{"title":"Books by Benjamin R. Barber","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780300209327","title":"If Mayors Ruled The World – Dysfunctional Nations,  Rising Cities","description":"Can cities solve the biggest problems of the twenty-first century better than nations? Is the city democracy’s best hope? In the face of the most perilous challenges of our time—climate change, terrorism, poverty, and trafficking of drugs, guns, and people—the nations of the world seem paralyzed. The problems are too big, too interdependent, too divisive for the nation-state. Is the nation-state, once democracy's best hope, today democratically dysfunctional? Obsolete? The answer, says Benjamin Barber in this highly provocative and original book, is yes. Cities and the mayors who run them can do and are doing a better job. Barber cites the unique qualities cities worldwide share: pragmatism, civic trust, participation, indifference to borders and sovereignty, and a democratic penchant for networking, creativity, innovation, and cooperation. He demonstrates how city mayors, singly and jointly, are responding to transnational problems more effectively than nation-states mired in ideological infighting and sovereign rivalries. Featuring profiles of a dozen mayors around the world—courageous, eccentric, or both at once—If Mayors Ruled the World presents a compelling new vision of governance for the coming century. Barber makes a persuasive case that the city is democracy’s best hope in a globalizing world, and great mayors are already proving that this is so.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56232144830837,"sku":"9780300209327","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780300209327_c7460147-8870-4c79-807b-1a9ecd16bf93.jpg?v=1786012780"},{"product_id":"9780393330892","title":"Consumed – How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole","description":"A powerful sequel to Benjamin R. Barber's best-selling Jihad vs. McWorld, Consumed offers a vivid portrait of a global economy that overproduces goods and targets children as consumers in a market where there are never enough shoppers—and where the primary goal is no longer to manufacture goods but needs. Disturbing, provocative, and compelling, this book examines phenomena as seemingly disparate as adolescent fashion trends for adults, megachurches, declining voter participation, the privatization of the public sphere, branding, and the rise of online shopping to show how the freedoms of the free market have undermined the freedoms of the deliberative adult citizen. Barber brings together extensive empirical research with an original theoretical framework for understanding our contemporary predicament.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311743414645,"sku":"9780393330892","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780393330892_4dcf5323-856c-4883-a527-2ef72b18ca7e.jpg?v=1786014211"},{"product_id":"jihad-vs-mcworld","title":"Jihad Vs McWorld","description":"JIHAD VS. MCWORLD is an essential text for anyone who wants to understand the challenges facing us after the tragic events of September 11, 2001 and in light of the current conflict in the Middle East. In a groundbreaking work, political scientist Benjamin R. Barber offers a penetrating analysis of the central conflict of our times: consumerist capitalism versus religious and tribal fundamentalism. These diametrically opposed but intertwined forces are tearing apart - and bringing together - the world as we know it, undermining democracy and the nation-state on which it depends. On the one hand, capitalism on the global level is rapidly dissolving the social and economic barriers between nations, transforming the world's diverse populations into a blandly uniform market. On the other hand, ethnic, religious, and racial hatreds are fragmenting the political landscape into smaller and smaller tribal units. JIHAD VS. MCWORLD is the term that Barber has coined to describe the powerful and paradoxical interdependence of these forces. In this important book, now more timely than ever before, he explores the alarming repercussions of this potent dialectic and in his new introduction sketches a democratic response to terrorism.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57481549873525,"sku":"9780552163842","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780552163842.jpg?v=1786089820"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-benjamin-r-barber.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}