Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults & Swallow Citizens Whole by Benjamin R. Barber

Apr 11, 2010 Whitaker rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: social-cultural, 2010-read

Barber’s book in five easy steps:
1. Consumerist capitalism needs to create consumers who will buy goods ceaselessly. It does this by using advertising campaigns that create needs from wants. We become unable to distinguish between what we need and what we want.
2. Consumerist capitalism celebrates youth and not age. It values youthful and not mature behaviour. Thus it corrodes our ability to think. This allows us to be more easily manipulated and less able to participate meaningfully in making h...more Barber’s book in five easy steps:
1. Consumerist capitalism needs to create consumers who will buy goods ceaselessly. It does this by using advertising campaigns that create needs from wants. We become unable to distinguish between what we need and what we want.
2. Consumerist capitalism celebrates youth and not age. It values youthful and not mature behaviour. Thus it corrodes our ability to think. This allows us to be more easily manipulated and less able to participate meaningfully in making hard political choices.
3. Consumerist capitalism gives us the illusion of choice by giving us many different things to buy. Thus it convinces us that true freedom is in buying more things, and not in political participation.
4. Consumerist capitalism turns public goods like security and education into consumer goods via the process of privatisation. This erodes public trust and destroys the commonweal. Thus it turns us from citizens into consumers.
5. Hence capitalism destroys democracy.

Statements 1 to 4 are somewhat true for some people some of the time. However, they are not the be-all-and-end-all description of the state of modernity that Barber wants us to think they are. And they certainly do not lead ineluctably to statement 5.

Barber all too often relies on the rhetorical flourish to prove his case, as if saying something cleverly is to make it true. These sentences are typical of his idea of reasoned argument:
-- “Either democracy must be globalised or globalisation must be democratised.”
-- “In this new epoch in which the needy are without income and the well-heeled are without needs, radical inequality is simply assumed.”
-- “In the epoch in which we now live, civilisation is not an ideal or an aspiration, it is a video game.”

He is also prone to making sweeping statements like these:
-- “In higher education and elsewhere, the commercialising ethos of infantilisation encourages and is encouraged by a political ideology of privatisation that delegitimizes adult public goods such as critical thinking and public citizenship (once the primary objectives of higher education) in favour of self-involved private choice and narcissistic personal gain.”
-- “For the first time in history, a society has felt its economic survival demands a kind of controlled regression, a culture that promotes puerility rather than maturation.”
-- “Brand America feels like a metaphor, yet it is much more than that, not a game version of politics but politics itself reconceived as the new public relations specialty known as public diplomacy.”

Each of these statements appears to say much. Unfortunately, they have the same amount of content as the now-famous banner exclaiming, “Mission Accomplished!” That is to say, none.

It must surely be the second most ironic thing about this book that the only way one could be convinced by such hollow logic is if one has indeed developed no capacity for critical thought. The first most ironic thing is that Barber should think that such puerile demagoguery could be thought of as thoughtful critique.
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Aug 10, 2008 Caryn Vainio rated it 1 of 5 stars

The premise of this book sounded promising, but I felt let down at the end of it. Barber spends what seems like over half of the book to get to his point -- which is that the rampant consumerism so prevalent in the U.S. is actually undermining democracy itself -- and while he's doing this, he's so disdainful of anything that has the mere hint of consumerist pap that it's hard to think he's capable of enjoying anything that isn't considered high-brow literature or conversation.

His point is a good...more The premise of this book sounded promising, but I felt let down at the end of it. Barber spends what seems like over half of the book to get to his point -- which is that the rampant consumerism so prevalent in the U.S. is actually undermining democracy itself -- and while he's doing this, he's so disdainful of anything that has the mere hint of consumerist pap that it's hard to think he's capable of enjoying anything that isn't considered high-brow literature or conversation.

