Benjamin R. Barber - Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole
Here you can read online Benjamin R. Barber - Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2007, publisher: W. W. Norton, genre: Politics. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
Romance novel
Science fiction
Adventure
Detective
Science
History
Home and family
Prose
Art
Politics
Computer
Non-fiction
Religion
Business
Children
Humor
Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.
- Book:Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole
- Author:
- Publisher:W. W. Norton
- Genre:
- Year:2007
- Rating:4 / 5
- Favourites:Add to favourites
- Your mark:
Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole: summary, description and annotation
We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.
An apt sequel to Benjamin R. Barbers best-selling Jihad vs. McWorld, Consumed offers a wrenching portrait of how adult consumers are infantilized in a global economy that overproduces goods and targets children as consumers in a market where there are never enough shoppers. Driven by a frantic imperative to sell, consumer capitalism specializes today in the manufacture not of goods but of needs.
This provocative culmination of Barbers lifelong study of democracy and capitalism shows how the infantilist ethos deprives society of responsible citizens and displaces public goods with private commodities. Traditional liberal democratic society is colonized by an all-pervasive market imperative. Public space is privatized. Identity is branded. Our world, homogenized. With brilliance and depth, Barber confronts the likely consequences for our children, our liberty, and our citizenship, and shows finally how citizens can resist and transcend the civic schizophrenia with which consumerism has infected them.
Benjamin R. Barber: author's other books
Who wrote Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work
Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.
Font size:
Interval:
Bookmark:
In this powerful and disturbing critique, Benjamin Barber takes dead aim at a fundamental fallacy of our time: the equation of capitalism and democracy. No one who cares about the future of our public life can afford to ignore this book.
Jackson Lears, author of Fables of Abundance and Board of Governors Professor of History, Rutgers University
Barber, the prophetic author of Jihad vs. McWorld (1995), delivers a frightening analysis of the way consumerism is vitiating shoppers in the United States and around the world. Significant work.
Kirkus Reviews , starred review
As Ben Barber took scholarly pot shots at the relentless efforts of marketers to manipulate the needs and wants of gullible consumers, I applauded. This book is not merely a lament. It is a guide to help us make our way from where we are to where we need to be.
Bob Kerrey, president, The New School
An alarming study of the ways in which our child-centric culture is changing media. [Barbers] observations on the dumbing down of the broader culture are quite troubling.
Connecticut Post
Consumed should be required reading for college students and all Americans who are concerned about the corruption of our values. Benjamin R. Barber turns his powerful analytical and research skills toward the infantilization of Americans citizens by the unrestricted market. His message simply must not be ignored if we hope to have a peaceful and sustainable future for our children.
John de Graaf, coauthor of Affluenza
[Barbers] hypothesis that consumer culture has turned adult citizens into children by catering only to the lowest common denominator rings only too true. This lifelong study of the effects of capitalism and privatization reveals a pervasiveness of branding and homogenization from which there is no turning back.
Booklist
[Barbers] thoughtful, intelligent commentary reveals the tiny, mean-spirited truth behind the facades of seemingly untouchable institutions.Its almost guaranteed that at least one of your preconceived notionswill be exploded by the truths in this book, but Barber is never satisfied by laying waste to cultural mores: he always plants newer, stronger ideas in their wake.
Conscious Choice
Barber is at his best when he bluntly defends capitalism for what it isa profit-dependent construct. The wealth of information included here, juxtaposed with Barbers thoughtful analysis, [is] an enriching experience.
Tribune (UK)
Every page demonstrates how widely Mr. Barber has read and how deeply he has thought things through. He succeeds in getting you to use your head.
National Post (Ontario)
Powerful. In this well-documented book, the author explores how capitalism has evolved from production and its related values of hard work, responsibility, democracy, and citizenship to consumerism (or hyper-consumerism) characterized by inequalities, immaturity, indulgence, and childishness focused on faux needs. [ Consumed gives] hope for achieving the common good.
