Manufacturing Discontent: The Trap of Individualism in Corporate Society - Softcover

Perelman, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745324061 ISBN 13: 9780745324067

Publisher: Pluto Press, 2005

Synopsis

Corporate power has a huge impact on the rights and privileges of individuals -- as workers, consumers, and citizens. This book explores how the myth of individualism reinforces corporate power by making people perceive themselves as having choices, when in fact most peoples' options are very limited. Perelman describes the manufacture of unhappiness - the continual generation of dissatisfaction with products people are encouraged to purchase and quickly discard - and the complex techniques corporations employ to avoid responsibility and accountability to their workers, consumers and the environment. He outlines ways in which individuals can surpass individualism and instead work together to check the growing power of corporations. While other books have surveyed the corporate landscape, or decried modern consumerism, Perelman, a professor of economics, places these ideas within a proper economic and historical context. He explores the limits of corporate accountability and responsibility, and investigates the relation between a wide range of phenomena such as food, fear and terrorism. Highly readable, Manufacturing Discontent will appeal to anyone with an interest in the way society works - and what really determines the rights of individuals in a corporate society.

About this title

About the Author:

Sinisa Malesevic is lecturer in the Department of Political Science and Sociology, NUI, Galway. He is author of Ideology, Legitimacy and the New State (Frank Cass, 2002), editor of Culture in Central and Eastern Europe: Institutional and Value Changes (IMO, 1997) and co-editor of Ideology after Poststructuralism (Pluto 2002)._x000B_Iain MacKenzie is a Lecturer in Politics at The Queen's University of Belfast. He is author of articles on Deleuze and Guattari and co-author of Contemporary Social and Political Theory: An Introduction (OUP, 1999).

Review:

'A refreshing deconstruction of the pervading prejudices of corporate responsibility and shines a light on some of the workings of corporate power' -- Simon Basketter, Socialist Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0745324061
• ISBN 13: 9780745324067
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224