His point is a good one, but I found his defense of it less than fleshed out. He spends more time discussing how base and crass everything in our society is -- from movies to text messaging to what seems like his favorite target, video games -- than he does in explaining how exactly this is supposed to be undermining the democratic process.

There are a couple of sections, however, in which his point really hits home. One of these is the outsourcing of war. Barber talks about the unnerving shift between a time when we used actual soldiers to fight a war that an actual nation was in charge of to a time when we government figures pay shadowy corporations like Blackwater to fight our wars for us. Barber's main point is that citizens cannot take their proper role in civic duty if their desires have to be pulled between their own personal desires (the consumerism-based "I want") and their civic desires (the democractically-based "we want"). This point is expanded on in this section: when we use our representative government to send soldiers to fight a war, we stand behind it as a nation and as civic-minded citizens; when we allow private companies to fight our wars for us, we outsource democracy to the point of rendering it impotent here at home and abroad.

What stuck in my craw, though, about this book was the tone that Barber takes with anything that might be construed as entertainment for entertainment's sake, or anything that's deemed globally-inclusive, technologically-innovative, or anything that can shortcut labor. He specifically seems to have a deep hate for video games, and since I make them for a living, maybe I'm a little biased, but it seemed misplaced. He consistently refers to the people that play them as "man-boys" or "kidults" and only seems to refer to those video games that have garnered a notorious but certainly non-representative reputation for being immature or violent (or both). In his last chapter he devotes some time to how we can fight consumerism in the name of democracy and does actually mention a couple of video games that actually raise the bar, but it seems like a bitter afterthought. Text messaging is condemned as childish and immature, movies are bashed as being devoid of any value. As he's trying to make his point, Barber unfortunately comes off as a man who's afraid of progress, or at least is so black and white in his views on some technologies that he sees absolutely no way in which these could possibly serve the common good.

In the end, I felt that he had an interesting point -- the entire reason why I picked up the book in the first place -- but went off on so many tangents as to why these things were bad for us that his point got lost in the crabbing.(less)

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Feb 20, 2009 Wm rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: socio-poli-religio-cultural

Excellent. Scary. With prose that neither talks down nor gets to academic. All that you'd want in a public intellectual.

And really, it's an important work, and I fully agree with Barber's basic notions of reclaiming notions of civic space and the commons.

On the other hand:

Some sections are too much a rehearsal of a list of examples. And some examples don't contain enough analysis to suggest that Barber quite dug enough into it (both those things he lauds and criticizes). Case in point: His comme...more

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Jun 16, 2007 Brian Ayres rated it 3 of 5 stars

Consumed is designed as a wake-up call, however Barber will be hard-pressed to get the attention of our consumption-laden populace, who wishes only to be entertained and not educated. This book is not entertaining in the least, but it does provide a solid historical view of the stages of capitalism in this country and the perils of our current consumerist mindset. Barber uses the phrase infantilist ethos to describe our psychological state, which has been established by robust and omnipresent ma...more

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Nov 07, 2007 Steve rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Hardcore Academic Liberals with Vocabularies the size of the OED

This ended up being way over my head. Too dense.

The premise is that the international economy is pushing companies to make and market their products to "The lowest common denominator". The result is that more people buy them, which is good for business, but bad for society. The dumbing down of movies is a good example of this. According to Barker, people are being told they "need" consumer products from cradle to grave. Because of this they are more interested in their choices at Wal-Mart than...more

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Alejandro Reminds me of my cousins and folk from South East Florida where I lived most of my life. What you are saying is that everyone you meet including your...more
01 juin 15:22

Steve I should probably clarify -- I understood the concepts. It was the writing style that was inaccessible to me.

