Shop top categories that ship internationally
Similar items shipping to Netherlands
NL
Netherlands
See All Buying Options
Added to

Sorry, there was a problem.

There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Please try again.

Sorry, there was a problem.

List unavailable.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

David Graeber
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy Hardcover – February 24, 2015

by David Graeber (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 722 ratings
See all formats and editions
From the author of the international bestseller Debt: The First 5,000 Years comes a revelatory account of the way bureaucracy rules our lives  

Where does the desire for endless rules, regulations, and bureaucracy come from? How did we come to spend so much of our time filling out forms? And is it really a cipher for state violence?
 
To answer these questions, the anthropologist David Graeber—one of our most important and provocative thinkers—traces the peculiar and unexpected ways we relate to bureaucracy today, and reveals how it shapes our lives in ways we may not even notice…though he also suggests that there may be something perversely appealing—even romantic—about bureaucracy.
 
Leaping from the ascendance of right-wing economics to the hidden meanings behind Sherlock Holmes and Batman, The Utopia of Rules is at once a powerful work of social theory in the tradition of Foucault and Marx, and an entertaining reckoning with popular culture that calls to mind Slavoj Zizek at his most accessible.
 
An essential book for our times, The Utopia of Rules is sure to start a million conversations about the institutions that rule over us—and the better, freer world we should, perhaps, begin to imagine for ourselves.
Previous slide of product details
  1. Print length
    272 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Melville House
  4. Publication date
    February 24, 2015
  5. Dimensions
    5.99 x 0.96 x 9.03 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1612193749
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1612193748
  8. See all details
Next slide of product details
The%20Amazon%20Book%20Review
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
722 global ratings

Review this product

Share your thoughts with other customers
Write a customer review

Customers say

Customers enjoy the book's readability and find it entertaining. They praise the well-crafted sentences and clever insights. However, opinions differ on the insights - some find them thought-provoking and compelling, while others consider them esoteric and academic.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Select to learn more
ReadabilityInsight
20 customers mention "Readability"15 positive5 negative

Customers enjoy the book's readability. They find it engaging and well-written. The writing style is clear and enjoyable to read. Many readers consider it a must-read for anarchists.

"...Good academic writers are so rare, indeed, good writers generally are so rare. Good writers are pleasure to read, just the way they craft sentences...." Read more

"I loved this book of essays. Graeber always writes clearly, where you can almost hear him explaining ideas, returning to examples to illustrate his..." Read more

"...insightful but while some arguments were interesting it was not an enjoyable read." Read more

"I'm still reading the third essay but already like this book a lot...." Read more

25 customers mention "Insight"17 positive8 negative

Customers have different views on the book's insights. Some find it insightful and thought-provoking, with compelling explanations of modern aspects and operations. They appreciate the author's use of examples to illustrate his theories and repeating ideas to remind. Others find the book too esoteric and academic for their taste, with errors and misinterpretations. Many feel the arguments are unconvincing, weakly researched, and disconnected.

"...His book Debt was a masterpiece, and this book on Bureaucracy is a revelation, though I'm only just getting into it...." Read more

"...Graeber always writes clearly, where you can almost hear him explaining ideas, returning to examples to illustrate his theories and repeating ideas..." Read more

"The Utopia of Rules by David Graeber is an engaging riff on the theme of bureaucracy and the BS people think about it. &#..." Read more

"...Unfortunately, this is a wandering and disconnected series of weakly researched essays that, while making a few interesting points, buries them..." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Charles Parselle
    5.0 out of 5 stars ANOTHER BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN ORIGINAL WORK
    Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    I rather resented having to pay $20.44 for this 227-page book (thinking: where's the $13.99 paperback?) but then I started reading, and now I'm happy to be paying David Graeber's royalty, not so much for the hard cover. Good academic writers are so rare, indeed, good writers generally are so rare. Good writers are pleasure to read, just the way they craft sentences. Then they have to say something worth the effort of reading; this is pretty rare as well, even though we are deluged with writers trying to write as if they were saying something. David Graeber has something to say, really a lot to say. His book Debt was a masterpiece, and this book on Bureaucracy is a revelation, though I'm only just getting into it. He is writing about situations I am living, have lived, and will go on living, but without really noticing, even though so frequently irritated. Graeber stops to take a closer look, and we stop and look with him. The result turns one's head around, changes one's perspective. Terrific book.
    16 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Games, Stupid Violence and Freedom
    Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2022
    Verified Purchase
    I loved this book of essays. Graeber always writes clearly, where you can almost hear him explaining ideas, returning to examples to illustrate his theories and repeating ideas to remind you of something he mentioned before a longer tangent.

