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Publication Date: 2004
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler
Binding: Paperback
Topics: Agriculture, Corporate Rule, Democracy: Theory & Practice, Economics, Energy, History: Local to Global, Labor & Work / Classism, Nature, Race & Civil Rights, Social Movements, Sustainable Community, Technology, Transportation, United States

Description: The culmination of a three-year project by the International Forum on Globalization, 'Alternatives to Economic Globalization' is a definitive document of the anti-global corporatization movement - the consensus report of an alliance of leading activists, scholars, economists, researchers, and writers. It offers a constructive, coherent, positive alternative to global corporatization - the very thing that the anti-global corporatization movement is always accused of not putting forward. And it does so more fully, specifically, and thoughtfully than has ever been done before.

The book begins with a thorough critique of economic globalization, examining its ideological underpinnings and detailing its many negative economic and environmental effects. The authors then lay out ten governing principles for a new social paradigm, one that will lead to truly democratic and sustainable societies that benefit the many rather than the few.

The authors detail how particularly vital goods and services (for example, water or genetic material) can be administered for the common good rather than privatized for profit or monopolized for control. They recommend specific policies that can remove the power to make economic decisions from distant corporations and return it to the people directly affected by them. They explore how to rein in corporate domination by eliminating corporate welfare, special corporate rights, and the mechanisms by which corporations exert influence over public policy. They spell out alternatives to the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO that advance democracy, basic rights, and ecological sustainability. And they offer policies for rebuilding economies in a way that is responsive to human needs, describing alternative operating systems for energy, agriculture and food systems, transportation, and manufacturing.

This revised and expanded edition features a new opening chapter on the global balance of power, a new section on the media and globalization, and a new final chapter on what ordinary citizens can do to fight the injustices of globalization. It also includes many new charts, sidebars, and other updated information.

Review(s): "At this critical moment in history, 'Alternatives to Economic Globalization' could not be more timely. The joint authors comprise some of the most articulate and powerful voices of dissent, thought leaders who insist that democracy, participation, and common rights form the basis of a world that will provide real wealth for all." - Paul Hawken, author of 'The Ecology of Commerce'

"These are sober, realistic, workable policies, as utopian today as social security and women's rights would have seemed in the eighteenth century, yet as sensible and moral as these comparable changes turned out to be." - Tikkun Magazine