SOURCE: A review of Jihad vs. McWorld, in Tikkun, Vol. 11, No. 1, January-February, 1996, pp. 87–8.

In the following review, Karabell contends that the civil society Barber advocates never existed and cannot be reproduced, and suggests that the real solution is to use Barber's concept of “McWorld” to change the present political and social climate.

Several years ago, Benjamin Barber, a professor at Rutgers University, wrote a stimulating essay in The Atlantic in which he posited two alternative metaphors for the future: Jihad and McWorld. He suggested there was a dialectical process at work, in which these apparently opposed forces actually stimulate each other, the anarchic pulls of McWorld modernity sparking a violently dogmatic form of identity politics.

Barber has now turned that essay into a book of the same title [Jihad vs. McWorld], and, fortunately, it maintains the same provocative quality. Yet, in extending and fleshing out the model, Barber...