In response to your other comments -- Man...more
03 juin 07:47

Alejandro I see, it's clear you do get it. That's what seems to happen to ordinary folks, I mean you and I can engage in a simple conversation about the academi...more
03 juin 14:10

Mar 22, 2013 Ben Boocker rated it 1 of 5 stars

After a mere ten pages, the amount of redundancy and overuse of buzzwords was more than I could handle. The accusations of the "infantilizing" of the current 20-something generation is the same tired point that has emerged from the mouths of the older generation to the younger since humanity has evolved vocal chords to form speech. People change, life-styles change, societies and their conventions change. Get used to this idea, sir. The author ridicules people who should apparently be acting lik...more

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Dec 30, 2009 Litro rated it 2 of 5 stars

A tentative, paternal liberal manifesto in opposition to the lifestyle of rampant consumerism.

Barber invokes a number of astute observations, particularly how certain consumer preferences compromise the stability of prevailing historical conceptions of adulthood and citizenship,however, his thesis is weakened by his unwillingness to consider the systemic functionality of consumer capitalism alongside his own moral argument. Indeed, Barber demonstrates his cynical rejection of such suggestions w...more

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Aug 04, 2008 Summer added it

Shelves: abandoned

This has been sitting in my room with a bookmark in it for a couple of months now - I slogged through the chapter on Adorno and Veblen et al and said, "gnh, I'll finish this later." Well, it's later now, and the book is due soon, and I think I'm just going to let it go. I'm far from a defender of Lady Capitalism and her Free Market Brigade, but the section I read was so reactionary and condescending that it made me want to go on a day-long Wal-Mart shopping spree out of spite.

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Aug 06, 2010 Lumumba Shakur rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: modern-media, current-events

A book such as this is polarizing and any reviews will inevitably be emotionally founded in the economy ideology in which the reviewer subsides in. That being the case, knowing full well my own political and economic bias, the point is very well argued. The complaints of redundancy are founded and the work does not purport to be a literary masterpiece. The scene which he depicts is one in which corporations vie with more traditional institutions over subversive influence on the lives of citizens...more

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Jun 11, 2009 Zach rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: consumerism-mass-culture, capitalism

Barber has some great things to say about late capitalism's colonization of every part of life and the role of consumerism and advertising in the infantilization of modern life (I would argue that individualization is a more pernicious effect, but still, his point is valid). He is particularly on-point with his discussions of privatization and the decaying public sphere and the sovereignty of the liberal nation-state.

... but then, he lets his grumpy old man side take over. I mean, this guy HATES...more

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Jul 28, 2010 Tylernickl rated it 5 of 5 stars

In this time of capitalism's unquestioned economic and ideological dominance, Barber's book stands as a passionate plea to think critically about markets and the impediments they place in the way of true freedom. This isn't a simple Frankfurt School remix though. Unlike yesterday's culture critics, Barber presents documented evidence that marketers' reductive treatment of people is a purposeful and intentional part of the business plan. He then takes time to show the negative effects such a shor...more

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Sep 24, 2007 Katie Degentesh rated it 1 of 5 stars

Very dry & too proselytizing. The 'infantilization' was presented in the manner of a literary academic argument where the writer was searching for tropes to support a theme, rather than as a scientific argument with evidence. This is unfortunate as in general I felt the writer had a point and got hung up on his own semantics.

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Jul 07, 2012 Ken rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 03, 2013 Will rated it 2 of 5 stars

Not particularly original or well-written. This book felt more like an introduction to criticism of capitalism than a piece of actual scholarship. Barber bounces from how shitty movies get made to how children in sub-Saharan Africa don't have enough vitamins. The vulgar outcomes of capitalism are many, to be sure, but Barber's solution of 'more democracy' and a 'global citizenry' are cliches, if not simply meaningless platitudes. Without any notions of how we might actually subvert capitalism's...more

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Jul 01, 2007 Simon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: colbert

Totally great book, really annoyingly redundant and verbose.

