Made in China, Designed in California, Criticised in Europe

Made in China, Designed in California, Criticised in Europe PDF Author: Mieke Gerritzen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789063695873
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
When everything is destined to be designed, design disappears into the everyday. We simply do not see it anymore because it is everywhere. This is the vanishing act of design. At this moment, design registers its redundancy: our products, environments and services have been comprehensively improved. Everything has been designed to perfection and is under a permanent upgrade regime.Within such a paradigm, design is taken over by the capitalist logic of reproduction. But this does not come without conflicts, struggles and tensions. The most obvious of these, is that design is constantly being replaced. Our dispense culture prompts a yearning for longevity. The compulsion to delete brings alive a desire to retrieve objects, ideas and experiences that refuse to become obsolete. Society is growing more aware of sustainability and alert to the depletion of this world. For the ambitious designer, it is time to take the next step: designing the future with a more holistic consideration and approach. The book is a critical look at the design world with its various design disciplines and how these have developed in the past 10 years. Made in China, Designed in California, Criticised in Europeis for professional designers that care about design, the environment and how we live.

Made in China, Designed in California, Criticised in Europe

Made in China, Designed in California, Criticised in Europe PDF Author: Mieke Gerritzen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789063695873
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 128

Get Book

Book Description
When everything is destined to be designed, design disappears into the everyday. We simply do not see it anymore because it is everywhere. This is the vanishing act of design. At this moment, design registers its redundancy: our products, environments and services have been comprehensively improved. Everything has been designed to perfection and is under a permanent upgrade regime.Within such a paradigm, design is taken over by the capitalist logic of reproduction. But this does not come without conflicts, struggles and tensions. The most obvious of these, is that design is constantly being replaced. Our dispense culture prompts a yearning for longevity. The compulsion to delete brings alive a desire to retrieve objects, ideas and experiences that refuse to become obsolete. Society is growing more aware of sustainability and alert to the depletion of this world. For the ambitious designer, it is time to take the next step: designing the future with a more holistic consideration and approach. The book is a critical look at the design world with its various design disciplines and how these have developed in the past 10 years. Made in China, Designed in California, Criticised in Europeis for professional designers that care about design, the environment and how we live.

The Great Divergence

The Great Divergence PDF Author: Kenneth Pomeranz
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691217181
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
A landmark comparative history of Europe and China that examines why the Industrial Revolution emerged in the West The Great Divergence sheds light on one of the great questions of history: Why did sustained industrial growth begin in Northwest Europe? Historian Kenneth Pomeranz shows that as recently as 1750, life expectancy, consumption, and product and factor markets were comparable in Europe and East Asia. Moreover, key regions in China and Japan were no worse off ecologically than those in Western Europe, with each region facing corresponding shortages of land-intensive products. Pomeranz’s comparative lens reveals the two critical factors resulting in Europe's nineteenth-century divergence—the fortunate location of coal and access to trade with the New World. As East Asia’s economy stagnated, Europe narrowly escaped the same fate largely due to favorable resource stocks from underground and overseas. This Princeton Classics edition includes a preface from the author and makes a powerful historical work available to new readers.

Orientalism

Orientalism PDF Author: Edward W. Said
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0804153868
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
More than three decades after its first publication, Edward Said's groundbreaking critique of the West's historical, cultural, and political perceptions of the East has become a modern classic. In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of "orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined "the orient" simply as "other than" the occident. This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding. Essential, and still eye-opening, Orientalism remains one of the most important books written about our divided world.

Europe Central

Europe Central PDF Author: William T. Vollmann
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143036599
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 834

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Book Description
A daring literary masterpiece and winner of the National Book Award In this magnificent work of fiction, acclaimed author William T. Vollmann turns his trenchant eye on the authoritarian cultures of Germany and the USSR in the twentieth century to render a mesmerizing perspective on human experience during wartime. Through interwoven narratives that paint a composite portrait of these two battling leviathans and the monstrous age they defined, Europe Central captures a chorus of voices both real and fictional— a young German who joins the SS to fight its crimes, two generals who collaborate with the enemy for different reasons, the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich and the Stalinist assaults upon his work and life.

Uncouth Nation

Uncouth Nation PDF Author: Andrei S. Markovits
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400827299
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
No survey can capture the breadth and depth of the anti-Americanism that has swept Europe in recent years. From ultraconservative Bavarian grandmothers to thirty-year-old socialist activists in Greece, from globalization opponents to corporate executives--Europeans are joining in an ever louder chorus of disdain for America. For the first time, anti-Americanism has become a European lingua franca. In this sweeping and provocative look at the history of European aversion to America, Andrei Markovits argues that understanding the ubiquity of anti-Americanism since September 11, 2001, requires an appreciation of such sentiments among European elites going back at least to July 4, 1776. While George W. Bush's policies have catapulted anti-Americanism into overdrive, particularly in Western Europe, Markovits argues that this loathing has long been driven not by what America does, but by what it is. Focusing on seven Western European countries big and small, he shows how antipathies toward things American embrace aspects of everyday life--such as sports, language, work, education, media, health, and law--that remain far from the purview of the Bush administration's policies. Aggravating Europeans' antipathies toward America is their alleged helplessness in the face of an Americanization that they view as inexorably befalling them. More troubling, Markovits argues, is that this anti-Americanism has cultivated a new strain of anti-Semitism. Above all, he shows that while Europeans are far apart in terms of their everyday lives and shared experiences, their not being American provides them with a powerful common identity--one that elites have already begun to harness in their quest to construct a unified Europe to rival America.

