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Index of Book Reviews

What I'm reading now ...

Benjamin J. Cohen, The Future of Money. Princeton University Press, 2004.

With the advent of the euro, most people probably think that the future of money in international finance is what Jerry Cohen calls the Contraction Contention -- the number of different currencies will diminish, gradually or suddenly, and we will be left with the dollar, the euro, the yen, and not much else. Cohen disagrees, he believes that we are entering a period when the number of currencies will in fact increase, not diminish. The contraction contention is based on the demand side of currencies -- international finance is easier for tourists, traders, investors, and so forth, if we have fewer currencies to deal with.
  Cohen argues that the supply side must also be considered. There are many parts of the world economy that might benefit from the creation of new payment media that would provide substitutes for and competition with the traditional state-based currencies. The suppliers of currencies are states, the traditional issuers, and also private firms. He is especially interested in the potential for the private sector to create local monies (to serve as exchange media for transactions limited by geography or some other factor) and electronic monies. Is PayPal, the trascactions system used on e-Bay and elsewhere, private money? I've never thought of it that way, but perhaps it is.

The world of monopoly money is being replaced with a regime of oligopolistic competition, Cohen says. Much of the book is an examination of strategic options for states in this competitive environment, which takes us some ways beyond the familiar trade-offs of the Mundell monetary trilemma.

Cohen seems to believe that currency competition is a good thing, overall, but how can it be governed? "The future of money will be perilous, but it need not be chaotic," he says. I certainly agree with Jerry about the governance issues and I am not willing to accept the convergence contention as a fait accompli. There are too many forces pushing the other way. As to the potential for competition by private sector monies, well I just don't know. I'm not persuaded by the current speculative argument and evidence, but I won't dismiss the whole thing, either. Cohen's earlier book, The Geography of Money (Cornell, 1998), convinced me, based upon historical examples, that territorial money is a relatively recent and surpassingly limited phenomenon. It will be interesting to see what the future of money turns out to be.

Jagdish Bhagwati, In Defense of Globalization. Oxford University Press, 2004.

There are two kinds of serious students of globalization. One kind believes that the current globalization is the best that the world can achieve. These are the pessimists. Optimists know that the current system, while perhaps better other options, is badly flawed. The optimists think it can be improved. Bhagwati is an optimist, as I define the term. This book, while a defense of globalization against its many critics, is also a defense of the optimist view that serious reforms need to be enacted.

I was hoping that this book would be a reply to Joseph Stiglitz's volume on Globalization and Its Discontents (W.W. Norton, 2002), but it really isn't. Stiglitz's book is not about globalization so much as about the governance of the world economic system. It is especially a critique of IMF governance of the international monetary regime. Bhagwati is less concerned with governance of finance and more concerned with the effects of global trade and migration. So the expected shoot-out at the OK corral doesn't happen -- the two gunfighters are walking down different avenues.

Stiglitz is an optimist, I think, because he believes that globalization can be improved with the right governance and policies. Bhagwati feels the same way, although he points to a different set of issues. Some of the most interesting parts of In Defense of Globalization are the sections where Bhagwati, after defending globalization in general, points out specific problems that need to be addressed and recommends appropriate policies. I think it would be a useful exercise to go through the two books just to compile a list of problems and possible solutions. You might be surprised at the degree of consensus that exists at this level!

The other thing that Stiglitz and Bhagwati share is a certain attitude -- both are a bit too quick to condemn or make fun of people who disagree with them. This is particularly true about Stiglitz, who engaged far too many personal attacks, but Bhagwati also includes a number of unnecessary asides that do nothing to advance his real agenda and will offend some of the people he is trying to convert. Frankly, these sound like "sound bites" from speeches -- the sort of throw away lines that get big laughs on the lecture circuit but that should never be put in print.

Bhagwati doesn't say very much about global economic governance, his focus here is on globalization itself and especially international trade, not finance. This is appropriate because the benefits of international trade are clear (if not uniformly distributed) and deserve a spirited defense. The global financial regime, on the other hand, is unequal, unstable, and generally very hard to defend. Many topics are covered in the book, but two that are especially noteworthy are these. First, Bhagwati looks to his roots in this discussion, drawing upon many cases from India and some work of India-based scholars that you might otherwise overlook. This gives the book a "third world" perspective that is not obvious just looking at the cover.

