Barber: Jihad v McWorld

Barber, B., Jihad v McWorld. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199203/barber?ca=9B5pyrSUsZedqmnhhRKhf/BSnLWQXUfactosEkJZ21E%3D.

*Note: pagination from a word document

“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” (1).

McWorld contains four imperatives: the market imperative, the resource imperative, the information-technology imperative and the ecological imperative. Each has a bearing on the changing nature of globalization.

Jihad is the other global power at work, and it represents a return to identity politics as can be seen in the myriad splinter-groups and break-away regions seeking independence.

Neither of these forces provides much room for democracy, as one is a totalizing and homogenizing power sweeping the world and the other is an authoritative, exclusive power rooted in identity politics.