Occupy the Future
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
How the Occupy movement has challenged the gap between American principles and American practice—and how we can realize our most cherished ideals.
The Occupy Wall Street movement has ignited new questions about the relationship between democracy and equality in the United States. Are we also entering a moment in history in which the disjuncture between our principles and our institutions is cast into especially sharp relief? Do new developments—most notably the rise of extreme inequality—offer new threats to the realization of our most cherished principles? Can we build an open, democratic, and successful movement to realize our ideals? Occupy the Future offers informed and opinionated essays that address these questions. The writers—including Nobel Laureate in Economics Kenneth Arrow and bestselling authors Paul and Anne Ehrlich—lay out what our country's principles are, whether we're living up to them, and what can be done to bring our institutions into better alignment with them.
Contributers: David Grusky, Doug McAdam, Rob Reich, Erin Cumberworth, Debra Satz, Kenneth J. Arrow, Kim A. Weeden, Sean F. Reardon, Prudence L. Carter, Shelley J. Correll, Gary Segura, David D. Laitin, Cristobal Young, Charles Varner, Doug McAdam, Paul R. Ehrlich, Anne H. Ehrlich, Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, Donald A. Barr, Michele Elam, Jennifer DeVere Brody, H. Samy Alim and David Palumbo-Liu.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Attempting to bring cohesion to the Occupy protests of 2011 and 2012, Stanford University professors Grusky, McAdam, Reich, and Satz asked fellow academics, as preparation for a teach-in, to analyze the Occupy movement with an eye toward defining its potential. The result is similar to the protests themselves: energetic, noble, and inconclusive. Beginning with Grusky and Erin Cumberworth's fairly objective examination of the wealth gap and continuing with Reich and Satz's elaboration on the ethical reasons for the gap, the book makes a persuasive case that radical change is needed, but a little further in, the prescription becomes unclear. While worthy, essays on race and inequality, gender and inequality, education and inequality, and health care and inequality do not make for a cohesive message, which the editors address when they state that Occupy is not a single-issue movement but an overarching social awakening. Stanford political scientist David Laitin makes a compelling case for electoral reform, while essays on the language of Occupy and the art of Occupy prove trite and tacked on. This issue recurs throughout: does actual change require a more intensely focused objective and a more narrowly defined goal? Despite the book's good intentions, it falls short of answering that important question. 12 illus.