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Aug 02, 2011 The Capital Institute rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: environment, economics, youth-education, information-age, capital-institute

Barber describes global capitalism as the driver of social inequality that has produced two distinct kinds of consumers: the poor who cannot fulfill their basic needs and the rich who have a great deal of disposable income but very few needs. Today’s consumer economy, is driven by and ethos, focuses on creating needs, by promoting what he calls an “ethos of infantilization,” or a “mind-set of ‘induced childishness,’ in which adults pursue adolescent lifestyles, as evidenced by their tastes and s...more

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May 14, 2012 Lisa rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The book sounded interesting, and from the description it had the potential to be thought-provoking. The author made some good points.

Unfortunately, those points were overshadowed by the author's complete failure to understand pop culture- no, it's not all Shakespeare, but neither is it as infantile as he makes it out to be. (Seriously, he used The Incredibles as an example of the puerility of modern movies. He's apparently unable to divorce his preconceptions of the medium from the actual cont...more The book sounded interesting, and from the description it had the potential to be thought-provoking. The author made some good points.

Unfortunately, those points were overshadowed by the author's complete failure to understand pop culture- no, it's not all Shakespeare, but neither is it as infantile as he makes it out to be. (Seriously, he used The Incredibles as an example of the puerility of modern movies. He's apparently unable to divorce his preconceptions of the medium from the actual content- since when is snark about profiteering insurance companies for kids?)

The first three chapters of the book come off as one long, overblown 'kids these days!' rant- the language may be highfalutin', but it's the same sentiment. The author is, pardon my word choice, a serious fanboy of the 'Protestant work ethic' and so dismissive of video games, comic books/graphic novels, contemporary film, TV, etc that the well known definition of Puritanism springs to mind- the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is having fun. Growing up doesn't mean never having fun again or surrendering for all time the right to a little whimsy now and then.

The author also does not understand modern communications. I can't spend time in person with my younger cousins who live halfway across the country on a regular basis, but I can Skype/IM/txt/play online games/Facebook/etc. Just because we're staying in touch that way does not mean our contact is somehow less valid than if we sat down and wrote letters- in fact, I'd argue it's richer. IM and and texting does not have to be ADD or mindless time-killing. Sometimes it's a convenient way to keep in touch while doing other things. The increased options we have for real-time communications seems like a good thing from where I'm sitting, but the author seems to feel otherwise.

The book got better about halfway through, when the author stopped his screed about pop culture and got down to business talking about consumerism, capitalism as currently practiced, and the effects of both on society. Unfortunately, by that time, I was reading very critically due to the bad aftertaste from the cranky old man chapters.(less)

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Dec 10, 2011 W. Bradford Littlejohn rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: christmas-reading

It took me more than a year to finish this book--sometimes, that should tell you something about me, but in this case, that should tell you something about this book. While Barber's overall thesis is compelling and important, his presentation of it seemed calculated to alienate any possible allies. Pompous and blustering, he writes most of the book's 339 small-font pages in a breathless, melodramatic tone of fervent moral passion and outrage (I suppose the subtitle should've warned me adequately...more It took me more than a year to finish this book--sometimes, that should tell you something about me, but in this case, that should tell you something about this book. While Barber's overall thesis is compelling and important, his presentation of it seemed calculated to alienate any possible allies. Pompous and blustering, he writes most of the book's 339 small-font pages in a breathless, melodramatic tone of fervent moral passion and outrage (I suppose the subtitle should've warned me adequately: "How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole"). Now, this would understandable as an occasional device. The subject is one that calls for moral passion and outrage, and I, for one, am sympathetic to the desire to indulge in rhetorically-charged passages chock-full of unusual polysyllabic words. So for the first chapter or two, I was willing to go along for the ride. I even underlined and starred lots of the more colorful passages. But intense rhetoric is only effective as an occasional device, as a departure from the benchmark of more restrained rhetoric. Unfortunately, for Barber, the bombastic was the benchmark, from which he almost never departed. And as you can imagine, that begins to grate on one.

