A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet - Hardcover

Raj Patel; Jason W. Moore

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1788732138 ISBN 13: 9781788732130

Publisher: Verso, 2018

Synopsis

Nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives: these are the seven things that have made our world and will shape its future. In making these things cheap, modern commerce has transformed, governed, and devastated Earth. In A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore present a new approach to analyzing today's planetary emergencies. Bringing the latest ecological research together with histories of colonialism, indigenous struggles, slave revolts, and other rebellions and uprisings, Patel and Moore demonstrate that throughout history, crises have always prompted fresh strategies to make the world cheap and safe for capitalism. At a time of crisis in all seven cheap things, innovative and systemic thinking is urgently required. This book proposes a radical new way of understanding - and reclaiming - the planet in the turbulent twenty-first century.

About this title

Review:

'Moore and Patel's expansive view of capitalism makes it possible to understand a much broader coalition of struggles as anti-capitalist and capable of helping to head off climate change.' - --Alyssa Battistoni, The Nation
Moore's academic rigour and Patel's accessible writing style mean this book can be recommended to friends who have yet to understand the cruelty of capitalism and how categories of race and gender have been construed to fuel it. --Red Pepper

About the Author:

Raj Patel is an award-winning writer, activist and academic. He is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin and a Senior Research Associate at the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University. He is the author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and The Value of Nothing.

Jason W. Moore teaches world history and world-ecology at Binghamton University, and is coordinator of the World-Ecology Research Network. He is the author of several books, including Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital, and numerous award-winning essays in environmental history, political economy, and social theory.

About this edition

• Publisher: Verso
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1788732138
• ISBN 13: 9781788732130
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336