Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole

Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole

by Benjamin R. Barber
Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole

Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole

by Benjamin R. Barber

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Overview

"Powerful and disturbing. No one who cares about the future of our public life can afford to ignore this book." —Jackson Lears

A powerful sequel to Benjamin R. Barber's best-selling Jihad vs. McWorld, Consumed offers a vivid portrait of a global economy that overproduces goods and targets children as consumers in a market where there are never enough shoppers—and where the primary goal is no longer to manufacture goods but needs. Disturbing, provocative, and compelling, this book examines phenomena as seemingly disparate as adolescent fashion trends for adults, megachurches, declining voter participation, the privatization of the public sphere, branding, and the rise of online shopping to show how the freedoms of the free market have undermined the freedoms of the deliberative adult citizen. Barber brings together extensive empirical research with an original theoretical framework for understanding our contemporary predicament.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780393070392
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 03/17/2008
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 416
File size: 853 KB

About the Author

Benjamin R. Barber (1939—2017) was an American political theorist and author, perhaps best known for his 1995 bestseller, Jihad vs. McWorld.

Table of Contents


Acknowledgments     ix
The Birth of Consumers
Capitalism Triumphant and the Infantilist Ethos     3
From Protestantism to Puerility     38
The Eclipse of Citizens
Infantilizing Consumers: The Coming of Kidults     81
Privatizing Citizens: The Making of Civic Schizophrenia     116
Branding Identities: The Loss of Meaning     166
Totalizing Society: The End of Diversity     213
The Fate of Citizens
Resisting Consumerism: Can Capitalism Cure Itself?     257
Overcoming Civic Schizophrenia: Restoring Citizenship in a World of Interdependence     291
Notes     341
Index     383
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