The Great Disruption

Anthony Gottlieb

...Fukuyama is an analyst who does notintellectually speakingget out of bed for anything less than the all-encompassing grand sweep of history....[He] reaffirms his belief that history "appears to be progressive and directional" in the political and economic realm....He has given us strong reasons to believe that a recovery would comeand the evidence to show that it in fact did. You don't need an upward arrow of History to know which way the wind blows. —The New York Times Book Review

David Shi

...Fukuyama marshals an impressive array of data...to bolster his broad thesis....[His] controversial assertions...are enough to create a stimulating book, but Fukuyama offers more....[A] must-read for those interested in the human condition.
—Christian Science Monitor

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 revolution. After defining the Great Disruption (the usual litany of increased crime, family breakdown and lack of confidence in public institutions), Fukuyama turns to an exploration of the nature of human beings and morality. In doing so, he makes much of the idea of "social capital," which he defines as "a set of informal values or norms shared among members of a group that permits cooperation among them." Social capital is lacking in periods of disruption and is present when periods of disruption come to an end. Simply put, it's what makes civil society possible. He concludes that Western societies are now reconstructing their social orders--much as they have over the course of history--through revitalized morality, renewed civic pride and strengthened family life. As in previous books, Fukuyama's conclusions are less interesting than the way he arrives at them through a willingness to ask the big questions and an ability to look at contemporary society through the lens of his own vast reading and scholarship. (June) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Alan Wolfe

....Fukuyama wishes to examine the social and moral consequences of a society whose main economic activity lies in the accumulation and the dissemination of information.
— The New Republic

Andrew Ferguson

...[A] learned and impressive work, ranging easily across disciplines, combining fact and argument in subtle and unexpected ways....[And] if you're of a certain cast of mind, it is sure to give you the creeps....
— The Weekly Standard

Charles Murray

...[T]akes on questions that go to the heart of social policy writ large. It is written with never-failing lucidity, brings together vast and disparate literatures, and makes one think in new ways about the prospects of post-industrial society. That is quite enough for one book.
— Commentary

David Shi

...Fukuyama marshals an impressive array of data...to bolster his broad thesis....[His] controversial assertions...are enough to create a stimulating book, but Fukuyama offers more....[A] must-read for those interested in the human condition.
— The Christian Science Monitor

Phillip E. Johnson

Fukuyama...observes and interprets the social world....His message is that social disruption is self-healing, provided that people are given a chance to follow their innate desires for norm-setting and for building communities.
— National Review

Steven Waldman

...[T]here is much that is thoughtful and original in this book....Fukuyama is on to something when he identifies...massive economic forces, rather than government policies, as the key to the riddle...The Washington Monthly

Alan Ehrenhalt

This is, in its way, almost as profound an idea as the End of history. Mr. Fukuyama believes the values that began to sweep through the Western world in the mid-1960s—individual over community, rights over responsibilities, liberty over order—are rapidly losing ground....He argues that the past three decades have represented a Great Disruption in the normal process of human social order. And we are on the verge of recovering from it...[E]ven Mr. Fukuyama's harshest critics have to give him credit for something important.
— The Wall Street Journal

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 itis 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)