Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

Good introduction to the broad topic of Degrowth

The appearance in English of a militant book about degrowth is an all too rare event, but a welcome one. “Degrowth” in its contemporary sense is most often an umbrella term for a variety of political and philosophical positions questioning whether economic growth should be a social, political and economic priority. Debate about this subject is very important for our collective future.This book by more than 45 authors approaches the subject through the filter of 51 concepts. Each concept is allotted a very concise chapter, with from 1-1/2 to 3-1/2 pages of main text followed by a list of no more than half a dozen references. [ADDED 2016 May: Unfortunately, sparse as they are, these lists are riddled with minor errors -- as I discovered once I started trying to use them.] The Foreword, Introduction and Epilogue are also worth reading (with the editors allowing themselves a longer reference list, of about 40 cites, in their Introduction). The concepts chosen include many that are frequently discussed in the degrowth literature, some that are pertinent but less often mentioned, and at least one where the author of the related chapter repudiates any connection [50] (bracketed numbers refer to chapters, not pages). The effect is something like a mini-encyclopedia, coming in at a very modest 220 pages or so.I’ll have more to say about the brevity of the book and of the reference lists below, but let me say at the outset there are some good articles here, many of them by contributors new to me. Overall I was very heartened to see that many more people, especially younger scholars, are getting interested in this field. Some other virtues: the book also includes contributions from some of the most best-known Anglophone degrowth advocates — particularly Peter Victor on “Growth” [23], Tim Jackson on “New economy” [42], and Juliet Schor on “Work sharing” [47]. These chapters, moreover, are among the best-written and clearest-thinking in the book (even if the title of Jackson’s chapter isn’t so descriptive). Also, the editors come up with a novel philosophical footing for degrowth in their Conclusion, based on the notion of “dépense” (expenditure) from a 1933 essay by French sociologist Georges Bataille. This is an original and imaginative step, even if personally I believe it’s not so successful, as I’ll explain below.This will be a long review, but not because I disagree with the concept of degrowth — quite the opposite. My own interest in this field has been ongoing continuously for roughly 8 years as I write, and I’ve published several articles and a book about it in Japan, where I live. I’m also personally acquainted with a number of scholars and others who are active in the field, particularly in Europe, have corresponded with others, and in 2014 participated in a very large degrowth conference (3,000 attendees) in Leipzig, in which the editors and many contributors to the present work were speakers.Rather, my main concern with this book is that it’s way too tilted toward theory. From one perspective this is a refreshing departure from many earlier Anglophone books about degrowth, which tended to emphasize private action: be frugal, recycle, go solar, share things, change your consciousness. But all the most erudite theory in the world is academic wheel-spinning if degrowth can’t be translated into a program for public policy. Actually, there are many scholars who are interested in practical implementation, but they’re greatly underrepresented by this book. For a work intending to provide “a vocabulary for a new era,” this isn’t the sort of book that will help to educate your local Congressperson or MP — it’s far more likely to alienate him or her.Here’s a short overview of what I’ll discuss in the rest of this review: (1) some nuances of the term “degrowth,” (2) the many currents of degrowth thought that are overlooked by the book, (3) the book’s preference for certain less-than-crystal-clear thinkers who are way more amenable to the seminar room than to practical action, (4) some topics that weaken the book by their absence, and (5) some other pros and cons of the book. My bottom line is that I suggest you read some other books on the topic before you dive into this one. I’ll name a few in my penultimate paragraph, so if you’re impatient you may want to scroll down to there.(1) “DEGROWTH”: This word’s connotation as a critique of economic growth entered English from the French “décroissance.” (“Croissance” is French for growth — your morning croissant is called that because it looks like a crescent (growing) moon.) Probably more has been written about degrowth in French than in most other languages. But the word itself has generated a lot of political and philosophical controversy in France.In its positive sense, décroissance tends to connote a focus on a global reduction in growth, and a departure from the discourse of economic “development” (or développement, in French). The leading writer in this vein is economist Serge Latouche, now emeritus professor at Université de Paris-Sud, and contributor of two chapters here. Especially after the 2007 death of André Gorz, who was more concerned with work-related issues than with global development issues, Latouche has become the most public sage of décroissance. Another prominent author is Fabrice Flipo, a philosopher of science and technology currently in his 40s, who co-authored the Foreword