Consumed (edit title)

Timothy Gray approved Timothy Gray’s request to change the title of Consumed Saturday, October 31 2009.

Timothy Gray approved Ousia’s request to change the contributors of Consumed Thursday, August 13 2009.

• Added a contributor: Benjamin R. Barber: (Primary Author)

Timothy Gray changed the title of Consumed Thursday, August 13 2009.

Ousia edited the first sentence of Consumed Tuesday, August 11 2009.

• In these paltry times of capitalism's triumph, as we slide into consumer narcissism, Shakespeare's seven ages of man are in danger of being washed away by lifelong puerility.

Ousia edited the contributors of Consumed Tuesday, August 11 2009.

• Added a contributor: Benjamin R. Barber: (Primary Author)

Shelfari edited the description of Consumed Sunday, August 2 2009.

• A piercing and vital look at how capitalism is consuming U.S. society. An apt sequel to Benjamin R. Barber's best-selling Jihad vs. McWorld, Consumed offers a wrenching portrait of how adult consumers are infantilized in a global economy that overproduces goods and targets children as consumers in a market where there are never enough shoppers. Driven by a frantic imperative to sell, consumer capitalism specializes today in the manufacture not of goods but of needs. This provocative culmination of Barber's lifelong study of democracy and capitalism shows how the infantilist ethos deprives society of responsible citizens and displaces public goods with private commodities. Traditional liberal democratic society is colonized by an all-pervasive market imperative. Public space is privatized. Identity is branded. Our world, homogenized. With brilliance and depth, Barber confronts the likely consequences for our children, our liberty, and our citizenship, and shows finally how citizens can resist and transcend the civic schizophrenia with which consumerism has infected them.