The Rise of the Anti-corporate Movement

The Rise of the Anti-corporate Movement PDF

Author: Evan Osborne

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13:

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An economist traces the evolution of anti-corporate sentiment and shows why much of the criticism of corporations and business people has been misguided.

The Rise of the Anti-Corporate Movement

The Rise of the Anti-Corporate Movement PDF

Author: Evan Osborne

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2007-09-30

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 0275997871

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Against the backdrop of Enron and the other high-profile cases of corporate malfeasance, it is easy to paint today's executives as villains and blame big business, and corporations generally, for a wide array of social ills. Is the criticism warranted? Not quite, says Evan Osborne, as he traces the history of anti-corporate sentiment and assesses the fever-pitch hatred, by some, of all things corporate. While not perfect angels, Osborne argues, corporations confer many more benefits to society than ills. Moreover, they are an essential engine of human progress, and longstanding legal principles are more than adequate to address their flaws. And that makes the rising tide of anti-corporate sentiment dangerous. Why? Look at the facts: Large corporations inspire both awe and fear. On the one hand, they create jobs, introduce scientific and technological breakthroughs, open up borders through trade, and provide indispensable products and services that make life easier. On the other hand, many think they undermine the will of the people, encourage bribery and corruption, finance oppressive regimes, ruin values and culture, befoul the environment, and encourage economic inequality. It was no accident that the terrorists of September 11 targeted the World Trade Center, an iconic symbol of American financial power. In this provocative book, Evan Osborne pulls back the curtain to illuminate how corporations have evolved as an essential element of society, and how opposition to them has developed out of proportion—a fire fanned by anti-business activists, the media, and other groups. He sets the record straight, explaining how corporations work, how they have evolved in the context of other institutions, the net benefits they provide—and how to deal with their undeniable imperfections. At the same time, he shows how anti-business claims have become more strident and where these arguments fail to stand up to scrutiny.

Naming the Enemy

Naming the Enemy PDF

Author: Amory Starr

Publisher: Zed Books

Published: 2000-10

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13:

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The events around the 1999 World Trade Organization conference in Seattle drew attention to the rise of social movements opposing globalization and the power of corporations. This book provides an analysis of these movements, presenting the critiques they make of growth, consumption and dependence.

Naming the Enemy

Naming the Enemy PDF

Author: Amory Starr

Publisher: Zed Books

Published: 2000-10-27

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9781856497640

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A new movement of 'anti-globalists', in Time Magazine's words (24 April 2000), now 'oppose corporate dominion over the planet's poor and disfranchised'. Naming the Enemy is the first systematic documentation of this international resistance to transnational corporations and globalization which has so recently burst into the public gaze with the street protests in Seattle, Washington, London and Prague. A wide and heterogeneous range of social movements now oppose the very fundamentals of market capitalism. Their challenge is beginning, Amory Starr shows, to amount to a sweeping critique of its purposes and practice. She explains how these movements understand their enemies and what sort of future they envision. There are, she suggests, three basic types: Movements trying to constrain corporate power through democratic institutions and direct action; Movements attempting a completely different kind of 'globalization from below' in which corporations will be reshaped in the service of new international democratic structures that will be populist, participatory and just; Movements seeking to delink their localities and communities from the global economy and rebuild instead small-scale socieites in which large corporations have no role at all. This new phenomenon has received scant media or scholarly attention. But it is likely to become much more important politically as the globalized economy dominated by giant corporations and institutions like the World Bank and IMF fails to deliver on jobs, social justice, Third World development and the environment. The course of this new kind of political struggle will have huge implications for human welfare and civil liberties. This unique and important book is relevant to activists as well as students and scholars of globalization, new social movements and political economy.

We Are Everywhere

We Are Everywhere PDF

Author: Notes From Nowhere

Publisher: Verso

Published: 2003-10-17

Total Pages: 530

ISBN-13: 9781859844472

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We Are Everywhere is a whirlwind collection of writings, images and ideas for direct action by people on the frontlines of the global anticapitalist movement. This is a movement of untold stories, because those from below are not those who get to write history, even though we are the ones making it. We Are Everywhere wrenches our history from the grasp of the powerful and returns it to the streets, fields and neighbourhoods where it was made.

Insurrection

Insurrection PDF

Author: Kevin Danaher

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2003-09-25

Total Pages: 612

ISBN-13: 1135939551

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From uncovering major retailers' links to sweatshop abuses and revealing the deception of American tobacco companies, to questioning corporations' ties to repressive dictators, shaming food processors into selling dolphin-safe tuna and demanding that businesses stop destroying old growth forests, citizens have become far more aggressive in directly

Anti-System Politics

Anti-System Politics PDF

Author: Jonathan Hopkin

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0190699760

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Recent elections in the advanced western democracies have undermined the basic foundations of political systems that had previously beaten back all challenges -- from both the left and the right. The election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, only months after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, signaled a dramatic shift in the politics of the rich democracies. In Anti-System Politics, Jonathan Hopkin traces the evolution of this shift and argues that it is a long-term result of abandoning the post-war model of egalitarian capitalism in the 1970s. That shift entailed weakening the democratic process in favor of an opaque, technocratic form of governance that allows voters little opportunity to influence policy. With the financial crisis of the late 2000s these arrangements became unsustainable, as incumbent politicians were unable to provide solutions to economic hardship. Electorates demanded change, and it had to come from outside the system. Using a comparative approach, Hopkin explains why different kinds of anti-system politics emerge in different countries and how political and economic factors impact the degree of electoral instability that emerges. Finally, he discusses the implications of these changes, arguing that the only way for mainstream political forces to survive is for them to embrace a more activist role for government in protecting societies from economic turbulence. A historically-grounded analysis of arguably the most important global political phenomenon at present, Anti-System Politics illuminates how and why the world seems upside down.

Big Hunger

Big Hunger PDF

Author: Andrew Fisher

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2018-04-13

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0262535165

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How to focus anti-hunger efforts not on charity but on the root causes of food insecurity, improving public health, and reducing income inequality. Food banks and food pantries have proliferated in response to an economic emergency. The loss of manufacturing jobs combined with the recession of the early 1980s and Reagan administration cutbacks in federal programs led to an explosion in the growth of food charity. This was meant to be a stopgap measure, but the jobs never came back, and the “emergency food system” became an industry. In Big Hunger, Andrew Fisher takes a critical look at the business of hunger and offers a new vision for the anti-hunger movement. From one perspective, anti-hunger leaders have been extraordinarily effective. Food charity is embedded in American civil society, and federal food programs have remained intact while other anti-poverty programs have been eliminated or slashed. But anti-hunger advocates are missing an essential element of the problem: economic inequality driven by low wages. Reliant on corporate donations of food and money, anti-hunger organizations have failed to hold business accountable for offshoring jobs, cutting benefits, exploiting workers and rural communities, and resisting wage increases. They have become part of a “hunger industrial complex” that seems as self-perpetuating as the more famous military-industrial complex. Fisher lays out a vision that encompasses a broader definition of hunger characterized by a focus on public health, economic justice, and economic democracy. He points to the work of numerous grassroots organizations that are leading the way in these fields as models for the rest of the anti-hunger sector. It is only through approaches like these that we can hope to end hunger, not just manage it.

Networking Futures

Networking Futures PDF

Author: Jeffrey S. Juris

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2008-07-09

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780822342694

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This is an ethnographic account of how the anti-corporate globalization movement uses new technologies to organise itself, written by a participant im many of the biggest demonstrations of recent years. In addition to this, Juris provides a history of the movement and traces its roots.