This bombast results in a desire to include in his indictment of consumer culture pretty much every conceivable example and phenomenon he can think of, regardless of whether it's relevant or compelling. Instead of a focused account of some of the most alarming trends and damning evidence, Barber is determined to offer a comprehensive account of everything that is wrong with the world today under his heading of "infantilization." Couple that with the fact that he seems to have been too pompous to have accepted any advice from his editor, and one has to endure many pages of irrelevant or laughably overblown laundry lists of complaints.

Now, I say all that and still give this three stars, because as I said, his overall thesis is compelling and very important. Basically, Barber argues that a vast distance separates the consumer capitalism of our own day from the productive capitalism of yesteryear which pundits continue to laud, idealistically imagining that our economic system today is scarcely different from that of 100 years ago, and that today's critics of capitalism can be answered by appealing to capitalism's virtues of yesteryear. As a somewhat nostalgic, rose-tinted view of capitalism's past, Barber's portrait leaves me skeptical, but as a diagnosis of our contemporary condition, I think he is spot-on. Originally, says Barber, capitalism served to meet genuine human needs, and it did a really excellent job of this; now, however, with genuine material needs sated in the West, capitalism has had to turn to *creating* artificial needs and wants that it can satisfy. Not only that, but although there are still many places in the world with genuine needs, urgent needs, it is far less profitable to service these than it is to continue to feed the pathological desires of consumer society. Producers, eager to create as much demand as possible to a strategy of infantilization, and this is the heart of Barber's argument.

Since children have far less sales resistance, far less ability to discriminate what they really want and really need, far less ability to make rational decisions about what they can afford and what they can't, it's much easier to sell to children than adults, easier to get them hooked on brands and products. So Barber chronicles the sinister ways that companies have sought to take over childhood with commercialism, barraging children not only with a surfeit of children's products, but also colonizing childhood prematurely with the trappings and products of adulthood. Not only that, but it pays to keep adults in a perpetual state of childlike neediness and dependency, to establish habits of impulse buying and brand addiction that people will never outgrow. Some of Barber's examples of the phenomenon of infantilization (e.g., the popularity of Pixar, which makes "children's movies") are quite poor, and even hurt his thesis, but overall, as I say, it's compelling. Of course, it's important to note that Barber does not treat this simply as some big conspiracy on the part of manufacturers (although occasionally he comes off that way), but as an overarching social phenomenon in which we are all complicit.

The other key theme of Barber's argument is "privatization," understood not in its narrow sense of handing over government functions to corporations (though that is part of it), but as a wider problem of the destruction of the public, the atomization of society, and the consequent loss of corporate moral agency (note that "corporate" here and following does not mean "relating to a corporation"). Although I'm not sure that he cites her at all, Hannah Arendt's fascinating discussion of the "privation of the private" provides an excellent foundation for his argument here. He argues that we have made such an idol out of personal choice and freedom that we find ourselves powerless to oppose all kinds of things that almost no one wants and almost everyone considers harmful--unrestricted pornography, aggressive marketing of junk food to children, etc. Indeed, he points out in a section that should be of great interest to conservative Christians how this demographic finds itself in a ridiculous quandary. On the one hand, conservative Christians are most concerned about many of the things the culture is throwing at our children, and the ways that the ubiquity of media and the aggressiveness of advertising make it impossible to escape from, and yet conservative Christians are most likely to eschew any public means of combating this onslaught, and are reduced to each fighting their losing battles as tiny enclaves. In the interests of freedom, we have actually accepted a great loss of freedom, since to resist some evils and protect some freedoms, it requires corporate agency--to remain free, we cannot each rely solely on our own resources. Barber offers a compelling apologia for regulation, understood not as the officious meddling of power-hungry bureaucrats, but as the collective decision of citizens to stand against and rein in forces that undermine society and morality.

