SOURCE: A review of Jihad vs. McWorld, in Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 25, No. 5, September, 1996, pp. 588–89.

In the following review, Juergensmeyer contests the adequacy of both Jihad and McWorld as “comparative categories,” questioning whether McWorld can really be called a “global culture” and whether nationalism requires a lack of democracy or of democratic principles and procedures.

So demonstrable and straightforward was Benjamin Barber's observation about global society that many of us experienced an “aha” reaction simply on reading the title of his provocative article “Jihad vs. McWorld” when it first appeared in The Atlantic several years ago. The thesis of the article—and now the book [Jihad vs. McWorld]—is that two of the most important trends in the world today are antithetical. On the one hand is Jihad, the parochial ethnic, racial, and religious allegiances that tend to balkanize and separate regions of the world. On the other is...