This book compares the approaches of consultants and academic advisers and provides an in-depth analysis of their advice argumentation. Both compete on the market for economic advice, with consultants enjoying a larger market share and usually obtaining higher fees. However, academics criticize them for overcharging, shallowness, and quick-and-dirty methods. So, are consultants clients misled or even cheated? Not necessarily. The book reveals that academics have drawbacks as well; their arguments are less balanced than those of consultants and their estimates contradict each other more. Economic Advice and Rhetoric argues that clients should be cautious, challenging academics to reconsider their understanding of consulting practices. Onno Bouwmeester illustrates that the instrumental concept of academic advice as assumed by mainstream economists and policy scientists does not guide the practice of academic advisers and thus creates wrong expectations. He deconstructs the current understanding of academic advice, and counters the view held by critical academics that consultants rhetoric is misleading by comparing it to the rhetoric of academics. This rhetorical analysis will be informative to academics and advisors with an interest in the subject of consulting. Students aiming to become consultants, as well as consultants who want to learn more about academic advisers as their competitors, will also find this book an invaluable resource.

Bernard Maris was killed in Paris on January 7, 2015, during the terrorist attack against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. He remains one of the most original intellectuals of contemporary France, but despite being a uniquely original heterodox thinker, his international reputation has been compromised by the fact that his writings are inaccessible to non-French speakers. This book remedies that. By providing an overview of Bernard Maris’ life and intellectual trajectory as well as an English translation of an anthology of his most relevant writings, this volume provides the international audience – for the first time ever – the chance to know and understand the contribution of this major heterodox economist. An outstanding and atypical figure in economic thought and a virulent critic of mainstream dominant economics, he was also an all-round actor and thinker of his time. Through rigorous reasoning, he questioned the notion of well-being, which, he argued, is too often conflated with having more. Enslavement by work, or the endless destructive accumulation of natural wealth, is also inherent to the capitalist system. Probably his most original contribution is his epistemological reflection on the very nature of economics and his appraisal of this discipline as a form of rhetoric. This book will be of great interest to readers in heterodox economics, economic methodology, epistemology, and French literature and culture more broadly.

First published in 1993. The importance of language in economics has been neglected and dominated by techniques from other disciplines. This looks at the wider methological implications of language within economics in a practical and theoretical way.

This book examines the subtle ways in which rhetorics of sacrifice have been re-appropriated into the workings of the global political economy in the 21st century. It presents an in-depth analysis of the ways in which ritual practices are deployed, under a diverse set of political and legal contexts, as legitimation devices in rendering exploitative structures of the prevailing political-economic system to appear inescapable, or even palatable. To this end, this work explores the deeper rhetorical and legal basis of late-capitalist governmentality by critically interrogating its mythical and ritual dimensions. The analysis gives due consideration to the contemporary incarnations of ritual sacrifice in the transnational neoliberal discourse: from those exploitative yet inescapable contractual obligations, to calendrical multi-billion dollar 'offerings' to the insatiable needs of 'too-big-to-fail' corporations. The first part of the book provides a working interpretative framework for understanding the politics of ritual sacrifice – one that not only accommodates multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary knowledge of ritual practices, but that can also be employed in the integrated analysis of sacrificial rituals as political rhetoric under divergent historical and societal contexts. The second conducts a series of case studies that cut across the wide variability of ritual public takings in late-capitalism. The book concludes by highlighting several key common doctrines of public ritual sacrifice which have been broadly observed in its case studies. These common doctrines tend to reflect the rhetorical and legal foundations for public takings under hegemonic market-driven governance. They define 'appropriate and proper' occasions for suspending pre-existing legal protections to regularize otherwise transgressive transfers of rights and possessions for the 'greater good' of the economic order.

As the transition from socialism to a market economy gathered speed in the early 1990s, many people proclaimed the final success of capitalism as a practice and neoliberal economics as its accompanying science. But with the uneven achievements of the "transition"--the deepening problems of "development," persistent unemployment, the widening of the wealth gap, and expressions of resistance--the discipline of economics is no longer seen as a mirror of reality or as a unified science. How should we understand economics and, more broadly, the organization and disorganization of material life? In this book, international scholars from anthropology and economics adopt a rhetorical perspective in order to make sense of material life and the theories about it. Re-examining central problems in the two fields and using ethnographic and historical examples, they explore the intersections between these disciplines, contrast their methods and epistemologies, and show how a rhetorical approach offers a new mode of analysis while drawing on established contributions.

Countries establish defence industries for various reasons. Chief among these are usually a concern with national security, and a desire to be as independent as possible in the supply of the armaments which they believe they need. But defence industries are different from most other industries. Their customer is governments. Their product is intended to safeguard the most vital interests of the state. The effectiveness of these products (in the real, rather than the experimental sense) is not normally tested at the time of purchase. If, or when, it is tested, many other factors (such as the quality of political and military leadership) enter into the equation, so complicating judgments about the quality of the armaments, and about the reliability of the promises made by the manufacturers. All of these features make the defence sector an unusually political industrial sector. This has been true in both the command economies of the former Soviet Union and its satellites, and in the market or mixed economies of the west. In both cases, to speak only a little over-generally, the defence sector has been particularly privileged and particularly protected from the usual economic vicissitudes. In both cases, too, its centrality to the perceived vital interests of the state has given it an unusual degree of political access and support.

“An accessible introduction to contemporary rhetorical theory and its applications in everyday life.” —Cory Brewster, Eastern Oregon University Rhetoric in Popular Culture, Fifth Edition, shows you how to apply growing and cutting-edge methods of critical studies to a full spectrum of contemporary issues seen in daily life. Exploring a wide range of mass media including current movies, magazines, advertisements, social networking sites, music videos, and television shows, Barry Brummett uses critical analysis to apply key rhetorical concepts to a variety of exciting examples drawn from popular culture. You are guided from theory to practice in an easy-to-understand manner, providing you with a foundational understanding of the definition and history of rhetoric as well as new approaches to the rhetorical tradition. The highly anticipated Fifth Edition includes new critical essays and case studies that demonstrate for you how the critical methods discussed can be used to study the hidden rhetoric of popular culture.

Gibbon aspired to combine the critical analysis of the eighteenth-century philosophe with the older traditions of the humanist and scholarly historian. His different uses of numbers, to inform and to persuade, illustrate his remarkable fusion of these approaches. This book, the first to be devoted to a historian’s use of numbers, shows how carefully Gibbon interrogated and deployed the numerical evidence in his sources to create a more accurate historical narrative; to demonstrate his own reliability and candor as a historian; and to convince readers of the validity of his interpretations of characters and events.

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In Networked Media, Networked Rhetorics, Damien Pfister explores communicative practices in networked media environments, analyzing, in particular, how the blogosphere has changed the conduct and coverage of public debate. Pfister shows how the late modern imaginary was susceptible to “deliberation traps” related to invention, emotion, and expertise, and how bloggers have played a role in helping contemporary public deliberation evade these traps. Three case studies at the heart of Networked Media, Networked Rhetorics show how new intermediaries, including bloggers, generate publicity, solidarity, and translation in the networked public sphere. Bloggers “flooding the zone” in the wake of Trent Lott’s controversial toast to Strom Thurmond in 2002 demonstrated their ability to invent and circulate novel arguments; the pre-2003 invasion reports from the “Baghdad blogger” illustrated how solidarity is built through affective connections; and the science blog RealClimate continues to serve as a rapid-response site for the translation of expert claims for public audiences. Networked Media, Networked Rhetorics concludes with a bold outline for rhetorical studies after the internet.