You are here:Jihad vs. McWorldJihad vs. McWorldThe following article from The Atlantic Online, has been reposted here. It looks at the issue of democracy and how neither terrorism nor corporate globalization necessarily support democracy. While written back in 1992, it seems quite relevant today. This article can be found at its original location, .Jihad Vs. McWorldBy Benjamin R. BarberThe Atlantic M March 1992; Volume 269, No. 3; pages 53-65.The two axial principles of our age -- tribalism and globalism -- clash at every point except one: they may both be threatening to democracy by Just beyond the horizon of current events lie two possible political futures -- both bleak, neither democratic. The first is a retribalization of large swaths of humankind by war and bloodshed: a threatened Lebanonization of national states in which culture is pitted against culture, people against people, tribe against tribe -- a Jihad in the name of a hundred narrowly conceived faiths against every kind of interdependence, every kind of artificial social cooperation and civic mutuality. The second is being borne in on us by the onrush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers, and fast food -- with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald’s, pressing nations into one commercially homogenous global network: one McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications, and commerce. The planet is falling precipitantly apart AND coming reluctantly together at the very same moment.These two tendencies are sometimes visible in the same countries at the same instant: thus Yugoslavia, clamoring just recently to join the New Europe, is expl India is trying to live up to its reputation as the world’s largest integral democracy while powerful new fundamentalist parties like the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, along with nationalist assassins, are imperiling its hard-won unity. States are breaking up or joining up: the Soviet Union has disappeared almost overnight, its parts forming new unions with one another or with like-minded nationalities in neighboring states. The old interwar national state based on territory and political sovereignty looks to be a mere transitional development.The tendencies of what I am here calling the forces of Jihad and the forces of McWorld operate with equal strength in opposite directions, the one driven by parochial hatreds, the other by universalizing markets, the one re-creating ancient subnational and ethnic borders from within, the other making national borders porous from without. They have one thing in common: neither offers much hope to citizens looking for practical ways to govern themselves democratically. If the global future is to pit Jihad’s centrifugal whirlwind against McWorld’s centripetal black hole, the outcome is unlikely to be democratic -- or so I will argue.Update: November, 2009Please visit
to read the rest of the article.Update: July 16, 2005.The remainder of the article has the following sub-headings:McWorld, or the Globalization of Politics
The Market ImperativeThe Resource ImperativeThe Information-Technology ImperativeThe Ecological ImperativeJihad, or the Lebanonization of the WorldThe Darkening Future of DemocracyThe Confederal OptionAtlantic Monthly recently made their articles available on a paid subscription-only basis. As a result, this article is no longer freely available on the web at all, and they have asked me to accordingly remove the full article, and just leave the introduction section. Please visit the above link if you wish to see the original article (or to suggest to them to make at least this one article available on line for free!). is Whitman Professor of Political Science and director of the Whitman Center at Rutgers University and the author of many books including Strong Democracy (1984), An Aristocracy of Everyone (1992), and Jihad Versus McWorld (Times Books, 1995)(C), 1992, Benjamin R. Barber.
All rights reserved.General Fair Use NoticeThis reposted page may contain copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Globalissues.org is making this article available in efforts to advance the understanding of the workings, impact and direction of various global issues. I believe that this constitutes a “fair use” of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond “fair use,” you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.Where next?This article is part of the following collection:Jihad vs. McWorldShare this page with:Bookmark or share this with others using some popular social bookmarking web sites:Find this page/site useful?Other optionsUrban Dictionary: McWorld
Top Definition
Symbolizes global markets rooted in consumption and profit, leaving to an untrustworthy, if not altogether fictitious, invisible hand issues of public interest and common good that once might have been nurtured by democratic citizenries and their watchful governments.
There is simply no efficient way to do justice to the multiple Jihads that have sprung up within but against McWorld from a
region that is within McWorld's borders without being of McWorld.
April 29, 2007
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what will happen if individual cultures disappear, replaced entirely by American culture.
A McWorld will never take place because American companies (such as McDonald's) and products will never displace local cultures but instead be integrated into them, while themselves integrating local culture and tradition.
Used in August 1999 National Geographic Magazine.
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