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From The Publisher, Simon & Schuster, 1999 |
| In the past thirty years, the United States has undergone a profound transformation in its social structure: Crime has increased, trust has declined, families have broken down, and individualism has triumphed over community. Has the Great Disruption of recent decades rent the fabric of American society irreparably? In this brilliant and sweeping work of social, economic, and moral analysis, Francis Fukuyama shows that even as the old order has broken apart, a new social order is already taking its place. The Great Disruption forges a new model for understanding the Great Reconstruction that is under way. |
Francis Fukuyama is the sociologist who has written about the end of history -- in the Hegelian sense of history moving by major conflicts. He has seen liberal capitalism becoming triumphant in the world.
In The Great Disruption Francis Fukuyama writes about is the disruption of social harmony in the sixties and seventies -- as in rising crime rates, a breakdown of shared values and trust. And the Great Disruption, writes Fukuyama, has put the "nuclear family into a long-term decline."
Fukuyama's work is not pessimistic. He points out some ups and downs in social disruptions across recent centuries, and he believes that just as creativity brought new harmonies following those disruptions, so too will creativity bring new harmonies in our times. There will be, he claims, a Great Reconstruction, in other words a rebuilding of harmony, good will and trust.
Associated with this rebuilding, Fukuyama writes of human nature. He draws from the recent trend in viewing genetics as playing a role in human behavior, away from the notion that we act merely in response to our environment and cultural upbringing. Fukuyama does not mention empathy specifically -- the inborn empathy that has helped dogs, chimpanzees and humans live in a group and preventing them from tearing each other apart. But empathy has to be a part of his optimism about the new reconstruction.
Fukuyama examines the cause of the last Great Disruption -- which took place in the 1960s and 70s. Fukuyama appears to see different explanations of the disruption as exclusive of each other, and he writes that a plausible cause was diverging values -- a cultural divergence.
Some of what Fukuyama calls the Great Disruption was itself a healing process. The civil rights movement was America coming to terms with its past. Fukuyama equates people getting along with each other with what many call morality, and in his last thirty-three pages he writes a summary that includes a description of capitalism as simultaneously injuring and improving moral behavior. He sees capitalism as a part of our future. He disagrees with Daniel Bell and others that capitalism necessarily undercuts its own moral basis. "There is little evidence," he writes, "that the need for informal ethical norms will disappear, or that human beings will cease to set moral standards for themselves and seek to live up to them."
Fukuyama sees no conservative religious revival in western society similar to what Iran experienced in 1979. He claims that a return to religiosity in the United States would far more likely be decentralized and without a dominant dogma. People in the United States, he suggests, will continue to hold to their individualism and to their belief in individual choice for others.
About modern industrial societies in general Fukuyama writes:
Nations built on … universal liberal principles have been surprisingly resilient over the past two hundred years, despite frequent setbacks and shortcomings. A political order based on Serb ethnic identity or Twelver Shi'ism will never grow beyond the boundaries of some miserable corner of the Balkans or Middle East, and could certainly never become the governing principle of large, diverse, dynamic, and complex modern societies.... The logic of a liberal and democratic political order becomes more pressing as societies develop economically, since reconciliation of all of the diverse interests that make them up requires both participation and equality.
From The Critics
Reviewed by Donald E. Brown, Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, University of California at Santa Barbara, USA.
The New York Times Book Review, Anthony Gottlieb
...his careful reporting of a wide range of social data and his critical account of the various explanations that have been offered for them make this a useful volume. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
The Wall Street Journal, Alan Ehrenhalt
...even Mr. Fukuyama's harshest critics have to give him credit for something important. He asks large questions; he generates coherent answers; and he changes the agenda of public debate. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Virginia Postrel
The Great Disruption is an important and ambitious work. It promises to communicate unconventional ideas to political intellectuals bound by convention and thus to inject much needed vitality and realism into stale and stylized debates. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Fukuyama attempts to reconcile the extent of social disruption experienced in many Western countries during the past 30 years with his neo-Hegelian belief that the triumph of Western liberal democracy represents an end of history (articulated in The End of History and the Last Man). He successfully contends that the "Great Disruption" Western nations are experiencing as society moves from an industrial to an information economy is much like the social upheaval that accompanied the industrial... read more --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Fukuyama's two previous books staked a distinct claim on the intellectual landscape, and this one extends the arguments floated in Trust (1995). Put simply, he argues that the Western world has begun to turn away from 1960s social innovations for the reason that the transition from an industrial to an information economy is largely complete. Concomitant with that, "social capital" is accumulating again after decades of rights-endowed individualism. In detail Fukuyama's views are more academically nuanced; but fundamentally he discerns a cultural reversal of sociological indicators, proferring in support scads of data and graphs on crime, marriage and fertility, and public opinion about values. Some readers might find more forceful, however, his exposition on human nature and the origin of the family, especially if one rejects the claim that they are socially constructed. Fukuyama thinks they are not and that from them emerge the informal norms that create social order, so that stable families equal socialized kids equal low crime and trust-based capitalism. Brainy stuff for the debate minded. Gilbert Taylor --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