Now, we are naturally inclined to suspect that Barber is simply going to take us out of the frying pan and put us into the fire, substituting the evils of big government for the evils of big market. This knee-jerk suspicion is often unfair, because there is a genuine place for government in restraining rapacious markets. But in this case, we are right to be a bit suspicious. Barber is almost as eloquent in eulogizing "democracy" as he is in decrying consumerism. He has this rosy idea that somehow if we all stepped up to the plate and were willing to be "citizens" again, and engage in real democracy, exercising our corporate moral agency, then everything would be alright. Given the depth of the cultural malaise that Barber identifies in this book, I'm awfully skeptical. For this reason, the last two chapters, trying to offer a way out of our current predicament, are the weakest.

For all this book's weaknesses, however, I would definitely recommend reading the first four chapters, if you can handle that much of the hypertrophied rhetoric. For a more disciplined treatment of some similar issues, read Naomi Klein's No Logo. And for a very concise and thoroughly theological overview of many of the same problems, read Cavanaugh's fantastic Being Consumed. And, of course, for a primer on the nature and importance of corporate moral agency, read Richard Hooker. :-)(less)

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Aug 25, 2011 Kathleen rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, american-politics

I thought that i would like this book. Barber wrote a short essay (maybe 7 or 8 pages) called "Shrunken Sovereign" for World Affairs' Spring 2008 issue. In it, he basically rehearsed the argument that he makes in this book. However, the essay in world affairs was not any indicator of the quality of this book. The essay is a triumph. This book, however, is poorly written. Pretty much every paragraph has at least one claim in it that is indefensible, or at the very least misguided.
I agree with Bar...more

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Jul 31, 2010 Hank Richardson rated it 4 of 5 stars

Provocative!- the author Benjamin Barber puts forward a really strong case for the realization and dangers of 'infantilization'- i.e., enduring childishness as more than just a simple metaphor for what is occurring in consumer capitalism today; and, he frames a window for considering productivist needs, real needs and even touches on invented needs that Karl Marx long ago discussed as 'imaginary needs,' at a time when we have become a consuming society in the U.S. lending q. and possibly for cre...more

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Oct 07, 2008 Kyle rated it 3 of 5 stars

Dull criticism of a Neo-liberal market which targets and brainwashes children, infantilizes consumer and fabricates needs. Prime example of Neo-Marxism under the disguise as anti-consumerism.

Second review a year later:
After increasing my knowledge of libertarianism, consumerism and critical theory, I thought I should take a second look at a book which is widely acclaimed.

Barber writes a compelling polemic against privatization which I focused on. His argument is basically that no matter what tr...more

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Jun 22, 2008 Kelly rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who are interested in capitalism and consumerism

This was an interesting enough book, though I have a couple gripes about it. It's about the rampant consumerism that is present in the West, but especially the U.S. His key argument is that adult consumers are infantilized by the current economy, which primarily produces needs rather than goods. He also criticizes the economy for targeting children as consumers. Later in the book, he criticizes capitalism for developing the way it has developed, and provides several suggestions for fixing all of...more

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Apr 20, 2008 A.C. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Benjamin Barber, well known for accurately predicting the current ideological (and I can't stress the word ideological enough) struggle between the movement of globalization and the reaction back by more traditional forces in Jihad vs. McWorld, writes a striking indictment of the capitalist system. Over the course of the book, Barber articulates the three components of the subtitle with extensive research and thorough analysis, referencing both John Dewey and Teen Vogue. His conclusions are much...more Benjamin Barber, well known for accurately predicting the current ideological (and I can't stress the word ideological enough) struggle between the movement of globalization and the reaction back by more traditional forces in Jihad vs. McWorld, writes a striking indictment of the capitalist system. Over the course of the book, Barber articulates the three components of the subtitle with extensive research and thorough analysis, referencing both John Dewey and Teen Vogue. His conclusions are much the same as the ones from Jihad vs. McWorld, so anyone looking for some radical new thinking from Barber with regards to solutions and the basis for this problem will be sorely disappointed.

