Author: William McLean File Type: pdf Air can be used in a variety of ways to make lightweight, flexible structures. It can be used to make inflatable structures, mobile structures, and temporary buildings, it can also activate movable elements and act as a means of constructing buildings that would be impossible with conventional construction methods. This book looks at every facet of the subject, examining the different types of air structure super pressure buildings, air beam structures, buoyant structures, inflatable structures, and many more. It also looks at the construction methods that use air, such as air-inflated steel, aerated concrete and blow moulding. Filled with photographs, models, drawings, and diagrams, this is the ideal book for curious students, designers and architects. **

Author: Mariana Mazzucato File Type: epub bModern economies reward activities that extract value rather than create it. This must change to ensure a capitalism that works for us all. bA scathing indictment of our current global financial system, The Value of Everything rigorously scrutinizes the way in which economic value has been accounted and reveals how economic theory has failed to clearly delineate the difference between value creation and value extraction. Mariana Mazzucato argues that the increasingly blurry distinction between the two categories has allowed certain actors in the economy to portray themselves as value creators, while in reality they are just moving around existing value or, even worse, destroying it.The book uses case studies-from Silicon Valley to the financial sector to big pharma-to show how the foggy notions of value create confusion between rents and profits, reward extractors and creators, and distort the measurements of growth and GDP. In the process, innovation suffers and inequality rises. The lesson here is urgent and sobering to rescue our economy from the next inevitable crisis and to foster long-term economic growth, we will need to rethink capitalism, rethink the role of public policy and the importance of the public sector, and redefine how we measure value in our society. **ReviewA finalist for the FT & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award A stimulating analysis of the underlying causes of inequality and growth which forces us to confront long-held beliefs about how economies work and who benefits *Martin Wolf, *Financial Times **** Mazzucatos mission is to overturn the now dominant neoclassical theory of value. *George Eaton for *New Statesman**** Mariana Mazzucato offers an expose of how value extractors and rent-seekers have been masquerading as value creators in the global economy. And, furthermore, how the conventional wisdom has indulged them in this. *Fran Boait for *Prospect**** [Mazzucatos] passionate call to empower policymakers to understand that the states role is not secondary to the private sector is infectious.*PROSPECT* Mazzucato is fast emerging as one of the worlds leading public intellectuals... [she] has offered the left a positive vision of growth based on innovation and profit-sharing, rather than sterile and counter-productive analysis based on the politics of resentment and expropriation.*SPECTATOR* Mazzucato sides with the actual makers, those who struggle in an economy tilted in favor of the ultrawealthy... she expresses specific incredulity about the banking sectors self-serving statements about wealth creation... She is especially eloquent when commenting on arrogant tech-giant billionaires such as Peter Thiel, who claims that his wealth accumulation occurred in spite of, rather than because of, government presence.*KIRKUS REVIEWS* Mazzucatos trenchant analysis is a compelling call to reinvent value as a key concept to help us achieve the world we all want.*NATURE* A fresh look at the meaning of value to the economy...This organized and easy-to-read book will appeal to curious readers as well as those interested in economics, investing, and public policy.**Booklist**** A fundamental re-think of what constitutes real value in the economy.*Stephen Denning, Forbes.com***About the Author Mariana Mazzucato holds the RM Phillips chair in the Economics of Innovation at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) of the University of Sussex. She is the author of The Entrepreneurial State Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths.

Author: Miguel de Beistegui File Type: pdf Liberalism, Miguel de Beistegui argues in The Government of Desire, is best described as a technique of government directed towards the self, with desire as its central mechanism. Whether as economic interest, sexual drive, or the basic longing for recognition, desire is accepted as a core component of our modern self-identities, and something we ought to cultivate. But this has not been true in all times and all places. For centuries, as far back as late antiquity and early Christianity, philosophers believed that desire was an impulse that needed to be suppressed in order for the good life, whether personal or collective, ethical or political, to flourish. Though we now take it for granted, desire as a constitutive dimension of human nature and a positive force required a radical transformation, which coincided with the emergence of liberalism. By critically exploring Foucaults claim that Western civilization is a civilization of desire, de Beistegui crafts a provocative and original genealogy of this shift in thinking. He shows how the relationship betweenidentity, desire, and government has been harnessed and transformed in the modern world, shaping our relations with others and ourselves, and establishing desire as an essential driving force for the constitution of a new and better social order. But is it? The Government of Desire argues that this is precisely what a contemporary politics of resistance must seek to overcome. By questioning the supposed universality of a politics based on recognition and the economic satisfaction of desire, de Beistegui raises the crucial question of how we can manage to be less governed today, and explores contemporary forms of counter-conduct. Drawing on a host of thinkers from philosophy, political theory, and psychoanalysis, and concluding with a call for a sovereign and anarchic form of desire, The Government of Desire is a groundbreaking account of our freedom and unfreedom, of what makes us both governed and ungovernable. *Review The Government of Desire is a challenging, original, and convincing attempt to address the crucial question of the forms taken by contemporary liberal and neoliberal governmentality, and of their capacity to produce and exploit subjects of desire. This fascinating book shouldbecome a fundamental reference for both students and scholars, not only in relation to Foucault studies, but more broadly within the fields of political and social philosophy. (Daniele Lorenzini, Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought) Miguel de Beistegui contributes to what Foucault called a history of the present by pursuing the idea of desire across three categories economic, sexual, and symbolic. By interweaving the historical and theoretical aspects of these together, he argues that desire is not a transcendental feature of subjectivity, but rather an assemblage of knowledge and power. Bolstered by a remarkable amount of research, The Government of Desire is a compelling, persuasive, and original work of philosophy. (Leonard Lawlor, Pennsylvania State University) About the Author Miguel de Beistegui is professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick. His most recent books include Proust as Philosopher The Art of Metaphor and Aesthetics After Metaphysics From Mimesis to Metaphor.

Author: Erica van Der Sijpt File Type: pdf Central to this book are Gbigbil womens experiences with different reproductive interruptions miscarriages, stillbirths, child deaths, induced abortions, and infertility. Rather than consider these events as inherently dissimilar as women do in Western countries, the Gbigbil women of eastern Cameroon see them all as instances of wasted wombs that leave their reproductive trajectories hanging in the balance. The women must navigate this uncertainty while negotiating their social positions, aspirations for the future, and the current workings of their bodies. Providing an intimate look into these processes, Wasted Wombs shows how Gbigbil women constantly shift their interpretations of when a pregnancy starts, what it contains, and what is lost in case of a reproductive interruption, in contrast to Western conceptions of fertility and loss. Depending on the context and on their life aspirations--be it marriage and motherhood, or an educational trajectory and employment, or profitable sexual affairs with so-called big fish--women negotiate and manipulate the meanings and effects of reproductive interruptions. Paradoxically, they often do so while portraying themselves as powerless. Wasted Wombs carefully analyzes such tactics in relation to the various social predicaments that emerge around reproductive interruptions, as well as the capricious workings of womens physical bodies. **