Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism [Paperback]

Mike Davis (Editor), Daniel Bertrand Monk (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2008

An extraordinary group of thinkers, brought together by the bestselling author of City of Quartz, explore future worlds being created by unfettered capitalism.

Filled with "stories of greed, exploitation and enough conspicuous consumption to make a hedge fund manager blush" (Los Angeles Times) and featured in Utne Reader, In These Times, and New Left Review, Evil Paradises is a global guidebook to capitalist "utopias" being constructed in cities, deserts, and even in the middle of the sea.

This fascinating world tour takes us to Dubai, where a gilded archipelago of private islands offers "supreme lifestyles" to the super-rich and famous; Medellín and Kabul, where drug lords—in many ways textbook capitalists—are redefining conspicuous consumption in fortified palaces; Hong Kong and Cairo, where the local nouveaux riches take shelter in fantasy Californias, while their maids sleep in rooftop chicken coops; and a dozen other places around the world where unfettered capitalism and inequality surpass our worst nightmares. Contributors include: Judit Bodnár, Patrick Bond, Anne-Marie Broudehoux, Joe Day, Marco d'Eramo, Anthony Fontenot, Marina Forti, Forrest Hylton, Sara Lipton, Ajmal Maiwandi, China Miéville, Don Mitchell, Timothy Mitchell, Dennis Rodgers, Laura Ruggeri, Emir Sader, Rebecca Schoenkopf, and Jon Wiener.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the evil paradises of this uneven anthology edited by scholars Davis and Monk, the free market coddles the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. With contributions from academics, architects and journalists, the essays explore how cities like Beijing and Johannesburg disregard good governance for prestige projects adored by the nomadic business elite. Though the message is consistent, the tone wanders from a fun and flimsy piece on Orange County by journalist Rebecca Schoenkopf to history professor Jon Wiener's overly somber look at Ted Turner's two million–acre landholding. In one essay, Davis launches a salvo at Dubai, distilling the glittering emirate into Milton Friedman's Beach Club, powered by the labor of imported near-slaves. California-style gated housing developments are a recurring theme, popping up in Iran and Hong Kong. More original is science fiction novelist China Miéville's brilliant essay Floating Utopias about a seafaring metropolis and tax haven to dwarf the largest ocean liner. The catch? This libertarian dream project will probably never be built because that philosophy, Miéville explains, is for people too small, incompetent or insufficiently connected to avoid taxes or, for that matter, to build a boat equipped with an airport. Even when it's not so pithy, this leftist world tour reminds us of development's human cost. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

As neoliberal economic policies are increasingly applied to city planning, urban spaces worldwide increasingly reflect the deliberate effort to amass capital and stimulate consumer spending. The most dramatic neoliberal development schemes—private archipelagoes in Dubai, gated communities in Hong Kong, the Mall of America in Minnesota—can even be said to resemble capitalist utopias, free of the chaotic diversity of city life and immune from concern for the welfare of the broader public. As emphasized by each of the 19 pieces in this collection, however, every "dreamworld of neoliberalism" constitutes a spatial manifestation of inequality, serving the interests of an increasingly international bourgeois class at the expense of the global poor. Although voicing generally similar variations on a theme of socioeconomic inequality, these articles cover a diverse group of localities (including Beijing and Orange County, California) from a variety of generally scholarly perspectives. Its best moments may be where it is most interdisciplinary, such as in Don Mitchell's analysis of neoliberalism at the Supreme Court in Virginia v. Hicks. Driscoll, Brendan --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The (June 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595583920
• ISBN-13: 978-1595583925
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #725,451 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mike Davis is the author of several books including City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, Late Victorian Holocausts, Planet of Slums, and Magical Urbanism. He was recently awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. He lives in Papa'aloa, Hawaii.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Just in Case you wanna know how bad things really are..., July 26, 2007

By 

Atahualpa Cohen (Buenos Aires) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism (Hardcover)

By the time you're done reading about the guy in the US who is arrested while delivering pampers because the city streets he walked all his life were privatized, or about the offshore hotels inhabited by the super rich so they never pay taxes in any country, or about Ted Turner's autonomous kingdom in Patagonia you'll start to put two and two together. This book does what I haven't seen anyone else do: look at the world we're heading towards by checking out the mini-'utopias' that the planet's plutocracy fashion for themselves in denial of inequality they produce. As the Dude put it: "New s@#t has come to light." Now what are we gonna do about it?

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The wealthy everywhere want their gated communities, September 11, 2009

By 

saskatoonguy (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism (Paperback)

I enjoyed Davis's "City of Quartz" about Los Angeles, and I thought I'd enjoy this collection of essays, edited by Davis. The problem with a collection of essays is that there is no common style and no common approach to the book's theme. On the positive side, there is always something that each person will like, and at least a few essays will strike a chord with anyone interested enough to open the book.

The theme - and it's a loose one - is that the world's nouveaux riches are creating poorly designed communities that isolate them from the broader society, and in the long run, these communities are not in anyone's self-interest, not even the self-interest of the people who live in them. For Americans, the archetype of this phenomenon is the gated suburban development in which McMansions sit on overly-spacious plots of land. Numerous countries, especially those with the worst income inequalities, are copying the phenomenon of the gated community, in which the well-to-do try to isolate themselves from their fellow citizens.

Here are the topics covered by these essays: New luxury suburbs in Egypt, Iran, Dubai, China, Hong Kong, South Africa, Nicaragua, Hungary, Columbia, and Brazil. Several essays are about the US from various angles, covering Minneapolis, Sun City (Arizona), Orange County (California), and Richmond (Virginia). There are essays about Ted Turner's rural landholdings in New Mexico and elsewhere, self-aggrandizing museums in the US, the fad of experiencing monastery life for brief visits, and an essay about planned "floating utopias" in international waters.

Some of the essays are excellent (e.g., the essay about Hong Kong, or the saga of of the man arrested for being on a "public" sidewalk in Richmond), while others are hodgepodges of leftist jargon. But as a totality, this book doesn't hang together as well as it might. Also, some of the authors wander far from the intended theme. It's fascinating to read about conflicts between the TV mogul, Ted Turner, and his rural neighbors, or to read about millionaires' museums as monuments to themselves, but the overall cohesiveness of the book is harmed.

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Evil Paradises: A Seminal Analysis of our Dadaist Reality, July 18, 2007

By 

Aaron Sprecher (Syracuse, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism (Hardcover)

In "Evil Paradises", Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk describe the consequences of neoliberal politics across the world. From Dubai to Kabul via Hong Kong, Cairo or Los Angeles, this stunning analysis takes shape around a rich collection of essays from leading academic researchers including Sara Lipton, Jon Wiener and Marina Forti. "Evil Paradises" represents an essential work in the search for a description of our phantasmagoric reality. Highly recommended to anyone interested to learn about the consequences of global economy and politics.