The other interesting feature is Bhagwati's discussion of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Although he saves some of his harshest words for a few anti-globalization NGOs, he makes a point to distinguish these from the "civil society" groups that he sees as having a positive role to play. In fact, Bhagwati argues that NGOs can play a very important role in global economic governance, filling some gaps left by the expansion of market forces and the relative decline of the states. I feel like Bhagwati is still working out his ideas here; I don't think he's reached a firm conclusion. He knows the NGOs are here to stay and he appreciates the fact that at least some of them have valid concerns and thoughtful (as opposed to dogmatic) leadership. I think he's sure that they belong at the table, but he's still not sure exactly where they should sit.

Bhagwati has a reputation (with me at least) for identifying critical issues and questions before others realize their importance. This being the case, I think we need to take seriously his concern with the third world, on the dangers of letting the status quo persist, and his focus on the role of NGOs in global governance.

Jagdish Bhagwai, Free Trade Today. Princeton University Press, 2002.

Jagdish Bhagwati is a distinguished Princeton professor of international economics (often mentioned as a future Nobel laureate). He is famous enough (at least within the international trade community at least) that the only image on the cover of this book is his face! This brief book collects three lectures he gave at the Stockholm School of Economics in the late 1990s and it represents a concise survey of how economists think about free trade.

The first lecture considers the "conventional threats" to free trade. Bhagwati asks why economic arguments for free trade fail to persuade policy makers and the public. He focuses on the need to confront "market failures" more directly and the benefits of free trade in overcoming problems of "directly unproductive profit-seeking activities," such as corruption.

The second lecture examines the idea of linking social issues to free trade through mandated labor and environmental standards, for example. Bhagwati is Indian by birth and he makes a point to interpret the debate from the perspective of people in less developed countries. I like his "principle" of two birds and two stones -- that it is a mistake to try to solve two different (if related) problems with a single policy. The final lecture outlines Bhagwati's argument that the movement toward regional trade agreements is inconsistent with progress towards multilateral free trade, a position that I share.

Overall, I find this a good, brief survey of important issues. The best thing about this book, and Bhagwati's writing in general, is that he eschews stereo-typed doctrinaire views about free trade. He looks carefully at arguments and is willing to acknowledge valid criticisms. He uses economic theory as a guide both to evaluate the arguments pro and con about free trade and also to suggest solutions. This firm grounding in theory and a critical appreciation of evidence is a surprisingly scarce resource in the free trade debate today.

 

Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes 1883-1946: Economist Philosopher, Statesman. Macmillan, 2003.

It has been said that Robert Skidelsky's three volume life of John Maynard Keynes was the greatest work of biography of the twentieth century. A big claim, indeed, but it might be true. Skidelsky certainly had good material to work with. From Bloomsbury to Bretton Woods, Keynes was a bigger than life figure who activities and influence span the defining events of the first half of the century. I have snapped up each of the volumes as they have appeared and devoured them hungrily.
  The volume under consideration here is a one-volume version of Skidelsky's biography, condensed and updated to reflect new scholarship. I was interested to see what Skidelsky would leave in and what he would leave out. What he has left in are all the people. I think he must have tried to track down the details of every personal and relationship that Keynes had from about age 15 onward. This is good in that it connects Keynes to his time and place (especially to Cambridge and Bloomsbury) very solidly. That said, I don't really need to know about every single romance and sexual misalliance. It's not that I am a prude, it's just that it gets tedious after a while! (Hmmm. Maybe I am a prude.)

Skidelsky also chooses to preserve Keynes the man of action and I approve of this choice. Keynes is an important figure because he was both a thinker and a doer. In economics, policy, and the arts, he was willing to take large risks to bend the world to suit his image of it. I admire Skidelsky's work here especially.

Although many readers will pick up this volume because they want to know more about Keynes's connections with the Bloomsbury group (and this interesting), I feel that Skidelsky really hits his stride when he talks about Keynes in the Great Depression. In this part especially I think the detailed accounts of personalities, ideas, policies and theories all come together splendidly. I particularly call your attention to the portrait Skidelsky creates on pages 455-499. If you only read one thing about Keynes, read this. It captures Keynes the way that Keynes's own "Essays in Biography" captured Marshall, Malthus, and Newton.

I also recommend the final chapter on Keynes's legacy. I remember being disappointed in this chapter when the last of the three volumes came out. I thought Skidelsky was too harsh, assigning Keynes to a particular time and place and denying his long-lasting influence. I don't feel this way about what Skidelsky has written here in the one-volume work. His assessment seems about right to me. I wonder if Skidelsky's text has changed or if I've just changed my mind? Or maybe the times have changed, moving from Clinton to Bush?
 
