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Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole. By Benjamin R. Barber. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2007; pp 416. $16.95 paper.
Since Francis Fukuyama touted the "end of history" in 1989, scholars have debated the durability and isomorphous nature of democratic governments, their citizenry, and their culture. Western neoliberal democracies and the capitalistic economies that they share have come under attack for their failure to remain politically active domestically and culturally distinct internationally. The United States of America, in particular, often stands as the shallow, materialistic, politically ignorant poster child for the horrors of capitalism and Western Democracy. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in Democracy in America, its democratic citizenry is prone to self-indulgence and alienated from their communities, families, and political systems. U.S. citizens exist as individuals with civil rights and freedoms, but no social or cultural obligations to tie them to others. A plethora of literature has erupted critiquing the dangers that laissez-faire liberalism and invasive marketing have on both democracies and their citizens.
Benjamin Barber joins this array of literature with his recent book Consumed. Barber asserts that consumer culture has weakened the American citizenry; he contends that the market's constant creation of supposed "needs" for consumers to demand has created an "infantilist ethos" that corrupts people's ability to be good citizens. When we identify ourselves as a consumer or individual instead of as members of a political public, we forget to think...