The Case Against the Global Economy [Hardcover]

Jerry Mander (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 9, 1996

Public discussions of NAFTA and GATT have failed to adequately describe the profound changes in the world economy that are being formulated or to critically examine the theories behind them. This book gathers more than 40 economic, agricultural, and environmental experts to convey a complete picture of how globalization will affect our lives.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"Economic globalization," writes Jerry Mander, "involves arguably the most fundamental redesign of the planet's political and economic arrangements since at least the Industrial Revolution. Yet the profound implications of these fundamental changes have barely been exposed to serious public scrutiny or debate. Despite the scale of the global reordering, neither our elected officials nor our educational institutions nor the mass media have made a credible effort to describe what is being formulated or to explain its root philosophies." From which omission arises The Case Against the Global Economy.

The 43 essays in this collection comprise a point-by-point analysis of globalization and its consequences that demonstrates that the future may not be as bright as business leaders tell us. Among the highlights: William Greider examines how General Electric works to shape (with the goal of controlling) the political arena; Ralph Nader and Lori Wallach attack NAFTA and GATT for undermining the sovereign authority of democratic governments; and Wendell Berry looks at the concerted efforts of big business to destroy local, particularly rural, communities in order to plunder the environment without opposition. Several authors, including Satish Kumar, Jeanette Armstrong, and Kirkpatrick Sale, outline alternatives to the global economy based on "bioregional" principles of local self-sufficiency. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

The contributors to this handbook?among them Jeremy Rifkin, Ralph Nader, Kirkpatrick Sale, Wendell Berry, Richard Barnet, William Greider, ecological economist Herman Daly and World Bank environmental adviser Robert Goodland?argue that the rush toward economic globalization, based on free trade and deregulation, is both harmful and reversible. Its consequences, they contend, include overcrowded cities, widening of the gap between rich and poor, lowering of wages while prices soar, destruction of wilderness, flattening of local traditions and cultures. The contributors recommend pursuing the opposite path?promoting greater economic localization through cooperatives and small companies that cater to local or regional markets. Essays deal with corporate control of the media and of financial markets; biotechnology's patenting of life forms as neocolonialist exploitation; the worldwide small-farm movement; the emergence of local currencies, barter and work exchange networks; and how global trade agreements (NAFTA, GATT) override decisions on worker safety and environmental standards made democratically by member nations. An important, vital resource for planetary stewardship. Mander (In the Absence of the Sacred) cofounded the International Forum on Globalization; Goldsmith is a founding editor of Britain's Ecologist.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 550 pages
• Publisher: Random House, Inc.; 1st edition (September 9, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871563525
• ISBN-13: 978-0871563521
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #830,563 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Forty-three essays vital to democracy & the human species!, February 18, 2001

By 

James Otterstrom (Big Bear City, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Case Against the Global Economy: And for a Turn toward the Local (Paperback)

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

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Words to live by.", April 13, 2001

By 

G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Case Against the Global Economy: And for a Turn toward the Local (Paperback)

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 is local. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Value life. You will find words to live by here.

And for those of you who do not understand why hundreds were shot with rubber bullets, pepper sprayed, and arrested for nonviolent protest in the streets of Seattle, November 30 through December 3, 1999, while corporate elites met in secret behind police barricades and a 25-block no-protest zone, consider this book required reading.

G. Merritt

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A guidebook for understanding the anti-globalism movement, July 13, 2001

By 

Michael S. Mcintyre (Eagle, NE United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Case Against the Global Economy: And for a Turn toward the Local (Paperback)

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.