Addresses the issue of modern corporate power, exposing the harmful effects gobalization is having not only on economics, but also on politics, society and the environment

We have long been told that corporations rule the world, their interests seemingly taking precedence over states and their citizens. Yet, while states, civil society, and international organizations are well drawn in terms of their institutions, ideologies, and functions, the world's global corporations are often more simply sketched as mechanisms of profit maximization. In this book, John Mikler re-casts global corporations as political actors with complex identities and strategies. Debunking the idea of global corporations as exclusively profit-driven entities, he shows how they seek not only to drive or modify the agendas of states but to govern in their own right. He also explains why we need to re-territorialize global corporations as political actors that reflect and project the political power of the states and regions from which they hail. We know the global corporations' names, we know where they are headquartered, and we know where they invest and operate. Economic processes are increasingly produced by the control they possess, the relationships they have, the leverage they employ, the strategic decisions they make, and the discourses they create to enhance acceptance of their interests. This book represents a call to study how they do so, rather than making assumptions based on theoretical abstractions.

Why is it that multinational drug companies hide or falsify unfavorable results? Why do automakers knowingly sell us unsafe cars? Why is big business allowed to poison our environment—and us? Why is our food so unhealthy, with obesity growing at such an alarming rate? Why are we working such long hours and enjoying life less? This timely and important book places the blame for much of what ails contemporary society squarely on one institution: the modern publicly traded corporation, which enjoys the legal status of an individual but does not seem bound by the same legal and moral responsibilities, or, in fact, by its nature that is brutally and implacably selfish. While recognizing the positive contributions corporations have made over the past two centuries to science, technology, and medicine, Rowland examines the greed at the core of it all and pinpoints what went wrong and how we can free ourselves from the “Greed is good” syndrome.

Foreword by Ralph Nader. In Corporation Nation Derber addresses the unchecked power of today's corporations to shape the way we work, earn, buy, sell, and think—the very way we live. Huge, far-reaching mergers are now commonplace, downsizing is rampant, and our lines of communication, news and entertainment media, jobs, and savings are increasingly controlled by a handful of global—and unaccountable—conglomerates. We are, in effect, losing our financial and emotional security, depending more than ever on the whim of these corporations. But it doesn't have to be this way, as this book makes clear. Just as the original Populist movement of the nineteenth century helped dethrone the robber barons, Derber contends that a new, positive populism can help the U.S. workforce regain its self-control. Drawing on core sociological concepts and demonstrating the power of the sociological imagination, he calls for revisions in our corporate system, changes designed to keep corporations healthy while also making them answerable to the people. From rewriting corporate charters to altering consumer habits, Derber offers new aims for businesses and empowering strategies by which we all can make a difference.

"An urgent and witty manifesto, Monopolies Suck shows how monopoly power is harming everyday Americans and practical ways we can all fight back."--

The contributors to Corporate Citizen explore the legal frameworks and standards of conduct for multinational corporations. In a globalized world governed by domestic and international law, these corporations can be everywhere and nowhere at once, reaping financial benefits and enjoying the protections of investor-state arbitration but rarely being held accountable for the economic, environmental, and human rights harms they may have caused. Given the far-reaching power and success of the transnational corporation, and the many legal tools allowing these companies to avoid liability, how can governments protect their citizens? Broad-ranging in perspective, colourful and thought-provoking, the chapters in Corporate Citizen make the case that because the success of corporate global citizenship risks undermining national and international democratic governance, the multinational corporation must be more closely scrutinized and controlled – in the service of humanity and the protection of the natural environment.

The threat of continued warfare to the future of humanity has become dire. "The Great Turning explores that threat in detail and provides an equally detailed plan for meeting -- and overcoming -- it. Written in the author's trademark clear, compelling style, this timely book uncovers the roots of Empire in ancient Athens and charts the long transition from the institutions of monarchy to those of the global economy as the favored instruments of imperialism. Korten then discusses the promise of early America as a democracy dedicated to spreading liberty and freedom -- and the failure of th.

National Book Award for Nonfiction Finalist National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Finalist A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year A PBS “Now Read This” Book Club Selection Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Economist and the Boston Globe A landmark exposé and “deeply engaging legal history” of one of the most successful, yet least known, civil rights movements in American history (Washington Post). In a revelatory work praised as “excellent and timely” (New York Times Book Review, front page), Adam Winkler, author of Gunfight, once again makes sense of our fraught constitutional history in this incisive portrait of how American businesses seized political power, won “equal rights,” and transformed the Constitution to serve big business. Uncovering the deep roots of Citizens United, he repositions that controversial 2010 Supreme Court decision as the capstone of a centuries-old battle for corporate personhood. “Tackling a topic that ought to be at the heart of political debate” (Economist), Winkler surveys more than four hundred years of diverse cases—and the contributions of such legendary legal figures as Daniel Webster, Roger Taney, Lewis Powell, and even Thurgood Marshall—to reveal that “the history of corporate rights is replete with ironies” (Wall Street Journal). We the Corporations is an uncompromising work of history to be read for years to come.

Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Citizens United and other high-profile cases have sparked passionate disagreement about the proper role of corporations in American democracy. Partisans on both sides have made bold claims, often with little basis in historical facts. Bringing together leading scholars of history, law, and political science, Corporations and American Democracy provides the historical and intellectual grounding necessary to put today’s corporate policy debates in proper context. From the nation’s founding to the present, Americans have regarded corporations with ambivalence—embracing their potential to revolutionize economic life and yet remaining wary of their capacity to undermine democratic institutions. Although corporations were originally created to give businesses and other associations special legal rights and privileges, historically they were denied many of the constitutional protections afforded flesh-and-blood citizens. This comprehensive volume covers a range of topics, including the origins of corporations in English and American law, the historical shift from special charters to general incorporation, the increased variety of corporations that this shift made possible, and the roots of modern corporate regulation in the Progressive Era and New Deal. It also covers the evolution of judicial views of corporate rights, particularly since corporations have become the form of choice for an increasing variety of nonbusiness organizations, including political advocacy groups. Ironically, in today’s global economy the decline of large, vertically integrated corporations—the type of corporation that past reform movements fought so hard to regulate—poses some of the newest challenges to effective government oversight of the economy.

The international bestselling author of When Corporations Rule the World shares a vital new vision for changing humanity’s self-destructive course. We humans live by stories, says David Korten, and the stories that now govern our society have set us on a self-destructive path. In Change the Story, Change the Future, Korten offers a new story that lets us reimagine society and navigate the critical needs of our time. Korten calls our current story Sacred Money and Markets. Money, it tells us, is the measure of all worth and the source of all happiness, while inequality and environmental destruction are unfortunate but unavoidable. Although many recognize that this story promotes bad ethics, bad science, and bad economics, it will remain our guiding story until replaced by one that aligns with our deepest understanding of the universe and our relationship to it. To guide our path to a viable human future, Korten offers a story he calls Sacred Life and Living Earth. It is grounded in a cosmology that affirms we are living beings born of a living Earth itself born of a living universe. Our health and well-being therefore depend on an economy that works in partnership with the Earth's community of life. Offering a hopeful vision, Korten lays out the transformative impact adopting this story will have on every aspect of human life and society.