Book description
JIHAD VS. MCWORLD is an essential text for anyone who wants to
understand the challenges facing us after the tragic events of September
11, 2001 and in light of the current conflict in the Middle East. In a
groundbreaking work, political scientist Benjamin R. Barber offers a
penetrating analysis of the central conflict of our times: consumerist
capitalism versus religious and tribal fundamentalism. These
diametrically opposed but intertwined forces are tearing apart - and
bringing together - the world as we know it, undermining democracy and
the nation-state on which it depends. On the one hand, capitalism on the
global level is rapidly dissolving the social and economic barriers
between nations, transforming the world's diverse populations into a
blandly uniform market. On the other hand, ethnic, religious, and racial
hatreds are fragmenting the political landscape into smaller and smaller
tribal units. JIHAD VS. MCWORLD is the term that Barber has coined to
describe the powerful and paradoxical interdependence of these forces.
In this important book, now more timely than ever before, he explores
the alarming repercussions of this potent dialectic and in his new
introduction sketches a democratic response to terrorism. Benjamin R.
Barber is the Whitman Professor of Political Science at Rutgers
University and the director of the Walt Whitman Center for the Culture
and Politics of Democracy. He is the author of numerous books, including
the political classic Strong Democracy as well as An Aristocracy of
Everyone. With Patrick Watson, Barber also created and wrote the
prizewinning television series and book The Struggle for Democracy. He
writes regularly for Harper's, the Atlantic Monthly, and many other
publications. He is married to the dancer and choreographer Leah
Kreutzer.
