Much orthodox economic theory is based on assumptions which are treated as self-evident: supply and demand are regarded as independent entities, the individual is assumed to be a rational agent who knows his interests and how to make decisions corresponding to them, and so on. But one has only to examine an economic transaction closely, as Pierre Bourdieu does here for the buying and selling of houses, to see that these abstract assumptions cannot explain what happens in reality.


As Bourdieu shows, the market is constructed by the state, which can decide, for example,...

Much orthodox economic theory is based on assumptions which are treated as self-evident: supply and demand are regarded as independent entities, the individual is assumed to be a rational agent who knows his interests and how to make decisions corresponding to them, and so on. But one has only to examine an economic transaction closely, as Pierre Bourdieu does here for the buying and selling of houses, to see that these abstract assumptions cannot explain what happens in reality.


As Bourdieu shows, the market is constructed by the state, which can decide, for example,...

Prophet of the apocalypse, hysterical lyric poet, obsessive recounter of the desolation of the postmodern scene and currently the hottest property on the New York intellectual circuit.
The Guardian

A sharp-shooting lone-ranger from the post-Marxist left.
New York Times

The most important French thinker of the past twenty years.
J. G. Ballard

"Theory is never so fine as when it takes the form of a fiction or a fable," writes Baudrillard in Cool Memories V - the latest in a series of aphoristic journals that covers the period 2000-2004. During these...

Prophet of the apocalypse, hysterical lyric poet, obsessive recounter of the desolation of the postmodern scene and currently the hottest property on the New York intellectual circuit.
The Guardian

A sharp-shooting lone-ranger from the post-Marxist left.
New York Times

The most important French thinker of the past twenty years.
J. G. Ballard

"Theory is never so fine as when it takes the form of a fiction or a fable," writes Baudrillard in Cool Memories V - the latest in a series of aphoristic journals that covers the period 2000-2004. During these...

The dynamic that currently underlies global social change is the product of forces that are not of a single type or origin. As a consequence, that change is experienced as a process that uproots individuals but gives no guidance for the future, that destroys but does not reconstruct, that prescribes action but provides no reassurance. The radical uncertainty it engenders is an understandable source of anxiety: the rich countries are increasingly worried about competition from low-wage economies, while the wretched of the earth suspect their precarious existences will come under even greater...

The dynamic that currently underlies global social change is the product of forces that are not of a single type or origin. As a consequence, that change is experienced as a process that uproots individuals but gives no guidance for the future, that destroys but does not reconstruct, that prescribes action but provides no reassurance. The radical uncertainty it engenders is an understandable source of anxiety: the rich countries are increasingly worried about competition from low-wage economies, while the wretched of the earth suspect their precarious existences will come under even greater...

The year 2000, the end of the millennium: is this anything other than a mirage, the illusion of an end, like so many other imaginary endpoints which have littered the path of history? In this remarkable book Jean Baurdrillard--France's leading theorist of postmodernity--argues that the notion of the end is part of the fantasy of a linear history. Today we are not approaching the end of history but moving into reverse, into a process of systematic obliteration. We are wiping out the entire twentieth century, effacing all signs of the cold War one by one, perhaps even the signs of the First and...

Jean Baudrillard is widely recognized as one of the most important and provocative writers of our age. Variously termed France s leading philosopher of postmodernism and a sharp-shooting Lone Ranger of the post-Marxist left, he might also be called our leading philosopher of seduction or of mass culture. Following his acclaimed America and Cool Memories, this book is the third in a series of personal records in hyperreality. Idiosyncratic, outrageous, and brilliantly original, Baudrillard here casts his net widely and combines autobiographical memories with further reflections...