Extractive Capitalism

Reviews / Votes

Urgent, polemical, and shows how everything, from data centres to transportation, depends on extraction ... Khalili dissects what continues to be plundered to power an unrelenting rapacious capitalist world * Financial Times * Critiques of capitalism don't come much more sweeping, or scathing, than this. Read it-and be discomfited by the state of the world * Prospect * A potent critique of ruthless resource extraction and its far-reaching consequences * LSE Review of Books * Laleh Khalili is a brilliant explainer of how the world works. This book lays bare an essential, and usually unseen, and unfair, part of our world's functioning. In a rare combination of academic depth and tireless reporting, she takes the reader on a journey to all sorts of places that matter but that are all too rarely discussed -- Simon Kuper, author * Chums * Eye-opening ... a highly readable introduction * LabourHub * Extractive Capitalism -powerfully exposes how capital and coercion intertwine while showing that defiance persists * Socialist Worker * A book that I couldn't put down .... profound and compelling, Khalili shines a light on actors and institutions that typically go unseen: from shipping firms and management consultants, through to finance companies and fraudsters. Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the state of the world today -- Adam Hanieh, author * Crude Capitalism * Extractive Capitalism will make a lot of economists think they have been wasting their time on abstract equations when they could have been writing about the real stuff of the economy - blood, dirt, oil and violence -- Dan Davies, author * The Unaccountability Machine * Laleh Khalili, once more, describes with great clarity and precision the ways in which capitalism extracts, dispossesses and exploits. She traces the colonial roots of extractive capitalism focusing on two primary commodities, oil and sand, and shows the costs for the planet and the human species. She has an eye for details and anecdotes that illuminate the voracity and brutality of that economy. Essential reading, especially in our current time. -- Francoise Verges, author * A Decolonial Feminism * Praise for Sinews of War and Trade: Readers will delight in the book's originality - there is truly nothing else like it -- Marcus Rediker, author * The Slave Ship * The scale of this book is breath-taking but the story is intimate and expertly crafted, moving from entire coastlines to city streets and singular body movements. This is a poetry of place -- Deborah Cowen, author * The Deadly Life of Logistics * Laleh Khalili's fascinating new book opens the window on another world -- Adam Shatz