    The second essay is probably my least favorite of the three, but the third essay resonated with me enough that I would have given it 5 stars even if I disliked the other two essays.

    I hope we find playful ways of implementing the ideas discussed here. Rules can be fun to follow when you participate in the creation of them. Nobody likes to follow stupid rules.
    4 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • David Swanson
    4.0 out of 5 stars The Financialization of Fiction, and Vice Versa
    Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    The Utopia of Rules by David Graeber is an engaging riff on the theme of bureaucracy and the BS people think about it.

    "De-regulation," of finances, Graeber points out, creates more rules, paperwork, and bureaucrats, apparently because what happens is not the equivalent of firing a bunch of factory safety inspectors, but rather the employment of enough bureaucrats to redirect control of wealth from mid-sized companies to giant conglomerates. Yet, just as people imagine criminals to be mostly black or violent, or war to be philanthropic or necessary, or estate taxes to be about family farms, or voter fraud to be impacting elections, or elections to have any value that could possibly be hurt by voter fraud, or a minimum wage to eliminate jobs, or corporate trade agreements to not eliminate jobs, or guns to make us safer, or prisons to "correct" something, or wealth to trickle down, or small-time foreign thugs to constitute a graver threat than a McDonald's diet, what matters is a fiction well told, not any facts.

    Career advancement in a bureaucracy, Graeber writes, is based not so much on merit as on the loyalty exhibited by a willingness to pretend that it's based on merit. If you play along with the collective delusion, you're rewarded.

    "Globalization" is not about tearing down borders, but rather trapping people behind militarized borders within which public supports can be denied and workers can be compelled to work for little or nothing -- in other words, a species of bureaucratization. The effort to create a truly borderless and fair world is known as "anti-globalization."

    The "free market" means heavier bureaucracy, and an expansion of those areas of life that come under the control of state violence. This was the story of Russia's transition from state to private economics, Graeber writes: more bureaucrats, not fewer.

    When police bring law and order, we picture them turning a violent situation non-violent. In fact, they are not involved in most violent crime, and mostly show up to nonviolent situations which they turn violent. You have a much higher chance of being killed by police than by the terrorists they are now mostly imagined as combatting.

    When someone tells you to be "realistic" about such supposed fantasies as peace or justice, they are not telling you to recognize how things are, as they and you may imagine they are, but rather they are telling you to acknowledge the violence by which the state can impose its will no matter how stupidly it might choose to do so. "Real" in this usage comes from the Spanish real meaning royal or belonging to the king, not the Latin res or thing. It is the royal usage that created such phrases as "real property" or "real estate." The point is not that a house truly exists, but that the king ultimately owns it. To "be realistic" about violence simply means to be violent about violence. After all, we all know violence exists; some of us choose not to multiply it.

    Cutting taxes on "job creators" doesn't create any jobs, just the reverse. With more wealth, they do things like taking their pay in stock options, and then using extra money that could have gone into new hires or raises or research for stock buybacks. The result is a weaker economy inhabited by people convinced it's both a stronger economy and an inevitable economy against which one need not waste any energy struggling for change.

    Why don't we have robots doing our factory work and house work? Why don't we have useful technological advances on the scale of previous eras? Graeber writes that the most immediate reason is that 95% of robotics funding has gone through the Pentagon which has no interest in such matters and is more interested in destructive inventions like killer drones.

