About this item
Corporations have found a new resource to be mined for profit our children In this shocking and indelible behind-the-scenes journey Joel Bakan acclaimed author and award-winning maker of the renowned film and international bestselling book The Corporation uncovers the astonishing degree to which companies exploit the special vulnerabilities of children manipulate parents fears and operate with callous disregard for childrens health and well-being The number of children taking dangerous psychotropic drugs has skyrocketed as pharmaceutical companies employ insidious often illegal tactics to inflate diagnoses of disorders and convince parents their children require medication A highly sophisticated marketing industry deploys increasingly subtle and powerful tactics to play on childrens intense emotions and desires and to lure them into obsessive consumerism Computer game designers craft techniques to titillate children with sex and violence while social media developers infiltrate and shape childrens social and emotional worlds to compel them to spend more and more monetizable time online Americas schools are being transformed into profit centers while children are subjected to increasingly regimented teaching that thwarts curiosity and creativity numbing the joy of learning And childrens chronic health problems from asthma to cancer autism and birth defects steadily escalate as thousands of new industrial chemicals are dumped into their environments Nelson Mandela once sagely remarked that there can be no keener revelation of a societys soul than the way it treats its children The problem today as Joel Bakan reveals is that business interests have made protecting children extremely difficult Corporations pump billions into rendering parents and governments powerless to shield children from an unrelenting commercial assault with the result that after a century of progress during which protective laws and regulations were widely promulgated children are once again exposed to substantial harms at the hands of economic actors Childhood Under Siege leaves no room for doubt that this assault on childhood is a major crisis of our time A powerful manifesto for urgent change it empowers us to shield our own children while offering concrete and realistic proposals for legal reforms that would protect all children from these predatory practices.
About the Author
Joel Bakan is a professor of law at the University of British Columbia, and an internationally renowned legal scholar and commentator. A former Rhodes Scholar and law clerk to Chief Justice Brian Dickson of the Supreme Court of Canada, Bakan has law degrees from Oxford, Dalhousie, and Harvard. His critically acclaimed international hit, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (Free Press, 2004) , electrified readers around the world (it was published in over 20 languages) , and became a bestseller in several countries. The book inspired a feature documentary film, The Corporation, written by Bakan and co-created with Mark Achbar, which won numerous awards, including best foreign documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, and was a critical and box office success. Bakan's highly regarded scholarly work includes Just Words: Constitutional Rights and Social Wrongs (University of Toronto Press, 1997) , as well as textbooks, edited collections, and numerous articles in leading legal and social science journals. His new book, Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children, will be available in August, 2011. A frequent recipient of awards for both his writing and teaching, Bakan has worked on landmark legal cases and government policy, and served regularly as a media commentator, appearing on national television and radio. He is a popular and accomplished public speaker who has, over the last few years, addressed business, government, academic, and activist audiences in the United States and abroad. Bakan, who is also a professional jazz guitarist, grew up in East Lansing, Michigan and now lives in Vancouver, Canada with his wife, Rebecca Jenkins, and their two children, Myim and Sadie.
