Economics & Finance

Noonomy
Sergey Bodrunov

Noonomy

Published. Available now.
Pub Date: November 2024
Hardback Price: see ordering info
Hard ISBN: 9781774917787
Paperback Price: see ordering info
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-77491-779-4
E-Book ISBN: 9781003615514
Pages: 289 pages with index
Binding Type: Hardback / Paperback / eBook
Notes: 19 b/w illustrations


Reviews
“A well-referenced and informative book that provides a critique of neo-liberal economic fundamentalism. . . . An interesting book, which raises many fundamental questions not only in economics but also in public policy . . . not only brings out the urgency of the ‘re-industrialization’ of Russia, but also emphasizes the need for such development to be modern and embedded in new technology.”
—David Lane, Emeritus Reader in Sociology, Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, UK

“Outlines our path into the future devoid of compulsory labor, poverty and fighting over limited resources. . . . Bodrunov proposes a new methodology for the organization of socioeconomic knowledge–noonomy, which will use the technological progress to introduce a rational core into the management of the chaotically developing economy, something we have failed to accomplish so far due to cultural regression and moral decay.”
—Sergey Glazyev, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation

“Professor Bodrunov is distinguished by his fine and extremely useful sense of historical changes and trends which define social evolution. The concept he has offered provides a vivid illustration of Marx’s idea of the upcoming transition to communism as a higher stage of social development.”
—Samir Amin, Professor, Director of the Third World Forum

“A deep inquiry into sources of well-being and the need for an integration of technology and culture in constructing a knowledge economy under environmental challenges and resource constraints. Western readers will especially value Sergey Bodrunov’s synthesis of Russian and Western texts – notably those of my father – in the development of his ideas. Noonomy is a model, among other things, of transnational and cross-cultural research and reasoning.”
—James K. Galbraith, Professor, University of Texas at Austin, USA


In this visionary work, the author suggests an original novel concept: the general theory of a new industrial society of the second generation that evolves toward a new quality of public existence–“noonomy.” The volume explores the effect of modern technological shifts on human society. The author shows that technologies are about to undergo qualitative changes that will create new opportunities for personal development and the satisfaction of wants and, simultaneously, engender risks associated with growth opportunities of human interference with nature and technogenic stress on the environment. Based on the study of cutting-edge technologies and resulting socioeconomic shifts, Bodrunov makes the conclusion about the upcoming civilizational crisis. The crisis can be overcome through the formation of a new industrial society of the second generation reliant on knowledge-intensive material production and gradual removal of humans from immediate material production processes. These two trends can fully develop only subject to the transition from the current socioeconomic formation to a non-economic one–the noonomy.

The book determines the limits of humans as rational, self-interested agents who make decisions to maximize their own interests, who remain the key figure of mainstream economy. In order to move beyond these limits and prevent self-destruction of human civilization, the author proposes a new methodology for the organization of socioeconomic knowledge–noonomy, which uses technological progress to introduce a rational core into the management of the chaotically developing economy, something which, the author posits, we have failed to accomplish so far due to cultural regression and moral decay.

Systematically substantiating his theory by drawing on a wide range of sources and extensive empirical data, Dr. Bodrunov incorporates various components of rational socio-philosophical, political, and economic analysis with institutional theory and sociocultural analysis and focuses on the geopolitical economy approach to the issue under consideration.

The volume begins with a discussion of the basic principles of the research method used in the book along with the an explanation of how the key role of material production constitutes an essential principle that underlies the approach to explaining social development processes. The author emphasizes an essential and ever-increasing role of knowledge in the development of production technologies that occurs through a change in technological modes and is accompanied by changes in the structure of manufactured products and evolution in the level of saturation and structure of human wants.

The volume then assesses the first steps towards transitioning to a new stage of industrial production, a new type of knowledge-intensive material production that manufactures knowledge-intensive products. The volume considers the risks associated with the unchecked development of new technologies, which, while expanding opportunities for the satisfaction of human wants, also increases environmental stress and requires the need for finding occupations for people who used to be employed in dying professions. The volume examines how humans’ withdrawal from immediate production and the disappearance of economic relations serves as a non-economic way of regulating production activities of an autonomous technosphere by steering its development in accordance with personal development needs.

Introducing the English-speaking audience to a wide array of Russian twentieth-century authors that are little known abroad and whose studies on technological, economic and sociocultural transformations hold truly global significance, this eye-opening book will be of interest to those teaching and interested in the social philosophy of development of the human civilization and strategy of social and economic development.

CONTENTS:
Foreword to the English Edition

Scientific Editor’s Foreword

Introduction

PART 1: METHODOLOGY

1. The Role of Material Production

2. Interaction Between Knowledge, Technologies, and Wants

PART 2: NOOPRODUCTION: RUN-UP

3. New Industrial Society and Post-Industrialist Chimeras

4. Technological Prerequisites for Transitioning to a New Stage of Industrial Production

PART 3: NOOPRODUCTION: NEW TECHNOLOGIES AS A CHALLENGE TO THE HUMANITY AND SOCIETY

5. Global Choice of the New Technological Revolution: Techno or Bio

6. Evolution of the Technosphere: Opportunities and Risks

7. Nooproduction: Technological Changes and Social Structure

8. Nooproduction: New Human Subject, New Wants and New Ways of Need Satisfaction

PART 4: TOWARDS NOONOMY.

9. Economy: From Zoo to Noo

10. Noonomy: Cultural Imperatives and the End of Economic Civilization

Conclusion: Crystal Clear Marx

Index


About the Authors / Editors:
Sergey Bodrunov
Professor and Director, S. Y. Witte Institute for New Industrial Development in Saint Petersburg, Russia

Sergey Bodrunov, PhD, is a Professor and a Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is the President of the Free Economic Society of Russia, the oldest civic organization in Europe and the world (founded by the decree of the Empress Catherine the Great in 1765), which includes over 300,000 members from 65 regions of Russia. He is also the President of the International Union of Economists (the organization unites the representatives from 48 countries worldwide and has the General Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations since 1999). He is a founder (1997) and Director of the St. Petersburg S.Y. Witte Institute for New Industrial Development. Dr. Bodrunov is the author of over 800 scientific papers, including over 30 monographs concerning the issues of information systems development and society informatization, science and technology progress growth, intellectual property, history, the state and development prospects of the Russian economy, and a strategy of high technology economic development. Dr. Bodrunov is the author of fundamental papers on the concept of the new industrial society of the second generation (NIS.2) and the theory of Noonomy recognized worldwide. In particular, his book Noonomy was awarded a prize from the World Association for Political Economy (WAPE) “For an outstanding contribution to the development of Political Economy in the XXI(th) century” (2018). Dr. Bodrunov and the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences have been co-chairmen of the Moscow Academic Economic Forum (MAEF), Russia’s largest scientific and academic platform, since 2019. He has an extensive experience in business assets management and is a qualified investor in the area of high-tech manufacturing.




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