End of Politics

In The End of Politics, Carl Boggs delves beneath the sound bites and news headlines to explore the ongoing process of depoliticization in the United States. This pathbreaking book provides a panoramic view of our political, economic, cultural, and technological scene. Attuned to the many contemporary trends eroding the public sphere, Boggs illuminates the American retreat to an eerily privatized landscape of shopping malls, gated communities, new-age fads, rural militias, isolated computer terminals, and postmodern intellectual discourse. Drawing lessons from such diverse phenomena as the influence of economic globalization, the spread of civic violence and gun culture, and the end of the cold war, he traces the social processes that underpin and accelerate the triumph of antipolitics. Readers learn how the effects of free-market ideology and corporate power have helped to undermine civic obligation, democratic participation, and popular decision making--at a time when mounting social and ecological crises demand far-reaching and creative political solutions.

Booknews

Looking at the current state of US society, Boggs (social sciences, National U., Los Angeles) argues that the effects of free-market ideology and corporate power have helped undermine civic obligations, democratic participation, and popular decision making just at a time when mounting social and ecological crises demand far-reaching and creative political solutions. He also presents strategies for building deep citizenship and viable progressive movements. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Carl Boggs is the author of numerous books in the fields of contemporary social and political theory, European politics, and popular movements, including The Two Revolutions: Antonio Gramsci and the Dilemmas of Western Marxism (1984), Social Movements and Political Power (1986), Intellectuals and the Crisis of Modernity (1993), and The Socialist Tradition (1996). He has taught at UCLA, USC, and Washington University in St. Louis. For the past 12 years he has been professor of social sciences at National University in Los Angeles.