The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Over the past half-century, the United States and other economically advanced countries have gradually made the shift into what has been called an "information society,..." (more)
Key Phrases: moral miniaturization, hierarchical religion, cooperative norms, Great Disruption, New Zealand, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Francis Fukuyama cements his reputation as a wide-ranging public intellectual with this big-think book on social order and human nature. Following his earlier successes (The End of History and the Last Man and Trust), Fukuyama argues that civilization is in the midst of a revolution on a par with hunter-gatherers learning how to farm or agricultural societies turning industrial. He finds much to celebrate in this cultural, economic, and technological transformation, but "with all the blessings that flow from a more complex, information-based economy, certain bad things also happened to our social and moral life." Individualism, for example, fuels innovation and prosperity, but has also "corroded virtually all forms of authority and weakened the bonds holding families, neighborhoods, and nations together." Yet this is not a pessimistic book: "Social order, once disrupted, tends to get remade again" because humans are built for life in a civil society governed by moral rules.

We're on the tail end of the "great disruption," says Fukuyama, and signs suggest a coming era of much-needed social reordering. He handles complex ideas from diverse fields with ease (this is certainly the first book whose acknowledgments thank both science fiction novelist Neal Stephenson and social critic James Q. Wilson), and he writes with laser-sharp clarity. Fans of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and David Landes's The Wealth and Poverty of Nations will appreciate The Great Disruption, as will just about any reader curious about what the new millennium may bring. This is simply one of the best nonfiction books of 1999. --John J. Miller --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Fukuyama attempts to reconcile the extent of social disruption experienced in many Western countries during the past 30 years with his neo-Hegelian belief that the triumph of Western liberal democracy represents an end of history (articulated in The End of History and the Last Man). He successfully contends that the "Great Disruption" Western nations are experiencing as society moves from an industrial to an information economy is much like the social upheaval that accompanied the industrial revolution. After defining the Great Disruption (the usual litany of increased crime, family breakdown and lack of confidence in public institutions), Fukuyama turns to an exploration of the nature of human beings and morality. In doing so, he makes much of the idea of "social capital," which he defines as "a set of informal values or norms shared among members of a group that permits cooperation among them." Social capital is lacking in periods of disruption and is present when periods of disruption come to an end. Simply put, it's what makes civil society possible. He concludes that Western societies are now reconstructing their social ordersAmuch as they have over the course of historyAthrough revitalized morality, renewed civic pride and strengthened family life. As in previous books, Fukuyama's conclusions are less interesting than the way he arrives at them through a willingness to ask the big questions and an ability to look at contemporary society through the lens of his own vast reading and scholarship.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 1st edition (June 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684865777
• ISBN-13: 978-0684865775
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #599,383 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A good primer in modern sociology without the politics, July 8, 1999

By	Marty Spiller ([e-mail]) (Ashby, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (Hardcover)

The Great Disruption is a wonderfully apolitical look at the rather disconcerting changes that have taken place in the social structure of western civilization during the last third of the twentieth century. Francis Fukuyama does this by examining the recent changes in social norms and values in western civilization as a whole, including the course they have taken in other countries, as well as in the United States. He lucidly examines the underlying causes for these changes, and compares them with those observed in other cultures as well as those that have taken place due to earlier social disruptions throughout the history of Western civilization. It is of special interest to those of us who grew up in the times prior to the disruption, when social norms tended to support individual happiness by stressing the more communitarian aspects of culture such as family, religion, and reciprocal employer/employee relations. For many of us, the world has become a cold, lonley place.

Fukuyama does NOT take sides in the culture war except insofar as to acknowledge changes that have come about, or are in the process of taking place. He does make judgments about the adaptability of some of the changes and their likelihood of remaining in their present form over the long haul. It is of particular interest to note that he does not attribute the various disruptions in social norms to politics per se, but rather to natural reactions of individuals to the changes in their environment wrought by the new technologies that have come to dominate western culture. These include the wide dissemination of information, increases in longevity and the shift from a society based on manual labor to one based on intellect. The politics on either side, from the feminists and the sexual liberationists on the left to the religionists on the right were not seminal in either creating or delaying these changes, and in fact, Fukuyama seems to be arguing that human nature will be the final arbiter of the form that social norms will finally take. In short, neither side will ultimately win the culture war, but then, neither side will lose either. The left will be happy to learn that the liberation of women is a natural phenomena and cannot be reversed. The right will be happy to learn that Fukuyama sees no clear, realistic alternative to traditional families (nuclear or extended), and that over time the rather devastating changes in family structure wrought by the change in status of women will certainly be modified, (as indeed is slowly happening now) not because of political arguments, but because human nature, the key to all social interaction, will demand it.

