The uses of shame (and shamelessness) in spheres that range from social media and consumerism to polarized politics and mass violence Today, we are caught in a shame spiral—a vortex of mutual shaming that pervades everything from politics to social media. We are shamed for our looks, our culture, our ethnicity, our sexuality, our poverty, our wrongdoings, our politics. But what is the point of all this shaming and countershaming? Does it work? And if so, for whom? In Shame, David Keen explores the function of modern shaming, paying particular attention to how shame is instrumentalized and weaponized. Keen points out that there is usually someone who offers an escape from shame—and that many of those who make this offer have been piling on shame in the first place. Self-interested manipulations of shame, Keen argues, are central to understanding phenomena as wide-ranging as consumerism, violent crime, populist politics, and even war and genocide. Shame is political as well as personal. To break out of our current cycle of shame and shaming, and to understand the harm that shame can do, we must recognize the ways that shame is being made to serve political and economic purposes. Keen also traces the rise of leaders on both sides of the Atlantic who possess a dangerous shamelessness, and he asks how shame and shamelessness can both be damaging. Answering this question means understanding the different types of shame. And it means understanding how shame and shamelessness interact—not least when shame is instrumentalized by those who are selling shamelessness. Keen points to a perverse and inequitable distribution of shame, with the victims of poverty and violence frequently being shamed, while those who benefit tend to exhibit shamelessness and even pride.

In the late twentieth century, disasters seemed like distant happenings in countries far away from the prosperous West. But today they are ‘coming home’ with a vengeance. From global warming to migration crises, from assaults on democracy to Covid-19 and the fall-out of war in Ukraine – the West is in the grip of multiple, overlapping crises that keep its populations in a state of perpetual fear and distraction.   Disasters should be awakening us to the need to reform our disaster-producing system. Yet instead, as David Keen shows in this disturbing and original book, they are routinely being exploited for political as well as economic gain. A number of crises, whether slow-burning or sudden, are not only reinforcing each other but also bolstering the toxic politics that helped to generate them. One key problem here is the use of emergencies to vilify those who are trying to relieve them or to highlight their root causes. Unless these voices and alternative perspectives find a way to break through, we risk being locked into a system of emergency politics that is self-reinforcing rather than self-correcting – and that routinely manufactures its own legitimacy.

The United States' ignominious exit from Afghanistan in 2021 topped two decades of failure and devastation wrought by the war on terror. A long-running "fight against migration" has stoked chaos and rights abuses while pushing migrants onto more dangerous routes. For its part, the war on drugs has failed to dampen narcotics demand while fueling atrocities from Mexico to the Philippines. Why do such "failing" policies persist for so long? And why do politicians keep feeding the very crises they say they are combating? In Wreckonomics, Ruben Andersson and David Keen analyze why disastrous policies live on even when it has become apparent that they do not work. The perverse outcomes of the fights against terror, migration, and drugs are more than a blip or an anomaly. Rather, the proliferation of pseudo-wars has become a dangerous political habit and an endless source of political advantage and profit. From combating crime to the war on drugs, from civil wars to global wars and even "covid wars," chronic failure has been harnessed to the appearance of success. Over a wide variety of spheres, problems have persisted and worsened not so much despite the "wars" and "fights" waged against them as thanks to these floundering endeavors. Covering a range of cases around the world, Wreckonomics exposes and interrogates the incentive systems that allow destructive policies to flourish in the face of systemic failure - while offering strategies for dismantling the addiction to waging war on everything.

In the late twentieth century, disasters seemed like distant happenings in countries far away from the prosperous West. But today they are ‘coming home’ with a vengeance. From global warming to migration crises, from assaults on democracy to Covid-19 and the fall-out of war in Ukraine – the West is in the grip of multiple, overlapping crises that keep its populations in a state of perpetual fear and distraction.   Disasters should be awakening us to the need to reform our disaster-producing system. Yet instead, as David Keen shows in this disturbing and original book, they are routinely being exploited for political as well as economic gain. A number of crises, whether slow-burning or sudden, are not only reinforcing each other but also bolstering the toxic politics that helped to generate them. One key problem here is the use of emergencies to vilify those who are trying to relieve them or to highlight their root causes. Unless these voices and alternative perspectives find a way to break through, we risk being locked into a system of emergency politics that is self-reinforcing rather than self-correcting – and that routinely manufactures its own legitimacy.

There are currently between twenty and thirty civil wars worldwide, while at a global level the Cold War has been succeeded by a "war on drugs" and a "war on terror" that continues to rage a decade after 9/11. Why is this, when we know how destructive war is in both human and economic terms? Why do the efforts of aid organizations and international diplomats founder so often? In this important book David Keen investigates why conflicts are so prevalent and so intractable, even when one side has much greater military resources. Could it be that endemic disorder and a "state of emergency" are more useful than bringing conflict to a close? Keen asks who benefits from wars--whether economically, politically, or psychologically-and argues that in order to bring them successfully to an end we need to understand the complex vested interests on all sides.

First paperback edition with a new and updated author's introduction, and a Foreword by Douglas H. Johnson.. The conflict in Darfur had a precursor in Sudan's famines of the 1980s and 1990s. David Keen's The Benefits of Famine presented a new and startling interpretation of the causes of war-induced famine. The book is now in paperback for the first time with a new and updated introduction by the author. The Benefits of Famine gives depth to understanding the Darfur crisis. DAVID KEEN is Professor of Complex Emergencies at the DevelopmentStudies Institute, London School of Economics North America: Ohio U Press; Uganda: Fountain Publishers