Since the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, Indonesia has undergone a radical program of administrative decentralization and neoliberal reforms. In Methods of Desire, author Aurora Donzelli explores these changes through an innovative perspective—one that locates the production of neoliberalism in novel patterns of language use and new styles of affect display. Building on almost two decades of fieldwork, Donzelli describes how the growing influence of transnational lending agencies is transforming the ways in which people desire and voice their expectations, intentions, and entitlements within the emergent participatory democracy and restructuring of Indonesia’s political economy. She argues that a largely overlooked aspect of the Era Reformasi concerns the transition from a moral regime centered on the expectation that desires should remain hidden to a new emphasis on the public expression of individuals’ aspirations. The book examines how the large-scale institutional transformations that followed the collapse of the Suharto regime have impacted people’s lives and imaginations in the relatively remote and primarily rural Toraja highlands of Sulawesi. A novel concept of the individual as a bundle of audible and measurable desires has emerged, one that contrasts with the deep-rooted reticence toward the expression of personal preferences. The spreading of foreign discursive genres such as customer satisfaction surveys, training sessions, electoral mission statements, and fundraising auctions, and the diffusion of new textual artifacts such as checklists, flowcharts, and workflow diagrams are producing forms of citizenship, political participation, and moral agency that contrast with the longstanding epistemologies of secrecy typical of local styles of knowledge and power. Donzelli’s long-term ethnographic study examines how these foreign protocols are being received, absorbed, and readapted in a peripheral community of the Indonesian archipelago. Combining a telescopic perspective on our contemporary moment with a microscopic analysis of conversational practices, the author argues that the managerial forms of political rationality and the entrepreneurial morality underwriting neoliberal apparatuses proliferate through the working of small cogs, that is, acts of speech. By examining these concrete communicative exchanges, she sheds light on both the coherence and inconsistency underlying the worldwide diffusion of market logic to all domains of life.

A popular model of human action treats it as universally explicable by appeal to what we want. A related view evaluates our actions as rational or otherwise by appeal to what we want. However, these dominant views sit in tension with two other common sense ideas. First, that our normative beliefs — such as our beliefs about what we ought to do — sometimes explain our actions. Second, that those beliefs are crucial for determining whether our actions are rational. To try and resolve these tensions, this book defends 'desire-as-belief', the view that desires are just a special subset of our normative beliefs. This view entitles us to accept orthodox models of human motivation and rationality that explain those things with reference to desire, while also making room for our normative beliefs to play a role in those domains. This view also tells us to diverge from the orthodox view on which desires themselves can never be right or wrong. Rather, according to desire-as-belief, our desires can themselves be assessed for their accuracy, and they are wrong when they misrepresent normative features of the world. Hume says that it is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of your finger, but he is wrong: it is foolish to have this preference, and this is so because this preference misrepresents the relative worth of these things. This book mounts an engaging and comprehensive defence of these ideas.

A married person falls deeply in love with someone else. A man of average income feels he cannot be truly happy unless he owns an expensive luxury car. A dieter has an irresistible craving for ice cream. Desires often come to us unbidden and unwanted, and they can have a dramatic impact, sometimes changing the course of our lives. In On Desire, William B. Irvine takes us on a wide-ranging tour of our impulses, wants, and needs, showing us where these feelings come from and how we can try to rein them in. Spicing his account with engaging observations by writers like Seneca, Tolstoy, and Freud, Irvine considers the teachings of Buddhists, Hindus, the Amish, Shakers, and Catholic saints, as well as those of ancient Greek and Roman and modern European philosophers. Irvine also looks at what modern science can tell us about desire--such as what happens in the brain when we desire something and how animals evolved particular desires--and he advances a new theory about how desire itself evolved. Irvine also suggests that at the same time that we gained the ability to desire, we were "programmed" to find some things more desirable than others. Irvine concludes that the best way to attain lasting happiness is not to change the world around us or our place in it, but to change ourselves. If we can convince ourselves to want what we already have, we can dramatically enhance our happiness. Brimming with wisdom and practical advice, On Desire offers a thoughtful approach to controlling unwanted passions and attaining a more meaningful life.

A wholly new force is driving human behavior today, and it's turning the world as we know it upside down and inside out. Human behavior is now being driven by a new survival instinct -- a new primal desire -- that is invisibly but unstoppably reshaping the world, from the most intimate details of our private lives to the dynamics of the global marketplace. The New Culture of Desire reveals and chronicles this present and future brave new world -- the beginning of Human History Part II. According to futurist Melinda Davis, it is evolving right under our noses, and we need to adapt now to survive -- and to thrive. Described variously as "a secret weapon of the Fortune 100" and a "hired-gun visionary," Davis divulges the startling conclusions and once confidential details of The Human Desire Project, a six-year, multidisciplinary study to investigate what makes human beings want what they want and do what they do. Originally initiated as a landmark study for big business (Davis's client ranks include distinguished companies such as AT&T, Merck, Diageo, Procter & Gamble, L'Oréal, Unilever, and Lucent Technologies), The Human Desire Project evolved into an even larger phenomenon with far-reaching implications for all of our lives. In The New Culture of Desire, you learn to leverage for your own good fortune, today -- and into tomorrow -- the same insights and strategies that inform the future plans of some of the most powerful corporate movers and shakers around. Here are just some of the revelations of The New Culture of Desire: • The unconscious formula that we all use to make choices now • Why bliss beats sex, money, and power • The new peak experience: the State of O • The single greatest unmet consumer need • The battle for our interior lives • The five strategies we enlist to satisfy the new primal desire -- and what they mean for your life and your business Harvard-educated and street-smart, Davis examines the telltale signs of our rapidly morphing world with the nose of an MIT/MTV anthropologist and an arsenal of case histories. Quizzes and checklists appear throughout the book to help you diagnose your own desires. New marketing models provide new ways to speak more powerfully to the heart of your customers' true desires. This insider's analysis of the most powerful desire-driven trends of our time provides a strategic guide to the inside of the new millennial mind, to help you understand your own motivations and those of your colleagues, customers, and friends. Here are some of those cultural trends that you need to know about: • Magical Thinking: Looking for the simple, supernatural solution • The Third Sex: Having it all • Yoda-ism: New candidates for a god • Tribe Crashing: The ultimate insiderism • Hot-Blooded Spiritualism: Drumming up the saving graces • Raging Amazonianism: The rise of the butt-kicking babe • Pleasure Healing: Self-indulgence that does you good • P. Q.: The Performance Quotient: Upgrading the human processor A pioneering work that looks into what people want and why, The New Culture of Desire blows traditional future-planning theory and practice sky-high, and replaces it with groundbreaking strategies that really work.

Irvine looks at what modern science can tell about desire--what happens in the brain when one desires something and how animals evolved particular desires. He suggests that people who can convince themselves to want what they already have dramatically enhance their happiness.

Affordable e-book of volume honored as one of Library Journal's "Poetry Books of the Year."

Providing a comprehensive perspective on human desire, this volume brings together leading experts from multiple psychological subdisciplines. It addresses such key questions as how desires of different kinds emerge, how they influence judgment and decision making, and how problematic desires can be effectively controlled. Current research on underlying brain mechanisms and regulatory processes is reviewed. Cutting-edge measurement tools are described, including practical recommendations for their use. The book also examines pathological forms of desire and the complex relationship between desire and happiness. The concluding section analyzes specific applied domains--eating, sex, aggression, substance use, shopping, and social media.