Synopses & Reviews
"The book's greatest feat is the degree of critical distance it brings to its volatile subject. I urge people to get a hold of this book, more than any other one considered here. It offers no comfort in its extensive demonology of martyrdom, intolerance, and oppression-engendered rage, but it provides its readers with a higher level of understanding than any hundred hours logged on CNN.com"
Carlo McCormick, Bookforum
"Chelkowski...and his colleague Dabashi unroll a canvas as detailed as it it broad...This spectacularly illustrated volume is a serious and largely successful attempt to analyze a carefully orchestrated blend of verbal and visual rhetoric."
Religion and the Arts
The Islamic Revolution in Iran was one of those remarkable historical events when the power of words and images successfully challenged the military might of an established state. From the fiery words of Ayatollah Khomeini, the charismatic leader of the Revolution, to revolutionary posters, banners, murals, graffiti, songs, and declamations, to the compelling symbols of its shared sacred history, an avalanche of public sentiments was mobilized by the leading figures of the revolutionary movement.
In Staging a Revolution, designed by award-winning Jonathan Barnbrook, Peter Chelkowski and Hamid Dabashi examine how this massive orchestration of public myths and collective symbols propelled the Islamic revolution of 1978-9 and the war with Iraq that followed from 1980 to 1988. Employing a wealth of primary sources from various active organs of the Islamic Republic, the authors demonstrate how popular belief and ritual were converted into stamps, banknotes, posters, even chewing gum wrappers, and directed towards mass mobilization for revolution and war. Staging Revolution represents a remarkable portrait of a pictorial revolution in which the interplay of sacred sensibilities, revolutionary action, and visual imagery were inextricably bound together.
Review
“A superb collection of classic and contemporary readings on commodification theory, including the latest, most advanced theorizing on this subject. It is a must-read.
-Elizabeth Anderson,Philosophy, University of Michigan
Review
“As someone who helped to draw attention to the subject of commodification more than two decades ago, I believe that commodification is, if anything, more important today than it has ever been. We must ask ourselves: Are there some things that money can't buy? Who is advantaged and who disadvantaged by desperate market exchanges? This indispensable collection of old and new thoughts on commodification will help us as we struggle towards answering these questions.”
-Margaret Jane Radin,Stanford Law School
Review
“Rethinking Commodification includes several classic texts of commodification theory that familiarize readers with the traditional debate. The work then offers new insights into the issue, with two dozen articles, appellate court opinions, and essays. Taken together, this book comprises an intellecutal mosaic that moves the discussion beyond the early, on-off question of whether or not to commodify.”
-Metapsychology Online,
Review
“A magnificent collection. The subject is profound and complex, the text gripping, lively, and thoroughly enjoyable to read.”
-Sylvia A. Law,NYU Law School
Review
“Commodification is on net a great source for good in the world. But the seminal essays in Rethinking Commodification show that the serious questions about alienability are much more than concerns about hypothetical contracts for babies or self-indenture.”
-Ian Ayres,author of Insincere Promises
Synopsis
What is the price of a limb? A child? Ethnicity? Love? In a world that is often ruled by buyers and sellers, those things that are often considered priceless become objects to be marketed and from which to earn a profit. Ranging from black market babies to exploitative sex trade operations to the marketing of race and culture,
Rethinking Commodification presents an interdisciplinary collection of writings, including legal theory, case law, and original essays to reexamine the traditional legal question: ̶To commodify or not to commodify?”
In this pathbreaking course reader, Martha M. Ertman and Joan C. Williams present the legal cases and theories that laid the groundwork for traditional critiques of commodification, which tend to view the process as dehumanizing because it reduces all human interactions to economic transactions. This "canonical" section is followed by a selection of original essays that present alternative views of commodification based on the concept that commodification can have diverse meanings in a variety of social contexts. When viewed in this way, the commodification debate moves beyond whether or not commodification is good or bad, and is assessed instead on the quality of the social relationships and wider context that is involved in the transaction. Rethinking Commodification contains an excellent array of contemporary issues, including intellectual property, reparations for slavery, organ transplants, and sex work; and an equally stellar array of contributors, including Richard Posner, Margaret Jane Radin, Regina Austin, and many others.
About the Author
Peter Chelkowski is Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at New York University.
Hamid Dabashi is currently Assistant Professor of Persian Studies at Columbia University and author of the acclaimed Authority in Islam: From the Rise of Muhammad to the Establishment of the Umayyads.