Between Jihad and McWorld: Voices of Social Justice, Papers presented at a Conference with Benjamin Barber

David Perusek

Feb 2010 · Cambridge Scholars Publishing

About this ebook

This volume is the outgrowth of a conference aimed at situating questions of social justice within the broad social-historical context of our times as outlined by Benjamin Barber in the international bestseller Jihad vs. McWorld. In it, 15 contributors from across the academic spectrum grapple with questions of inequality, culture, communication, education, language, representation, democracy, poverty and power in a variety of local, global, and cross-cultural contexts that extend from North America to Japan, the Middle Ages to Post-Modernity. They are joined by Benjamin Barber whose wide-ranging and insightful contribution focuses on democracy and terrorism, celebrates civil society and includes what he enumerates as “6 rules for democracy.”

Written at a time, 5 years out from 9/11, when the Patriot Act and color-coded terror alerts loomed large across the American Landscape; when “water boarding,” “rendering,” “Blackwater,” and “Gitmo” had become household words in much of the world; when globalization and de-industrialization were penetrating and re-shaping societies and lives North and South as the world’s rich grew richer and its poor poorer and wars without end in sight continued in the Middle East and elsewhere, these essays are artifacts of those times—our times. This book should be of interest to many.

About the author

David Perusek is Assistant Professor of Anthroplogy at Kent State University at Ashtabula. His research interests focus on anthropological theory, critical anthropology, language and culture, “race” and ethnic relations, globalization, inequalities, medical anthropology, the US, and South Asia. His most recent work focuses on the culture concept and cultural relativism and on cultural constructions of cancer in the US. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from Michigan State University.