imperialism), and builds a vulgar utopian (insert “free” to everything) model devoid of real-world application (power, class, contradictions, crises). Next, “economics” takes the winners, abstracts away interrelations (ex. “History” starts with names and dates names of the great men who won (and their perspectives) and dates of singular events (noisy surface phenomenon which barely reveal the underlying structures). Meanwhile, this critical examination of real-world history/political economy is buried.

commodification of society for endless private accumulation) from the 1600 East India Company and 1694 Bank of England to today’s Amazon and Wall Street? What drives our notions of “progress”, “growth” and “cosmopolitanism” behind liberalism? Instead of merely dwelling in ideas (where we are a bundle of contradictions), what about the production/distribution of real-world capitalism (i.e. I am most interested in the materialist structures ( political economy: production/distribution) behind “liberalism” rather than getting lost in the cultural spillover effects. 2022 Update: with the author going into palliative care, it’s time to update this review and fill in some gaps (esp.

It’s a book about understanding the relationship between the built and the un-built, the physical fabric and social fabric.” Read more.Liberalism and Imperialism, 2 sides of the same Capitalist coin… It made sense of things why the railways have gone and why freeways had proliferated for example (the railways in LA were brought up by a conglomerate made up of companies in the car industry, who just shut them down because they were competition, which in time meant the freeways popped up). Whilst I was there I picked up a copy of City of Quartz, which had just come out, and read it all in one session. I was thinking what the hell is going on here? It wasn’t just to do with the freeways and the smog, and Hollywood – there was something very strange about it. When I first arrived in Los Angles, before I read the book, I was completely and utterly bamboozled by the place.

In its angry and political way, it describes how cities arise out of an incredibly complex and difficult set of uncontrollable forces. I found City of Quartz when I went to Los Angeles for first time. “Mike Davis is getting increasingly vociferous about development and climate change, and in a way this is one of his milder books. Foreign Policy & International Relations.

Late victorian holocausts review