The ministry of nostalgia
$32.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Author Owen Hatherley shows how our past is being resold in order to defend the indefensible. From the marketing of a “make do and mend” aesthetic to the growing nostalgia for a utopian past that never existed, a cultural distraction scam prevents people grasping the truth of their condition. The Ministry of Nostalgia looks at the creation of a false history -(...)
The ministry of nostalgia
Actions:
Price:
$32.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Author Owen Hatherley shows how our past is being resold in order to defend the indefensible. From the marketing of a “make do and mend” aesthetic to the growing nostalgia for a utopian past that never existed, a cultural distraction scam prevents people grasping the truth of their condition. The Ministry of Nostalgia looks at the creation of a false history - examining the austerity of the 1940s and 1950s, which saw the development of a welfare state while the nation crawled recovered from the war. Hatherley examines how this period has been recast to offer consolation for the violence of neoliberalism, an ideology dedicated to the privatisation of common wealth.
Critical Theory
$39.95
(available to order)
Summary:
From the grandiose histories of monumental state building projects to the minutiae of street signs and corner cafés, from the rebuilding of capital cities to the provision of the humble public toilet, "Clean living under difficult circumstances" argues for the city as a socialist project. This essay collection spans a period from immediately before the 2008 financial(...)
Clean living in difficult circumstances
Actions:
Price:
$39.95
(available to order)
Summary:
From the grandiose histories of monumental state building projects to the minutiae of street signs and corner cafés, from the rebuilding of capital cities to the provision of the humble public toilet, "Clean living under difficult circumstances" argues for the city as a socialist project. This essay collection spans a period from immediately before the 2008 financial crash to the year of the pandemic. Against the business-as-usual responses to both crises, Owen Hatherley outlines a vision of the city as both a venue for political debate and dispute as well as a space of everyday experience, one that we shape as much as it shapes us. Incorporated here are the genres of memoir, history, music and film criticism, as well as portraits of figures who have inspired new ways of looking at cities, such as the architect Zaha Hadid, the activist and urbanist Jane Jacobs, and thinkers such as Mark Fisher and Adam Curtis. Throughout these pieces, Hatherley argues that the only way out of our difficult circumstances is to imagine and try to construct a better modernity.
Urban Theory