Resisting Work

Paid work is absolutely central to the culture and politics of capitalist societies, yet today’s work-centred world is becoming increasingly hostile to the human need for autonomy, spontaneity and community. The grim reality of a society in which some are overworked, whilst others are condemned to intermittent work and unemployment, is progressively more difficult to tolerate. In this thought-provoking book, David Frayne questions the central place of work in mainstream political visions of the future, laying bare the ways in which economic demands colonise our lives and priorities. Drawing on his original research into the lives of people who are actively resisting nine-to-five employment, Frayne asks what motivates these people to disconnect from work, whether or not their resistance is futile, and whether they might have the capacity to inspire an alternative form of development, based on a reduction and social redistribution of work. A crucial dissection of the work-centred nature of modern society and emerging resistance to it, The Refusal of Work is a bold call for a more humane and sustainable vision of social progress.

Why do individuals say what they do during everyday face-to-face influence interactions? How do people seek or resist compliance in different relational, institutional, and cultural contexts? Linking theory and research to salient, real life examples and recent academic studies, Steven Wilson introduces the reader to the theories, systems of message analysis, complexities and nuances of interpersonal persuasion. Seeking and Resisting Compliance is the only single-authored, interdisciplinary text to explore compliance gaining and resistance from a message production perspective. This incisive, clearly written text is ideal for students, scholars, and anyone interested in interpersonal influence and persuasion in everyday interactions. Recommended for graduate and upper-level undergraduate courses in persuasion as well as special topics courses in interpersonal influence, social psychology, and sociolinguistics. Features of this text: Ground breaking, specific focus on message production as opposed to only message effects. Multiple theoretical perspectives are presented and the vast body of research from communication, psychology, linguistics, philosophy and related fields is reviewed. Student-friendly pedagogy, such as definitions, examples, and sections describing "common assumptions" about various theories engage students and highlight important concepts. Steven Wilson currently is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Communication at Purdue University. He is one of five associate editors for the interdisciplinary journal Personal Relationships, and past chair of the International Communication Association's Interpersonal Communication division. His research and teaching focus on interpersonal influence and message production in a variety of contexts, from parent-child interaction in abusive families to intercultural business negotiations. He has published nearly forty articles and book chapters on these topics.

This text brings together research into the determinants of marginalization risks for the unemployed and research into social policies for combating marginalization. It examines how far entrapment in unemployment is due to resource constraints, motivational problems or skill deficiency.

Resisting Ethics is a new contribution to an ongoing debate on how the world can be improved. Starting with the notion that resistance and ethics are theoretically and practically intertwined, Schaffer develops a new socially oriented ethics based on the practical experience of resistance and ethics. Borrowing from and extending the ideas of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Bourdieu, and using case studies of the Algerian Revolution and the Zapatista rebellion, Schaffer argues that existentialism can give us new insights into how we can and should act ethically in the world. Resisting Ethics is a wide-ranging work and represents a new kind of intervention into issues of social justice and resistance.

** A New York Times Bestseller ** NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: Time • The New Yorker • NPR • GQ • Elle • Vulture • Fortune • Boing Boing • The Irish Times • The New York Public Library • The Brooklyn Public Library "A complex, smart and ambitious book that at first reads like a self-help manual, then blossoms into a wide-ranging political manifesto."—Jonah Engel Bromwich, The New York Times Book Review One of President Barack Obama's "Favorite Books of 2019" Porchlight's Personal Development & Human Behavior Book of the Year In a world where addictive technology is designed to buy and sell our attention, and our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity, it can seem impossible to escape. But in this inspiring field guide to dropping out of the attention economy, artist and critic Jenny Odell shows us how we can still win back our lives. Odell sees our attention as the most precious—and overdrawn—resource we have. And we must actively and continuously choose how we use it. We might not spend it on things that capitalism has deemed important … but once we can start paying a new kind of attention, she writes, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind’s role in the environment, and arrive at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress. Far from the simple anti-technology screed, or the back-to-nature meditation we read so often, How to do Nothing is an action plan for thinking outside of capitalist narratives of efficiency and techno-determinism. Provocative, timely, and utterly persuasive, this book will change how you see your place in our world.

Since its first appearance in 1981, critical regionalism has enjoyed a celebrated worldwide reception. The 1990s increased its pertinence as an architectural theory that defends the cultural identity of a place resisting the homogenising onslaught of globalisation. Today, its main principles (such as acknowledging the climate, history, materials, culture and topography of a specific place) are integrated in architects’ education across the globe. But at the same time, the richer cross-cultural history of critical regionalism has been reduced to schematic juxtapositions of ‘the global’ with ‘the local’. Retrieving both the globalising branches and the overlooked cross-cultural roots of critical regionalism, Resisting Postmodern Architecture resituates critical regionalism within the wider framework of debates around postmodern architecture, the diverse contexts from which it emerged, and the cultural media complex that conditioned its reception. In so doing, it explores the intersection of three areas of growing historical and theoretical interest: postmodernism, critical regionalism and globalisation. Based on more than 50 interviews and previously unpublished archival material from six countries, the book transgresses existing barriers to integrate sources in other languages into anglophone architectural scholarship. In so doing, it shows how the ‘periphery’ was not just a passive recipient, but also an active generator of architectural theory and practice. Stylianos Giamarelos challenges long-held ‘central’ notions of supposedly ‘international’ discourses of the recent past, and outlines critical regionalism as an unfinished project apposite for the 21st century on the fronts of architectural theory, history and historiography.

Since antiquity, European Jewish diaspora communities have used formal appeals to secular and religious authorities to secure favors or protection. Such petitioning took on particular significance in modern dictatorships, often as the only tool left for voicing political opposition. During the Holocaust, tens of thousands of European Jews turned to individual and collective petitions in the face of state-sponsored violence. This volume offers the first extensive analysis of petitions authored by Jews in nations ruled by the Nazis and their allies. It demonstrates their underappreciated value as a historical source and reveals the many attempts of European Jews to resist intensifying persecution and actively struggle for survival.