Summary of David Graeber's The Utopia of Rules

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 I had to take care of my mother, who was having a series of strokes. She had saved up six thousand dollars, which was enough to qualify her for Medicaid, but she needed power of attorney over her bank account in order to pay her monthly rent bills.
#2 The next week, the notary duly appeared to officially complete the paperwork. I was surprised the bank insisted on having its own separate power of attorney form, but I figured the notary knew what she was doing. The bank would not accept the forms in their current state, so my mother died soon after.
#3 One can fairly say that bureaucracies are utopian forms of organization. They set demands they believe are reasonable, and then blame the individuals when they fail to live up to them.
#4 I was forced to confront the fact that I was doing a lot of foolish things because I was trying to understand and influence the government officials who had the power to change the rules. I realized that I needed to stop worrying about how not to seem like I was rubbing notaries in their faces, and just focus on the task at hand.

Sujets

• Industrial relations

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669349280
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on David Graeber's The Utopia of Rules
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I had to take care of my mother, who was having a series of strokes. She had saved up six thousand dollars, which was enough to qualify her for Medicaid, but she needed power of attorney over her bank account in order to pay her monthly rent bills.

#2

The next week, the notary duly appeared to officially complete the paperwork. I was surprised the bank insisted on having its own separate power of attorney form, but I figured the notary knew what she was doing. The bank would not accept the forms in their current state, so my mother died soon after.

#3

One can fairly say that bureaucracies are utopian forms of organization. They set demands they believe are reasonable, and then blame the individuals when they fail to live up to them.

#4

I was forced to confront the fact that I was doing a lot of foolish things because I was trying to understand and influence the government officials who had the power to change the rules. I realized that I needed to stop worrying about how not to seem like I was rubbing notaries in their faces, and just focus on the task at hand.

#5

Americans and Europeans have many rituals surrounding birth, marriage, death, and similar rites of passage, but not because Americans and Europeans are particularly interesting or interesting things to write about. Instead, it is because paperwork is boring.

#6

paperwork is supposed to be boring. And it’s getting more so all the time. anthropologists are drawn to areas of density. paperwork, on the other hand, is designed to be maximally simple and self-contained.

#7

Great novelists have written compelling literature about bureaucracy, but they have done so by embracing the absurdities and circularity of bureaucracy and producing works that partake of the same mazelike, senseless form.

#8

Weber and Foucault were two 20th century European social theorists who gained a great deal of popularity in the United States. Their theories suggested that power was not simply or primarily a matter of the control of production, but rather a pervasive, multifaceted, and unavoidable feature of any social life.

#9

With the fall of Weber, Foucault became the new king of academic sociology. His focus on the power/knowledge relationship was especially appealing to those who had become disillusioned with leftist politics during the 1960s.

#10

The truth is that we are all subject to the same types of willful blindness when it comes to situations created by structural violence. We tend to ignore them, and instead focus on the things that seem important, because those things are usually backed up by the threat of physical harm.

#11

All of these institutions involve the allocation of resources within a system of property rights regulated and guaranteed by governments. And all of it ultimately depends on the threat of physical harm.