 

Alexander Wolff, Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure. Warner Books, 2002.
This is a very interesting book on globalization and basketball. Alexander Wolff is an editor for Sports Illustrated who is interested in the big world of basketball in part perhaps because of his personal experience. A so-so player by American big-college standards, he dropped out of college for a year and played on a professional team in Switzerland.

In this book, Wolff travels around the U.S. and around the world looking at local basketball culture. He visits my adopted hometown, Bologna Italy, for example, and explains the rivalry between Virtus, the rich club of the suburbs and Fortitudo, the gritty working class club. This is global basketball (Virtus is one of the top teams in Europe), but it is also local class warfare. He goes to Lithuania, where basketball is a symbol of anti-Soviet resistance, and to Bhutan where the King is not just a fan, but a notable player.
  Wolff's itinerary includes Poland, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Ireland, Israel, China, the Philippines, France, Angola, Brazil, and Japan. He says that he is traveling to find America abroad, through its particular team sport basketball, but if he really means it, then this book is a failure. Because he doesn't find "America." Instead in each place he finds a particular local story that is attached to America through basketball, but not dependent upon it or defined by it. His stories don't support the notion that the globalization is Americanization -- and I think he is really a little bit surprised by this. Basketball is a global marketplace with global media, but in this book it is always a distinctly local culture. Not a deep book, but a very good one.
 


Robert Rubin (with Jacob Weisberg), In an Uncertain Time: Tough Choices from Wall Street to Washington. Random House, 2003.

In the future when students ask me what they can do with an economics major, I will send them to read this book. This co-authored biography explains how a smart and thoughtful person can like Robert Rubin can use the economic way of thinking to accomplish a good deal, both in private business and in public service. This is a more interesting book that I was expecting and it is interesting in unexpected ways. Since Rubin, Rubinomics, and Wall Street are much written about today (see especially the Stiglitz and Greider books below), it is worth examining Rubin's book, however briefly.
  One reason that I bought this book was to see what Rubin has to say about the economic crises of the 1990s. He was a key policy maker during the financial crises in Mexico, Asia, and Russia (if this is your interest, focus on chapters 1,8-11 and 13). Rubin's insider viewpoint is very interesting, although it doesn't tell us much that is new (my favorite insider book about financial crises remains Paul Blustein's, The Chastening: Inside the Crisis that Rocked the Global Financial System and Humbled the IMF.) Rubin's version is helpful, however, in stressing that the crises were very much political economy at all levels: international, domestic, and in the business sector, too. Again and again Rubin finds himself surprised by political reactions and, at times, forced to put these factors ahead of purely economic concerns. Interestingly, the political constraints in the 1990s, in Rubin's version of the tale, mostly involved the need for Congressional support, not concerns about Presidential election prospects, which I suspect play a big role in current U.S. economic policy.

Rubin also stresses the role of personal relations in getting policy done and he seems to go out of his way to present foreign and domestic actors in a fair light. Since Joe Stiglitz is very harsh on Rubin in his books, I was interested in how Rubin would deal with Stiglitz. The answer is that he doesn't, for the most part. Stiglitz is mainly ignored in Rubin's book, except for the discussion of the Asian Crisis, where Rubin presents a fairly evenhanded summary Stiglitz's critique of U.S. and IMF policies. Economic policy would be easy to make, I think, if we could ignore politics and personalities. But, Rubin's book tells us, we simply cannot.

One of the main points that Rubin wants to make in this book is the need to think in probabilistic terms in, as the title says, an "Uncertain World." The point is well taken, but I am not sure that he accomplishes this goal very well. Perhaps it is impossible to do this without sounding like a textbook, however. A bigger point that Rubin makes unintentionally, I think, involves a certain type of dangerous mental compartmentalization that can occur in a complex and uncertain world -- and this point relates to some of the points raised by Stiglitz, Thurow, Greider and others.

When Rubin talks about what he believes in for individuals, families and society, he tends to say smart things. For example, he talks about how important it is for an individual to invest for the long run -- buy and hold. But then when he talks about his career at Goldman Sachs, he switches compartments and falls easily into the pattern of thinking where short run profit, not stability or long term goals. And, as head of the arbitrage department, Rubin's short term was really short! Anyhow, my point is that Rubin respects the legitimacy of business and business interests, but he cannot quite seem to see that even his own business activities sometimes undermined the very long term personal and social goals that he advocates in his other mental compartment. Business isn't distinct from society, it is part of society. Although there are limits to the degree that we can expect businesses to take social concerns into account, there are also limits to the degree to which we can allow business values to undermine society.

