DOCUMENT by: Bob Hassenger
Subject: Mini-Lecture Part 3

Chapters 17 and 18 can be lightly read, as Barber further develops the thesis of the previous chapter, with specific reference to Russia and the former East Germany. Each is a society changed greatly by McWorld, and each has pockets of fierce resistance from the forces of Jihad. Chapter 19 is a kind of Habits of the Heart Redux, except that "community" is now the world. Barber's argument is for citizenship, which is "nurtured first of all in democratic civil society" (p. 277). He calls for "[a] global citizenship [that] demands a domain parallel to McWorld's in which communities of cooperation do consciously and for the public good what markets currently do inadvertently on behalf of aggregated private interests" (ibid.). Then, he goes on to admit that this is difficult, not because there is no public, but because there is "too much public," as Dewey noted. In the world, who is the public? "How can civil society be constructed in an international arena?" (ibid.) As Barber admits, we lack this even in the U.S.

Yet, this is what he sees as the only way out, in this final chapter and the "Afterword". McWorld wouldn't have been possible without the free market that could exist only under democracy. Yet, democracy's very pluralism has resulted in a "savage capitalism," a McWorld where economics trumps culture and community. Barber sees Jihad as a reaction to McWorld. Zealots of every stripe fear modernization, and revolt against the loss of controls. The answer is, somehow, a return to the types of civic association urged by Bellah et al.,perhaps not unlike what was found in the Chicago (and America) of the 1950s. Are we going in a circle?

Of course, there was Jihad long before there was McWorld: people have always feared the new, and reacted against it as a "we" against "they." This is, in fact, the origin of many of the associations celebrated by Bellah et al. and Barber (who refers to Habits in the final chapter). What has changed is a result of the electronic revolution, among other influences, that has brought advertising, "videology," and raised expectations to all corners of the globe. Yet, somewhat paradoxically, Barber sees the computer and electronic media as perhaps the best hope of extending participatory democracy to those far reaches of humankind. Do you think this is unrealistic? Does Barber, rather like the authors of Habits, romanticize the early days of "democracy," whether in what became the United States, or in ancient Athens or Rome? What proportion of people were really citizens, then? How many women were participants in the Roman Senate or New England town meetings? Peoples of color? Slaves, whether in Athens, Rome or America?

It is difficult to disagree with Barber that "[m]ore than anything else, what has been lost in the clash of Jihad and McWorld has been the idea of the public as something more than a random collection consumers or an aggregation of special political interests or a product of identity politics" (p. 286). Yet, the most important word in that sentence may be, not the italicized one, but "idea." Whether or not such a public every really existed may be another story. Perhaps some of these questions are addressed in another book I have yet to read, by Putnam et al. Making Democracy Work, Princeton University Press, 1994. ISBN 069103337388].

The final three paragraphs of Chapter 19 (pp. 291-92) sum up Barber's case. In reading them, one is tempted to say, "Yeh, but..." Share some of your reservations (or agreements) in the Discussion Area.

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