to this book. He shares Latouche’s highly philosophical approach to the subject (though earlier he had done some very applied work about the environmental impact of cell phones). There are also a number of rowdier, activist décroissancistes, associated especially with the polemical newspaper « La Décroissance » (Vincent Cheynet, Philippe Ariès, et al.), whose very Gallic style of irreverence is something like that of the satirical journals Charlie Hebdo and Le canard enchainé. When used by French politicians, mainstream economists and others, though, “décroissance” connotes a return to the Stone Age, a lowering of the standard of living, hippies playing their guitars around a campfire, a purely negative concept that doesn’t describe what it stands for, etc.As a result, some economists, sociologists, philosophers and others in France have taken to calling themselves “objecteurs de croissance” (objectors to growth). This still isn’t descriptive of what they stand for, but they use the phrase in part to distinguish themselves from the La Décroissance style of confrontational rhetoric, Latouche’s style of unspecific, lofty rhetoric reminiscent of the Marxist ’60s and ’70s, and the barbs of politicians and the media. Some “objecteurs” also focus more on degrowth as a practical program that could begin in the so-called developed countries. Even Latouche has begun to speak more of “a-croissance” than “décroissance” in recent years. The “objecteurs” and the “décroissancistes” have a lot in common nonetheless, and the now-defunct academic journal ENTROPIA, published between 2006 and 2013 from Lyon (a center of anti-neoliberal activism), was a shared forum for both groups.A considerable literature about related concepts has also grown in Italy (decrescita), Spain (decrecimiento), Germany (Postwachstum or Wachstumsrücknahme), and also in some countries of the South, including Latin America, India, and South Africa. As mentioned above, I’ve written about it in Japan, and another scholar has translated one of Latouche’s books into Japanese, though we translate “décroissance” differently (the pre-existing Japanese word “dasseichou” in his case, the neologism “genseichou” in my case, since this sounded less pessimistic and more neutral, more like “a-croissance” perhaps). As in France, there tends to be a diversity of voices within each of these cultures of degrowth advocacy. There even is political diversity, with right-wing reactionary versions of degrowth as well as the (more typically) left-derived versions.From this it should be apparent that to create “a vocabulary for a new era” based on degrowth, as the present book aspires to do, one has to be either encyclopedic or rather selective. To a somewhat radical degree, this book chooses the latter route. Although published originally in English, when the French translation appeared in 2015 it bore the very appropriate title « Décroissance, vocabulaire pour une nouvelle ère ». Now that you know more about the nuances of the French word, you can get a hint of the dominant outlook expressed in this book, albeit more Latouche than La Décroissance.(2) UNMENTIONED AUTHORS & CURRENTS: Having a point of view is fine. But a reader new to the field, or monolingual in English, wouldn’t have any inkling that this supposed overview of degrowth completely omits mentioning literally dozens of its leading thinkers. A fundamental problem with this book’s design was the decision to strictly limit both the chapter exposition and the reference list, which seems to have been capped at six — the references at least should have offered a more generous spectrum on each topic. I’ll try to approach this concisely, without including all the names I’m tempted to mention.A) Right-wing degrowth: The book never alerts the reader to the fact that degrowth arguments can be — and have been — mustered by right-wing authoritarians, plutocrats, social conservatives and opponents of immigration. Examples, respectively, include Alain de Benoist (France), Meinhard Miegel (Germany), Edward and Robert Skidelsky (UK; mentioned once in the book in a banal context), and ecological economist Herman Daly, a degrowth icon (US; though de Benoist is even more xenophobic). Some of this stuff is very creepy indeed, particularly Miegel and de Benoist, but this dangerous trend remains lurking below the radar of most degrowth researchers. (One exception: Jean-Louis Prat’s 2008 article about de Benoist, « La Décroissance est-elle réactionnaire ? », in the Revue de Mauss permanente, available for free online.)B) German authors: As mentioned above, the editors were involved with the 2014 Degrowth Conference in Leipzig. The rockstar speaker there was German economist Nico Paech, who has authored a couple of books about degrowth, at least one of which has been published in English. Yet his name doesn’t appear anywhere in the book, nor do those of other prominent authors such as Irmi Seidl, Uwe Schneidewind or Christian Felber, among others.C) Italian authors: The book does contain contributions by several Italian researchers. Mauro Bonaiuti, who works in the theoretical field of bioeconomy (inspired by Nicholas Gerorgescu-Roegen) [2], was the one most familiar to me. However, many significant names are omitted even from citation. One is the most prolific of the writers on decrescita, Maurizio Pallante. Another is Alberto Magnaghi, the leader of a very important group at the Università di Firenze who have developed the idea of “territorio” (territory) as