World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability [Hardcover]

 

 

Create your own review

I am a Chinese-Filipinos myself, I completely disagree what the author is claiming regarding this book, its full of racism against Filipinos. I noticed her hatred towards Filipinos and her "Chinese superiority mentality", she keep insisting that Chinese-Filipinos control economy of the Philippines, and they are this bad that only Filipinos works for Chinese and no Chinese works for Filipinos., which is not true. Many young Chinese-Filipinos work for entirely Filipino companies after graduating from college. Aside from that, she keeps emphasizing how Chinese amass wealth, how they collaborated with Marcos, and even said "upon learning that Marcos wished only to re-distrubute wealth to themselves and not to the poor, the Chinese rejoiced and stock prices steadily climbed up". She have same mentality as those exceptional few wealthy Chinese-Filipinos who look down at Filipinos, but she is insisting that all Chinese-Filipinos are like that, she is emphasizing this just to justify her point of view regarding ethnic hatred. This kind of mentality really exist among tsinoys, but they are only few, she did not deny the fact that her family is part of those few individuals. Like what she said about the comment of her uncle when asked about the Payatas tragedy, her uncle was annoyed why everyone is discussing that, for that, I find her family cruel, everyone is sad about Payatas tragedy, even the Chinese-Filipino community donated much money and goods and helped in relief operations, she did not mention at all any contributions of Chinese-Filipino to the Philippines, the operation barrio schools, the volunteer fire fighters, the free medical clinic, the various educational foundations, charity organizations like Tzu Chi, Chi Liam Tong etc. She also mentioned about the safety deposit boxes of her family full of gold bars, the diamond collections of her aunt who was killed. It can easily be seen that her family is the typical target of crimminals because they dont know how to hide their wealth and treated their servants and employees badly. She mentioned that her aunt once told her in front of their maid that Filipinos are lazy and unintelligent. So after reading the book, I dont feel pity for her aunt's death. In fact, what the police blotter wrote might be true, the motive of the crime is "revenge" not robbery, in which Amy Chua find it weird. She can't understand why the chauffeur of her aunt want to revenge her, because in her view, servants must only obey what the lords told them to do. In conclusion, this book is not worth reading, because many of the facts stated in the book was based on personal feelings and did not have documentary evidence.

Wether you agree with Amy or not is not the point of this book. The quality of its scholarship is however: the book is badly written, poorly researched, poorly edited, and evinces all the traits of coffee-table dillitantes. Although Amy is a Lawyer, that does not necessarily preclude her from arguing tightly outside her discipline. Coming from a prestigious university however one expects A LOT more.

The problems are manifold:

1) No real reasearch: evidence is anecdotal and butressed largely with popular magazine articles with no journals and few scholarly first sources.

Even credible secondary sources are lacking. Of particular note is her citing of Jared Daimond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" (a good book, but hardly a historical reference) for describing the actions of Pizzaro. Seems like she just reached on the shelf for the closest book on anything dealing with South America. And this lack of feel for history extends virtually through even topic she covers.

She has the regular dillitante habit of citing personal anecdotes as "evidence" --- usually some dinner party, in-class student experience, or cocktail party question. But she doesn't really pull it off because most of her experieces are... well frankly boring. People like Lawrence Friedman and Kaplan do this much better --- and they have actually been to the troubled spots of the world and have a story to tell. They also have deep understanding of the culture they are critiquing. Better to leave this type of story telling to those who really have "stories" to tell.

2) Amy shows all the worst habits of a particular (American?) scholarship that is gaining acceptance in its Universities ---the attempt to impose a subjective order on facts --- to take dissonant information and make it fit theories: every event seemingly magnifies her thesis, every exception proves the rule. One wonders is Amy Chou has ever read any Karl Popper?

Her thesis is that US Foreign Policy exports Globalism (poorly defined by Amy) and democracy is a volitile mix that supports economically dominant ethnic minorities and exacerbates tensions between then and the economic underclass in their respective countries.

I have no doubt that there is an element of veracity in what she says. But she is describing really: a) the nature of conflict, and b) ethenic politics. Both are historical constants. Moreover how is "Globalism" different from Colonialism and British supporting indigenous races ---- quantitatively different --- from what Amy proposes? To answer this would demonstrate a good grasp of history and a rigourous scientific approach to knowledge --- it would mean that she understands the importance of "falsifiability".

3) She has an extremely weak grasp of history. Good cross-discipline writers are not too hard to find: JK Galbraith, Bronowski, J Diamond, Isaiah Berlin, Keith Windshuttle, even Victor Davis Hansen (who suffers from other faults) and Paul Johnson. But Amy is really out of her depth here and it shows with her lack of citing primary and secondary sources of repute (sometimes no sources at all), and outright factual errors. Some betray a gnawing ignorance of the world. eg. She states that the "British" did not intermarry with local indians in their colonies like the Spanish did in the South American. For the English this remains true. For the Scots and Irish, this is patently false. Has Amy never heard of the Metis in Canada or the Black Scots of the Carribean (who still run some of the original cane plantations), or the Eurasians of Indian (once a dominant minority).

