Expulsions : Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy / Saskia Sassen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sassen, Saskia, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Economics--Sociological aspects.

Economics.

Economic development--Social aspects.

Economic development.

Economic development--Moral and ethical aspects.

Capitalism--Social aspects.

Capitalism.

Equality--Economic aspects.

Equality.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (305 p.)

Edition:

Pilot project. eBook available to selected US libraries only

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Soaring income inequality and unemployment, expanding populations of the displaced and imprisoned, accelerating destruction of land and water bodies: today's socioeconomic and environmental dislocations cannot be fully understood in the usual terms of poverty and injustice, according to Saskia Sassen. They are more accurately understood as a type of expulsion--from professional livelihood, from living space, even from the very biosphere that makes life possible. This hard-headed critique updates our understanding of economics for the twenty-first century, exposing a system with devastating consequences even for those who think they are not vulnerable. From finance to mining, the complex types of knowledge and technology we have come to admire are used too often in ways that produce elementary brutalities. These have evolved into predatory formations--assemblages of knowledge, interests, and outcomes that go beyond a firm's or an individual's or a government's project. Sassen draws surprising connections to illuminate the systemic logic of these expulsions. The sophisticated knowledge that created today's financial "instruments" is paralleled by the engineering expertise that enables exploitation of the environment, and by the legal expertise that allows the world's have-nations to acquire vast stretches of territory from the have-nots. Expulsions lays bare the extent to which the sheer complexity of the global economy makes it hard to trace lines of responsibility for the displacements, evictions, and eradications it produces--and equally hard for those who benefit from the system to feel responsible for its depredations.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction. The Savage Sorting

1. Shrinking Economies, Growing Expulsions

2. The New Global Market for Land

3. Finance and Its Capabilities: Crisis as Systemic Logic

4. Dead Land, Dead Water

Conclusion: At the Systemic Edge

References

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jun 2020)

ISBN:

9780674369825

0674369823

9780674369818

0674369815

OCLC:

880147826