Average customer rating:
- Excellent advice for aspiring artists and others as well.
- A great book
- Save your money!
- Let yourself go
- A license to create...
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Trust the Process
Shaun Mcniff
Manufacturer: Shambhala
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1570623570
Release Date: 1998-03-31 |
Book Description
Whether in painting, poetry, performance, music, dance, or life, there is an intelligence working in every situation. This force is the primary carrier of creation. If we trust it and follow its natural movement, it will astound us with its ability to find a way through problemsâand even make creative use of our mistakes and failures. There is a magic to this process that cannot be controlled by the ego. Somehow it always finds the way to the place where you need to be, and a destination you never could have known in advance. When everything seems as if it is hopeless and going nowhere . . . trust the process.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent advice for aspiring artists and others as well........2007-03-10
This is a well written, easy to read book on creativity. I found it very useful in pursuing my photography hobby. I took off a star because like so many books the author seemed to run out of things to say about 2/3 of the way through and filled the remainder with repetition and unrelated "
stuff".
A great book.......2006-06-05
I loved this book. Lots of food for thought, and lots of directions for exploring. I read it slowly over a period of a couple of months, and plan to pick it up and read a chapter here and there when I'm stuck.
Save your money!.......2003-04-19
Have you ever gotten so sick of the meals you are used to cooking that you will try any recipe? You might then be so hungry that you'll eat it anyway, no matter how bad it tastes. Well, I got stuck reading this book.
Sometimes you need any kind of creative push you can get, and this book is so bad, I would be willing to do anything besides read it. Check this out--"I cannot augur the creative spirit's labyrinthine ways." There is just no excuse for that sentence. And there are 210 pages full of them. McNiff also mentions D.H. Lawrence twice in the first two chapters when any reasonable person would have to be forced to mention Lawrence twice during their entire writing career. Unless he is talking about his children, or making a truly canned reference to mythology, McNiff can only discuss standard junior college material, which of course, would be any commonly known artist from the beginning of the 20th century.
Now, let me take the opportunity to complain about visual arts getting kidnapped by academia. Art does not exist as an educational tool. It can be studied, but that is a separate activity. Art exists because people like to make things, and sometimes our eyes get hungry. Put your charge card away this time, don't buy this stilted little book.
Good luck on your art!
Let yourself go.......2003-02-11
This is one of the books I read before I published my own book on art creativity - Creative Painting For The Young Artist. A good point of the book is that it deals with painters block. Not many art books do. This is important for me because I had always thought that I could not paint till the age of 24 years. This book with the book Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain are especially good for right brain learners who have to enter the process of painting through emotion and getting the larger picture before paying attention to details. That is you can't begin painting by sitting in a class and beging to draw a shoe. This has brought a sense of failure to many would be artists. This is more than a book on creativity but also a book about the psychology of the artist as the book also deals with painters block, dealing with criticism, the purpose of being a painter, states of consciousness and childhood origins of the artist.
A license to create..........2002-08-02
Whether you are an artist, dancer, writer, musician, healer or seeker, you will find inspirition and validation of your path with this book. Shaun McNiff, artist and internationally known advocate of the creative arts therapies, presents a thoughtful and beautifully written case for trusting the natural movement of the creative process. This wonderful book includes observations from "famous" artists about the creative process, anecdotes from ordinary people who are experimenting with new attitudes in their daily lives and suggestions from the author about creating a satisfying life. In a world where destruction has become a form of popular entertainment, this book offers an alternative. Worth reading, then rereading again and again!
Amazon.com
Fearless investigative journalists Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber (Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! and Mad Cow U.S.A.) are back with a gripping exposé of the public relations industry and the scientists who back their business-funded, anti-consumer-safety agendas. There are two kinds of "experts" in question--the PR spin doctors behind the scenes and the "independent" experts paraded before the public, scientists who have been hand-selected, cultivated, and paid handsomely to promote the views of corporations involved in controversial actions. Lively writing on controversial topics such as dioxin, bovine growth hormone, and genetically modified food makes this a real page-turner, shocking in its portrayal of the real and potential dangers in each of these technological innovations and of the "media pseudo-environment" created to obfuscate the risks. By financing and publicizing views that support the goals of corporate sponsors, PR campaigns have, over the course of the century, managed to suppress the dangers of lead poisoning for decades, silence the scientist who discovered that rats fed on genetically modified corn had significant organ abnormalities, squelch television and newspaper stories about the risks of bovine growth hormone, and place enough confusion and doubt in the public's mind about global warming to suppress any mobilization for action.
