{"title":"Books by Brett Christophers","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781118874325","title":"Economic Geography – A Critical Introduction","description":"This volume in the celebrated Critical Introductions to Geography series introduces readers to the vibrant discipline of economic geography. The authors provide an original definition of the discipline, and they make a strong case for its vital importance in understanding the dynamic interconnections, movements, and emerging trends shaping our globalized world.    Economic Geography addresses the key theories and methods that form the basis of the discipline, and describes its “communities of practice” and relations to related fields including economics and sociology. Numerous illustrative examples explore how economic geographers examine the world and how and why the discipline takes the forms it does, demonstrating the critical value of economic geography to making sense of globalization, uneven development, money and finance, urbanization, environmental change, and industrial and technological transformation.    Engaging and thought-provoking, Economic Geography: A Critical Introduction is the ideal resource for students studying across a range of subject areas, as well as the general reader with an interest in world affairs and economics.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56296479916405,"sku":"9781118874325","price":28.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781118874325_d1b1e1b0-964c-4f58-841b-f68b4ae06be4.jpg?v=1786018167"},{"product_id":"9781786631596","title":"The New Enclosure","description":"\u003cb\u003eHow public land has been stolen from us.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMuch has been written about Britain's trailblazing post-1970s privatization program, but the biggest privatization of them all has until now escaped scrutiny: the privatization of land. Since Margaret Thatcher took power in 1979, and hidden from the public eye, about 10 per cent of the entire British land mass, including some of its most valuable real estate, has passed from public to private hands. Forest land, defence land, health service land and above all else local authority land- for farming and school sports, for recreation and housing - has been sold off en masse. Why? How? And with what social, economic and political consequences? The New Enclosure provides the first ever study of this profoundly significant phenomenon, situating it as a centrepiece of neoliberalism in Britain and as a successor programme to the original eighteenth-century enclosures. With more public land still slated for disposal, the book identifies the stakes and asks what, if anything, can and should be done.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56305661477237,"sku":"9781786631596","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781786631596_d2d21a9e-a361-423a-951e-111f72e26115.jpg?v=1786025631"},{"product_id":"9781804292310","title":"The Price is Wrong","description":"\u003cb\u003e\"Standard theories of the causes of climate breakdown will not survive this book. Readers will be all the wiser.\"\u003cbr\u003e—Andreas Malm, author of \u003ci\u003eHow to Blow Up a Pipeline\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhy the market will never solve the climate crisis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat if our understanding of capitalism and climate is back to front? What if the problem is not that transitioning to renewables is too expensive, but that saving the planet is not sufficiently profitable?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is Brett Christophers' claim. The global economy is moving too slowly toward sustainability because the return on green investment is too low.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eToday's consensus is that the key to curbing climate change is to produce green electricity and electrify everything possible. The main economic barrier in that project has seemingly been removed. But while prices of solar and wind power have tumbled, the golden era of renewables has yet to materialize.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe problem is that investment is driven by profit, not price, and operating solar and wind farms remains a marginal business, dependent everywhere on the state's financial support.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe cannot expect markets and the private sector to solve the climate crisis while the profits that are their lifeblood remain unappetizing. But there is an alternative to providing surrogate green profits through subsidies: to take energy out of the private sector's hands.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn essential intervention, \u003ci\u003eThe Price Is Wrong\u003c\/i\u003e is as politically far-reaching as it is factually illuminating.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56307573457269,"sku":"9781804292310","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781804292310.jpg?v=1790000811"},{"product_id":"9781839768989","title":"Our Lives in Their Portfolios","description":"\u003cb\u003eAll hail the new masters of Capitalism: How asset managers acquired the world\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Banks have taken a backseat since the global financial crisis over a decade ago. Today, our new financial masters are asset managers, like Blackstone and BlackRock. And they don’t just own financial assets.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The roads we drive on; the pipes that supply our drinking water; the farmland that provides our food; energy systems for electricity and heat; hospitals, schools, and even the homes in which many of us live—all now swell asset managers’ bulging investment portfolios.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As the owners of more and more of the basic building blocks of everyday life, asset managers shape the lives of each and every one of us in profound and disturbing ways. In this eye-opening follow-up to \u003ci\u003eRentier Capitalism\u003c\/i\u003e, Brett Christophers peels back the veil on “asset manager society.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Asset managers, he shows, are unlike traditional owners of housing and other essential infrastructure. Buying and selling these life-supporting assets at a dizzying pace, the crux of their business model is not long-term investment and careful custodianship but making quick profits for themselves and the investors that back them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In asset manager society, the natural and built environments that sustain us become one more vehicle for siphoning money from the many to the few.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":57685861073269,"sku":"9781839768996","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":56307666911605,"sku":"9781839768989","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781839768996.jpg?v=1792599076"},{"product_id":"rentier-capitalism","title":"Rentier Capitalism","description":"\u003cb\u003eHow did Britain’s economy become a bastion of inequality?\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this landmark book, the author of \u003ci\u003eThe New Enclosure\u003c\/i\u003e provides a forensic examination and sweeping critique of early-twenty-first-century capitalism. Brett Christophers styles this as ‘rentier capitalism’, in which ownership of key types of scarce assets—such as land, intellectual property, natural resources, or digital platforms—is all-important and dominated by a few unfathomably wealthy companies and individuals: rentiers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e If a small elite owns today’s economy, everybody else foots the bill. Nowhere is this divergence starker, Christophers shows, than in the United Kingdom, where the prototypical ills of rentier capitalism—vast inequalities combined with entrenched economic stagnation—are on full display and have led the country inexorably to the precipice of Brexit.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e With profound lessons for other countries subject to rentier dominance, Christophers’ examination of the UK case is indispensable to those wanting not just to understand this insidious economic phenomenon but to overcome it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrequently invoked but never previously analysed and illuminated in all its depth and variety, rentier capitalism is here laid bare for the first time.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57487841657205,"sku":"9781788739757","price":26.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781788739757.jpg?v=1786355064"},{"product_id":"house-society","title":"House Society","description":"The world is in the midst of a deep and worsening housing crisis. It has caused rents to soar in Britain, millions to protest in Spain, and a government to collapse in Sweden. Under a global ideology that exalts homeownership above all else, on every continent we see greed trump the human need for housing.   Yet we still think of housing problems as a symptom of other issues – of inequality, migration, or regulation. Award-winning geographer Brett Christophers turns this thinking on its head. Housing does not merely reflect our societies’ problems. Instead, it makes our societies what they are.   Journeying across both hemispheres – from the scapegoating of migrants in Canada to the turning of Brazilian favelas into investment opportunities, and American corporations taking advantage of depopulation in Japan – Christophers reveals in stark terms how the relation between landlords and tenants shapes all of our lives, and how everywhere renting exists marginalised in the shadow of homeownership.   With incisive clarity and passion, House Society shows how different countries’ housing crises have been made, and how, in turn, they are remaking our entire world. But Christophers shows that we can still choose to make housing – and our world – differently.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57499145634165,"sku":"9780241706688","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-brett-christophers.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}