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superborbPresenting six narratives about globalization, and then showing how they recombine and interact to deal with complex issues.
This is very much a book that fits my personal taste in political discussion, trying to take people where they are and understand why they have the perspective and values they do, while cutting out all the ad hominem and points designed to distract. I first heard about this book here.
I originally thought I'd find the right-wing populist chapters most informative, but actually it was the corporate power one, because it had a lot of detail on trade that I previously had not organized mentally in as precise a manner as the book laid out. So for that chapter alone, I'm happy I read it. The chapters describing the narratives--establishment, left-wing populist, right-wing populist, corporate power, geoeconomic, and global threats--I found to be the most useful in clarifying and organizing political patterns. The second half of the book was less novel in the points it tried to make, but I think still valuable. It's just that the book was retreading ground on diversity of narrative, integrative teams, etc that I had spent quite some time thinking about already.
The authors were careful in how they presented each narrative and what its proponents would say, but this sometimes led to minimal pushback when there was no narrative that naturally disagreed. This was especially obvious in some of the arguments wrt China. However, it's not like I didn't read other parts with a critical eye, it's just that the China related arguments felt distinctly more one dimensional, even as they tried to convey complexity. It didn't quite manage to become multidimensional the way the domestic arguments did because of the limitations of the six Western narratives they chose. They do have a chapter on non-Western narratives, but it's pretty superficial as they themselves acknowledge.
My major complaint is the wild misuse of math in the section where they tried to make an argument from probability distributions without seemingly any knowledge of how probability distributions (or correlation) worked. It read like some mathematical economist wrote something careful and then it had been poorly understood through reinterpretations. Basically the pet peeve of 'using the /idea/ of math to make an argument' without really understanding the math.
Overall, I'd definitely recommend this to people who would like to understand more about political narratives, but haven't perhaps done as much reading on it as they'd like. It would be ideal, in my opinion, for a high schooler who wanted to know more about the world but hadn't had the time to learn patterns passively. An adult who is well read on the subject would find it obvious. Very readable and casual in tone.
This is very much a book that fits my personal taste in political discussion, trying to take people where they are and understand why they have the perspective and values they do, while cutting out all the ad hominem and points designed to distract. I first heard about this book here.
I originally thought I'd find the right-wing populist chapters most informative, but actually it was the corporate power one, because it had a lot of detail on trade that I previously had not organized mentally in as precise a manner as the book laid out. So for that chapter alone, I'm happy I read it. The chapters describing the narratives--establishment, left-wing populist, right-wing populist, corporate power, geoeconomic, and global threats--I found to be the most useful in clarifying and organizing political patterns. The second half of the book was less novel in the points it tried to make, but I think still valuable. It's just that the book was retreading ground on diversity of narrative, integrative teams, etc that I had spent quite some time thinking about already.
The authors were careful in how they presented each narrative and what its proponents would say, but this sometimes led to minimal pushback when there was no narrative that naturally disagreed. This was especially obvious in some of the arguments wrt China. However, it's not like I didn't read other parts with a critical eye, it's just that the China related arguments felt distinctly more one dimensional, even as they tried to convey complexity. It didn't quite manage to become multidimensional the way the domestic arguments did because of the limitations of the six Western narratives they chose. They do have a chapter on non-Western narratives, but it's pretty superficial as they themselves acknowledge.
My major complaint is the wild misuse of math in the section where they tried to make an argument from probability distributions without seemingly any knowledge of how probability distributions (or correlation) worked. It read like some mathematical economist wrote something careful and then it had been poorly understood through reinterpretations. Basically the pet peeve of 'using the /idea/ of math to make an argument' without really understanding the math.
Overall, I'd definitely recommend this to people who would like to understand more about political narratives, but haven't perhaps done as much reading on it as they'd like. It would be ideal, in my opinion, for a high schooler who wanted to know more about the world but hadn't had the time to learn patterns passively. An adult who is well read on the subject would find it obvious. Very readable and casual in tone.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-24 09:02 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-25 14:11 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-24 23:14 (UTC)BTW, if you ever have a yen for books about populism specifically, I've got reams of 'em to recommend.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-25 14:12 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-25 18:12 (UTC)