Another catalogue landed at Enlightenment Towers – Polity Press for July to December. A few I like the look of (it is of course a lefty list). [amazon_link id=”0745672574″ target=”_blank” ]Gutenberg’s Europe: The Book and the Invention of Western Modernity[/amazon_link] by Frederic Barbier. It promises parallels with the digital revolution. [amazon_link id=”1509504877″ target=”_blank” ]Platform Capitalism[/amazon_link] by Nick Srnicek – the blurb makes the conclusion clear: these are just big, bad monopolies. And the author is billed as a ‘rising star of critical theory’, possibly my least favourite subject discipline, not least because it’s so hard for me to understand. But it might be worth a read. I like the look of [amazon_link id=”0745681980″ target=”_blank” ]Cotton[/amazon_link] by Adam Sneyd – “the grubby politics of the fluffy white stuff.” Sounds like he’ll agree with the rather tendentious arguments in Sven Beckert’s [amazon_link id=”0141979984″ target=”_blank” ]Empire of Cotton[/amazon_link], but I have a limitless appetite for the fluffy white stuff as the daughter of cotton mill workers. There’s also Oliver Stuenkel’s [amazon_link id=”1509504575″ target=”_blank” ]Post-Western World: How Emerging Powers are Remaking the Global Order[/amazon_link]. I can buy the line that we take too western-centric a vew of the world. Finally, [amazon_link id=”0745696805″ target=”_blank” ]Borderlands[/amazon_link] by Michel Agier, an anthropologist – arguing that more of us are living in the ‘cosmopolitan condition’ in which the experience of the unfamiliar is becoming familiar.

[amazon_image id=”0745672574″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Gutenberg’s Europe: The Book and the Invention of Western Modernity[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”0745681980″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Cotton[/amazon_image]  [amazon_image id=”1509504575″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Post-Western World: How Emerging Powers are Remaking Global Order[/amazon_image]  [amazon_image id=”0745696805″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Borderlands: Towards an Anthropology of the Cosmopolitan Condition[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”1509504869″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Technology After Capitalism (Theory Redux)[/amazon_image]