a principle for regional management that deprioritizes growth. Both Pallante and Magnaghi are close to Latouche — but their approach is either as activist-provocateur (Pallante) or as hands-on planners and community organizers (Magnaghi group). Their omission is entirely consistent with the book’s bias towards the theoretical and against the practical.Even more disappointing is the omission of the Civil Economy school, comprising several dozen researchers, and led by economists Stefano Zamagni of Bologna and Johns Hopkins, and Luigino Bruni in Rome. Their project is a revival of economic ideas from the Renaissance and especially from the 18th Century Neapolitan economist Antonio Genovesi that have an anthropology opposite to that inferred from the “invisible hand” story in The Wealth of Nations: civil economy assumes a duty of humans to help each other instead of following self-interest. This school also has ties to the Magnaghi group and (via Bruni) to Latouche. Ideally they would have been included among the potential allies of the degrowth movement, which are described in Part 4 of the book (all the more so since the spokesperson for one of the proposed allies, feminist economics, rejects the alliance).Zamagni, who is the former head of the Italian government’s agency for charities and non-profits, is also, along with his wife, among the world’s leading authorities on cooperatives, so it’s too bad their book published in Italian and English on that topic is nowhere mentioned in the cooperatives chapter [34]. Incidentally, Zamagni and Bruni edited a book very analogous to the present one, entitled » Dizionario di economia civile « (Dictionary of civil economy, 2009) — but they went for a more inclusive, encyclopedic approach, making for a book I keep close to my desk and refer to often.D) Francophone authors: The most surprising and sweeping omission is that of almost all living authors writing in French about degrowth. The few who are mentioned include Fabrice Flipo and François Schneider, who contributed a foreword; Denis Bayon, co-author of a book with Flipo and Schneider and contributor of a good article on unions [45]; and Latouche himself, who contributes an OK article focusing on Cornelius Castoriadis [25] and a very short article on the “pedagogy of disaster” that seems hastily written and ill-considered [19]. A couple of thinkers from the anti-utilitarian group known as MAUSS, especially Alain Caillé, are also mentioned, esp. in [1]; but Caillé’s writings over the years have variously run hot and cold — or tepid and cold — about décroissance.For a good idea of who’s left out, check the 15-issue run of ENTROPIA, the scholarly journal of décroissance mentioned above. The present book contains exactly zero cites to articles from the journal, and mentions only a tiny fraction of authors who appeared in the journal’s pages. One can also check the list of signers of the 2013 « Manifeste convivialiste ». Senior French economists and sociologists like Jacques Gadrey, Dominique Méda, Christian Comeliau, François Flahaut, Florence Jany-Catrice and Agnes Sinaï among many, many prominent “objecteurs de croissance” — not even a citation. Also among those ignored is economist Marc Humbert, former head of the Maison Franco-Japonaise in Tokyo, and host of a 2010 conference I attended there that included Caillé, Latouche, Patrick Viveret (also ignored) and many others. That conference, which led to a subsequent book by the four lead participants, was the birthplace of the use of “convivialisme” as a slogan in connection with degrowth. (The idea of conviviality as developed by Ivan Illich in the 1970s of course has a longer association with the movement.) So it’s all the more ironic that the editors conclude their book with the French expression “Vive la décroissance conviviale!” even though they ignore most of the folks who are promoting that idea.Finally, Timothy Duverger’s excellent history of the French degrowth movement and its many subtleties, fissures and fractures (2011) also goes unnoticed by the present book.(3) TILT TOWARD ABSTRACTION: Let’s start with the more traditional topic, the “pioneers” of degrowth. Along with economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and the conservative English economist Ezra Mishan (who wrote a popular anti-growth book in the 1960s complaining especially about traffic), three names that often come up in the literature are Ivan Illich, André Gorz and Cornelius Castoriadis.One of the virtues of this book is that Illich is mentioned at all, and even gets a chapter devoted to one of his most pertinent ideas, conviviality [15]. Given that he wrote in English and his works were first published in the US and UK, it's ironic that only one reasonably successful English-language book about degrowth (Richard Heinberg's "The End of Growth") even mentions him, albeit as a name in a tossed-off list and without citation to his work (Heinberg cites to Latouche, instead); the books by by Jackson, Schor, Victor, Skidelsky & Skidelsky, and Naomi Klein ignore him absolutely. Gorz, a French philosopher, novelist and journalist and founder of a news magazine still publishing today (Le nouvel observateur, a/k/a L’Obs), was a friend of Illich, and some in France believe that this friendship was directly responsible for Gorz's interest in degrowth. Both were excellent prose stylists and capable of vivid, down-to-earth and highly original arguments. Yet in this book Illich is discussed mostly at a highly