A powerful exposé of the 'war' framework that governments around the world have adopted to tackle difficult problems yet which locks them into failed and cruel policies that never seem to end. The United States recently exited a two-decade long war in Afghanistan -- part of its 'global war on terror' -- in ignominy, with the Taliban taking Kabul. The US and European countries also continually increase funding for their own border security, leading to more chaos and shifting the problem around. And America's war on drugs has failed to dampen narcotics demand, while fueling atrocities and profiteering from Mexico to the Philippines. Why do politicians keep feeding the very crises they say they are combating? In Wreckonomics, Ruben Andersson and David Keen analyze why disastrous policies continue to live on when it has become apparent that they do not work. The authors show how the perverse outcomes we see in the fight against terror, migration, and drugs are more than a blip or an anomaly. Rather, the proliferation of pseudo-wars has become a dangerous political habit and an endless source of political advantage and profit. From combating crime to the war on drugs, from civil wars to global wars and even 'culture wars,' chronic failure has been harnessed to the appearance of success. A wide variety of problems have persisted or even worsened not so much despite the wars and pseudo-wars that are waged against them as because of them. Covering a range of cases around the world, Wreckonomics exposes and interrogates the incentive systems that allow destructive policies to remain in effect even in the face of systemic failure. It also develops strategies to collectively dismantle the addiction to waging war on everything.
The uses of shame (and shamelessness) in spheres that range from social media and consumerism to polarized politics and mass violence
Today, we are caught in a shame spiral-a vortex of mutual shaming that pervades everything from politics to social media. We are shamed for our looks, our culture, our ethnicity, our sexuality, our poverty, our wrongdoings, our politics. But what is the point of all this shaming and countershaming? Does it work? And if so, for whom?
In Shame, David Keen explores the function of modern shaming, paying particular attention to how shame is instrumentalized and weaponized. Keen points out that there is usually someone who offers an escape from shame-and that many of those who make this offer have been piling on shame in the first place. Self-interested manipulations of shame, Keen argues, are central to understanding phenomena as wide-ranging as consumerism, violent crime, populist politics, and even war and genocide. Shame is political as well as personal. To break out of our current cycle of shame and shaming, and to understand the harm that shame can do, we must recognize the ways that shame is being made to serve political and economic purposes.
