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The Beneficiary
About this book
From iPhones and clothing to jewelry and food, the products those of us in the developed world consume and enjoy exist only through the labor and suffering of countless others. In his new book Bruce Robbins examines the implications of this dynamic for humanitarianism and social justice. He locates the figure of the "beneficiary" in the history of humanitarian thought, which asks the prosperous to help the poor without requiring them to recognize their causal role in the creation of the abhorrent conditions they seek to remedy. Tracing how the beneficiary has manifested itself in the work of George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, Jamaica Kincaid, Naomi Klein, and others, Robbins uncovers a hidden tradition of economic cosmopolitanism. There are no easy answers to the question of how to confront systematic inequality on a global scale. But the first step, Robbins suggests, is to acknowledge that we are, in fact, beneficiaries.
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Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Yes, you can access The Beneficiary by Bruce Robbins in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophy & Literary Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1. The Starving Child
- Chapter 2. You Acquiesce In It: George Orwell on the System
- Chapter 3. A Short History of Commodity Recognition
- Chapter 4. The Nation-State as Agent of Cosmopolitanism
- Chapter 5. Naomi Klein’s Love Story
- Chapter 6. Life Will Win
- Conclusion: You Can’t Handle the Truth
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
