Shameless Self-Promotion

The Boston Globe's newish Ideas section is always worth scanning. Even more so this week as it, ahem, includes a Chris Mooney-penned piece on cultural economist Tyler Cowen that cites both me and Virginia Postrel.

Cowen's got a new book out, Creative Destruction, which argues that globalization is good for cultural process. For balance, Mooney cites everyone's favorite poli. sci. prof, Benjamin Barber. From the piece:

[Cowen's] newfound attention to nuance isn't likely to win over globalization critics like University of Maryland political scientist Benjamin Barber, author of the 1995 book "Jihad vs. McWorld." Barber is not impressed, for example, with one of Cowen's classic case studies: Trinidadian steel-band ensembles who "acquired their instruments—fifty-gallon oil drums—from the multinational oil companies." Barber retorts in an interview, "I've also seen third-world necklaces made out of spent 50-caliber machine-gun shells. Does that justify colonial war?"