Creative Destruction
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A01=Tyler Cowen
Action film
American Movie
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Author
Author_Tyler Cowen
Brand
Bryan Caplan
Bureaucrat
Canadians
Category=GTQ
Category=JBCC
Cinema of Hong Kong
Cinema of the United States
Code word (figure of speech)
Collectivism
Collegiality
Commercialism
Competition
Consumer
Cosmopolitanism
Creative destruction
Cross-cultural
Cultural diversity
Cultural homogenization
Cultural identity
Cultural imperialism
Culture of the United States
Customer
Daniel Klein (grammarian)
David Schmidtz
Dumbing down
Economic development
Economy
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eq_society-politics
Ethos
Expense
Fast food
Film industry
Filmmaking
Folk art
Free trade
Funding
Globalization
Institution
International trade
Literature
Major film studio
Market economy
Marketing
Mercatus Center
Modernity
Multiculturalism
Politics
Printing press
Project
Protectionism
Robin Hanson
Seminar
Society
Sophistication
Sound film
Special effect
Steven Spielberg
Subsidy
Technology
Third World
Timur Kuran
Tourism
Trade-off
Wealth
Welfare
Western culture
Western world
Yuppie
Product details
- ISBN 9780691117836
- Weight: 28g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 21 Mar 2004
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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A Frenchman rents a Hollywood movie. A Thai schoolgirl mimics Madonna. Saddam Hussein chooses Frank Sinatra's "My Way" as the theme song for his fifty-fourth birthday. It is a commonplace that globalization is subverting local culture. But is it helping as much as it hurts? In this strikingly original treatment of a fiercely debated issue, Tyler Cowen makes a bold new case for a more sympathetic understanding of cross-cultural trade. Creative Destruction brings not stale suppositions but an economist's eye to bear on an age-old question: Are market exchange and aesthetic quality friends or foes? On the whole, argues Cowen in clear and vigorous prose, they are friends. Cultural "destruction" breeds not artistic demise but diversity. Through an array of colorful examples from the areas where globalization's critics have been most vocal, Cowen asks what happens when cultures collide through trade, whether technology destroys native arts, why (and whether) Hollywood movies rule the world, whether "globalized" culture is dumbing down societies everywhere, and if national cultures matter at all.
Scrutinizing such manifestations of "indigenous" culture as the steel band ensembles of Trinidad, Indian handweaving, and music from Zaire, Cowen finds that they are more vibrant than ever--thanks largely to cross-cultural trade. For all the pressures that market forces exert on individual cultures, diversity typically increases within society, even when cultures become more like each other. Trade enhances the range of individual choice, yielding forms of expression within cultures that flower as never before. While some see cultural decline as a half-empty glass, Cowen sees it as a glass half-full with the stirrings of cultural brilliance. Not all readers will agree, but all will want a say in the debate this exceptional book will stir.
Tyler Cowen is Holbert C. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University, where he is General Director of the Mercatus Center and the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy. His books include "What Price Fame?", "In Praise of Commercial Culture", and "Risk and Business Cycles".