A Power Audit of EU-China Relations

A Power Audit of EU-China Relations PDF Author: John Fox
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781906538101
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 101

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Book Description


When China Rules the World

When China Rules the World PDF Author: Martin Jacques
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101151455
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 631

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Book Description
Greatly revised and expanded, with a new afterword, this update to Martin Jacques’s global bestseller is an essential guide to understanding a world increasingly shaped by Chinese power Soon, China will rule the world. But in doing so, it will not become more Western. Since the first publication of When China Rules the World, the landscape of world power has shifted dramatically. In the three years since the first edition was published, When China Rules the World has proved to be a remarkably prescient book, transforming the nature of the debate on China. Now, in this greatly expanded and fully updated edition, boasting nearly 300 pages of new material, and backed up by the latest statistical data, Martin Jacques renews his assault on conventional thinking about China’s ascendancy, showing how its impact will be as much political and cultural as economic, changing the world as we know it. First published in 2009 to widespread critical acclaim - and controversy - When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order has sold a quarter of a million copies, been translated into eleven languages, nominated for two major literary awards, and is the subject of an immensely popular TED talk.

Invisible China

Invisible China PDF Author: Scott Rozelle
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022674051X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
A study of how China’s changing economy may leave its rural communities in the dust and launch a political and economic disaster. As the glittering skyline in Shanghai seemingly attests, China has quickly transformed itself from a place of stark poverty into a modern, urban, technologically savvy economic powerhouse. But as Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell show in Invisible China, the truth is much more complicated and might be a serious cause for concern. China’s growth has relied heavily on unskilled labor. Most of the workers who have fueled the country’s rise come from rural villages and have never been to high school. While this national growth strategy has been effective for three decades, the unskilled wage rate is finally rising, inducing companies inside China to automate at an unprecedented rate and triggering an exodus of companies seeking cheaper labor in other countries. Ten years ago, almost every product for sale in an American Walmart was made in China. Today, that is no longer the case. With the changing demand for labor, China seems to have no good back-up plan. For all of its investment in physical infrastructure, for decades China failed to invest enough in its people. Recent progress may come too late. Drawing on extensive surveys on the ground in China, Rozelle and Hell reveal that while China may be the second-largest economy in the world, its labor force has one of the lowest levels of education of any comparable country. Over half of China’s population—as well as a vast majority of its children—are from rural areas. Their low levels of basic education may leave many unable to find work in the formal workplace as China’s economy changes and manufacturing jobs move elsewhere. In Invisible China, Rozelle and Hell speak not only to an urgent humanitarian concern but also a potential economic crisis that could upend economies and foreign relations around the globe. If too many are left structurally unemployable, the implications both inside and outside of China could be serious. Understanding the situation in China today is essential if we are to avoid a potential crisis of international proportions. This book is an urgent and timely call to action that should be read by economists, policymakers, the business community, and general readers alike. Praise for Invisible China “Stunningly researched.” —TheEconomist, Best Books of the Year (UK) “Invisible China sounds a wake-up call.” —The Strategist “Not to be missed.” —Times Literary Supplement (UK) “[Invisible China] provides an extensive coverage of problems for China in the sphere of human capital development . . . the book is rich in content and is not constrained only to China, but provides important parallels with past and present developments in other countries.” —Journal of Chinese Political Science

The American Discovery of Europe

The American Discovery of Europe PDF Author: Jack D. Forbes
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252091256
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
The American Discovery of Europe investigates the voyages of America's Native peoples to the European continent before Columbus's 1492 arrival in the "New World." The product of over twenty years of exhaustive research in libraries throughout Europe and the United States, the book paints a clear picture of the diverse and complex societies that constituted the Americas before 1492 and reveals the surprising Native American involvements in maritime trade and exploration. Starting with an encounter by Columbus himself with mysterious people who had apparently been carried across the Atlantic on favorable currents, Jack D. Forbes proceeds to explore the seagoing expertise of early Americans, theories of ancient migrations, the evidence for human origins in the Americas, and other early visitors coming from Europe to America, including the Norse. The provocative, extensively documented, and heartfelt conclusions of The American Discovery of Europe present an open challenge to received historical wisdom.

Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)

Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) PDF Author: Jing Tsu
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735214735
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.