Rampton and Stauber introduce the movers and shakers of the PR industry, from the "risk communicators" (whose job is to downplay all risks) and "outrage managers" (with their four strategies--deflect, defer, dismiss, or defeat) to those who specialize in "public policy intelligence" (spying on opponents). Evidently, these elaborate PR campaigns are created for our own good. According to public relations philosophers, the public reacts emotionally to topics related to health and safety and is incapable of holding rational discourse. Needless to say, Rampton and Stauber find these views rather antidemocratic and intend to pull back the curtain to reveal the real wizard in Oz. This is one wake-up call that's hard to resist. --Lesley Reed
Book Description
The book that unmasks the sneaky and widespread methods industry uses to influence opinion through bogus experts, doctored data, and manufactured facts.
"Finally a long-overdue exposé of the shenanigans and subterfuge that lie behind the making of experts in America." (Jeremy Rifkin)
"If you want to know how the world wags, and who's wagging it, here's your answer." (Bill Moyers)
"Meticulously researched . . . Rampton and Stauber's documentation of PR campaigns proves that they are the real 'experts.' " (Brill's Content) AUTHOBIO: John Stauber is the founder and director of the Center for Media & Democracy. He and Sheldon Rampton write and edit the quarterly PR Watch: Public Interest Reporting on the PR/Public Affairs Industry.
Customer Reviews:
The Death of Capitalism.......2007-09-04
Capitalism - market economy - free enterprise - these are the jewels in the crown of civilization which, since the renaissance, have brought unprecedented wealth, prosperity and freedom to large parts of the world. Capitalism has struggled and eventually triumphed over its historical adversaries; in earlier times, popes and kings and in our time socialism and communism. In the 21st century, since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, international corporate capitalism is bursting, like fireworks, in triumph; merging, globalizing and buying governments. What puny opposition remains is easily dispatched with a broad range of powerful weapons which have been developed over the years. Today the only real threat to capitalism is capitalism!
Socialists may practice socialism and Christians may practice Christianity but if by capitalism we mean a competitive market driven economic system, then capitalists do not practice capitalism. Theorists notwithstanding, capitalism is not an ideology, it is merely a description. Capitalists are not trying to implement some philosophy, they are only trying to make a buck any way they can. To a capitalist the biggest enemy is not socialism or labor unions or liberals or environmentalists, or even big government, the biggest enemy is risk. Risk of not making money. Risk of losing money.
Making money and avoiding risk in doing so is what capitalism is all about. But it is precisely in the risk taking that society draws its benefits from capitalism. That is the dilemma. Risk promotes wise investment resulting in efficiency, innovation and the creation of wealth, not just for the capitalist but for society as a whole. But a lot of capitalists fall by the wayside in the process. It is in the capitalist's interest to eliminate risk and society's interest to prevent them from doing so. The way to avoid risk is to control the market and to do that they must also control the government. This struggle has been going on for hundreds of years: capitalists forming monopolies, oligarchies and trusts and society breaking them up.
So long as society can keep pace with all the tricks and turns that capitalists take to avoid risk, the world would continue to reap the blessings of capitalism. But for the capitalists to succeed in eliminating risk, they would have to eliminate competition resulting in a monopoly of corporations with as much efficiency and innovation as any government bureaucracy. The ultimate risk-free climax would be monopoly and oligarchy and the corporate-run government necessary to keep it that way -- functionally indistinguishable from a Mafia run state or a Stalinist one. Capitalism, instead of an engine which pumps wealth to society and makes some capitalist wealthy in the process, would become an engine which sucks the wealth out of society, making a handful wealthy by impoverishing the rest.
We see this process going on in third world countries today and we are seeing the beginnings of it at home, in America. All three branches of government are increasingly under the control of corporations. Both political parties are addicted to corporate financing. Mergers, acquisitions and globalization, all techniques for eliminating risk, are rampant. The media is being merged and taken over by corporations and increasingly being used as public relations outlets for the corporations.
Right now society is not keeping pace. The tricks and turns that corporate capitalists use to avoid risk have gotten trickier and twistier. Just as a mosquito injects an anesthetic so that you will not feel it is sucking your blood, corporations are coopting the very processes by which people recognize what is going on so that more and more we are living in a virtual reality without realizing it. Sort of like a Potemkin village or like the movie The Truman Story where a boy is born and raised on a television set without knowing it. And as corporations merge and grow larger, they have even bigger budgets to build even more elaborate and convincing "sets". But this is not science fiction. The "sets" are being built around us as you read this.
