Copyright (c) 2009 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/sbeder Recent documents in Professor Sharon Beder en-us Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:02:37 PDT 3600 http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/34 http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/34 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:52:51 PDT At the onset of the twenty first century work and production have become ends in themselves. The resulting material affluence is accompanied by increasing levels of stress, insecurity, depression, crime, and drug taking. Escalating production and consumption are also destroying the environment on which life itself depends. Yet employment has become such a priority that much environmental degradation is justified merely on the grounds that it provides jobs. And people are so concerned to keep their jobs that they are willing to do what their employers require of them even if they believe it is wrong or environmentally destructive.The social benefit of having the majority of able-bodied people in a society working hard all week goes unquestioned, particularly by those who work hardest. Few people today can imagine a society that does not revolve around work. How did paid work come to be so central to our lives? Why is it that so many people wouldn't know what to do with themselves or who they were if they did not have their jobs?In this major new book, Sharon Beder unearths the origins and the practices of a triumphant culture of work in which the wealthy are respected and inequality is justified. Dr Beder shows that these values are neither natural nor inevitable. They have been actively promoted - through religious preaching, corporate propaganda, the education system, and socialisation - by those who benefit most from them.Selling The Work Ethic provides an absorbing account and critique of this central aspect of modern capitalist society. Prompted by her conviction that humanity needs to unlearn and change these powerfully held but now pathological values if we are to reverse the declining quality of life in industrial society, Dr Beder illuminates the impasse we are now in. S. Beder The Work Ethic http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/33 http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/33 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:41:34 PDT Global Spin reveals the sophisticated techniques being used around the world by powerful conservative forces to try to change the way the public and politicians think about the environment. Large corporations are using their influence to reshape public opinion, to weaken gains made by environmentalists, and to turn politicians against increased environmental regulation. The corporations' techniques include employing specialized PR firms to set up front groups that promote the corporate agenda whilst posing as public-interest groups; creating 'astroturf' - artificially created grassroots support for corporate causes; deterring public involvement by imposing SLAPPS-strategic lawsuits against public participation; getting corporate-based 'environmental educational' materials into schools; and funding conservative think-tanks, which have persistently tried to cast doubt on the existence of environmental problems and to oppose stricter environmental regulations. In the media, corporate advertising and sponsorship are influencing news content, and industry-funded scientists are often treated as independent experts. In the shops, 'green marketing' is being used to reassure consumers that corporations are addressing serious environmental problems. Global Spin shows how, in a relentless assault on democracy and its institutions, the massive, covert power of large corporations has enabled corporate agendas to dominate the international debate about the state of the environment and the most effective means of solving environmental problems. S. Beder Corporate Public Relations http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/32 http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/32 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:33:39 PDT Power Play argues persuasively that the track record of electricity privatisation and deregulation around the world indicates that it is a confidence trick. The book shows how simplistic ideology and economic theory have been used to mask the pursuit of self-interest; how control of electricity has been wrested from public hands to create profit opportunities for investors and multinational corporations; and how an essential public service has been turned into a speculative commodity in the name of 'reform'. Power Play explores the battles between private and public ownership in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia since the early twentieth century, and the agenda-setting and public relations strategies involved. It investigates the way that developing countries such as Brazil and India have been forced to allow foreign investors to exercise a stranglehold over their electricity systems. And it uncovers the campaigns waged by think tanks, corporate interests, and multinational companies such as Enron to swindle the public in dozens of countries out of rightful control over an essential public service. S. Beder Electricity Privatisation http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/31 http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/31 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:29:33 PDT Throughout the 20th Century business associations and coalitions coordinated mass propaganda campaigns that combined public relations techniques developed in 20th Century America with revitalised free market ideology originating in 18th Century Europe. The aim was to persuade people that it was in their interests to eschew their own power as workers and citizens, and forego their democratic power to restrain and regulate business activity. These campaigns have been augmented by those of corporate-funded think tanks in English speaking nations to promote free enterprise and business-friendly policies and by other strategies to encourage market-orientation such as the expansion of share ownership.Today's free market missionaries seek to change