The Case Against the Global Economy: And for a Turn toward the Local

by Edward Goldsmith and Jerry Mander

Book Overview

A great political debate has emerged over the many unexpected and profound consequences of the rush toward the global economy. The world's political and corporate leaders are restructuring the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0871568659
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Sierra Club Books
• Length: 560 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.5" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Critical Book In Understanding Economic Globalism!

In a book one can best describe as both painstaking and muckraking, author and scholar Jerry Mander focus his considerable critical acumen by editing a series of essays on the much vaunted and constantly ballyhooed phenomenon of economic globalization. From the outset, Mander admits that the processes feeding into this process are so wide-spread, pandemic, and attractive to a variety of international corporate forces that any prospect for reversing the trend will be problematic indeed. Yet, given the potential for catastrophic consequences stemming from the movement toward the expanding influence of such global corporate enterprises, the author advises us that we would do well to try. Mander was among the first critics to point out how fundamentally undemocratic the rise of the corporate entities were in terms of how they came to increasingly exert powerful influences regarding the disposition of resources, political orientations, and the public welfare. Indeed, given the fact that economic globalization may well represent the most fundamental and the most radical reorientation of the sum total of international social, economic, and political arrangements in several hundred years, it is without a doubt critical that the average citizen learn more about the nature of economic globalization, how it is being implemented, and what this phenomenon means for each of us as individuals, as consumers, and, most importantly, as citizens. Thus, he and co-editor Edward Goldsmith have organized a series of 43 different essays from contributors as far ranging as Jeremy Rifkin to William Greider, from Ralph Nader to Wendell Berry, and from Jeanette Armstrong to Kirkpatrick Sale (the noted Neo-Luddite advocate), each discussing topics ranging from the nature of corporations accomplishing such change to the impact of the change for individuals in a number of important and interesting ways. Thus we have Wendell berry focusing on how corporate activities tend to attack and destroy rural opposition to facilitate the plunder of the natural resources, or William Greider discussing how a corporate giant like General Electric uses its political influence to fix the game in its favor, and this is often against the greater influence of the public at large in terms of jobs, the local economy, and the environment. This is an important book, one that arms the reader with an array of facts regarding what the so-called "New World Order" really means in terms of its potential impact on each us in every aspect of our lives, as individuals, as members of the local community, as consumers of necessary (and other) products, and as citizens of a nation and of the world at large. The scope of the change to come is immense, and it is obviously in the interest of each of us to better understand exactly what is at stake in terms of our lives, our freedoms as citizens, and our survival in a world increasingly endangered by reckless corporate activities that are destroying the biospher

A guidebook for understanding the anti-globalism movement

If you've wondered what all those protests were about in Seattle, or anywhere else, it seems, that the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank, or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been scheduled to meet -- this is the book to read. It contains 43 articles by such writers as Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Ralph Nader, Jeremy Rifkin, Helena Norberg-Hodge, David C. Korten, Kirkpatrick Sale, and Herman E. Daly.The book's premise is that the emergent global economy is destroying diversity, both biological and cultural. Even nation-states are becoming increasingly irrelevant and meaningless under globalism -- much less regional and local jurisdictions. The bright and hopeful message, in the otherwise bleak landscape painted by the book, is the fact that people inherently seem to need small-scale forms of community -- we appear to be genetically programmed for it -- and if globalism won't provide for this need, we will reinvent structures that do. The book details, for example, a number of efforts underway around the world to recreate local currencies. Highly recommended.

"Words to live by."

Jim Otterstrom's review below prompted me to read this book. "We are caught in a terrible dilemma," contributor David Korten writes in this collection of 43 essays. "We have reached a point in history where we must rethink the very nature of and meaning of human progress" (p. 29). Reading the newspaper on any day reveals the ever-increasing problems caused by the expansion of our global economy: worldwide unemployment and poverty; homelessness; global warming; air, soil, and water pollution; violence; political chaos; a global monoculture "which is leveling both cultural and biological diversity" (p. 317); the destruction of natural resources; sprawling superstores that destroy communities; and "a global sense of despair about the future" (p. 94). However, as this long-overdue book makes clear, these are not simply unrelated problems as the media would have us believe. This book first identifies "the global economy" and examines the effects of globalization, and then offers strategies "required to assist a transition toward a more viable, more satisfying, and incomparably more sustainable world" (p. 392). Co-edited by Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith, this collection includes contributions from Ralph Nader, Jeremy Rifkin, Wendell Berry, Satish Kumar, and Jeanette Armstrong, among others. It offers compelling evidence that we are living in a "global factory" (p. 302)--a corporate state, "which not only disregards local tastes and cultural differences, but threatens to serve as a form of social control over attitudes, expectations, and behavior of people all over the world" (p. 300), and which defines education as job training, and success as a high-paying job (p. 416). In his essay, Satish Kumar observes that with economic globalization, people have lost their dignity; they have "become cogs in the machine, standing at the conveyor belt, living in shanty towns, and depending on the mercy of their bosses" (p. 420). He writes, "global economy drives people toward high performance, high achievement, and high ambition for materialistic success. This results in stress, loss of meaning, loss of inner peace, loss of space for personal and family relationships, and loss of spiritual life" (p. 421). We are pieces of the living, dreaming earth (p. 465), Jeanette Armstrong writes in another favorite essay, sharing the world with "people without hearts," who have "lost the capacity to experience the deep generational bond to other humans and to their surroundings," "blind to self destruction, whose emotion is narrowly focused on their individual sense of well-being without regard to the well-being of others" (p. 467). Economic globalization may seem overwhelming while reading this book, but there are also strategies here for local production, local consumption, reducing global trade, and ensuring strong environmental standards (p. 91). The solution begins with each of us, individually. Eat vegan. Buy organic. Walk to work. Appreciate what i

