Customer Reviews

Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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?

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.

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.

Despite a firm aversion to edited books, I picked this beauty up for the Mike Davis name and it did not disappoint. While a few pieces wander into the uber-technical or the borderline psychedelic, most plot an accessible middle course and drive home a severe look at our ferocious and irrational future. The common theme of essays planetary in reach is a nouveau bunkerization, in which turbo-capitalism's vicious few winners ostentatiously gird themselves against a sea of presumed hoods, Robin and otherwise. A work like no other, Evil Paradises captures bitter life in the face of this increasingly indelicate segregation, even while stirring the anxiety of those reading from the sunny side of the wall. Angry yet intelligent, hard yet understated, Davis takes an artists brush to the overall arrangement, suggesting in the end that jazz, were it a non-fiction anthology, might just wear a purple cover.

Mike Davis has done it again: this collection, edited by Davis together with Daniel Bertrand Monk, is yet another forceful, readable, and compelling indictment of capitalism and its (re)shaping of our one and only planet. Unlike most other Davis books, this one is not mostly written by him, but instead collects a series of essays and observations by various authors on the single topic of capitalist, neoliberal cities and their anti-human properties. As is the nature of essay collections, there is some unevenness both in theme and quality in the book, but the general level of insight as well as writing style is high throughout, and almost all the essays are worth reading.

The collection totals some 19 articles, containing a fairly broad range of topics within the constraints of the general subject. Several essays are about the creation of neoliberal claustrophobic cities for the wealthy, from Hong Kong to Budapest; particularly worthwhile in this range is the polemic against the nightmarish 'paradise' of Dubai, now so hip in the Western media, done by Mike Davis himself. But there are also other themes: Sara Lipton has an article on monasteries as fashionable retreats for the bourgeoisie, Joe Day writes about modern 'personal musea' created by the ultra-wealthy as showpieces, Rebecca Schoenkopf mocks the bizarrely spoiled worldview of the upper class of Orange County, and so on. China Miéville's well-known essay on libertarian ideals, "Floating Utopias", is also part of this collection.

Overall, not all contributions are equally interesting, but generally this is a great book for becoming (or staying) infuriated about the pretense, arrogance, and cowardice of the wealthy few in our times, as well as the stranglehold they have over public space and even the formation of the very cities the millions of poor also have to live in; the same poor who do the work that makes their "Evil Paradises" possible.

Behind the glitz and glamor of many of paradises in this world is an interwoven network of corruption, fear, and oligarchical rule. From Hong Kong to Los Angeles, a new style of living is enabling the super-rich and their affluent elbow rubbers to wall themselves up and live in the ivory towers above the serfdom they created. A bleak picture, I know, but it is the picture painted by editors Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk in their essay collection Evil Paradises. This book is a collection of nineteen essays specially selected to broaden the horizon of the reader as regards the state of the wealth gap and how it shapes national and urban developments throughout the world. As stated by Davis in the introduction, " Evil Paradises addresses a simple but epochal question: Toward what kind of future are we being led by savage, fanatical capitalism?" (Davis IX). Taking this to heart, the editors compiled a list of essays quite worthy of the title. Standout authors and topics include: Timothy Mitchell addressing the questionable leadership in Egypt in his essay Dreamland, Anthony Fontenot and Ajmal Maiwandi reporting on the state of the city of Kabul, Laura Ruggeri's take on the false Palm Springs in Hong Kong guarded by mercenaries and money, and pieces from both editors Davis and Monk tackling Dubai and Neoliberalism respectively.

The major themes in this collection are based in a strong anti-capitalism that believes that no good can come from unrestrained wealth, development, and social control. Essentially, the essays contained within show the evils that arise when capitalism is so laissez faire that it gets taken to its extreme end resulting in a wide margin between the wealthy and impoverished. While the behaviors and ends of the super-rich don't really surprise us anymore the means used to achieve such ends can be altogether terrifying. Davis states,

"No one is surprised to read about millionaires spending $50,000 to clone their pet cats or a billionaire who pays $20 million for a brief vacation in space...so much hyperbole is depleted in the coverage of the lifestyles of billionaires and celebrities that little awe remains to greet the truly extraordinary statistics, like the recent disclosure that the richest 1 percent of Americans spend as much as the poorest 60 million...or that rich individuals currently shelter a staggering $11.5 trillion...in offshore tax havens" (Davis X).

Davis is spot on in his assessment as the essays will soon show the reader. A wealth of specific empirical data lies between the pages of Evil Paradises. Facts like "300,000 citizens of Beijing forced to move to accommodate the Olympic Games and many of them forced into labor by government and corporate officials" or "Ted Turner poisons fish as far as 77 miles upriver just to keep the flow of trout in his ranch secure and protects the elk population near his land only to allow hunter to shoot for a week for the small price of $13,000" all but confirm without doubt that Monk and Davis have hit the head of this issue with a hammer and sickle so to speak.

All in all, Evil Paradises functions primarily as your typical collection of essays on any given topic, providing a well rounded view from multiple angles on a particular theme, but also pushes the limits of what can be said about its area of expertise. Davis and Monk did not simply gather up pieces from friends or works that would offer a view from both sides of the coin. They did not hope to put together a work for the sake of academic speculation. What the editors have done here is purposely create a single work that any individual could pick up and learn from, that would make a bold and direct statement on the condition that they believe this world to be in, and that would pull the curtain back from the great and powerful Oz revealing him to be no more than a manipulator of society through fear and resource domination. They had no plans of making this read easy for the reader to digest or for it to be comfortable to work through. It is obvious that their intent was to disturb the mind and clear the awe from our vision. One can not help but stare when we see TMZ taking photos of David Beckham or when we watch Donald Trump say "You're fired". Evil Paradises is the slap in the face that you need to make you notice that folks like Beckham own land in the corruption capital of Dubai and that Donald Trump would sell you to build his new hotel if he could. If ever such a slap was needed, now is the time. Davis and Monk have issued their wake up call with Evil Paradises. Rise and shine.

Enjoyable read that addresses the growth of gated communities in cities across the globe. The book highlights the false constructions of community that these developments sell, as privatization commodifies community. I particularly liked the essay on Palm Springs in Hong Kong, the one on Managua's very recent redevelopment and repopulation by the wealthy, as well as the one on water rights in Johannesburg.

Evil Paradises, edited by Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk, is an important and timely book. It brings together scholars from a wide range of disciplines and takes us on a global tour too easily overlooked. Highly recommended.

The book is tedious and unevenly written. It has added no new information or insight for this reader. Much of the material has nothing to do with what are undoubtedly the ravages of neo-liberalism.

Karl Hiller