The Business of America: How Consumers Have Replaced Citizens and How We Can Reverse the Trend (Pathways Through the Twenty-First Century) [Paperback]

Saul Landau (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415944694 | ISBN-13: 978-0415944694 | Publication Date: June 17, 2004 | Edition: 1

Written by one of the most insightful critics of American commercialism, The Business of America probes the forces that have transformed citizens into consumers eager to take as much as they can from the planet. From online shopping to spectator sports to the cash-and-carry ethos of political campaigns, Saul Landau decodes the subtle ways in which advertising images tell us to correct our inadequacies with yet more things: SUVs, credit cards, air conditioning, video games. The winds of change are blowing, Landau shows, from resurgent student protests for underpaid janitors to the 'Group of 21', the developing countries that stopped the World Trade Organization dead in its tracks in 2003. Eschewing nostalgia for a simpler time - a less-interconnected world that can never return - The Business of America shows how we as citizens can regain our identities, stripping away the plastic overlay of consumerism.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The credit card has gradually replaced the voter registration card as a key symbol of civic involvement. Saul Landau takes a fresh and valuable look at how and why -- and what we can do about it. Against the mass-media grain, this book refutes the inevitability of corporate consciousness. Readers will find in Landau's writing an incisive analytical approach combined with an uplifting spirit
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–Norman Solomon, Syndicated columnist and Author, The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media

Papers critically examine the vision of President George W. Bush; the national security culture; media in the twenty-first century; some environmental issues; and the Iraqu conundrum.
–Journal of Economic Literature

About the Author

Saul Landau, an internationally-known scholar, author, commentator, and filmmaker, is the Director of Digital Media Programs and International Outreach at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He has made 40 films, including the recent Syria: Between Iraq and a Hard Place. He received the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, the George Polk Award for Investigative Reporting, and the First Amendment Award, as well as an Emmy for Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang. He has written fourteen books including his most recent, The Pre-emptive Empire: A Guide to Bush's Kingdom, and received an Edgar Allen Poe Award for Assassination on Embassy Row, a report on the murder of Orlando Letelier. He is currently working on a detective novel.

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (June 17, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415944694
• ISBN-13: 978-0415944694
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,917,919 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Timely Manifesto for Change--and an Entertaining Read, September 2, 2004

By 

Farrah Hassen (West Covina, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Business of America: How Consumers Have Replaced Citizens and How We Can Reverse the Trend (Pathways Through the Twenty-First Century) (Paperback)

Landau's THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA, a complementary follow-up to his 2003 work, THE PRE-EMPTIVE EMPIRE (a bold and witty collection of diary-like entries chronicling the lingering parallels, contradictions and dramatic shifts in U.S. foreign policy under President George W. Bush before and after the 9/11 attacks), succeeds in once again providing the public with a much needed context for decoding the current political, socioeconomic and environmental dimensions behind one of America's favorite exports, the culture of consumption, or shopping.

More precisely, Landau observes, the habitual and seemingly unconscious usage of the accountants' term `bottom line' by President George W. Bush, college professors, students and others alike "symbolizes contemporary values. Advertisers attempt to convince each `consumer' that he or she is and should be the focus of attention and as such can overcome the severe inadequacies from which he or she suffers by buying something, at the mall or online" (p. 2).

Spend a few minutes channel surfing through the barrage of "plastic surgery changed my life--and left me looking totally unrecognizable" reality TV shows (like ABC's "Extreme Makeover" and Fox's "The Swan"), interspersed with commercials selling "new and improved" SUVs and shampoos and the frenzied news flashes about the latest sex scandal, to recognize, as Landau pointedly does in Chapter 3 ("Sheep Don't Need Whipping: Media in the Twenty-First Century"), how the mainstream media's reinforcement of individualism and consumerism plays a role in distracting citizens from thinking about the more crucial issues of their time--including the ongoing resistance in Iraq, worldwide proliferation of terrorism, growing unequal distribution of wealth in America and abroad and environmental degradation.

What distinguishes THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA from the flock of pretentious, dust-collecting "cultural studies" books on the same subject is its broad scope, sense of humor and conversational-like quality. Indeed, Landau analyzes President Bush's promotion of shopping as a spiritual value (following the 9/11 attacks, W urged Americans to shop and travel to Disney World) and consumerism's correlation to his political values (Chapter 1, "The Bush Vision: A Bipolar Political Disorder") and justification for waging war against Iraq (Chapter 5, "The Iraq Conundrum); the prevailing national security culture in Washington (Chapter 2); and Nature's response to congested freeways, gus-guzzling vehicles and developers' encroachment on public land (Chapter 4, "At Two with Nature").

In particular, Landau's unlikely pairing of essays on Las Vegas as epitomizing Bush's America and a wedding celebration in Havana stand out as effectively dramatizing one culture's celebration of easy money with that of an anti-global economic model neighbor's embrace of an educated, healthy and socially-conscious public.

Ultimately, Landau challenges readers with a lingering question: What is the meaning of citizenry in America, besides the upcoming ritual of voting for a President every four years and shopping? Rather than answering that question, Landau's work, in the words of the late C. Wright Mills's 1959 critique (THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION) of the anti-humanist sociology schools of the time, aims at encouraging 21st century individuals to "grasp what is going on in the world, and to understand what is happening in themselves as minute points of intersections of biography and history within society"--without being lured to do so by endless commercial messages and empty sales pitches.