Forty-three essays vital to democracy & the human species!

A thorough roast of the Corporate State, the Global Economy, GATT, NAFTA, the WTO, the World Bank, the IMF, and our own ignorance to the consequences we will suffer at the hands of the New Fascism. This book is another formidable brick in the foundation of an emerging sub-culture that seeks a viable human future. The underlying message throughout these essays is that we either involve ourselves in our communities---strive toward local sustainability, nurture the ecology of our place, reject bureacratic centralization, be it governmental, or corporate---or we allow the environmental destruction, the social disintegration, and the bankrupt moralilty of the profit-driven limitless growth maniacs to reach its inevitable cancer-like conclusion. The authors here share an awareness that we might well be facing the end of democracy, unbearable degradation to the quality of our air, water, food, and lives, and ultimately the collapse of our entire civilization. But all is not Doom & Gloom! We are reminded that corporations only exist because we allow them to, legally and economically, and the politicians they own are, at his point, still elected by us. There is optimism that the rapidly growing numbers of the displaced, disenfranchised, and disenchanted will unify, informed and wisened by their loss, or love, of place, and their common experience outside the confines of ideology and education manipulated by corporate-owned media. We are also reminded that on a global scale, the grotesquely rich & economically powerful, are far in the minority, if we so choose, we the people, the vast majority, can still throw the bums out! This book should be required reading in all schools, but the fact that most educational institutions are increasingly influenced by the same narrow socio-political-economic interests makes this quite unlikely. If you're a homeschooler though, I highly recommend 'The Case Against The Global Economy' as part of your curriculum.Jim Otterstrom

Call Back to the Local and Familar

Quo Vadis? Where are we going? What is our destination? At the close of this millennium a spectrum of voices have gathered together, in this treatise The Case Against the Global Economy, to toil with such questions. This tome tackles the ever growing phenomenon of economic globalization -- questioning its motives, cost, and viability against its effect on life, liberty, and the environment. Editors Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith have compiled some 43 essays from such diverse thinkers and activists as: Jeremy Rifkin, Ralph Nader, Richard Barnet, Kirkpatrick Sale, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Herman Daly and Wendell Berry, just to name a few. From their own unique perspective, each author decries the rush to economic globalization and, in concert, call for its reversal. Thus, we find the goals of compilation as stated by editor Jerry Mander: to halt economic globalization and, then, reverse its affects.What do the contributors mean by economic globalization? Well, a simple definition of economic gobalization -- for our purpose globalization -- is hard to craft. As with most phenomenon, globalization does not fit neatly into a generic category. Globalization is a tendency, in the sense that it appears under such shibboleths as "market democracy," "free and open trade," "NAFTA," and "GATT." On the surface, to the average person, such slogans seem trite and abstract. According to Mander, however, economic globalization, "involves arguably the most fundamental redesign of the planet's political and economic arrangements since at least the Industrial Revolution." (3) It is this redesign forged through "free trade" accords, IMF "structural adjustment programs," and global "deregulation" that has contributed to "the spreading disintegration of the social order and the increase of poverty, landlessness, homelessness, violence, alienation, and extreme anxiety about the future." (4) Such grand assertions are developed and defended in each of the four sections that make up the book: "The ! Multiple Impacts of Globalization," Panaceas That Failed," "Engines of Globalization" and "Steps Toward Relocalization." Helena Norberg-Hodge in "Pressure to Modernize and Globalize" depicts the insinuation of modernism and consumerism into a land and people of Ladakh (Kashmir), who have for thousands of years not only survived but prospered without them. Ladakh is a high altitude desert in the Tibetan plateau in northern most India. She chronicles the transformation of Ladakh and its inhabitants as a result of tourism, media images, and western-style education. A poignant illustration of this transformation comes in the embodiment of a young Ladakhi named Tseweng. When she first met Tsewang the concept of poverty, the feeling of material envy, or inferiority seemed alien to the young man. However, on the heels of western tourism and commercialism, -- both consequences of globalization efforts -- Norberg-Hodge noticed a drastic change in Tsew