abstract level [15], and Gorz is only mentioned a couple of times in passing, including an erroneous attribution to him of the first use of the word “décroissance” [Intro. @ p.1.].Rather, the patron pioneer of this book is Castoriadis, a sociologist influenced by psychoanalytic theory, whose prose is very difficult to make sense of, regardless of whether one tries in French or English. To some extent this made the book more interesting for me, since I hadn’t succeeded before in understanding what he was about (though I’m not sure if success is the best word even now). But he’s definitely a theoretician’s choice. More typical potential readers would find Gorz and Illich much more persuasive — which is one reason why they tend to be discussed more widely in the literature, especially outside of France.Even more problematic is the editors’ more original contribution, their promotion of Georges Bataille’s 1933 essay “The Notion of Expenditure” (La notion de dépense) as a new source of inspiration for the degrowth movement. Like Castoriadis, Bataille might not be obscure in reputation, but his writing style is another story. In its original form, much of the essay deals with the social functions of hugely wasteful private expenditure, including something very similar to conspicuous consumption, though Bataille seems to have been unaware of Thorstein Veblen’s “Theory of the Leisure Class” written more than 30 years earlier. Later in the piece he talks about the class struggle as “the grandest form of social expenditure,” and related to Christian religious ecstasy. (OK, I’ll be honest: by its end I found Bataille’s essay to be verging on incoherence.) The editors take this idea of wasteful expenditure and attempt to turn it to a social end:“Dépense refers to a genuinely collective expenditure — the spending in a collective feast, the decision to subsidise a class of spirituals [sic] to talk about philosophy, or to leave a forest idle — an expenditure that in a strictly economic sense is unproductive. Practices of dépense “burn” capital out and take it out of the sphere of circulation, slowing it down. Such collective “waste” is not for personal utility or for the utility of capital. It aspires to be political. It offers a process through which a collective could make sense of and define the “good life,” rescuing individuals from their meaningless privatized lives.” [Epilogue, pp. 217-219].This is original and provocative, but is it an idea worth pursuing? May I suggest that there’s a difference between (i) abandoning the requirement that every public expenditure be “productive,” and (ii) *deliberately* spending money in non-productive ways, for the sake of spending it (especially when done in a Rousseauian, we-will-force-you-to-be-free spirit, as the term “rescuing” suggests here).I’m fine with (i), but (ii)? In a seminar room, proposition (ii) might occasion many delightful hours of discussion, especially because, as the editors chortle, “dépense generates horror” among economists of all stripes (id.) From a real world perspective though, it’s hard to think of anything that says “loser” in a more intellectual way. It’s hard enough to convince policy-makers that some public expenditures are worthwhile even if their direct benefit isn’t clearly economic (support for the arts, help for the homeless, preserving biodiversity, etc.). Telling them that they should spend money to pull capital out of circulation and thereby rescue people from meaninglessness is not going to be persuasive at all. An elegant, erudite, but really, really silly, argument.(4) TOPICS OMITTED: But unfortunately, persuasiveness is not the editors’ priority. They seem to assume that readers are on their side, a priori. Too many of the articles brush aside objections and alternative perspectives in summary fashion, or don’t mention them at all. For example, in an article that discusses both the Spanish Indignados and the US/global Occupy movement [39], we’re never told that the US Occupy movement was a failure, or that many of the demonstrators actually didn’t begrudge people getting rich through capitalism if they did so fairly. An article on dematerialization [16] presents a narrow and idiosyncratic definition of the term, without ever mentioning that it’s used in a very different sense in most of the environmental and ecological economics literature (and degrowth discourse). Even when objections or alternative points of view were mentioned, none of the references listed at the ends of articles guide the reader to anything critical.A welcome exception to this rosy-eyed trend was Antonella Picchio’s contribution on feminist economics as a supposed “ally” of degrowth [50]. She thoroughly trashed the editors’ premise that the two movements have anything in common. Her negativity was terrifically refreshing — I really enjoyed the piece. Unfortunately, though, her premises were incorrect. E.g., she seems to believe that “the degrowth narrative does not challenge the structure of capitalism,” but that the capabilities approach of Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen does so — this is 180 degrees backwards.I was particularly disappointed that the book doesn’t give the reader tools for responding to pro-growth arguments. Often those arguments are based on optimistic, Promethean foundations that go something like this: Man is naturally an inventive animal, and all problems are susceptible to being solved by human ingenuity. In particular, all environmental disasters