Analysis Of Benjamin R. Barber's Jihad Vs. Mcworld

In the article “Jihad vs. McWorld” written by Benjamin R. Barber, the main discussion is about the comparison of the Jihad world of “a threatened Lebanonization of national states in which culture is pitted against culture”(Barber, 1992, page 1) to the McWorld of economic and political globalization. This idea is based off of the concept of Barber stating that there are “2 possible political futures”(Barber, 1992, page 1); the idea of seperation for every nation to have its own state, and the idea of it all becoming one. The contrast for these is that each nation cannot survive, as states some simply aren’t large enough. However the idea of becoming a single nation would not be as efficient either, because the amount of governing parties that

McWorld is talked about by the four imperatives that make it up (Barber, 1992, page 2). These imperatives are the Market, Resource, Information-Technology, and Ecological. The Market imperative is talking about the global need for a free market, the downside to this is that it requires a common language and common currency (Barber, 1992, page 3). A failed demonstration of this could be the Euro, however they do not share a common language. If the world were to indulge in having a single currency, they would need to agree on the language to be used, and while most of the First World uses English, this is not the same for those peripherary states.The Resource imperative is as Barber puts it: “Democrats once dreamed in societies who political autonomy rested firmly on economic independence”(Barber, 1992, page 4). The problem with this imperative is that every nation requires something another nation has and some nations have almost nothing they need (Barber, 1992, page 5). This can be seen most prominently in Africa, states failling due to being incapable of running a state without the assitance of major states, like United States, or Russia. The following imperative is Information-Technology; this imperative is the idea of technology becoming universally used. The drawback to