Rubin seems to be guilty of not seeing the disjoint between his own actions and beliefs, but I don't view him as a particular social threat because his wealth and status have allowed him to accomplish a lot of good compared with whatever damage was done in the process of getting there. But I do wonder about the rest of us. It is too much to expect each of us to live our values through every action and all of the time. Too hard. You'd have to be a saint. But I think we can do much better. Time to break down mental compartments and set actions against values.

Lester C. Thurow, Fortune Favors the Bold: what we must do to build and new and lasting global prosperity. HarperCollins, 2003.

This is a book with a lot of different messages, which is both a weakness and a strength. The big message, I suppose, is that although globalization (in the form of technologically driven global capitalism) is a nearly unstoppable force the choice we have is not a simple one -- embrace globalization or not -- but a more complex one -- what kind of globalization do we want? Globalization, Thurow argues, is a fundamentally unstable (an issue I explored in Selling Globalization) and problematic in many ways. Someone has to write the rules and develop the institutions of global capitalism and there is, therefore, an opportunity to shape globalization to make it an acceptable form of social organization.
  Thurow is an optimist; like William Greider (see below) he thinks that we can build a better globalization -- and some of this book is about the reforms that he thinks are needed to make this happen. Thurow's proposed solutions more radical than Greider's incremental evolution -- but at the same time they are more conservative. Greider really seems to think that he can change the soul of capitalism through small actions. Thurow, on the other hand, seems capitalism's fundamental flaws as permanent, requiring major reforms. He presents, for example, a complicated agenda for intellectual property rights reform that he thinks would continue to encourage innovation and technological change while also making needed drugs available to the poor at an affordable price. Neither author's reform proposals are especially realistic, but that is not what they are about. Unlike George Soros, who seems to think that he can actually solve global problems himself, Thurow and Greider really want to stimulate serious consideration of the problems, which is the beginning of a solution.

Having said all of this, most of the book is not closely tied to any particular theme. Thurow's organization gives him an opportunity to comment about just about every important global issue and to assess the problems of most of the key nations and regions. So this is the Lester Thurow world tour and it uneven, highly opinionated, and worth reading (even though you won't agree with everything). I found his analysis of Japan, India, China and the United States to be especially insightful and worth reading.

Thurow's writing style takes a little getting used to. Short sentences. Big ideas. The flow is a little choppy sometimes. And then, all at once, you discover that the pieces add up to something quite profound (it happened to me for the first time about five pages in). Worth the effort, for the most part.

Fortune favors the bold, the title says. So what do bold countries do? They grab hold of the transformative elements of the third industrial revolution of course. And, concerning biotechnology and the status of women, they ...

Sorry. I won't tell. Musn't spoil the ending for you.
 

William Greider, The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy. Simon & Schuster, 2003. 

I always find William Greider's books interesting, frustrating, and annoying and this one is no exception. I find them interesting because he raises important questions and I am usually sympathetic to the basic line of argument. I get frustrated because Greider always seems to push his arguments to the extreme, so I end up disagreeing with where he ends up, even though I might agree with the original premise. And I get annoyed because I think Greider undermines his credibility in the course of pushing his arguments along. He writes so well that it is easy to overlook the missing steps in the argument, the careful selection of evidence, the internal inconsistencies, the needless exaggeration, or the fact that a universal conclusion is supported only by a single exceptional case. And that annoys me because I'm not able to support the conclusions, despite their appeal to me, because of my lack of regard for the arguments and evidence to support them.
  The basic premise of The Soul of Capitalism is that capitalism is the basic social system that we have today and will have in the foreseeable future. Capitalism is forward-looking and innovative, which makes it a good system for creating opportunity and economic growth. But it is a flawed system, especially with regard to inequality and environmental sustainability. There are many types of capitalism, however, not just U.S. hyper-capitalism, and it is possible to reform capitalism to make it a more acceptable form of social organization. This requires change, however, and Greider proposes an agenda of gradual change in economic institutions and state policies that he thinks is a good place to start. He thinks that vested interests will stifle policy change, but he is hopeful that grassroots initiatives and activism by young people can save the day. He is optimistic, in short, that capitalism can find its soul (that's what he says, at least, but I suspect he has a more radical agenda in mind).

