Reviews for Unholy trinity

The average rating for Unholy trinity based on 4 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-10-16 00:00:00 Finn Senturia I pooped out around page 38 after, and this is verbatim, paragraphs like this: With my present concern about policy, however, I am interested in a particularly formalized system of producing good economic sense. This is an area of cultural-political production inhabited by highly trained, experienced individuals - 'experts' - and well-established, abundantly financed institutions - government departments, think tanks, banking associations, and the like. The entire social process of high-level institutionalized thinking, and the cultural process of producing insightful (but limited) ideas, employs a certain kind of symbolic representation for which even the Gramscian term 'common'sense is insufficient. While thinking may begin at the common-sense level, and return to it when policies are explained by 'spokes­persons' to the 'general public,' the intermediate stage of theorization and policy formation takes place at a different, theoretical order of symbolization - theories being experientially based, but highly rationalized, dense statements. On to a Marxian-Gramscian base we might therefore graft Michel Foucault's notion of 'discourse.' Foucault (1972, 1973) was particularly interested in the careful, rationalized, organized statements made by experts - what he called 'discourses.' In The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972) Foucault saw the human sciences as autonomous, rule-governed systems of discourse. Within these discourses, Foucault claimed to discover a previously unnoticed type of linguistic function, the 'serious speech act,' or statements with validation procedures made within communities of experts (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1983: 45-7). At the other end of the scale serious speech acts exhibited regularities in what Foucault called 'discursive formations.' Discursive formations had internal systems of rules determining what was said, about which things. Discourses had systematic structures that could be analyzed archaeologically (identifying their main elements and the relations that formed statements into wholes) and genealogically (how discourses were formed by institutions of power). We take from this the notion that discourses are carefully rationalized, organized systems of statements, backed by recognized validation procedures, bound into formations by communities of experts. Discourses assume, as one, particularly significant propositional form, the shape of economic policies suggested by experts to governing bodies. In other words, hegemony in the policy arena is theoretically backed, political and economic good sense produced by experts in the symbolic form of discourses. There is no way I am wading through pages of dense and, I think, probably superfluous critical theory / Continental philosophy blather to get to the heart of how and why the IMF, World Bank and WTO screwed the Third World. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go looking for a more readable approach to this subject.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-03-15 00:00:00 John Downs Could have been perfect if it was not marred by a reformist perspective that peddles the illusion that the unholy trinity can be reformed to serve the people's needs. Nevertheless, it still offers a comprehensive overview of the workings of the IMF, WOrld Bank, and WTO and how the three serve the Washington-Wall Street alliance.

Review # 3 was written on 2013-10-16 00:00:00 Vicki Ramsey I pooped out around page 38 after, and this is verbatim, paragraphs like this: With my present concern about policy, however, I am interested in a particularly formalized system of producing good economic sense. This is an area of cultural-political production inhabited by highly trained, experienced individuals - 'experts' - and well-established, abundantly financed institutions - government departments, think tanks, banking associations, and the like. The entire social process of high-level institutionalized thinking, and the cultural process of producing insightful (but limited) ideas, employs a certain kind of symbolic representation for which even the Gramscian term 'common'sense is insufficient. While thinking may begin at the common-sense level, and return to it when policies are explained by 'spokes­persons' to the 'general public,' the intermediate stage of theorization and policy formation takes place at a different, theoretical order of symbolization - theories being experientially based, but highly rationalized, dense statements. On to a Marxian-Gramscian base we might therefore graft Michel Foucault's notion of 'discourse.' Foucault (1972, 1973) was particularly interested in the careful, rationalized, organized statements made by experts - what he called 'discourses.' In The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972) Foucault saw the human sciences as autonomous, rule-governed systems of discourse. Within these discourses, Foucault claimed to discover a previously unnoticed type of linguistic function, the 'serious speech act,' or statements with validation procedures made within communities of experts (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1983: 45-7). At the other end of the scale serious speech acts exhibited regularities in what Foucault called 'discursive formations.' Discursive formations had internal systems of rules determining what was said, about which things. Discourses had systematic structures that could be analyzed archaeologically (identifying their main elements and the relations that formed statements into wholes) and genealogically (how discourses were formed by institutions of power). We take from this the notion that discourses are carefully rationalized, organized systems of statements, backed by recognized validation procedures, bound into formations by communities of experts. Discourses assume, as one, particularly significant propositional form, the shape of economic policies suggested by experts to governing bodies. In other words, hegemony in the policy arena is theoretically backed, political and economic good sense produced by experts in the symbolic form of discourses. There is no way I am wading through pages of dense and, I think, probably superfluous critical theory / Continental philosophy blather to get to the heart of how and why the IMF, World Bank and WTO screwed the Third World. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go looking for a more readable approach to this subject.

Review # 4 was written on 2013-03-15 00:00:00 Lee Pitts Could have been perfect if it was not marred by a reformist perspective that peddles the illusion that the unholy trinity can be reformed to serve the people's needs. Nevertheless, it still offers a comprehensive overview of the workings of the IMF, WOrld Bank, and WTO and how the three serve the Washington-Wall Street alliance.