That said, this book is a fantastic read with a lot of clever insight from Barber. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, as I could see much of the content in my own day-to-day life since I work in a retail job. Even though it is a very relevant book, this isn't to say that the book is completely flawless. Actually, quite far from it.

While I was reading the book, I kept noting massive grammatical errors within the text, something that was disturbing seeing as I read a paperback version. In most situations, the errors were very unassuming and, most likely, things that people will skip past. But, I did see them and found them immensely distracting.

Additionally, I found the text to be somewhat didactic. The subtitle of the book makes it fairly clear what the text is about. But, Barber felt it necessary to continually remind the reader of what he was talking about. While in most situations, such an approach is appreciated, Barber felt the need to use the same language in describing what he was talking about each time. This need made reading the book painful from time to time.

As well, I would have liked Barber to articulate more solutions to the problems that he feels are in existence. While many of the solutions can be reached by personal reflection, Barber needs to articulate how these changes can play a positive role in actuating civic change.

While these are fairly substantial critiques about the text, I believe that the ideas within this book are enough to recommend it to anyone who needs to be reminded of the true powers of the pocketbook and the vote.(less)

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Apr 02, 2008 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I thought this book was mildly entertaining and fairly informative. I mean: After much rumination, I postulated the content of this literary work to be flippantly recreative and averagely elucidative.

I have the same complaints I've had for all the non-fiction books I've read that cover "America sucks" topics. It's typically left wing and not written for average people. If you think you have an important message to get out to the public, something that could help remedy the ills of society, you b...more

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Jan 11, 2008 Meg rated it 3 of 5 stars

page 123: "At war with the the democratic history it once helped inaugurate, laissez-faire liberalism continues to mistake popular sovereignty for illegitimate coercion and to confound the public weal with the repression of liberty. It forgets the very meaning of the social contract, a covenant in which individuals agree to give up unsecured private liberty in exchange for the blessings of public liberty and common security."

The first 100 pages of this book were a little grating, with an overuse...more

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Feb 07, 2008 Anne rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: failed-reads

I must preface this with the acknowledgement that I didn't finish this book. I didn't get beyond the first chapter.

I had issues with the author's reliance on technological gadgetry as proof of advertising's grip and an individual's reduction to "infantilized" state. I had issues with a symptom of this state: an adult reading Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings.

The Lord of the Rings is inappropriate for adult reading consumption? I'm sure Tolkien would have found this fascinating. Harry Potter...more

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Dec 16, 2010 Stephen rated it 3 of 5 stars

This, to me, was a self-indulgent preacher-on-a-pulpit book that used loads of illustrations to prove commonsensical evaluations of American culture, but seemed to leave out crucial facts and figures that would have hammered points home better. If one simply opens their eyes and sees the pervasiveness of big business in everything we do throughout the day, and how our government supports the usurpation of personal freedom for slavery through consumerism and infantilism in American culture, you c...more

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Aug 22, 2010 Stephanie rated it 1 of 5 stars

I've gotten to page 192 and I'm done. Michael Stipe is not a movie producer.

Some people might think that's nitpicky, but this book was hanging by a thread already. I really WANT to like this book. I think the author has some good points to make about what this society is becoming. But he has also made me feel extraordinarily crappy for ever giving in to a "childish" whim. Do we revolt against marketers who target children by never buying anything we want ever again? That seems to be the tone Bar...more

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Mar 22, 2013 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

Very interesting. The debate in the book is about consumer capitalism - how it was once good for the economy but is now killing it. In addition, is it really helping America in any way? A good quote: "The question is whether or not democracy but capitalism itself can survive the infantilist ethos upon which it has come to depend." Read it to find out more...

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Jan 25, 2009 John rated it 4 of 5 stars

Barber makes the case that materialism as we know it has moved past the "supply and demand" paradigm to one of created need, which necessitates the infantilization of adults and the tempting of youngsters into pre-teen/teen consumers. A bit abstruse at times, but a significant book.

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Trivia About Consumed: How Mar...