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Foreword by Marcus Raskin
Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: Routledge (June 2004)
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The Business of America:
How Consumers Have Replaced Citizens & How We Can Reverse the
Trend
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.
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Praise for The Business of America:
Norman Soloman, syndicated columnist & author, The
Habits of Highly Deceptive Media
"The credit card has gradually replaced the voter registration
card as a key symbol of civic involvement. Saul Landau takes a fresh
and valuable look at how and why--and what we can do about it. Against
the mass-media grain, this book refutes the inevitability of corporate
consciousness. Readers will find in Landau's writing an incisive
analytical approach combined with an uplifting spirit."
About Saul Landau
Saul Landau is an internationally known scholar, author, journalist,
poet and activist. An Emmy-award-winning film maker, he does frequent
radio and TV shows, and his work on human rights and Latin America
have won him worldwide acclaim.
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