The Business of America

1. Auflage 2004
ISBN: 978-0-415-94468-7
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 216 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 398 g

Reihe: Pathways Through the Twenty-First Century

When President Bush promoted shopping as a patriotic duty, the American culture of consumption hit a new low. But a quiet revolution is growing in the developing world and in a new generation of Americans, fighting the advance of the shopping malls and the desolation they leave behind. Written by one of the most insightful critics of American commercialism, The Business of America probes the forces that have transformed citizens into consumers eager to take as much as they can from the planet. From on-line shopping to spectator sports to the cash-and-carry ethos of political campaigns, Saul Landau decodes the subtle ways in which advertising images tell us to correct our inadequacies with more things: SUVs, credit cards, air conditioning, video games. The winds of change are blowing, Landau shows, from resurgent student protests for underpaid janitors to the Group of 21, the developing countries that stopped the World Trade Organization dead in its tracks in 2003. Eschewing nostalgia for a simpler time--a less-interconnected world that can never return-The Business of America shows how we as citizens can regain our identities, stripping away the plastic overlay of consumerism.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Landau, Saul

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophische Anthropologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS PREFACE FOREWORD: By Marcus Raskin INTRODUCTION I. THE BUSH VISION: A BIPOLAR POLITICAL DISORDER -The Culture of Naked Power -Politics and the Enron Scandal, Part I: The Enron System Works -Well, For Some People! -Enron Part II: Sex and the Enron Scam -A Dialogue About Sex, Violence and the Budget -It's the Budget Stupid! II. CLASSIFY THIS! NATIONAL SECURITY CULTURE SETS THE NORM -The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age -Our Aging Faust -A Panglossian Conversation -History? What's That? III. SHEEP DON'T NEED WHIPPING: MEDIA IN THE 21ST CENTURY -World News in Shotgun Pellets of Anxiety -Religious Diversion From The Issues In The Age Of Reason And Hi Tech -Review of Pollack -Advertising Can Make You Personally and Politically Crazy -Commercial Messages Produce Advance Scatteration -Television: Democracy at its Ugliest -Clear Channel Fogs the Airwaves -The Film Industry: Business and Technology IV. AHAB CAN BEAT THE WHALE -At Two with Nature -Commuting in Los Angeles -Privatize- the Key to Public Culture -Will the Next War be Against Smog? -A Global Warming Sermon in Dialogue -An Anza Borrego Odyssey -Mount Whitney Towers Over Death Valley, but Death Valley Doesn't Look Up to Whitney -Diseased Meat? - Could be Wurst! -Exporting the Best Chemicals Money Can Absorb -Las Vegas: Bush's America -Cuba is Not Las Vegas: Scenes from a Late Summer Havana Wedding V. THE IRAQ CONNUNDRUM -Bush and King Henry-Similar Birds of Different Feathers -Don't Get Distracted by Cameron Diaz's Acne or Talk of War -How 9/11 Events Helped Democracy to Evolve toward Perfection -Different Worlds -Shiite Happens -The Quiet American Returns on Film -Shopping, the End of the World and G.W. Bush: Part I and II VI. CLOSING REMARKS -There is Life After Shopping-And It Feels Good VII. ENDNOTES VIII. BIBLIOGRAPHY IX. INDEX

Leseproben

By Marcus Raskin
INTRODUCTION
I. THE BUSH VISION: A BIPOLAR POLITICAL DISORDER
-The Culture of Naked Power
-Politics and the Enron Scandal, Part I: The Enron System Works -Well, For Some People!
-Enron Part II: Sex and the Enron Scam
-A Dialogue About Sex, Violence and the Budget
-It's the Budget Stupid!
II. CLASSIFY THIS! NATIONAL SECURITY CULTURE SETS THE NORM
-The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age
-Our Aging Faust
-A Panglossian Conversation
-History? What's That?
III. SHEEP DON'T NEED WHIPPING: MEDIA IN THE 21ST CENTURY
-World News in Shotgun Pellets of Anxiety
-Religious Diversion From The Issues In The AgeofReason And Hi Tech
-Review of Pollack
-Advertising Can Make You Personally and Politically Crazy
-Commercial Messages Produce Advance Scatteration
-Television: Democracy at its Ugliest
-Clear Channel Fogs the Airwaves
-The Film Industry: Business and Technology
IV. AHAB CAN BEAT THE WHALE
-At Two with Nature
-Commuting in Los Angeles
-Privatize- the Key to Public Culture
-Will the Next War be Against Smog?
-A Global Warming Sermon in Dialogue
-An Anza Borrego Odyssey
-Mount Whitney Towers Over Death Valley, but Death Valley Doesn't Look Up to Whitney
-Diseased Meat? - Could be Wurst!
-Exporting the Best Chemicals Money Can Absorb
-Las Vegas: Bush's America
-Cuba is Not Las Vegas: Scenes from a Late Summer Havana Wedding
V. THE IRAQ CONNUNDRUM
-Bush and King Henry-Similar Birds of Different Feathers
-Don't Get Distracted by Cameron Diaz's Acne or Talk of War
-How 9/11 Events Helped Democracy to Evolve toward Perfection
-Different Worlds
-Shiite Happens
-The Quiet American Returns on Film
-Shopping, the End of the World and G.W. Bush: Part I and II
VI. CLOSING REMARKS
-There is Life After Shopping-And It Feels Good
VII. ENDNOTES
VIII. BIBLIOGRAPHY
IX. INDEX

Über Autor(innen)

Saul Landau, an internationally-known scholar, author, commentator, and filmmaker, is the Director of Digital Media Programs and International Outreach at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He has made 40 films, including the recent Syria: Between Iraq and a Hard Place. He received the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, the George Polk Award for Investigative Reporting, and the First Amendment Award, as well as an Emmy for Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang. He has written fourteen books including his most recent, The Pre-emptive Empire: A Guide to Bush's Kingdom, and received an Edgar Allen Poe Award for Assassination on Embassy Row, a report on the murder of Orlando Letelier. He is currently working on a detective novel.