individual and institutional values using bolder strategies such as the expansion of share ownership and the manipulation of wider public concerns. In the end the outcome is the same, the triumph of business values over community values and the manipulation of democracy. S. Beder Corporate Public Relations http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/30 http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/30 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:26:59 PDT For the last forty years transnational corporations have been mobilizing behind the scenes to ensure that governments of all persuasions adopt business-friendly policies and to secure corporate access to global markets in every corner of the world. Key corporate leaders have created powerful networks of business groups and international coalitions to mobilize political support for globalization and to reorient the policies of international institutions and national governments. Where persuasion has not been enough, economic pressure and coercion have been employed. S. Beder Corporate Public Relations http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/29 http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/29 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:21:23 PDT Environmental Principles and Policies examines six key environmental and social principles that have been incorporated into international treaties and national laws. It uses them to evaluate the new wave of economic instruments and market-oriented environmental policies that seek to utilise economic incentives and market forces to protect the environment. S. Beder Environmental Politics Environmental Economics http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/28 http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/28 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:16:58 PDT This Little Kiddy Went to Market investigates the way that corporations are strategically shaping children to be hyperconsumers, submissive employees, and passive, unquestioning citizens as well as feeding a burgeoning pharmaceutical industry by ensuring children who cannot be shaped are given a psychiatric diagnosis. It covers the way that corporations are targeting ever younger children with a barrage of advertising and marketing; the way that children's play has been turned into a commercial opportunity; and how corporations have taken advantage of childish anxieties and insecurities, and reshaped children's very identities. It shows how school funding shortages have opened the door to an influx of corporate materials into schools aimed at inculcating consumer and business values. The book analyses school reforms in English-speaking nations to uncover the hidden agendas behind them including: shifting of responsibility for the consequences of funding shortages to school management; turning schools into competing business enterprises where children are drilled and constantly tested; producing submissive employees with basic literacy and numeracy skills rather than developing an informed active citizenry with critical thinking skills; enabling businesses to take control of more and more aspects of schooling; and eroding the ideal and reality of public schooling. S. Beder Children and Education http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/27 http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/27 Thu, 29 May 2008 11:39:37 PDT [Extract] The root of the environmental problem, however, is the priority given to economic considerations over environmental considerations. Economic instruments, privatisation and environmental 'valuation' ensure that priority is still given to economic goals and they enable firms to make decisions that affect others on the basis of their own economic interests. Even if those economic interests have been slightly modified to give a small economic value to environmental impacts, the basic paradigm remains unchanged: whenever big profits can be made the environment will be destroyed. S. Beder Corporate Public Relations http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/26 http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/26 Thu, 29 May 2008 11:39:35 PDT In 1990, neo-liberal think tanks the Institute of Public Affairs and the Tasman Institute collaborated with 13 employer associations to form 'Project Victoria' - a venture which outlined a neo-liberal agenda for the incoming Victorian (Coalition) Government. This article analyses Project Victoria and the privatisation of Victoria's electricity industry as a case study of the impact of neo-liberal think tanks. The analysis of Project Victoria highlights three main aspects of the impact of neo-liberal think tanks in contemporary Australia. First, neo-liberal think tanks are inextricably bound to the interests of business. Second, neo-liberal think tanks provide a broad framework within which sympathetic governments can convert the sectional interests of business and elites into policy and rhetoric. Third, the think tanks play an important role as shock troops for neo-liberalism. D. Cahill Electricity Privatisation http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/25 http://works.bepress.com/sbeder/25 Thu, 29 May 2008 11:39:32 PDT Engineering appears to be at a turning point. It is evolving from an occupation that provides employers and clients with competent technical advice to a profession that serves the community in a socially responsible manner. Traditional engineering education caters to the former ideal, whereas increasingly both engineers themselves and their professional societies aspire to the latter. Employers are also requiring more from their engineering employees than technical proficiency. A new educational approach is needed to meet these changing requirements. It is no longer sufficient, nor even practical, to attempt to cram students full of technical knowledge in the hope that it will enable them to do whatever engineering task is required of them throughout their careers. A broader, more general approach is required that not only helps students to understand basic engineering principles but also gives them the ability to acquire more specialized knowledge as the need arises. S. Beder Other