Trenchant social commentary with historical analysis requires long reading in many disciplines and an ability to subject your ideas to the scrutiny of piers. History is not like a legal argument. It cannot be made to fit personal theories with little regard for "truth". She needs to demonstrate a good appraisal of all ideas at hand, consider them --- as a synthesis of ideas -- not a linear supportive argument in favour of her theories.

4) No citing of the Foreign Policy drivers. There is no discernable connection between a foreign policy action and its effect. There is only Amy Chou affirming that US foreign policy, with emphasis on underwriting a certain policy, made a certain thing worse or shored up the economically dominant position of a specific ethnic group allowing them to dominate, persecute or be persecuted. There is little description or quantitative analysis of any US foreign policy (or any other country for that matter). This is the heart of foreign affairs writing and something that Kaplan and Friedman do well.

5) Poorly edited. The book reads like one very long newspaper article. In its present form it could very comfortably be stuffed into 150 pages. Nuff said on this point.

At the end of the day there is nothing that Amy could not be cured of if she took a good first-year course in History or Classics at almost any British University (or British Commonwealth University for that matter) and had to try to defend her central thesis. At its best Amy Chuo's writing exhibits all the worst effects of the rise of dilletentes in the making of US Foreign Policy.

The gruel was so thin that I could not justify my time in reading beyond 200 pages....Even Chomsky is much better than Chou, at least he is consistent and interesting, and makes one consider things -- even if he is wrong most of the time !

It sounds as if she is pandering to the anticapitalist left, saying capitalism is unpopular, which it is, and that to be politically acceptable it must be taxed, regulated, and redistributed, which is true.

And indeed she is pandering to the left. But the basic fact that she reports is that the average voter in the world, when he sees the wealth created by capitalism and free markets, concludes from his zero sum prejudices that some terrible crime has been committed, and lashes out to destroy those responsible and the wealth that they have created. What she is saying is not that free markets are wicked, but rather that since the rape of free markets is inevitable, we had best bite our tongues and pretend to enjoy it. Her report lacks the self righteous certainty that this destruction is a good thing, and that those greedy exploiters of the masses had it coming to them. In some important ways, this is a deeply pro capitalist book. Rather than saying that the wise and virtuous anti capitalists should be victorious and the evil capitalsts deserve to have the wealth they create dissipated and destroyed, she instead despairs that the anti capitalists: the evil, the stupid, the unproductive, the destructive, the hateful and hate filled, are apt to be victorious under democracy. She supports the anticapitalists like a rape victim kissing her rapist.

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 56 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

 

4.0 out of 5 stars Woman with a hammer, looking for nails...
...and finds more than couple, but pushes her case a little far in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Read more

Published on Aug 1 2009 by Musa Mubarak

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book!
The first book that I've read that deals with the social and political effects of globalization on the Third World. Read more

Published on Sep 4 2007 by PGT

5.0 out of 5 stars interesting to say the least
if you have any sort of interest dealing with world economics and it influences on culture and ethnic hatred, this book is for you..... Read more

Published on Jan 12 2005 by Andrew

4.0 out of 5 stars Informative and Explanatory
It explains why things are the way they are throughout the world. The author describes how markets and democracy are not meant to be implemented at the same time in certain... Read more

Published on Jun 10 2004 by Y. Frost

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting examples, unnecessary and poorly written thesis
The problem with Chua's book is that the thesis can't really be tied to anything. The fact that whites are an upper class in South Africa isn't the result of globalization; it's... Read more

Published on May 24 2004 by Justin Weitz

5.0 out of 5 stars Analysis encourages ethnic hatred and discimination
The basic argument here is simple. Globalization exported to non-western countries enriches minorities, forcing the majority to commit acts of genocide and therefore creating... Read more

Published on May 18 2004 by Seth J. Frantzman

1.0 out of 5 stars A store full of anti-Semitic canards
Amy Chua collected facts but not once does she show a cause and effect to anything. Every case of ethnic hatred in her book assigned to globalization existed before it and sadly... Read more

Published on Mar 27 2004 by Albert Reingewirtz

4.0 out of 5 stars Engaging and thought provoking.
Regardless of whether you agree with Chua's opinions, this book is worth reading because you will gain knowledge and insight you never had, and will think differently about the... Read more

Published on Mar 16 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars Another view of globalization
We hear so much back and forth on globalization, pro and con, propaganda or otherwise, that we tend to think in generalities. Read more

Published on Mar 11 2004 by John C. Landon

2.0 out of 5 stars Weakly Argued
Having read some of Chua's other work, I expected something with more meat on it than this. World On Fire is just a loose collection of ancedotal stories that are tied together... Read more

Published on Mar 2 2004

Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

› See all 56 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

Search Listmania!