There is nothing that I really disagree with here except the focus on grassroots. I tend to look to the power of ideas and the interests and initiatives of elites. I am disappointed, however that so much of the argument takes the form of a bold assertion, one heartwarming true story or personal recollection, and a universal conclusion. And I don't like the distortions, as when Greider correctly asserts that corporations create internal markets that may be more efficient that external markets, but then incorrectly says that "neoclassical economics" is ignorant of this fact. Try telling this to my colleague Ross Singleton! There is no need to distort economic analysis to make this point, but Greider does it anyway because it is important to him to discredit sources of authority that might disagree with parts of his story.

I find Greider annoying because he goes too far - farther than his arguments and evidence permit. In the penultimate chapter, Greider reveals that his purpose is not to make a logical argument but to create powerful narratives (I call these "stories"). Narratives, he believes, are powerful tools to shape society. The narrative of capitalism as an engine of growth and opportunity permits capitalists to hold power despite the abuses of the system. The acceptance of the narrative provides legitimacy to the interests thus served. (Greider has obviously read his Gramsci!). Greider's purpose is to create radical counter-hegemonic narratives that will undermine the current system. It doesn't matter if his narratives distort the facts or arguments, because that is what narratives do.

Now that I understand Greider's purpose, I am less disappointed and annoyed than horrified. To understand my reaction, you need to read Paul Krugman's new book (below).
 

U.S. cover

U.K. cover

(Different cover in the U.K. and different subtitle, too. 'From Bust to Boom in Three Scandalous Years. ' A marketing decision, not Krugman's choice, I believe.)

Paul Krugman, The Great Unraveling: Losing our way in the New Century. WW Norton, 2003.

Paul Krugman's new book is a collection of previously published short articles (mainly from the New York Times, but also a few from Fortune and Slate) that appeared from 1997-2002. The articles are organized around five topics: the economic bubbles of the 1990s, a critique of Bush economic policy, a critique of politics in the U.S., commentary of market failures (including pollution, foreign economic crises, and California's electricity disaster), and a concluding section that looks at current issues more broadly.

Interestingly, Krugman's columns as collected here deal with most of the problems that William Greider (see above) identifies. But Krugman is thin-skinned, I think, and doesn't like to be criticized, so all of his points are backed up with clear, strong analysis and persuasive evidence. (Greider probably doesn't care if he gets criticized so long as his message gets out.) The fact that Krugman's arguments are so disciplined does not make him any less controversial, however.

I wish Krugman had taken the time to write a new book, rather than just edit up his previous columns. Krugman's previous books, such as The Return of Depression Economics, Fuzzy Math and The Age of Diminished Expectations are excellent and unconstrained by the word-count limitations that newspaper columnists face. Like Thomas Friedman, Krugman is better when he has enough room to develop his ideas fully. That said, I recommend this book because the columns, as organized here, hang together very well and befcause Krugman is right: we are witnessing the systematic unravelling of the domestic and international bargains that defined the 20th century political economy. I also recommend this book of what the author has to say in the Introduction.

The Bush administration and its backers are revolutionaries, Krugman argues in the introduction. The mistake that we make is in looking at their policies and ideas and saying that they don't make sense or add up (the fuzzy math problem). These criticisms don't make any difference because the Bush gang don't accept the legitimacy of ideas that form the basis of the critique. Their aim, much like William Greider's is to undermine the current system and substitute a radical alternative by creating appealing narratives or stories, which they repeat again and again until then are accepted. That's what Bush and his cronies have done, as Krugman documents here.

Now you can see what upsets me so much about William Greider's book (and why I think Krugman's book is worth reading even if you've already read many of the columns). I agree with Krugman: powerful interests are competing for intellectual hegemony through a strategy of creating narratives and telling stories that grant them and their interests a legitimacy that they would otherwise lack. Greider, in my view, takes up the battle using the same strategy, fighting fire with fire, and I don't really respect this strategy because I think it tends to legitimize the methods of those he seeks to oppose.

The problem with fighting fire with fire, in other words, is the chance that the fire will engulf you and destroy what you seek to preserve. Krugman proposes to fight fire with water -- cold water. Cold hard facts and logic, repeated over and over. I'll stand with Krugman on this one.
 



Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: the political and economic origins of our time. (Originally published in 1944). Current edition: Beacon Press, 2001. Includes a foreword by Joseph E. Stiglitz.

