review

David Graeber’s book on rules and bureaucracy examines the topic from a refreshing standpoint. Much management literature, since at least Bennis (1965), has made the claim that bureaucracy and competitive markets and/or change are somehow incompatible. The world needs to be post-bureaucratic ­­– ‘bureaucracy must die’ (Hamel, 2014), organizations must be more entrepreneurial (Drucker, 1984). These are the refrains we hear – if we are to survive and grow, creativity must be unleashed from the shackles of bureaucracy.

‘Be well’. This is what you hear now at the checkout counter at Walgreens, the largest drugstore chain in America. Employees offer this valediction as they hand over the receipt, and it comes across as eerily sincere. In fact, the phrase was so effective at rattling me out of my consumerist stupor that I said it back – ‘Be well as well’ – but it didn’t quite come out the same way. It sounded mangled, faux-British, and for some strange reason I raised my voice at the end, turning it into a question. I left feeling confused.

Identity has emerged as a major theme in management and organisation studies. This is perhaps unsurprising since questions of who one is or who one might become are particularly important in organisational settings (Watson, 2008).

It was November 2008 and it happened at the London School of Economics’ School of Management. The city was trembling above the shockwaves of a devastating financial crisis yet Professor Luis Garicano had good reason to be cheerful, at least on the beginning of the particular day we’ve got scene-setting cause to look back on him. As the Departmental Head he was leading The New Academic Building’s^[1] opening ceremony and the event had attracted a large and illustrious crowd.

Introduction

What does it mean to feel at home, to feel safe – to belong? As the intricacy of the question unfolds it seems no easy answers come right to mind. One approach to explore this further is by rephrasing the question, asking oneself: How is such a feeling of belonging constructed and politicized?

In Life between borders: The nomadic life of curators and artists ten international art professionals address the effect of frequent travel and movement on their lives, perspectives and identities. Today, travelling the globe is projected as an essential part of how curators and artists are supposed to work. Words like nomad, migration, dislocation, deterritorialisation, and connectivity, among others, have appeared with increasing frequency and enthusiasm in descriptions of art practices over the last two decades.

In the introduction to his book, Icons of the left, O.K. Werckmeister (1999: 1-2) argued that the problem Marxists faced after the collapse of the Soviet bloc concerned not so much the validity of their ideas, but whether they could have any lasting organic relation to effective political organizations and action in capitalist society.

Harvesting feminist knowledge for public policy addresses gender and socioeconomic inequalities spurred by the 2008-2009 economic downturn and exacerbated by increases in food prices as well as shortages, access to fuel, and financial failures of the state and banking industries. The book project is a product of the 2000 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action as well as eleven years of discussion among feminist thinkers envisioning alternative futures with goals of social and economic justice.

Real social science: Applied phronesis is an important book. Edited by Bent Flyvbjerg, Todd Landman and Sanford Schram, it is a valuable sequel to Flyvbjerg’s (2001) highly cited Making social science matter (MSSM).