The concepts that organize our thinking wield, by virtue of this fact, a great deal of political power. This book looks at five concepts whose dominion has increased, steadily, during the bourgeois period of modernity: Labor, Time, Property, Value, and Crisis. These ruling ideas are central not only to many academic disciplines-- from philosophy and law to the political, social, and economic sciences-- but also to everyday life. These ruling ideas explain the cultural attitudes of boredom and multitasking, revealing the inescapable internalized consciousness of time that has become a mode of...

The concepts that organize our thinking wield, by virtue of this fact, a great deal of political power. This book looks at five concepts whose dominion has increased, steadily, during the bourgeois period of modernity: Labor, Time, Property, Value, and Crisis. These ruling ideas are central not only to many academic disciplines-- from philosophy and law to the political, social, and economic sciences-- but also to everyday life. These ruling ideas explain the cultural attitudes of boredom and multitasking, revealing the inescapable internalized consciousness of time that has become a mode of...