The Case Against the Global Economy: And for a Turn toward the Local - Softcover

Jerry Mander; Edward Goldsmith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0871568659 ISBN 13: 9780871568656

Publisher: Sierra Club Books, 1997

Synopsis

A great political debate has emerged over the many unexpected and profound consequences of the rush toward the global economy. The world’s political and corporate leaders are restructuring the planet’s economy and political arrangements in ways that are affecting humans and the environment more than anything since the Industrial Revolution. Global institutions such as GATT, the World Trade Organization, NAFTA, and the World Bank created with scant public debate or scrutiny have moved real power away from citizens and nation-states to global bureaucracies, with grave results.
The Case Against the Global Economy is the first comprehensive, point-by-point analysis of the global economy, its premises, and its social and environmental implications. Represented here are forty-three leading economic, agricultural, and environmental experts who charge that free trade and economic globalization are producing exactly the opposite results from what has been promised.
Contributors include William Greider, Jeremy Rifkin, Ralph Nader, Vandana Shiva, David Korten, Wendell Berry, Kirkpatrick Sale, Herman E. Daly, Richard Barnet, Helena Norberg-Hodge, and more than thirty other analysts of the global economy.

About this title

Review:

"Economic globalization," writes Jerry Mander, "involves arguably the most fundamental redesign of the planet's political and economic arrangements since at least the Industrial Revolution. Yet the profound implications of these fundamental changes have barely been exposed to serious public scrutiny or debate. Despite the scale of the global reordering, neither our elected officials nor our educational institutions nor the mass media have made a credible effort to describe what is being formulated or to explain its root philosophies." From which omission arises The Case Against the Global Economy.

The 43 essays in this collection comprise a point-by-point analysis of globalization and its consequences that demonstrates that the future may not be as bright as business leaders tell us. Among the highlights: William Greider examines how General Electric works to shape (with the goal of controlling) the political arena; Ralph Nader and Lori Wallach attack NAFTA and GATT for undermining the sovereign authority of democratic governments; and Wendell Berry looks at the concerted efforts of big business to destroy local, particularly rural, communities in order to plunder the environment without opposition. Several authors, including Satish Kumar, Jeanette Armstrong, and Kirkpatrick Sale, outline alternatives to the global economy based on "bioregional" principles of local self-sufficiency.

From the Inside Flap:

"A provocative and welcome counter-argument to the conventional wisdom that economic gobalization is in the best interests of mankind."--Orville Schell, Dean, Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley

About this edition

• Publisher: Sierra Club Books
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0871568659
• ISBN 13: 9780871568656
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 560