    In addition, robots are understood as job killers rather than time savers because we offer no one a guaranteed income even if they don't need to work. We begin with the requirement that everyone work no matter what, and then figure out stuff they can do to fulfill that requirement -- such as trying all day to get us to switch from one giant phone company to another.

    Another problem is innovative corporate culture that kills innovation by investing in only sure things, requiring everyone to invest time in PR, and multiplying bureaucracy.

    People are told to cling to the American freedom of private health insurance companies as an act of rebellion against government bureaucracy, even as the insurance corporations create vastly more bureaucracy, paperwork, sickness, and death.

    We don't notice bureaucracy, Graeber believes, because it has mushroomed. The average American will spend 6 months of their life waiting for stoplights to change and some larger length of time filling out forms.

    We don't notice bureaucracy, think we despise it, and secretly love it, Graeber thinks -- love it because it is the enemy of unpredictable and improvisational play, which we've been conditioned to believe is dangerous. Of course, the opposite is true.

    The preceding is a sampling of Graber's book and my thoughts on it, not a summary. I urge you to dive into it yourself. It's a book that intentionally raises many large questions. A couple of small ones stand out as flaws, however: 1) Why in the world does the author keep his money in Bank of America? 2) Why does he imagine that the "War on Terror" has ended? The whole point of a war on terror is that it's not endable, as terror can never be eliminated. Nor of course can it be outdone in terrorizing by anything moreso than war.
    96 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Tergon
    5.0 out of 5 stars I like this book very much
    Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    I'm still reading the third essay but already like this book a lot. As a researcher working for a state institution, bureaucracy is something I have to fight, avoid or run from every single day in order to be able to produce what I'm supposed to: scientific research. Some time ago I searched the internet and didn't find anything interesting on the topic. But finally, here it is. A collection of excellent essays by David Graeber, which I hope will inspire other writers to pursue and expand the topic. My own contribution is that we should distinguish true management from bureaucracy which is a pathological condition of the first. A kind of cancer that became pervasive in capitalist societies.
    5 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
  • Patside
    5.0 out of 5 stars Instructive
    Reviewed in Canada on March 31, 2024
    Verified Purchase
    I am sad the author passed away. I learned a lot about arbitraryness and culture reading the book. I am glad to fill the review form.
    Report
  • Arelarez
    5.0 out of 5 stars Catártico y entretenido
    Reviewed in Mexico on August 1, 2023
    Verified Purchase
    Este libro cuenta de todo: la historia del papeleo, críticas hacia el capitalismo, la decadencia de la academia corporativista, órdenes angelicales y Batman; escrito de una manera sumamente amena.
    Report
  • Roberto Marsicano
    5.0 out of 5 stars Un'analisi profonda dei sistemi burocratici.
    Reviewed in Italy on February 14, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    Un libro molto interessante, che va in profondità sul fenomeno burocrazia, senza pre-concetti mentali pro e contro, ma con un'analisi obiettiva del perché serve e di quali sono le ragioni per cui spesso non funziona.
    Molto interessante l'analisi delle scontro fra burocrazia tedesca, durante la seconda guerra mondiale, contro quella americana, che per l'autore è stato un fattore vincente per l'efficienza americana nella conduzione della guerra.
    Report
  • Rainer B
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book
    Reviewed in Australia on June 15, 2024
    Verified Purchase
    Classic David Graeber. It's such a shame he is no longer with us.
    Report
  • André Braga
    1.0 out of 5 stars Brainstorming
    Reviewed in Brazil on May 27, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    I have been researching about bureaucracy and red tape and reading some books on these topics. That's how I stumbled over "the utopia of rules". The description was promising. But my impression is that this is not a book about bureaucracy and its causes or even something similar. The author follows a certain pattern: he poses an interesting question about red tape and, in the following pages, forgets about it completely and starts talking about some worn out leftist cliches about violence and opression and racism. In between he fills some space writing about vampires, angels, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, role playing games, Egypt...

    I bought this book after reading "Cubed", by Nikil Saval, and the contrast couldn't be bigger.
    Report