Mark Blyth, Great Transformations: economic ideas and institutional change in the twentieth century. Cambridge University Press, 2002

Here are two books that inform the debate above (Stiglitz, Greider, Krugman, Thurow) about what to think and how about the 1990s. Karl Polanyi's Great Transformation was the reaction against the unregulated market in the 1930s. Polanyi famously argued that there was a "double movement" -- that economic change was disruptive and threatened the interests of labor, which reacted through the state. The free or "disembedded" market was thus "embedded" in society, which is to say that it came under the regulation of the state, which sought to protect labor interests.

"In retrospect, our age will be credited with having seen the end of the self-regulating market" he wrote in 1944, apparently secure in the belief that the New Deal and Keynesian policies would persist. Stiglitz's new book (see above) tell the story of the 1990s in a way that makes Polanyi's confidence seem unfounded.
  Mark Blyth's two great transformations are the 1930s (the Polanyi double movement) and the 1970s-80s period when it was reversed, when the market was freed from its embedded state, creating the environment favorable to the instability and corruption that concern Stiglitz, Greider and Krugman. Blyth's analysis stresses the power of ideas in the two transformations. A superficial statement of his theory is this: during periods of disruptive economic change, it is difficult for individuals to know what their interests really are until they discover an economic theory (Greider would want me to call it a "narrative") that provides for them a guide to self-interested political action. The crisis occurs because workers or business owners don't know what to do. The problem is solved that the introduction of persuasive ideas, which stimulate institutional change and complete the double movement.

Blyth's theory is more complex than this and very interesting as are his case studies, Sweden and the United States, which he tracks through both transformative periods. I find it very interesting that his theory raises ideas to the position of a critical factor in explaining the how the double movement is completed -- and how it can be reversed. It makes me think that Greider, Krugman, and Stiglitz are on the right track in their analysis.

I recommend both of these books to IPE students. They are not easy reading for undergraduate students, but they contain powerful ideas that you should consider.
 


Carlo Petrini, Slow Food: the case for taste. Translated from the Italian by William McCuaig. Columbia University Press, 2003. (Published in Italian as Slow Food: le ragioni del gusto, 2001.)

Carlo Petrini is credited with founding the Slow Food movement in Italy in the 1986. The short story, as it is usually told, is that Slow Food was a reaction to the opening of the first McDonald's in Rome, making it one of the first anti-globalization movements. Slow Food versus Fast Food. Perhaps today's emerging anti-globalization movements can learn something from this veteran organization?
  The long story, as told in this book, is more complex and more interesting. The founders of the movement were young radicals living in the area around Turin (Grasmci country!). Their movement was a reaction against not simply globalization, but really the industrialization of life in general and the human and environmental impacts. One of their early publications, Gambero Rosso (now a famous Italian magazine, the equivalent of Gourmet in the U.S., was a culinary supplement to a communist newspaper.

It is interesting and instructive to read how Slow Food has developed and evolved and how it balances politics, philosophy, and commercial interests. It is an encompassing movement that aims mainly to educate consumers and producers through publications, discussions, and conferences. It aims to change individual behavior through education and to have some impact on policies such as genetically modified foods, farmland preservations etc. They are founding a university in Italy to promote study and research of food and drink in all its manifestations.

This is an interesting little book that shows how thoughtful and intelligent people can approach a serious problem and how their actions have both deepened and evolved. Herewith two of my favorite quotes:

"Others may take to fighting in the streets, Slow Food has a different idea: to rescue eating establishments, dishes, and products from the flood of standardization. ... It is all too easy to confuse standardization with globalization. Globalization is absolutely desirable when it creates networks of communication among diverse realities instead of leveling. It offers real advantages to poorer countries as long as they can escape the logic of "conquest" that only creates wealth in the colonizing countries by exploiting the resources of those they colonize." (page 28).

"Notwithstanding this, Slow Food is not against McDonald's just because it hates hamburgers and French fries and regards spending a long time around the dinner table as compulsory. A slow pace can sometimes become agonizing; who doesn't recall some terrible wedding banquet like that? Conversely, fast food doesn't have to be disagreeable, and there are some traditional ways of eating it -- archetypes of McDonald's in a way -- that we point to as customs worth saving ... like the lampredotto (a kind of tripe) ritually eaten in the piazze of Florence ... ." (page 32)
 


 

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Michael Veseth
Contact: veseth@ups.edu