The first half of the book reads more easily than the second half because it deals with actual real life societal changes and their causes. The second half deals more heavily with socioeconomic theory and is a good deal more work, but rewarding if you have the will to stick it out. My major criticism with the book is that it does not deal at all with timeline other than to hint that the disruptions will be ironed out within a number of generations. It would have been cold comfort for Czarist loyalists to know that the Soviet experiment would eventually fail, but that it would take three generations and millions of political deaths for it to happen, and another several generations for Russian citizens to rebuild enough social capital to rejoin the rest of the world.

52 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Fukuyama Disproves Himself -- Ideology trumps facts, September 3, 2000

By	John B. Carpenter (Yanceyville, NC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (Hardcover)

I was intrigued by his "The End of History." I thought his "Trust" was a brilliant book and used it extensively in my masters thesis and doctoral dissertation. I only hope this latest book is a disruption in an ongoing chain of good books. In the end, "The Great Disruption" is a down right silly book. It has a lot of usefull data but Fukuyama's humanistic ideology clouds it all. All his empirical data and any real understanding of history undermine his polly-anna conclusion: that things just have to get better because people are ultimately good. Fukuyama proves that the moral consensus -- the social capital -- of the earlier era has been wiped away. That crime has sky-rocketed and that the apparent drops in recent crime rates are only the result of high incarceration rates and lower percentages of younger men. Then he turns around and wants us to believe that disfunctional behaviour has dropped because people are naturally gregarious and have a natural inclination to rebuild social capital. He doesn't bother to deal with societies -- like Ethiopia -- that have never been able to build up enough social capital. He doesn't really look any further back in history past about 1950. His generalizations about the 19th century merely show how little he has taken into account the big picture of history. He thinks (based on his ideology of human goodness) that things just have to get better. If he had studied Pitirim Sorokin for a really big picture of history, he would know better. People can come to a similar optimistic conclusion as does Fukuyama but they will need to be much better grounded in history if they are going to make generalizations about long-term historical cycles. For that, I would recommend Robert W. Fogel's "The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism." Fogel, a Nobel prize winner, has all the optimism of Fukuyama but with the history to back it up.

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Seeing the big picture, February 1, 2000

By	Todd Weiner (Gambier, OH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (Hardcover)

This is an important book for readers who are interested in how our cultural landscape has shifted in the last three decades and what the future holds for us. Mr. Fukuyama is the premiere writer in American today when it comes to articulating the big picture and offering unique and provocative viewpoints. "The Great Disruption" is further evidence of that fact. Many Americans fail to appreicate the incredible social changes that have taken place since 1960 and Fukuyama pinpoints the prime culprit - a radical change in gender relations. Changes in the economy and the government are big enough but when you're talking about the way that families are raised and how men and women relate to each other - social mores that have lasted for thousands of years - you're talking about a seismic social shift. This revolution, which Fukuyama traces to the birth control pill, has led to serious social issues - teen pregancy, single-parent families, crime, low trust in government, and more. This is not a completely unique thesis but Fukuyama explains it in far more depth than any other recent author. Furthermore, Fukuyama reports that this "Great Dispruption" is mellowing and he uses the encouraging statistical data of the last five years as evidence. The author sites mankind's fundamental need for order as the catalyst for this social pause. What he leaves out, however, is a vision of what our country will look like ten or twenty years from now because of this development. Will these statistic trends level off? Will they reverse themselves? And if so, completely? Or is this just the eye of a storm waiting to churn again? This, I suppose, is left to the intellect of the reader. Nevertheless, this book is a must-read.