Technological and economic progress meet social decay in this ambitious book that promises more than it delivers. Part of what makes reading Fukuyama (Public Policy/George Mason Univ.) fun and interesting is his willingness to take on big questions, as he did in The End of History and the Last Man (1992). Here he tackles what he finds to be the epochal transformation of developed societies into a postindustrial era where information and knowledge form the basis of economic life. He finds this transformation to be as monumental as the Industrial Revolution, and as disruptive. The dawn of the postindustrial era, roughly since the 1960s, has been accompanied by dramatic increases in crime, family breakups, and public distrust. Why has this occurred, what is the connection between technological change and social upheaval? Fukuyama maintains that technological changes have allowed certain things to occur that would not have otherwise. A post-industrial economy, which needs brains not brawn, has allowed unprecedented numbers of women to enter the workforce. While not necessarily bad in itself, this trend has contributed to the breakdown of families. When this happens, naturally aggressive young men do not have the checks on their actions that a strong family presents, hence the increase in crime. The advent of the pill and abortion have allowed men to be sexually more promiscuous and abdicate their communal responsibilities, such as control[ling] access to women on the part of younger men. Fukuyama deals with much more, yet what he says returns again and again to family. In the end he is optimistic that families, and hence society, will right themselves, for we are social animals and it is in our nature to reconstitute society into viable and functional forms. He may be correct, but the book ends up being a disingenuous defense of specific values rather than any dispassionate analysis of the interactions of technological and social change. A disappointing effort that, for all its detail, says very little. (First serial to Atlantic Monthly) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Walter Kirn in New York Magazine
David Shi in The Christian Science Monitor
Michael Kazin in the Washington Post
Charles Murray in Commentary
Gavin McNett in Salon
Book Description
In the past thirty years, the United States has undergone a profound transformation in its social structure: Crime has increased, trust has declined, families have broken down, and individualism has triumphed over community. Has the Great Disruption of recent decades rent the fabric of American society irreparably? In this brilliant and sweeping work of social, economic, and moral analysis, Francis Fukuyama shows that even as the old order has broken apart, a new social order is already taking its place. The Great Disruption forges a new model for understanding the Great Reconstruction that is under way.
About the Author
Francis Fukuyama is a professor of public policy at George Mason University and the author of The End of History and the Last Man and Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. He lives in McLean, Virginia.
PBS Interview
Book Synopsis
Customer Reviews
Reviewer from Ohio
This is an important book for readers who are interested in how our cultural landscape has shifted in the last three decades and what the future holds for us. Mr. Fukuyama is the premiere writer in American today when it comes to articulating the big picture and offering unique and provocative viewpoints. "The Great Disruption" is further evidence of that fact. Many Americans fail to appreicate the incredible social changes that have taken place since 1960 and Fukuyama pinpoints the prime culprit - a radical change in gender relations. Changes in the economy and the government are big enough but when you're talking about the way that families are raised and how men and women relate to each other - social mores that have lasted for thousands of years - you're talking about a seismic social shift. This revolution, which Fukuyama traces to the birth control pill, has led to serious social issues - teen pregancy, single-parent families, crime, low trust in government, and more. This is not a completely unique thesis but Fukuyama explains it in far more depth than any other recent author. Furthermore, Fukuyama reports that this "Great Dispruption" is mellowing and he uses the encouraging statistical data of the last five years as evidence. The author sites mankind's fundamental need for order as the catalyst for this social pause. What he leaves out, however, is a vision of what our country will look like ten or twenty years from now because of this development. Will these statistic trends level off? Will they reverse themselves? And if so, completely? Or is this just the eye of a storm waiting to churn again? This, I suppose, is left to the intellect of the reader. Nevertheless, this book is a must-read.
Reviewer from Texas
Fukiyama's End of History was a bit overwritten, but it contained some original and provocative ideas which he convincingly defended. The book caught my attention to the degree that I've bought Fukiyama's subsequent books: Trust, and now The Great Disruption.
Trust, Fukiyama's middle book, explored some of the links between what he calls "spontaneous sociability", circles of trust, and productivity. Not exactly the sweeping scope of End of History, but he did promote some new ideas.
The Great Disruption, in many ways, reads like "Trust Lite". This time around Fukiyama focuses on the relationships between rules, social order, and economic growth. He offers some empirical data (and nifty line charts) on statistics like crime, out of wedlock births, poverty, etc. There is some good information here, but I reached the end of the book without having acquired any new ideas or concepts.
The book's conclusion is strange. First, he puts in a plug for his End of History theme: that liberal democracy is the only viable alternative for the advancement of society. He then goes on to contradict his Hegelian theory of historical directionality by concluding that history in the "social and moral sphere" is not in fact directional in nature, but is cyclical. Finally, he concludes that the future of mankind depends on the "upward direction of the arrow of History", contradicting his previous point and again promoting his idea of the "directionality". Huh??
In the end, Fukiyama runs us around in circles (280 pages worth) without reaching any real conclusions at all. There wasn't really enough material here for a book, and as I read Disruption I felt that I was just getting bits and pieces that he'd forgotten to include in his previous two releases. This is recycled material. Not recommended. |
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