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber of the Center for Media & Democracy have been documenting this process for years. Their publications include a quarterly newsletter, PR Watch, and several books including: Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?, and now Trust Us, We're Experts. While flippant and amusing, these books and articles tell a very chilling story of corporate public relations manipulation and spin control growing exponentially in size, audacity and sophistication.
The "father of public relations", Rampton and Stauber point out in Trust Us, is Edward L. Bernays, son in law and disciple of Sigmund Freud. By following Bernays' philosophy one can see the road map to the future. Here are some of his ideas [pp 42 - 44]:
** scientific manipulation of public opinion is necessary to overcome chaos and conflict in society
** In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.
** while most people respond to their world instinctively, without thought, there exist an intelligent few who have been charged with the responsibility of contemplating and influencing the tide of history
** public relations is an applied science, like engineering, through which society's leaders could bring order out of chaos
** being herd like also made people remarkably susceptible to leadership.
Of course that "leadership" can only be exercised by those who can afford the price of the Hill & Knowltons and APCOs of this world.
Here are some cases of virtual reality cited in their latest book. Big contributions, free junkets and the promise of future jobs are the more obvious ways of corrupting legislators but less obvious and more subtle is the use of public relations to actually manipulate the "facts". A typical example of how this works is illustrated on page 14.
"In the Fall of 1997, Georgetown University's Credit Research Center issued a study which concluded that many debtors are using bankruptcy as an excuse to wriggle out of their obligations to creditors. Lobbyists for bank and credit card companies seized on the study as they lobbied Congress for changes in federal law that would make it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy relief. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen cited the study in a Washington Times opinion column, offering Georgetown's academic imprimatur as evidence of the need for `bankruptcy reform'. What Bentsen failed to mention was that the Credit Research Center is funded in its entirety by credit card companies, banks, retailers, and others in the credit industry. The study itself was produced with a $100,000 grant from Visa USA and MasterCard International Inc. Bentsen also failed to mention that he himself had been hired to work as a credit-industry lobbyist."
Coopting and distorting the very sources of knowledge and information which informed people, legislators, scientists, government officials, the press, etc. rely on as being objective and scientific is one of the most clever and the most egregious techniques for creating virtual reality. As an EPA employee I have seen many examples of self-serving corporate sponsored "scientific" studies being foisted off on EPA and used to justify weak ineffective regulations or no regulations at all. The fraud, if discovered at all, is rarely discovered by EPA. In the absence of high level support there is very little incentive for science bureaucrats to look closely at studies with powerful backers.
From p. 199: If you want to know just how craven some scientists can be, the archives of the tobacco industry offer a treasure trove of examples. Thanks to whistle-blowers and lawsuits, millions of pages of once-secret industry documents have become public and are freely available over the Internet. In 1998, for example, documents came to light regarding an industry- sponsored campaign in the early 1990s to plant sympathetic letters and articles in influential medical journals. Tobacco companies had secretly paid 13 scientists a total of $156,000 simply to write a few letters to influential medical journals. One biostatistician, Nathan Mantel of American University in Washington, received $10,000 for writing a single, eight-paragraph letter that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Cancer researcher Gio Batta Cori received $20,137 for writing four letters and an opinion piece to the Lancet, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and the Wall Street Journal - nice work if you can get it, especially since the scientists didn't even have to write the letters themselves. Two tobacco-industry law firms were available to do the actual drafting and editing. All the scientists really had to do was sign their names at the bottom."
If the virtual reality created by public relation firms were only limited to selling toothpaste and deodorant we might not get too concerned about it. Falsifying medical research to defend harmful and dangerous products is a troublesome escalation. But there appears to be no limits to the uses of PR and no concern by the users of its ultimate impact. The issue of global warming, which could possibly plunge humanity into a new dark age, is being surrounded by the fog of virtual reality by the practitioners of PR as if the stakes were no more important than the selling of mouthwash.
Rampton and Stauber point out in pp 267-288 of Trust Us that PR firms hired by the major industrial emitters of greenhouse gasses have created dozens of influential sounding front organization such as "The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition", "The Global Climate Information Project", "The Information Council for the Environment" and "The Greening Earth Society" which have saturated the media, Congress and the public with industry spin so as to make their case by sheer volume and noise. Since the facts and the scientific community are so overwhelming against them, the object of the public relations onslaught has been to slow down, confuse and defuse public clamor for resolute action. Friends of the Earth International calls this "lobbying for lethargy".
