1st Edition

Unmaking Goliath Community Control in the Face of Global Capital

By James DeFilippis Copyright 2004
    198 Pages 8 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    198 Pages 8 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Arguing against those who say that our communities are powerless in the face of footloose corporations, DeFilippis considers what localities can do in the face of heightened capital mobility in order to retain an autonomy that furthers egalitarian social justice, and explores how we go about accomplishing this in practical, political terms.

    Introduction: Challenging Capital Mobility Through Local Control 1. Local Autonomy in the New Urban Politics of Capital Mobility 2. The Local State and the Politics of Local Economic Development 3. Collective Ownership and Local Control: The Long View 4. From Community Control to Non-Confrontational Organizing: Critiquing the Politics of Community Organizing and Development from the 1960s to the Present 5. Collective Ownership of the Means of Production 6. Collective Ownership of the Means of Reproduction 7. Collective Ownership of the Means of Exchange 8. A Voyage to Lilliput? The Potential of Localized Collectives in the Global Economy Epilogue: Our Resistance Must Be Local as Capitalism

    Biography

    James DeFilippis is Assistant Professor of Black and Hispanic Studies at Baruch College.

    "James DeFilippis has made an extraordinarily important contribution to the urban political economy literature. In his analysis of the potential of collectively owned, local enterprises, he offers critics of globalization and mobile capital a realistic assessment of the alternatives to them. By examining empirically some experiments in local autonomy and placing them within a broad theoretical context, he arrives at sensible conclusions that sum up both the possibilities and deficiencies of thinking locally.
    ." -- Susan Fainstein, Professor of Urban Planning, Columbia University, and author of The City Builders
    "Unmaking Goliath presents some instructive case studies on three types of collective ownership existing in the United States." -- Jerry Kloby, Shelterforce
    "Unmaking Goliath covers a lot of ground in its 188 pages but does in an accessible and engaging way. Admirably linking theory and practice, the book assesses how some communities, faced with the negative consequences that global capitla has had in their localities, are attempting to regain a measure of control in their daily lives." -- Jane Holgate, Urban Studies Vol 42, No. 4, April 2005