Walter LaFeber's Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism

It might seem strange for a book about Michael Jordan to tell the story of American foreign policy at the turn of the century. Walter LaFeber positions Nike as a new kind of corporation - a transnational corporation - that has fully taken advantage of the postindustrial era and the availability of the mass media to dominate the global market. Such corporations are funded by American capital and have the intention of spreading the American way of life across the globe. These transnationals are so big and so global that they do not have to answer to any single government - rather, they are more powerful than all of the world's governments. In the case of Nike, much of their success is due to their marketing of Michael Jordan as a sort of global American icon. This is particularly true when considering the fact that Jordan's sport, basketball, is not very popular in most countries around the world - certainly not as popular as it is in the United States of America. Thus, to use an American basketball star as your key marketing tool points to the success of globalizing tactics employed by American transnationals in spreading the "American way of life." The fact that Nike accomplished this by using exploitive labor practices in their Asian factories is the seamier side of the story, one that elicits no sympathy for practitioners of global capitalism. By continuing these practices - and by continuing to spread American culture through the media, effectively asserting America's hegemony over the developing world - LaFeber argues that violent instability will be provoked, both at home and abroad. Considering the fact that this book was written in 1999, it is easy to see how prescient LaFeber's argument is from a post-9/11 standpoint.

Bibliography

LaFeber, Walter. Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism. New York: Norton, 1999.