There is legitimate scientific debate about the source and rate of global warming and a lot of the spin addresses that, but a lot doesn't. Some of the dirtier tricks played are:
** An attempt to stimulate anti Kyoto Treaty email to President Clinton by promising to enter writers' names in a $1000 sweepstakes drawing.
** Appealing to anti-abortion activists with the claim that "Al Gore has said abortion should be used to reduce global warming."
** Touting phoney petitions of scientists discrediting the theory of global warming.
** Circulating phoney "scientific" papers made up to look like they had appeared in reputable peer reviewed scientific journals.
** Some industry flacks claim the Earth is actually cooling while other claim that global warming is a good thing.
The scary thing is that lobbying for lethargy is working.
The book is very idealistic/ unrealistic.......2007-04-13
One thing that the authors don't think about is that: Most people are not only not educated enough to understand the specialist jargon that goes with many industrial products, but that if they did try to interpret it *based on their limited information/ understanding* disaster would result.
The authors also don't get into what happens when a well meaning government agency overregulates an industry SO MUCH that it ends up being of benefit to no one. Examples abound-- that were not dealt with in the book.
1. The FDA has such tight regulations on drugs that they end up costing 2-3 times more to produce/ sell to the American public than what they should. And much of this cost is legal fees, excessive testing, and clinical trials.
2. The trucking industry is also something that is heavily regulated. There is a chronic shortage of truck drivers in the industry because there are so many regulations that many people who would be perfectly competent truck drivers can't get a chance at working. (For reference, automobiles kill 40,000+ Americans per year, and trucks kill about 900. An average truck driver might drive 55 hours per week compared to the single digit hours that are driven by a passenger car.)
3. Everyone is whining about the price of gas, but no one knows whether the high cost is because of refineries operating at peak capacity or because of insufficient existing oil supplies. No one will ever be able to test this, since a single refinery has not been built in the last 30 years in the United States.
If people were able to regulate industries by the political process (say, by referenda or voting for candidates that would pass strict legislation), whatever came along after what currently exists would be FAR WORSE.
These authors need to pick up some books on Economics-- specifically ones that deal with information asymmetry (as in, how corporations have a better idea of what they are doing than third party observers).
Other than that, the book is very well written with lots of good examples. It's worth picking up-- in spite of my low rating thereof.
If Everybody Believes Something, It's Probably Wrong.......2006-12-29
If everybody believes something, it's probably wrong! We call that Conventional Wisdom. "Trust Us We're Experts" is one of the few books that I recommend to all of my patients that enter my office. The information in this book has the power to potentially save your life, since it provides the reader with the tools to spot propaganda that's regularly disseminated to the masses.
Americans are the most conditioned, programmed beings on the planet. Not only are our thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded; our very awareness of the whole design seems like it is being subtly and inexorably erased! It is an exhausting and endless task to keep explaining to people how most issues of conventional wisdom are scientifically implanted in the public consciousness by a thousand media clips per day. I feel that Stauber and Rampton do an excellent job at guiding the reader through the PR industry and expert deception that is propagated daily. My recommendation is to buy this book today then kill your TV!
Dr. Matthew J. Loop
- Author of "Cracking the Cancer Code"
Take critical thinking one step further..........2005-11-19
...and use the techniques in this book on the book itself. Sadly, a book with so much promise falls victim to its own PR machine all too often. Face it, if you're going to use critical thinking, use it consistently. If you use it against what you don't like, but cast a blind eye on things you are passionate about, how critical is that, really?
Beware of "Experts" -- Follow the Money! .......2005-07-02
John Stauber tells it like it is, and I wish this book were a bestseller. Readers who can accept these truths may also want to read a highly detailed yet fascinating expose of a huge and profitable industry that has been manipulating science and gambling with your health -- "The Whole Soy Story:The Dark Side of America's Favorite Health Food" by Kaayla Daniel, The fact that you are probably thinking, "No, we all know that soy is healthy for us" is proof of how thoroughly you've been conned. I was too, but no longer. "Fluoride Deception" by Christopher Bryson is another good one. Thanks to John Stauber, I'm wary of experts and now know enough to follow the money.
Book Description
Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan (1833-1911) is best known for condemning racial segregation in his dissent from Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, when he declared, "Our Constitution is color-blind." But in other judicial decisions—as well as in some areas of his life—Harlan's actions directly contradicted the essence of his famous statement. Similarly, Harlan was called the people's judge for favoring income tax and antitrust laws, yet he also upheld doctrines that benefited large corporations.
