In five essays, fol­lowed by exten­sive notes and bib­li­ogra­phies, Ivan Illich embarks on a major his­tor­i­cal and soci­o­log­i­cal analy­sis of mod­ern man’s eco­nom­ic exis­tence. He traces and ana­lyzes options which sur­pass the con­ven­tion­al polit­i­cal ‘right-left’ and the tech­no­log­i­cal ‘soft-hard’ alter­na­tives and presents the con­cept of the ‘ver­nac­u­lar’ domain: “…to name those acts of com­pe­tence, lust or con­cern that we want to defend from mea­sure­ment by Chica­go Boys or Social­ist Commissars…the prepa­ra­tion of food and the shap­ing of lan­guage, child­birth and recre­ation, with­out imply­ing either a pri­va­tized activ­i­ty akin to the house­work of mod­ern women, a hob­by or an irra­tional and prim­i­tive pro­ce­dure.” Illich deals provoca­tive­ly with the con­trol­ling uses of lan­guage and sci­ence and the val­u­a­tion of women and work. Draw­ing on unfa­mil­iar his­tor­i­cal sources, he lays bare the roots of much of the social order­ing which affects indus­tri­al man: his own cre­ation, but one which, at the same time, con­nives at his own oppression.

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