predicted in the past have been averted thanks to “innovation.” Arguments about running out of resources, ditto. Remember how that Chicken Little “Limits to Growth” book from the ’70s said we’d all be in trouble by the year 2000? Actually we’re doing great.Furthermore, the argument goes (especially in the mainstream academies of economics and law in the US), any deliberate slowing of the pace of innovation, such as through the observance of a “precautionary principle,” (a) is an attempt to inhibit human nature, (b) does not pass the criteria of cost-benefit analysis because of the valuable benefits foregone, and/or (c) is impossible to apply in a logically consistent way.How does one get around these conceptual obstacles to gain acceptance of degrowth? The book doesn’t give you a clue. Innovation isn’t really discussed at all, much less its role in neoliberal ideology. Precaution is alluded to, but doesn’t get a deep treatment.Even more striking, though, was the absence of any discussion of income and wealth inequality within countries. Perhaps because of the book is strongly influenced by the outlook of Latouche, questions of North and South, i.e. rich countries vs. poor countries, play a prominent role in many chapters. Class issues within countries are mentioned only rarely (e.g., in [39]). Thomas Piketty is nowhere mentioned, even though his book “Capital in the 21st Century” had been published in France more than 2 years before this book was published, and had become an international bestseller more than a year before publication too. Piketty’s book emphasizes that if the rate of financial return on investments exceeds a country’s rate of economic growth, inequality will worsen —- and that the bigger the gap between the two rates, the worse the inequality will be. At a policy level, some have interpreted this to mean that increasing the growth rate is urgent for reducing inequality.So if you’re a “degrowther” (the book’s rather ugly term, new to me, for degrowth proponents) and someone lobs this argument in the middle of your spiel, what do you say? Even more broadly, how can lower GDP possibly reduce inequality — doesn’t it mean average per capita income is going down? Either or both questions might occur to a reasonably critical reader. But the book addresses neither issue.Since I am, I suppose, a “degrowther” myself, I’m playing devil’s advocate here. But the upshot is that the book is better at preaching to the converted (or to the intellectually innocent) than as a work that will help in what Castoriadis called the “Imaginary, decolonization of” [25]. Or to borrow the clearer jargon of election year politics: this book focuses way more on playing to its base than on winning over undecideds.(5) Other pros and cons: Many of the above objections could have been cured if each author had been allowed another page or two to discuss her or his topic, and also allowed a longer list of references. That would have brought the book to around 350 pages tops, hardly unreasonable. What is unreasonable in a book of this nature, though, is the absence of an index. This makes it impossible to trace themes and thinkers through the 54 substantive chapters. (Moreover, the publisher saw fit to include three pages of blurbs up front, but zero blank pages at the beginning or end of the book, limiting the space for the reader to compile an impromptu index of key terms and cited authors, etc. of his or her own.) I’ll only mention in passing that the authors would have been served better by the assistance of a professional copy editor: these seem to be a vanishing species throughout academic publishing today.To end on a more upbeat note, here are a few more articles I thought were particularly good and not already praised above: Joan Martinez-Alier provides two articles in this category, on environmentalism [5] and on neo-Malthusians [27], the latter making some especially useful distinctions. Mauro Bonauiti provides a nice overview of bioeconomics [2], as do Silke Helfrich and David Bollier on the commons [14]. Kristofer Dittmer’s piece on community currencies [33] and Mary Mellor’s on public money [41] were also quite interesting. The most intriguing piece for me was the final one, by Mogobe B. Ramose about the Ubuntu philosophy of Bantu-speaking Africa [51]. Some of Ubuntu’s key notions are that “a person is a person through other persons,” and that “if and when one ought to choose between the preservation of life, especially of human life, and the possession of excess wealth, one must opt for the preservation of life.” As an inspiration for degrowth, this leaves Bataille in the dust.BOTTOM LINE: If you’re a current or aspiring career academic with a love for theory who knows next to nothing about degrowth, and especially if your French is weak, this book could be a very good place to start. If you’re someone who already knows something about degrowth, you’ll find much that is stimulating - both to interest you and to annoy you — in this book, too. If you’re simply new to the subject and looking for a more down-to-earth treatment in English, I’d recommend you start with books like Tim Jackson’s “Prosperity without Growth,” Peter Victor’s “Managing without Growth,” André Gorz’s “Ecologica,” Ivan Illich’s “Tools for Conviviality” and Juliet Schor’s “Plenitude.”There are few problems with this book that an expanded, revised edition couldn’t cure. I hope a revision that takes more of a big-tent approach will materialize without too long a wait.