Examining these and other puzzles in Harlan's judicial career, Linda Przybyszewski draws on a rich array of previously neglected sources—including the verbatim transcripts of his 1897-98 lectures on constitutional law, his wife's 1915 memoirs, and a compilation of opinions, drawn up by Harlan himself, that he wanted republished. Her thoughtful examination demonstrates how Harlan inherited the traditions of paternalism, nationalism, and religious faith; how he reshaped these traditions in light of his experiences as a lawyer, political candidate, and judge; and how he justified the vision of the law he wrote.
An innovative combination of personal and judicial biography, this book makes an insightful contribution to American constitutional and intellectual history.
Book Description
Tom A. Coburn, a congressional maverick who kept his promise to serve three terms and then leave Washington, offers a candid look at the inner workings of Congress-why the system changes politicians instead of vice versa. Breach of Trust shows readers, through shocking behind-the-scenes stories, why Washington resists the reform our country desperately needs and how they can make wise, informed decisions about current and future political issues and candidates. This honest and critical look at "business as usual" in Congress reveals how and why elected representatives are quickly seduced into becoming career politicians who won't push for change. Along the way, Coburn offers readers realistic ideas for how to make a difference.
Customer Reviews:
Self righteous pablum.......2007-09-23
This book, based on the reviews here, is self-righteous pablum with little factual substance. A better, book, one that I've actually read, is Chris Edwards - Downsizing the Federal Government (Cato).
At Last Someone Brave Enough to Expose Congress.......2007-05-18
This is one of the most rewarding and enlightening books I ever read. It was a real sleeper as far as publicity goes, but everyone should read this book. Liberals who just scrunge up their faces when they hear Senator Coburns name, should think again and read this book. Senator Coburn is a very conservative republican, but he does not rail against liberals or democrats in this book. He must have rightly figured to do so would tag the book as a typical partisan effort. Instead he exposes what the Republican party establishment does and goes after Republican leaders. He only mentions Democrats when he has to in relaying information about any particular congressional bill. He surely didn't win any friends in congress when he exposed the inner workings of that body. Politicians quickly (if they didn't sart out that way) transform into playing the power game. Everything becomes about power and not what is best for the people. The bribes, strong arm tactics, threats, play along to get along, we'll do the right thing later, gotta secure power now kind of shenanigans. You definately do not have to agree with Tom Coburn politically to appreciate this book. It's great to get a birds eye view on why our government does not work. I can see what congress is doing and not doing now and understand why thanks to having read this book. The establishment doesn't want you to read this book, but do yourself a favor and read Breach of Trust. We need to shake things up in Washington and elect new people. In fact Mr. Coburn talks about the 20-25 in congress who stick to their principles and truley work to do the right thing. It's good to know who they are. Let's get a majority like them. To get a feel as to how to do that it helps to read this book. This is eye opening stuff. Thank you, Senator Coburn.
This is the real thing. Why doesn't Congress work and how to fix it!!!.......2006-12-05
Wow, and Wow again!!!! This book makes a lot of sense, no matter what your party or political viewpoint.
As a business owner who, like most, has a low opinion of Congress, this is a must read. Voters' approval ratings of Congress are widely reported to be in the low twenty percentile, are now are the lowest in history, and are still dropping. Congress is clearly broken. This unique book explains why it's broken, with many revolting but compelling examples.
And it also shows us a way to fix today's out of control, unaccountable government. It suggests practical methods for fixing Congress before matters get even worse. The author deserves a medal for responsible public service, and this book deserves to be read and understood.
John D. Trudel
Extraordinary Case for a New Independent Party.......2006-01-11
This is an extraordinary book, an easy to read book, which is organized to provide 10 truths, 3 myths, 4 dangers, and 5 actions that citizens can take to restore the integrity of the Congress (both Senate and House).
The author's conclusions, based on his experience as a three-term Congressman, are consistent with both the recent polls that show that Americans damn both the Democrats and the Republicans as corrupt and ineffective at representing We the People, and with books such as Peter Peterson's "Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It."
As a moderate Republican, I found this book representative precisely of the vision I signed up to in the 1970's--smaller government, less waste, more discretion to the states.
Two quotes really stand out:
xix: "Although the events o September 11, 2001 have focused the public attention on the threat of international terrorism, the greatest threat to the continuity of our form of government is our government itself."
79: "What makes this [Party Line] mentality dangerous is that when the team is held together by careerism and mindless partisanship, individual members are punished for thinking for themselves [or their Districts]. When members can't think for themselves their constituents are deprived of honest representation."
The book itemizes the positive aspects of the "Contract with America" that the Republican class of 1994 hoped to achieve, and blasts Newt Gingrich for failing to honor the contract and failing as a leader.
