rdf-syntax-grammar
mods:
  schema location: http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
  title info:
    title: Futilitarianism
    sub title: neoliberalism and the production of uselessness
  name:
    name part: Vallelly, Neil
    role:
      role term: creator
    role:
      role term: author.
  type of resource: text
  genre: bibliography
  origin info:
    place:
      place term: enk
    date issued: 2021
    issuance: monographic
  language:
    language term: eng
  physical description:
    form: print
    extent: xi, 234 pages ; 21 cm.
  abstract: If maximizing utility leads to the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people, as utilitarianism has always proposed, then why is it that as many of us currently maximize our utility, by working endlessly, undertaking further education and training, relentlessly marketing and selling ourselves, we are met with the steady worsening of collective social and economic conditions? In Futilitarianism, social and political theorist Neil Vallelly eloquently tells the story of how neoliberalism transformed the relationship between utility maximisation and the common good. Drawing on a vast array of contemporary examples, from self-help literature and marketing jargon to political speeches and governmental responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, Vallelly coins several terms, including "the futilitarian condition," "homo futilitus" and "semio-futility," to demonstrate that in the neoliberal decades, the practice of utility maximisation traps us in useless and repetitive behaviors that foreclose the possibility of collective happiness. This urgent and provocative book chimes with the mood of the time by at once mapping the historical relationship between utilitarianism and capitalism, developing an original framework for understanding neoliberalism and recounting the lived experience of uselessness in the early twenty-first century. At a time of epoch-defining disasters, from climate emergencies to deadly pandemics, countering the futility of neoliberal existence is essential to building an egalitarian, sustainable and hopeful future.
  note: Neil Vallelly.
  note: Includes bibliographical references and index.
  subject:
    topic: Utilitarianism
  subject:
    topic: Neoliberalism
    topic: Social aspects
  subject:
    topic: Common good
  subject:
    topic: Social history
    temporal: 21st century
  subject:
    topic: Economic history
    temporal: 21st century
  classification: B843 .V35 2021
  classification: 306.3
  identifier: 9781912685905
  identifier: 1912685906
  record info:
    record content source: YDX
    record creation date: 210906
    record change date: 20220105144611.0
    record identifier: in00004386466