Shock Doctrine and Disaster Capitalism: Naomi Klein

Image taken of New Orleans in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, 2005.

Naomi Klein

• Canadian journalist, writer and activist best known for her critique of corporate globalization

• Author of No Logo (2000), an attack of brand-oriented consumer culture

• More recently (2007), the NY Times best-seller, Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

Milton Friedman

• Economist with what has come to be known as the Chicago School of Economics

• Winner of Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976

• Father of Neo-liberalism, an economic philosophy that favours privatization, government deregulation, and cuts to social spending

Neoliberalism

• Seen in the late 1970s in Pinochet’s Chile, in the 1980s in Thatcher’s Britain and Reagan’s USA (Reaganomics)

• Still the dominant economic model, despite economic crises since 2008

• “Unfettered capitalism”

What is Disaster Capitalism?

• A way of describing the intersection of super-profits and mega-disasters (Klein, 10)

• Economic shock-treatment

• “Only a crisis – real or perceived – produces real change” (Friedman, preface to Capitalism and Freedom, 1982 edition)

Complete Shock Doctrine Documentary

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iW1SHPgUAQ

RSA Animate, David Harvey’s “The Crisis of Capitalism”

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0

Michael Moore, Capitalism, A Love Story

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjsQWPUbpPg trailer

The Yes Men Fix the World

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OazUh0Ym8rc 57:00

How to find articles online at the Library, for next week

Conducting Research

• Starting from a topic or problem• Exercise using Argument Essay assignment