|
This is a powerful and timely book. Globalization and the Demolition of Society is sophisticated and subtle yet hard-hitting. Loo has a gift for precision, close analysis, and synthesis conveyed in a manner akin to the unfolding of a richly textured story. Without expressly intending to do so, he also tells a very personal story as he unwraps the tale of not two cities but two worlds in motion and fierce contention.
There are actually many books residing in this one; the book is a feast for the mind and the spirit. The individual chapters could each form the core of a separate book by itself, presented in a highly concentrated, yet decidedly readable form in this edition. Each chapter builds towards the next but each one stands on its own and can be read by itself. (See Table of Contents right sidebar and also Excerpts from Globalization and the Demolition of Society tab above.)
Loo, as an editor has described it, "takes what might seem like scattered disturbing developments in politics and places them in the context of larger, identifiable trends in history." The evidence, analogies, and mode of discussion in this book bring concepts and theory alive. He uses and explains theory so well that it is as if the theory he is scrutinizing is an actual concrete object in his hand. He hones in on the essence of a phenomenon or concept and then artfully examines its various facets and connections to other processes and entities. In so doing, he manages to be both concise and uncommonly comprehensive. After reading this book you will not see the world in the same way. You will feel both provoked and more empowered. His willingness and ability to speak the truth is precious in these times of profound troubles.
As Loo states in his Introduction:
"We have to know what is real in all of its complexity and fluidity if we want to change reality. We have to use theoretical and conceptual tools that mirror reality well and that give us the ability to turn necessity into forms of freedom. Poor conceptual and theoretical tools blind us to what is actually going on. This book is thus not only about what is happening around us, about phenomena and the sources of those phenomena, but also about rejecting theoretical models that obscure our ability to grasp what is really happening."
The shortest possible way to describe this book's subject is that it is a robust critique of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is sometimes referred to as free market fundamentalism. It is "liberalism" in the Adam Smith sense of the term of liberating or unleashing market forces as the panacea for all things.
Loo’s central argument is that neoliberal policies by their very nature and logic relentlessly undermine security, thus fostering ever-grander disasters, on the micro and macro levels. Not only is this because some of these disasters are being deliberately triggered (as Naomi Klein has argued) but also because neoliberalism’s nature leads inevitably to inadvertent disasters (such as the BP Gulf of Mexico catastrophe). As he writes in Chapter Three:
"The worst and most alarming news here, in other words, is not that 9/11 was an inside job, a grand conspiracy hatched within the highest US government echelons. It is instead that 9/11 and other disasters such as the BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe are due to the normal and ordinary workings of capitalism, and specifically neoliberal policies."
Loo points out that neoliberalism further creates the need for states to employ ever more mass deception and coercion - including the use of state terror - regardless of which political party is in power, as it systematically undermines the basis for people to voluntarily co-operate. (See especially Chapters Three and Four.)
Unlike other books critiquing neoliberalism, Loo puts forth a startlingly convincing critique of democratic theory (in Chapter Five) and points the way forward to what authentic popular rule would look like, not based on the flawed assumptions within democratic theory.
Loo has received national awards in three separate areas – as a scholar, as a journalist, and as an activist: the Alfred R. Lindesmith Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems, Project Censored’s Award, and The Nation Magazine’s “Most Valuable Campaign” award. He is Professor of Sociology at Cal Poly Pomona and a National Steering Committee Member of the World Can’t Wait. His previous book was Impeach the President: the Case Against Bush and Cheney (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006) that he co-wrote and co-edited with Peter Phillips. He is an honors graduate from Harvard where he majored in Government and he earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is a former journalist.
Globalization and the Demolition of Society is aimed at both the trade market and university classes. For the university audience it is most suitable for upperclassmen and graduate classes in Sociology (e.g., social problems, theory, social movements), Political Science, Media Studies, Economics (radical economists), History, and interdisciplinary programs. It would also work extremely well in critical thinking classes.
Individual chapters in the book are very suitable for specific purposes. To give you a sense of the richness here: Chapter Two contains within it a pathbreaking case study of the 1960s' crime issue and the way in which the "law and order" discourse was manufactured by elites anxious to clamp down on the social protests of the era by attempting to conflate protest with crime. His analysis of the actual polling data versus the conventional understanding of public opinion and the polls is remarkable as he gives the lie to the scholarly and conventional wisdom. Loo recounts how a "moral panic" over crime was fabricated, how this process laid the basis for the subsequent "War on Drugs" and "War on Terror," and how despite this the 1960s' social insurgencies held court over elites' best efforts to control and suppress them, with "social justice" prevailing over "law and order" as the dominant social interpretive frame for a time. In the course of this, Loo lays bare in a very convincing way certain fundamental theoretical problems with the most popular version of social constructionism employed in social problems accounts. His analysis in Chapter Two of the 1960s' crime issue dovetails wonderfully with his book's larger presentation that what matters in public policymaking is not what public opinion is but what is presented as the dominant public opinion. His discussion of that issue is typical of his ability to take evidence in order to closely examine and test theory and to take theory and subject it to extremely close and illuminating inspection in the abstract.
To cite another example, Chapter Four's incisive analysis of terrorism and the "War on Terror" in particular is simply the best statement on the subject. He shows, for instance, the flaws in the "ticking time bomb scenario." To take another example, he shows that the WOT's logic and the draconian policies and burgeoning bureaucracy devoted to "security" and to surveillance that have arisen on the basis of the WOT actually necessitate the occasional successively completed or abortive terrorist incident. In other words, the WOT needs a terrorist incident every so often to justify itself, thus providing the institutional-level interest in having (or conceivably instigating in a false flag attack) a terrorist attack. This is affirmed by public (and private) statements by various policy-makers that another 9/11 would be a good thing.
Loo intends this book to be read both by the broad public and by specialists. He approaches it this way because he believes that the only way that the profound problems that confront us today can be resolved is through the populace being truthfully and deeply informed of what we face and what path forward promises real hope, rather than ersatz hope. As he writes in Chapter Five:
"The goal for those genuinely interested in popular rule should not be popular participation per se. The goal should be that there be authentic popular rule. The two are not synonymous and the latter cannot be achieved simply through mass voting. The path to authentic popular rule, therefore, does not mean handing over the key decisions to others. Instead it requires the masses of people becoming increasingly engaged, informed, and involved."
Release Date: August 1, 2011.
Price: $27.95. Hardcover. 432 pages.
Also available in eBook format from eBook retailers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Apple.
A website has been created to accompany Loo's book at http://dennisloo.com.
Table of Contents
Excerpts from Globalization and the Demolition of Society
|
