Meme Wars: The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics

by Kalle Lasn (Editor), Adbusters (Editor)

Overview

"Engrossing, exciting [...] This book compels us to rethink our approaches to economics ..." 
—Literary Review of Canada

"Thought-provoking and creative" — Julie Nelson, author of Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics

"Meme Wars is a Molotov cocktail tossed into the boardroom. "— Calgary Herald


From the editor and magazine that started and named the Occupy Wall Street movement, Meme Wars: The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics is an articulation of what could be the next steps in rethinking and remaking our world that challenges and debunks many of the assumptions of neoclassical economics and brings to light a more ecological model. Meme Wars aims to accelerate the shift into this new paradigm that takes into account psychonomics, bionomics, and other aspects of our physical and mental environment that are often left out in discussions of economics. 

Like Adbusters, the book will be image heavy and full-color throughout. Lasn calls it "a textbook for the future" that provides the building blocks, in texts and visuals, for a new way of looking at and changing our world. Through an examination of alternative economies, Lasn hopes to spur students to become "barefoot economists" and to see that a humanization of economics is possible. Meme Wars will include contributions from Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Samuelson, George Akerlof, Lourdes Benería, Julie Matthaei, Manfred Max-Neef, David Orrell, Paul Gilding, Mathis Wackernagel and the father of ecological economics Herman Daly, among others.

Based on ideas that were presented in a special issue of Adbusters entitled "Thought Control in Economics: Beyond the Growth Paradigm / An Activist Toolkit," Meme Wars will help move forward the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609804732
Publisher:	Seven Stories Press
Publication date:	11/13/2012
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	703,082
Product dimensions:	8.66(w) x 10.86(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

An internationally known documentarian and anti-consumerism activist, KALLE LASN is the publisher of Adbusters magazine and founder of the Adbusters Media Foundation and Powershift Advertising Agency. With Adbusters, he has dedicated himself to launching such social media campaigns as Buy Nothing Day and TV Turnoff Week, and to fighting legal battles for the right to access public airwaves. Much of his activism has taken the form of “culture jamming”—a term he coined and illustrated his first book, Culture Jam. Lasn, along with Adbusters senior editor Micah White and Adbusters’ 90,000-strong global network of activists, instigated the first #OccupyWallStreet event on 17, 2011. Lasn lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

ADBUSTERS is a not-for-profit, reader-supported, advertising-free magazine with a circulation of approximately 70,000. It puts forward anticapitalist, pro-environment concerns through incisive philosophical essays, activist commentary, and advertising spoofs. Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Adbusters past and present contributors include Slavoj Žižek, David Graeber, Simon Critchley, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Matt Taibbi, Bill McKibben, Douglas Rushkoff, Jonathan Cook, and Chris Hedges, among others.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Adbusters magazine and its editor Kalle Lasn have been at the forefront of the global resistance to capitalism exemplified by the Occupy movement. Their new book, Meme Wars: the Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economies, uses startling images to back up its hard-hitting points. "
—The Guardian

"The essays in Meme Wars are engrossing, exciting even. This book compels us to rethink our approaches to economics by offering critique after critique of the way the subject is written about and taught, indeed of the very conceptual categories we use when we debate about how goods are produced and distributed, services provided and resources extracted. By turns wonky and visionary, Meme Wars ... brings together a group of accomplished writers, most of them academics, who approach the world’s economic, environmental and social problems in ways one seldom finds in mainstream journalism or economics departments."
—Literary Review of Canada

“Meme Wars should be required reading for anyone wants to challenge their ideas about the modern economy and the people who champion it.”
—Meme Wars is a textbook for a new way of thinking, Straight.com

"Thought-provoking and creative"
—Julie Nelson, author of Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics 

"Meme Wars should be required reading for anyone wants to challenge their ideas about the modern economy and the people who champion it."
—Miranda Nelson, The Georgia Straight

"Meme Wars is a kind of anti-textbook, which uses words and images to explore the dark spaces that surround conventional economic theory."
—David Orrell  

Editorial Reviews

This self-consciously stylized anticapitalist textbook offers a tour through alternative economics targeted toward college students and those encountering anarchist or radical politics for the first time. Lasn is both the founder of Adbusters Magazine and the mind behind the Occupy Movement, which has earned his culture-jamming ethos an extended moment in the sun. This latest text marries these two cultural phenomena, driven equally by the glitzy subversion of '90s culture jamming and the broad-ranging ideological concerns of Occupy protestors, environmental and social justice concerns prime among them. The book is rich with enlightening interviews with mainstream and radical economists as well as tours through historic economic development and paradigm-shifting concepts. However, the reliance on a '90s style of faux-ads and fraught, frenetic imagery—familiar to anyone who has browsed an old Adbusters—feels dated, while the constant attempts to subvert the textbook genre come across more often as cheesy than radical. For those committed to the read, the core content of the book, including contributions by Herman Daly and Margaret Atwood, still manages to convince and inspire, even while the stylized design borders on a patronizing tone that risks turning off the very audience it addresses. Color illus. (Nov)

Publishers Weekly

"Adbusters magazine and its editor Kalle Lasn have been at the forefront of the global resistance to capitalism exemplified by the Occupy movement. Their new book, Meme Wars: the Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economies, uses startling images to back up its hard-hitting points. "
—The Guardian

"The essays in Meme Wars are engrossing, exciting even. This book compels us to rethink our approaches to economics by offering critique after critique of the way the subject is written about and taught, indeed of the very conceptual categories we use when we debate about how goods are produced and distributed, services provided and resources extracted. By turns wonky and visionary, Meme Wars ... brings together a group of accomplished writers, most of them academics, who approach the world’s economic, environmental and social problems in ways one seldom finds in mainstream journalism or economics departments."
—Literary Review of Canada

“Meme Wars should be required reading for anyone wants to challenge their ideas about the modern economy and the people who champion it.”
—Meme Wars is a textbook for a new way of thinking, Straight.com

"Thought-provoking and creative"
—Julie Nelson, author of Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics 

"Meme Wars should be required reading for anyone wants to challenge their ideas about the modern economy and the people who champion it."
—Miranda Nelson, The Georgia Straight

"Meme Wars is a kind of anti-textbook, which uses words and images to explore the dark spaces that surround conventional economic theory."
—David Orrell  

"The essays in Meme Wars are engrossing, exciting even. This book compels us to rethink our approaches to economics by offering critique after critique of the way the subject is written about and taught, indeed of the very conceptual categories we use when we debate about how goods are produced and distributed, services provided and resources extracted. By turns wonky and visionary, Meme Wars ... brings together a group of accomplished writers, most of them academics, who approach the world’s economic, environmental and social problems in ways one seldom finds in mainstream journalism or economics departments." 
—The Literary Review of Canada 

"Meme Wars is a Molotov cocktail tossed into the boardroom."
—Calgary Herald 

From the Publisher