Robert Novak is to be complemented for his superb foreword and his support of this book.
All of my reading suggests that America is ready to demand that the bulk of their representatives follow the example of the Member from Vermont, and declare Independence from the two corrupt incumbent parties. America appears to be ready for a new political party that will restore government of, by, and for the people. This book is a good starting point, and makes the case for discarding both parties as being so corrupt and unrepresentative as to be beyond salvation. We are on our own.
A Must read about Congress. The Scum!.......2005-08-11
Short and sweet. Will confirm your worst fears. Leo Hamel
Book Description
Practicing Servant-Leadership brings together a group of exceptional thinkers who offer a compendium of thought on the topic of bringing servant-leadership into the daily lives of leaders. Each contributor focuses on his or her area of expertise, exploring how servant-leadership works in the real world, using examples from a variety of organizations such as businesses, nonprofits, churches, schools, foundations, and leadership organizations. Highlights of the book's twelve essays include information on:
- how the idealistic vision of the servant as leader works even in the competitive world of business.
- encouraging leaders to begin by looking at what they themselves want to become and then to bring this knowledge into their daily leadership.
- how the principles of servant-leadership can enhance our understanding and practice of philanthropy.
- examining the board chairperson's especially vital role as a servant- leader.
- exploring what leaders learn from being followers.
Order your copy today!
Customer Reviews:
An Idea Whose Time Has Come.......2004-10-29
Robert K. Greenleaf published his seminal essay, The Servant as Leader, in the early 1970's. Since then, leaders committed to finding a better way to serve their organizations have embraced the idea. This volume contains a rich olio of essays by writers, drawn from diverse fields, looking to bring servant leadership from theory into practice. James Autry's essay, "Love and Work" is stunning in its message and based on the fact that the messenger is a former CEO of a large publishing company. Others explore the links between servant leadership and board chairmanship, restorative justice and ethical leadership. Don't pass up Meg Wheatley's essay, "From Hero to Host."
Amazon.com
As the United States faces what many see as another lackluster election in November 2000, John B. Judis's The Paradox of American Democracy addresses the decline of public participation in national politics over the course of the 20th century. He persuasively attributes the blame to the deteriorated relationship between unions and grassroots activists and the elite policy foundations that often championed their causes, a relationship eroded by self-interested businessmen and populist demagoguery. American political life, Judis writes, was never strictly a contest between popular and wealthy special-interest groups. Public policy organizations such as the Ford Foundation and the Brookings Institution, for example, have pushed for, or refereed, legislation for social, economic, and political reform that benefited labor, civil rights, and environmental activists. Since the 1970s, though, think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute have pursued their own economic interests by forging links with reactionary populist groups like the Moral Majority, silencing progressive voices less able to present their interests amidst the onslaught of corporate propaganda. Public policy, Judis feels, is now formed primarily by lobbyists rather than those concerned about the broader public welfare.
Paradox presents a detailed portrait of how organized political blocs, independent public policy foundations, and the federal government have interacted over the last 100 years, and how the relationship has been eroded by corporate priorities. While his facts are correct, Judis's fondness for the hegemonic social order of FDR's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society might raise objections from sympathetic readers who feel that vital leftist energy was co-opted by post-Fordism, not enabled by it. The link between activists' declining access to power and the dwindling electoral turnout could also be made more explicit. Judis nevertheless provides a brisk and informative history of the structure of American civic life. --John M. Anderson
Book Description
Washington is big business. The era of civic-minded captains of industry and serious think-tanks has given way to the heyday of K Street, home to the lobbyists who now spend $2.4 million a year on each member of Congress.
John B. Judis, a senior editor for the New Republic, conducts an instructive tour through this corridor of money and power in The Paradox of American Democracy-with eye-opening results. For example: Former foreign policy advisers now become lobbyists for foreign businesses. Former Senators call for privatizing social security while sitting on boards of investment banks that would benefit from the conversion. The bankers, lawyers, and business people who once devoted time to public service now confine their activity to lobbying for their firms.
The Paradox of American Democracy turns the conventional view of democracy on it's head. Judis shows that it's never been enough to have active political participation; American democracy has always depended on an enlightened political establishment-with only the nation's best interest in mind-to shape public opinion. Our political system suffers today because the lawyers, professors and former government officials who once made up of the establishment have put their minds and reputations at the service of moneyed special interests. Rather than balancing the interests of business and populists, the elites-and their money-are now firmly on the side of business.
With widespread cynicism so completely undermining our institutions, The Paradox of American Democracy cuts to the heart of today's debate on why our systems is broken, and what we can do to fix it.
