MickipediaThe education of Micki Krimmel

Barber’s apt sequel to his best-selling Jihad vs. McWorld, Consumed, offers a vivid portrait of a global economy that overproduces goods and targets children as consumers in a market where there are never enough shoppers - and where the primary goal is no longer to manufacture goods but needs. Kidults, rejuveniles, twixters, adultescents - these pop neologisms signal more than just a passing trend; they point to a new culture of consumerism that encourages adults to remain as infantile as possible, at the same time that it trains children to consume from an ever younger age.

Disturbing, provocative, and compelling, Consumed examines phenomena as seemingly disparate as adolescent fashion trends for adults, megachurches, declining voter participation, the privatization of the public sphere, branding, and the new twenty-four-hour shopper to show how the freedoms of the free market have undermined the freedoms of the deliberative adult citizen. Barber asserts that in place of the Protestant ethnic once associated with capitalism - encouraging self-restraint, preparation for the future, protection of and self-sacrifice for children and community, and other characteristics of adulthood - we are constantly being seduced into an “infantilist” ethic of consumption. With brilliance and depth, Barbar confronts the likely consequences for our children, our liberty, and our citizenship, and shows finally how citizens can resist and overcome the “civic schizophrenia” in which our impulses as consumers are forever in conflict with our convictions as citizens.