FOR RELEASE: Aug. 19, 1999
Contact: Franklin Crawford
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ITHACA, N.Y. -- Walter LaFeber's latest book was intended for use in the lecture hall. But Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism (Norton, $22.95) has proven to be compelling grist for a much wider audience. "During a call-in show at WNYC, they had to shut down the phone lines so many people were calling in," said LaFeber, Cornell University's Marie Underhill Noll Professor of American History. "People have very strong feelings about Jordan, his relationship with Nike's factories in Southeast Asia and the issue of culture vs. capitalism."
As stated on the book's dust jacket, Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism "is a primer on one of the most important issues currently under debate: how the devices of triumphant capitalism, coupled with high-tech telecommunications, are conquering the world, one mind -- one pair of feet -- at a time."
The book includes a mini-biography of retired basketball superstar Jordan, then slashes and dashes through social history while it spins and fires long-range economic critiques in the face of transnational enterprises like sports outfitter Nike.
In the '80s and '90s, Nike capitalized on the Jordan mystique and, with "His Airness" as its front man, led the charge of transnationals into the global marketplace. Today Jordan is as familiar a figure to Buddhist monks on the Tibetan Plateau as to street children in Brazil and is almost universally idolized. But Jordan is more than a sports figure. His ubiquity symbolizes the successful infiltration of American culture into nations and societies that are only beginning to realize that American power is as much about sportswear, hamburgers and soft drinks as it is about military might.
But the real issue, LaFeber says, isn't about America vs. the world but capitalism vs. culture.
"No one is forcing anybody to eat hamburgers or wear Nikes. A lot of people in France and China want to become American. They want Nike, McDonalds and Coca Cola; they want to see American television. The authorities want to filter this information, and it has stirred a lot of interesting debate within these countries about the influence of American culture," said LaFeber. "There are meetings now in the United Nations about how to exclude American culture without excluding the normal flow of trade, which is a very delicate situation."
LaFeber suggests that Jordan also symbolizes a rupture in the tradition of socially responsible public sports figures, and this new persona parallels the emergence of global high-tech communications and megabucks transnational interests. While he's not the first American athlete to enjoy global citizenship, Jordan, unlike Muhammad Ali or Kareem Abdul Jabbar, for instance, has remained a purely commercial force, almost blatantly apolitical. LaFeber writes that Jordan's career "helps us to understand something about the nature of U.S. power in the post-Cold War era."
The author explores what he calls Jordan's "Faustian bargain," how Jordan sold himself to the media, suffered its glaring scrutiny (remember his gambling, his father's death) and, when asked to take a stand on charges that Nike subcontractors in Southeast Asia exploited its workers, declined to comment. Jordan traded on his fame, and the toll has yet to be exacted. LaFeber implies that nations buying into the American way of life also enter into a Faustian contract. For better or worse, the impact of American culture on smaller nations signals profound changes; the slogan "Just Do It" is anathema to many societies.
LaFeber raises the issue of taking political responsibility for commercial actions. He quotes George Soros, who states that "you can have a market economy but not a market society." But weighing the evidence, LaFeber concludes that capitalism is going to win out over culture.
LaFeber has written and co-authored nearly 20 books, dozens of articles, as well as op-ed pieces in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and Newsday, among others.
He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has lectured at dozens of universities and has appeared widely on television and radio, including on Walter Cronkite's "American Presidencies," PBS's "American Century" and the BBC's "End of the Cold War?"
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