Customer Reviews:
very informative.......2003-08-01
The most compelling theme of this book to me was its historical explanation of why there seems to be no informed/reasoned middle ground in politics today, which is something I find particularly mystifying and frustrating. The history and mechanics Judis describes of how disinterested elites have disappeared while letterhead advocacy groups have become rampant is very plausible, especially with the numerous detailed examples he cites.
The book might lose a little gas after the Reagan years, but I thought that was OK since Clinton+ has been dissected a million different ways and I wasn't looking for another take on that.
The book also serves as a valuable field guide to policy groups of different stripes. If you are a little fuzzy on the difference between the Heritage Foundation and the Brookings Institute (as I admit I was), then that's a big part of the problem Judis is describing.
A cogent explanation of how we got here..........2002-07-15
Judis is particularly smart about the 1970s, which he characterizes as a moment of conservative and corporate backlash. He suggests that if you follow the money, and the think-tanks, you can see (in part) how and why the right was able to triumph politically in a degraded public sphere once we got to the 1980s and 1990s. The name of the game for them has been propaganda--"Trust us, Mr. Working Man, welfare cheats are what ail you. That and capital gains taxes that are too high."--and they've done it well. Hell, with all the Scaife, Olin, Cato, Heritage, AEI, and CEI doublespeak and disinformation spewed out over the course of the last 3 decades, it's a wonder any of us have any sense left at all. Hopefully, with the eruption of a new corporate scandal every other day in 2002 (nearly all of which have links to the "screw-the-poor-and-the-middle-class / but-fatten-the-rich-and-the-corporations" Bush-Cheney Administration) people are finally beginning to wise up...
Awful.......2001-10-31
Do yourself a favor and avoid this book. Mr. Judis fails miserably to explain why political cynicism seems to be at an all-time high. A devout leftist, Judis relies upon formulaic left wing claptrap to support his thesis that high minded elitists are no longer looking out for the interest of working people, but rather their own self interest. He somehow manages to strech out liberal 'bumper sticker' philosophy for 306 pages, most of it mind numbingly innane. This book is an utter failure, particularly given that his book on WF Buckley was surprisingly neutral and honest. This is the type of drivel you would expect to see from some nutjob writing for Mother Jones, not the New Republic. What a shame.
Great in understanding America's (corrupt) democracy.......2000-06-01
I enjoyed this book and recommend it to anybody interested in American history and politics. John B. Judis gives a historic account of how our democracy has been damaged by big money and irresponsible elites, focusing from the progressieve era to today. The book is an easy read, and Judis makes his points well understood. He analyzes how different elites and special interest groups have functioned in America.
The chapters "Business and the Rise of K Street," and "Triumph of Conservatives," were very interesting and thought provoking. Judis gives a closer and infromative look at how political action committees and conservative groups have contributed huge amounts of money to politicians, and how they recently dramatically increased their influence in governments decisions.
The last two chapters are also good in explaining how changes in big business influenceing government even more in the 70's and 80's is hard to shake when dealing with a reform agenda. It is chalk full of statistics that are astounding, and are attributed to respectable sources: PAC's gave 72% of their money to Republicans during the last six weeks of teh 1978 elections.
A problem with this book though is that it blames the Republicans too much when talking about the lack of public participation in politics. I guess that was expected though considering that Mr. Judis is a senior editor of "The New Republic" (a liberal magazine), although he does not seem to be a fan of Clinton. All together this book is very informative and holds your interest. Along with recommending this book, I will recommend reading Jim Hightower's "If the Gods had meant us to vote they would have given us Candidates." It bashed both Republicans and Democrats, and is comparable to this book, however discusses more recent issues.
This book informs us on the ever-changing-postion government, elites, and society has had over time, and explains how American democracy has evolved to today's current corrupt system. John B. Judis also gives us hope and discusses how our democracy can be corrected.
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IN DEFENSE OF GOVERNMENT: The Fall and Rise of Public Trust
Jacob Weisberg
Manufacturer: Scribner
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ASIN: 0684816040 |
Amazon.com
In his defense of the value of a relatively strong public sector, Jacob Weisberg, a political columnist for New York magazine and contributing editor of The New Republic, assigns blame to both ends of the political spectrum for the public's loss of faith in government, finding fault with conservatives for their hypocrisy and liberals for their elitism and racism. Like a number of writers before him, including John B. Judis (Grand Illusion), Michael Lind (The Next American Nation) and E. J. Dionne Jr. (They Only Look Dead), Weisberg offers early 20th-century Progressive Herbert Croly as a guide to reviving a sense of "nationalist fellow feeling."
