Jihad Vs McWorld: Terrorism's Challenge to Democracy [Paperback]

Brilliant book especially for sociologists. Came a bit late though. A few signs of wear but it was used so otherwise very pleased with it!

The book was probably an interesting read for untravelled Americans. For travelled Europeans it could be entitled 'The Bleedin Obvious'. Also, the author is excessively long winded and repetitive about getting his point across making several analogies along the way of which many are not required. The fact the book was written over 10 years ago really shows in its portrayal of communications and current economies. On the back of the book there is the impression that the book has been written on the back of September 11th, but this is has been engineered into the revised publication. Avoid it unless you have been in a coma for 10 years, or America.

Benjamin Barber's book, although on the surface laudable for its engagement with the complexities of global capitalism ("McWorld") and the search for group identities, fails to provide a truly thorough account of the ways in which "Jihad" and "McWorld" really function in today's world. The limits of his project are set at the outset through his implicit Humanism, which allows him to universalize the word "Jihad"-a multivalent term arising out of a complex Islamic history-to cover Hindu, American Protestant, Islamic, Buddhist, and every other imaginable fundamentalism. Although Barber at the outset self-consciously attempts to expand the meaning of the (Islamic) term, he contradicts himself in his discussion of Islamic fundamentalism: "Jihad has been a metaphor for anti-Western anti-universalist struggle throughout this book. The question is whether it is more than just a metaphor in the Muslim culture that produced the term" (207). Isn't Barber forgetting his earlier discussion of the ways in which he is consciously appropriating a word that happens to come from the Muslim world? First, Barber associates the word with parochialism, narrow-mindedness, and violence only to later claim that he meant to use the word metaphorically in regards to non-Islamic fundamentalism; as for the Islamic world, Barber implies that "Jihad" is no longer metaphoric. Barber falls into the too-easy trap of Western writers on Islam by implying that parochialism, narrow-mindedness, and violence are inherent in the Islamic world. "Muslim culture" may have produced the word "Jihad" (which, even in the Muslim context is an often contested term with meanings that drastically differ) but Barber badly appropriates it, only to imply that since Muslim culture produced it, perhaps Islam is the base for parochial narrow-mindedness in the world. By universalizing and misusing the term "Jihad" the book overlooks the specificity of each fundamentalism: "As the Muslim Brotherhood saw in Christianity a crusading corruptor, Know-Nothing American Protestants back in the 1880's saw in Mediterranean Catholic immigrants a grave peril to the American Republic, just as nervous Californians today worry about illegal Latino immigrants . . ." (212). The careless linking of these three disparate "fundamentalisms" (or "Jihad," as Barber would prefer to write) overlook, respectively, issues of decolonization, commerce and immigration, and racism / cultural imperialism. But perhaps the most careless omission in this book is a lack of engagement with Zionism and the formation of the state of Israel, which inform so much of the global fundamentalist motivation and rhetoric, while at the same time having implications for the nature and scope of "Americanization" and global capital (or, "McWorld"). In fact, Zionism is never mentioned in the text as an example of fundamentalism, and Israel is rarely alluded to. It would seem that any discussion of globalization, the modern nation-state, fundamentalism, and democracy would have to engage with the formation of Israel. In addition it would have to recognize the specificty of fundamentalisms, especially those arising in ex-colonial countries. Imperialism, colonialism, and decolonization are also issues noticeably absent in "Jihad vs. McWorld," a book which claims to discuss global themes without taking into account the way in which most of the globe is engaged in various processes of decolonization. The book's argument becomes much easier to make when messy and difficult issues such as decolonization, institutional racism, and the formation of Israel are left unexplored. Furthermore, Barber's implicit (Humanist) trust in an idealist notion of democracy and an unquestioned trust in the nation-state, with its attendant ideological machinery, provides too-easy solutions for the predicaments his book presumes to discuss.