Jihad Vs. McWorld by Benjamin Barber. Two opposite tendencies that threaten democracy

Résumé du document

Benjamin R. Barber is a professor of political science and director of the Whitman Center at Rutgers University. His popular books are Strong Democracy (1984), An aristocracy of Everyone (1992), and Jihad Vs. McWorld (Times Books, 1995). Jihad Vs. McWorld, his last book was published in the Atlantic Monthly in March 1992 (volume 269, No. 3, pages 53-65). The main purpose of this article it to highlight the two strong forces i.e. tribalism and globalism, or in other words Jihad and McWorld. They clash at every point except the fact that they both could be a serious threat to democracy.

Extraits

[...] = A way local communities can be democratic to avoid small dictatorships Confederal representative democracy: 3 advantages in the concerns for: accountability, protection of minorities, and universal rule of law we are already beginning to see, many nations may survive in the long term only as confederations that afford local regions smaller than “nations” extensive jurisdiction.” = A confederation of nation-states where the power is distributed more equally among the different levels of hierarchy (confederation, nation, and regions). It is a question of political realism according to Barber, a necessity to go through globalization. [...]

[...] These wars aim at redrawing the boundaries and imploding the national states. To escape McWorld's identity, a quest for ever smaller communities: some want to base their identity on local communities, the tribes for example, and war is nothing more than a symbol of this identity, this belonging to a certain community and not a political instrument. Many examples of that phenomenon: Palestinians, Kurds (separated in four different nations). Saddam Hussein has benefited from the threat to the territorial integrity that renewed tribal and religious warfare. [...]

[...] The information-technology imperative lends itself to surveillance as well as liberty, risk of new forms of manipulations and control, new forms of participation to unjust market outcomes as well as a greater productivity. consumer society and the open society are not quite synonymous. [ ] An efficient free market after all requires that consumers be free to vote their dollars on competing goods, not that citizens be free to vote their values and beliefs on competing political candidates and programs.” examples of free markets in autocratic or despotic countries: Chile, Korea 2. [...]

[...] Also in Eastern Europe a reaction against the idea of an international communism that has provided the Soviet Union with ethnic prejudices renewal of religious fundamentalism = another source of conflicts, new Crusades (battle to the death for the souls that if not saved will be forever ethnocentricity, proselytism, sectarism . Jihad = breakdown of civility in the name of identity, of comity in the name of community.” These two forces operate with the same strength in opposite directions: parochial hatreds vs. universalizing markets. They happen in the same places at the same moments, cf. examples of Yugoslavia, India, and former Soviet Union II. The risks that follow for democracy 1. [...]

[...] McWorld published in the Atlantic Monthly in March 1992 (volume 269, No pages 53-65). The main thesis of this article, this presentation will show, is that nowadays (at the beginning of the 1990s, when the article was first written), the world knows two strong forces pushing in opposite directions, that are tribalism and globalism, or in other words Jihad and McWorld. They clash at every point except the fact that they both could be a serious threat to democracy. I. Two strong forces acting in the world 1. [...]