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The Trust Process in Organizations: Empirical Studies of the Determinants and the Process of Trust Development
Manufacturer: Edward Elgar Publishing
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ASIN: 1843760789 |
Book Description
Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this volume focuses on the trust processes between people within organizations, with an emphasis on empirical studies.
Rational foundations and psychological motivations for trust are taken into account through conceptual and empirical chapters. The authors begin by summarizing a number of key elements from the literature, including how trust develops in time and how its development is affected by social-psychological phenomena. This includes the notion of `framing': the interpretive context in which actions are perceived and evaluated. A conceptual framework is then used to analyze trust and power in the internal relationships of the organization. The contributors take up this issue in an evolutionary analysis of competition between trust and cheating. The conditions for trust in teams, in terms of type of task and team composition are examined, and the effects on trust of different types of leadership are studied. In the concluding chapters, the relation between the control imposed by an expert system and the influence of users is analyzed, and the relational signaling perspective is used for a study of norm violation and sanctioning, which in turn is used to analyze trust and trouble.
Book Description
Does fair political representation for historically disadvantaged groups require their presence in legislative bodies? The intuition that women are best represented by women, and African-Americans by other African-Americans, has deep historical roots. Yet the conception of fair representation that prevails in American political culture and jurisprudence--what Melissa Williams calls "liberal representation"--concludes that the social identity of legislative representatives does not bear on their quality as representatives. Liberal representation's slogan, "one person, one vote," concludes that the outcome of the electoral and legislative process is fair, whatever it happens to be, so long as no voter is systematically excluded. Challenging this notion, Williams maintains that fair representation is powerfully affected by the identity of legislators and whether some of them are actually members of the historically marginalized groups that are most in need of protection in our society.
Williams argues first that the distinctive voice of these groups should be audible within the legislative process. Second, she holds that the self-representation of these groups is necessary to sustain their trust in democratic institutions. The memory of state-sponsored discrimination against these groups, together with ongoing patterns of inequality along group lines, provides both a reason to recognize group claims and a way of distinguishing stronger from weaker claims. The book closes by proposing institutions that can secure fair representation for marginalized groups without compromising principles of democratic freedom and equality.
Customer Reviews:
Award winner: 1999 best first book in political theory.......2000-11-01
Voice, Trust, and Memory was a co-winner of the Best First Book award from the Foundations of Political Theory section of the American Political Science Association. The award citation reads: "Voice, Trust, and Memory is a powerful and well-argued exploration of the relevance of identity to democratic representation. Williams's approach to the constitution of identity and the nature of democracy and representation is rigorous and thorough. Her analysis is sophisticated. She treats with subtlety and precision issues that too often are reduced and simplified by political discourse. In particular, Williams argues that members of historically disadvantaged groups are best represented by other members of those groups. Such members can bring the memory of discriminatory experience to bear on the expression of the group's preferences, and thereby give such groups a more genuine voice. The absence of embodied, experiential memory, characteristic of representation in liberal democracy, often engenders mistrust in the democratic process on the part of such groups; such a lack of trust often compromises the ideals and the efficacy of democracy. Williams's reconceptualization of representation is designed to help foster the trust that is necessary to support democratic institutions, and that is also desirable by the lights of democratic principles. Her focus on women and African-Americans to construct these arguments attends to the specific problems these groups face in liberal democracy. She makes substantive contributions to the theoretical and political literature on these specific groups. She also raises broader questions that transcend the particular boundaries of these two groups, and that apply to any group-based identity within liberal democracy, indeed, to the very nature of political representation itself. All in all, this is a deeply thoughtful and thought-provoking consideration of issues that lie at the heart of contemporary political and theoretical debate."
Minority representation.......2000-07-17
This book presents the most sophisticated and fully developed theory of minority representation available in contemporary political theory. Williams provides a powerful argument in favour of group representation for minorities: what Anne Phillips has called 'the politics of presence'. The argument is based on carefully constructed analytic distinctions, and while these are occasionally suspect (particularly the objective vs. subjective notion of group membership), the overall thesis is very well defended. Williams has not received the same degree of attention and praise as two other theorists working in this area, Iris Marion Young and Anne Phillips, which is unfortunate. This book is just as comprehensive and tightly argued as anything produced by Young and Phillips, if not more so. The book will be invaluable to anyone interested in contemporary democratic theory (particularly deliberative democracy) or theories minority inclusion. You should be aware that the book is directed primarily to an academic audience.
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