Review by Choice Review
This is a book about social revolution: how to reinvent society in a global context. It is, therefore, necessarily quite speculative and not everyone's cup of tea. Why do we need to reinvent society? The authors, both UK academics, present a well-researched critique of "market individualism" and the problems it has created, especially in an age of hyper-competition. They argue that market individualism and all that comes with it needs to be replaced by a system based upon "collective intelligence." The collective intelligence system would stress cooperation over competition, shared values over individualism, and shared rewards over individual incentives. The system would look something like a form of socialism, this reviewer thinks, but "socialism" does not appear in the index (although social capital, social division, social influence, social integration, social mobility, social partnership, social polarization, social progress, social reflexivity, social rights, and social skills all do). Readers interested in a thoughtful critique of market individualism without a plan for social revolution may wish to consult Thomas Frank's One Market under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy (2000). Most appropriate for graduate and research collections. M. Veseth University of Puget Sound
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