Journal of Family & Consumer Sciences
Lucid and readable. Barber offers a comprehensive look at whats wrong with modern capitalism, whos to blame, how we got here and (tentatively) how to fix it. Chapter One, Capitalism Triumphant, should be required reading for anyone with disposable income. Barbers analysis is clear, forceful and spot-onan urgent book about a topic that affects all of us.
Berkshire Eagle (Mass.)
For
Cornelia Barber
Who knows how to shop, and why shopping isnt enough
Fears Empire (2003)
The Truth of Power (2001)
A Place for Us (1998)
A Passion for Democracy: American Essays (1998)
Jihad vs. McWorld (1995)
An Aristocracy of Everyone (1992)
The Conquest of Politics (1988)
Strong Democracy (1984)
Marriage Voices (A Novel) (1981)
Liberating Feminism (1975)
The Death of Communal Liberty (1974)
Superman and Common Men (1971)
IN COLLABORATION
The Struggle for Democracy with Patrick Watson (1989)
The Artist and Political Vision edited with M. McGrath (1982)
Totalitarianism in Perspective with C. J. Friedrich and M. Curtis (1969)
How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY
NEW YORK LONDON
Copyright 2007 by Benjamin R. Barber
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from
this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barber, Benjamin R., 1939
Con$umed: how markets corrupt children, infantilize adults,
and swallow citizens whole
Benjamin R. Barber.1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Consumption (Economics)United States. 2. Consumer behaviorUnited States.
3. Child consumersUnited States. 4. CapitalismUnited States. 5. MaterialismUnited
States. 6. Mass society. 7. United StatesSocial conditions1980
I. Title. II. Title: Consumed. III. Title: How markets corrupt children,
infantilize adults, and swallow citizens whole.
HC110.C6B324 2007
339. 4'60973dc22
2006039751
ISBN: 978-0-393-07039-2
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT
Consumed has consumed not only a great deal of my time, but the time and energy of a number of hardworking research assistants. I am grateful to Gary Smith and the American Academy of Berlin for the Berlin Prize Fellowship in 20012002 that enabled me to inaugurate research on the book. At various times during the four years I have been at work, significant research contributions were made by Josh Goldstein, Tom Ellington, and Rene Paddags at the University of Maryland. Josh Karant, a brilliant young scholar who worked with me at Rutgers University and the University of Maryland, made substantial research contributions, and my intellectual interactions with him sharpened my own scholarly insights. My niece Kate Barber, who works in the magazine industry, has been a constant source of pertinent leads on marketing and advertising stories that strengthened the sections on childrens marketing. Kates father, my brother Willson Barber, did a final proofread even as he assessed the books arguments with his sharp critical eye.
In the final two years of work, when the book was actually written, Patrick Inglis acted not only as my primary research assistant, copyeditor, and fact-checker, but as a sounding board for ideas and as a thoughtful critic of my arguments in ways that significantly improved the book. That he did this even as he was conceiving his own doctoral dissertation and also contributing to my Interdependence Day project attests to his discipline and scholarly focus as well as his infinite good will.
My editor at Norton, Alane Mason, with whom I have now worked on three books, offered sound editorial judgments about the architecture and substance of my arguments. She cannot be blamed for remaining flaws, but deserves much credit for the coherence and continuity of the manuscript.
Finally, my youngest daughter, Cornelia, fifteen at the time I completed the book, contributed research, as well as critical judgments about materials I was drawing on, from her own reservoir of experiential knowledge. Her age and her shopping know-how make her a primary target of the marketing industry. Much more importantly, however, it gives me hope for the future: for Cornelia knows how to shop and takes pleasure in it, but she also knows the limits of shopping, and has the will and insight that allow her along with many others in her generation to mount a resistance to a hyperconsumerist society from within. Among her qualities is a thorough understanding of how she is being marketed to and why that marketing is often a violation of rather than a tribute to the freedom and dignity she seeks. For this reason, and because she harbors a beautiful soul that can only delight her parents and everyone else who knows her, I dedicate this book to herour Nellie.
Font size:
Interval:
Bookmark:
Similar books «Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole»
Look at similar books to Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.
Discussion, reviews of the book Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.