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Amazon.co.uk Review
Legrain rejects the anti-globalisation argument that governments are losing control to multinational companies, and that branding is taking over our lives, offering a powerful critique of the recent TRIPS agreement. He is also good on the extent to which "many of the worries about globalisation echo age-old fears about decline". In arguing for a much more interventionist model for the future of globalisation, Legrain follows the work of Anthony Giddens and Will Hutton, but he lacks scope and authority of their economic and political analysis to really add anything new to their radical democratic positions. His cultural analysis is so weak that he repeatedly idealises the new possibilities that globalisation provides; the claim that "we increasingly define ourselves rather than let others define us" is true for a privileged, but impossible to sustain for millions of people in the developing world. Open World still has one eye closed to the downside of globalisation. --Jerry Brotton --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Beijing, 12 July 2001. Fireworks light up the skies. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Whilst he raises interesting issues (e.g. the real extent of US cultural impact globally), on a macro level, the book contains none of the thoughtfulness or insightfulness of analyses by commentators such as Hutton, Chomsky or Friedman and reads rather like a university thesis, rooted in traditional theories of economics rather than realpolitik. Surprisingly, for example, in this sort of book, there is no real discussion of US economic and political hegemony which is pretty remiss to say the least.
On a micro level, there is a plethora of texts on each each of subjects he raises ranging from the popular (Eric Schlosser, Fran Abrams) to the academic (e.g. on global standards for human rights) which provide much more thorough, detailed and on-the-ground analysis and which often contradict Legrain's theories. There are many, many examples of this through the book, but to pick one at random, in his review of whether major corporations are in a position to take unfair advantage of their size (whether financial, environmentally or vis-a-vis consumers and employees) one of his four mitigating items is that these companies have to comply with many government regulations and therefore are prevented from doing so. To support this, he notes that "the Federal Register, which lists US government regulations is 70,000 pages long"... and that's it for your analysis. No consideration as to the extent of compliance, what constitutes compliance, whether companies can successfully breach regulations etc. This is a crucial failing of book given that if the majority of theories and principles are not necessarily applied or adhered to properly in practice, then his analysis of the actual impact of globalisation is seriously flawed.
In short, buy this book if you want a quick snapshot of alternative thinking to traditional globalisation but do not buy it for any thoughtful analysis of the subject.
minefield that is globalisation, this is the book for you. Read more
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