I like this book and would easily give it more than two stars. Unfortunately I must take Amazon to task on two issues. The most important is that the Kindle version of this book, bearing a hefty price, has no bibliography even though there are numerous citations in the text. I am left to fend for myself to find the citation. Second, most of the reviews of this book are not marked "verified purchase", which is Amazon's way of sorting out reviews by people who haven't read the book. It doesn't work very well in my experience.

Degrowth has been a silent movement at the sidelines of the debate on economy, ecology and the possibilities of collective life for some time now. This book amplifies the voice of a growing movement, showing it as a credible alternative to the current obsession with growth, energy overconsumption and ecological disaster. The great thing about the book is that it links an economic discussion on degrowth with philosophical ideas of slowing down a rather speedy life, with reporting on political experiments of collective sharing, and with the much needed habit of collective reflection about our future in a common world. Having said that, the book is inherently linked to the crisis-stricken European South, where its authors come from and work on. In that sense, it is a clear product of the european crisis, with all the unlimited possibilities and the possible limitations of such origins. It would be interesting to see how other parts of the Global South would respond to such a perspective, which is somewhat missing in the book. In any case, after this publication the stage is set for a much needed global discussion.

Whether we like it or not, the West may have entered a structural crisis which unfolds not only as a prolongued economic reccesion but also as a crisis of environment, social relations which points out to a more general crisis of "meaning". The political debate and dialogue in Europe and globally is mostly articulated along the sterile dilemma austerity vs growth or in other words conservative neoliberalism vs neo-Keynsianism. Furthermore the most of the reactions against the crisis even those who come from the most radical political organizations and intellectual thinkers often fail to address and/or to provide with alternative proposals because they are "trapped" into the same language and discourses which reproduce the aforementioned sterile dilemma. This book tries to push the dialogue beyond the dichotomy austerity or growth by introducing either notions which have been neglected for a long time or by introducing entirely new notions. Drawing on very different sources this book tries to employ "a new vocabulary" not only in order to expand the existing one but also in order to link discources, scientific fields, social movements, innovative social practices, traditional knowledge and indigenous movements from allover the world and many more into a dynamic political proposal, namely, the proposal for a future where economic growth will stop to operate as an imperative and as "master of signification" for the entire life in the planet. Very important, anyway, is that this book as well as the degrowth movement, despite its increasing radiation, doesn't claim to constitute a new coherent ideology or a single solution to the crisis but on the contrary by highlighting the possibility of multiple solutions tries to erect bridges between different ongoing processes and social movements in an attempt to collectively imagine a "world which contains many worlds". The language of the book is simple (but not simplistic) making it a very usefull reading both for scientists and the rest of the civil society. For me, it is a highly recommended one!

Very good and comprhensive introduction to de-growth and well broken down in chapters for the different aspects of this concept. With this book you will get the basic reasoning behind why is de-growth needed, what is needed for de-growth and what a de-growth society will look like. Perhaps what is missing is exactly how to get there from where we are now, but I suppose this is work in progress for many!

Originally bought this book for a course in university and have since reread it a couple of times. Fascinating topic and full of examples, case studies and ideas. Definitely worth it.