Le blog d'Edouard Husson

un livre qui étudie les ambiguités de la "démocratie du consommateur" -

un ouvrage qui vaut par sa description sociologue de la course au "bon marché" dans nos sociétés: "when prices are low, wages are also low", p.53.

Un livre qui a de très bonnes formules: "Museuized urban centers practise outsourcing of all visible problems: they are relegated to the suburbs. Our leisure cities must appear clean, safe and attractive. Paris is a wonderful example of this. Paris is Venice, is Disney, is Las Vegas. So far, the French capital has managed to outsource all its problems, which are mainly of a social or environmental nature" (p.111)// "Real markets mimic financial markets" (p.122)

un texte qui nous parle d'un monde en train d'être englouti par la crise du dollar ("A world of cheap is also dependent on cheap money"), p.19

Lire: chapitre 3, pp.58-79: "The Wal-Martization of our society"
""Shopping at Wal-Mart, people learn that thanks to Wal-Mart, they can continue to live their American Dream because the prioces are low. A good selection of goods at good prices. But they pay for this with hard work and low wages. And with this logic, it seems inevitable that, if you look closer at the organization, you are going to find it employing illegal immigrants. The dowward spiral this causes accelarates.
And this in turn produces the unavoidable double moral standard of a world in the process of globalization. We have a stark contrast between a more and more uncompromising asceticism in working life and utter hedonism in our leisure time, where we have a wealth of inexpensive options. While our work processes requires us to exploit our personal resources more and more - time, money, mental and physical energy - in a deregulated world of leisure we get to do whatever we want in our free time. Uninhibited hedonism and inhibited work standards meet in an insoluble paradox.
This Wal-Mart with its low prices (in the sense of value plus price) and its low wages is in an increasingly polarized position in contrast to a world of premium values with exorbitant wages in top management. Here, too, the question is how long this can go on. While the premium prices quickly come under increasing pressure, there isn't really an analogous development with regard to top salaries. If anything, the opposite is the case". (pp.69-70)

Lire: chapitre 7, "What is worth what?pp.163-174
"The desire to have children is almost as ubiquitous as the desire to find a partner. And the creativity with which people conduct a surch to get the child they want is also boundless. The US lesbian couple Sharon Duchesneau and Candy McCullough, from Bethesda in Maryland, were both born deaf. Their greatest wish was a child who was also deaf. Nowadays, it's easy to find a sperm donor, for example at mannotincluded.com, a website that offers "Private fertility - for lesbians and single women". After drawing a blank there, the two women found a sperm donor in the family of some friends, a family whose members were all deaf and had been deaf for five generations due to a genetic condition. So baby Gauvin McCullough was born. He was born deaf, but developed minimal hearing in one ear after a few months. The couple intend to let Gauvin himself decide later whether he wants a hearing aid or not. Their reasons for wanting a deaf baby are hyperindividualistic: deafness is not an illness that has to be cured but a cultural identity one assumes. They want the baby to have the same experience and feelings its parents had. This is a very good example of how legal limits can be interpreted in a highly individualistic manner. You can justify anything in this way. The law is flexible, just as flexible are human expectations.

Another example that can be mentioned here is that of a Dutsch student from Haarlem - even though this is more a media-interest story and one that touches more on aesthetic values - who decided to enter in a solo marriage: the young lady married herself. Thirty-year-old Jennifer Hoes pubklished the banns and turned up at the register office before registrar Ruud Grondel wearing the obligatory wedding dress. Even though such an act could not be legalized, it shows how the logic can be taken to extremes. Jennifer gave the following reason for her decision: "We live in a 'Me' society. Hence it is logical that one promises to be faithful to oneself". The bride's refusal to become emotionally dependent on anyone else and her resolve to be true to no one but herself is perhaps one that many women will understand. What we can see here, however, is a semless transition from hyperindividualism to hyper-democracy. Hyperdemocracy means that there is no value that does not have a legitimate claim to political realization. And that, of course, makes things immeasurably complex and dynamic. It means that there is no subject too absurd to appear on the agendas of parliaments and executive organs. We can already see today that the topics under public discussion are becoming more and more banal and self-centred" (pp.170-71)