Includes bibliographical references (p. 409-422) and indexes.

Introduction: the consumer, the laborer, the capitalist, and the nation-state in the society of perpetual growth -- Constructing the consumer -- Remaking consumption -- Marketing and advertising -- The transformation of institutions -- The transformation of spiritual and intellectual values -- The reconfiguration of time, space, and class -- Kinderculture in America: the child as consumer -- The role of children in capitalism -- The social construction of childhood -- Exporting the consumer -- The laborer in the culture of capitalism -- A primer on the economic elements of capitalism -- The baptism of money -- The construction and anatomy of the working class -- Characteristics of the working class -- The growth of overseas assembly plants -- The creation of free labor -- The segmentation of the workforce -- Control and discipline -- Resistance and rebellion -- The rise of the merchant, industrialist, and capital controller -- The era of the global trader -- A trader's tour of the world in 1400 -- The economic rise of Europe and its impact on Africa and the Americas -- The rise of the trading companies -- The era of the industrialist -- Textiles and the rise of the factory system -- The age of imperialism -- The era of the corporation, the multilateral institution, and the capital controller -- The rise of the corporation -- Bretton Woods and the world debt -- The power of capital controllers -- The nation-state in the culture of capitalism -- The origin and history of the state -- The evolution of the state -- The history and function of the nation-state -- Constructing the nation-state -- Creating the other -- Language, bureaucracy, and education -- Violence and genocide -- Spin, free trade, and the role of energy in the global economy -- Manufacturing consent: spin -- Markets and free trade -- Energy and technology -- The global impact of the culture of capitalism: introduction -- The problem of population growth -- The malthusians versus the revisionists -- The case of India and China -- The issue of carrying capacity -- The ideology of malthusian concerns -- Demographic transition theory -- A primer on the determinants of population growth and decline -- Some examples of demographic change -- Population growth in the periphery -- Wealth flows theory -- The social implications of wealth flows theory -- The question of gender and power -- Problems and prospects -- Hunger, poverty, and economic development -- The evolution of food production: from the neolithic to the neocaloric -- From gathering and hunting to the neolithic -- Capitalism and agriculture -- The neocaloric and the green revolution -- The politics of hunger -- The anatomy of famine -- The anatomy of endemic hunger -- Solutions and adaptations to poverty and hunger -- Economic development -- The nature and growth of the informal economy -- The nature and scope of the informal economy of drugs -- Environment and consumption -- The case of sugar -- Sugar origins and production -- Uses of sugar -- The development of the sugar complex -- The expansion of sugar consumption -- The mass consumption of sugar -- Modern sugar -- The story of beef -- The ascendancy of beef -- The emergence of the American beef industry -- Modern beef -- The internationalization of the hamburger -- Environmentally sustainable cattle raising -- Exporting pollution -- Health and disease -- A primer on how to die of an infectious disease -- The relationships between culture and disease -- Gathering and hunting to early agriculture -- "Graveyards of mankind" -- Diseases of environmental change -- Aids and the culture of capitalism -- How did the disease spread? -- Who gets infected with AIDS? -- Who gets blamed? -- Indigenous groups and ethnic conflict -- The fate of indigenous peoples -- Some characteristics of indigenous peoples -- The process of ethnocide -- The Guaraní: the economics of ethnocide -- History and background -- Contemporary development and Guaraní communities -- Disadvantaged majorities and their revenge -- Leveling crowds -- Genocide as an externality of the market -- Resistance and rebellion: introduction -- Peasant protest, rebellion, and resistance -- Malaysia and the weapons of the weak -- Malaysian peasants and the green revolution -- Fighting back -- Obstacles to resistance -- Protest and change -- Kikuyu and the Mau Mau rebellion -- The British in East Africa -- The White Highlands -- The roots of the rebellion -- The rebellion -- "State of emergency" -- The oath and the detention camps -- Independence -- The rebellion in Chiapas -- Poverty and inequality in Chiapas -- The rebellion and the global economy -- The revolt and the reaction of the Mexican government -- The future of peasants -- Antisystemic protest -- Protest as antisystemic: the two world revolutions -- The revolution of 1848 -- The revolution of 1968 -- The protests of labor: coal miners in nineteenth-century Pennsylvania -- The coal industry and the worker's life -- Worker resistance and protest -- Destroying worker resistance -- Global feminist resistance -- Gender relations in the culture of capitalism -- Strategies of protest -- Ecological resistance movements -- Earth first! -- Chipko and the tragedy of the commons -- Religion and antisystemic protest -- Indigenous religious movements as protest -- The ghost dance -- The cargo cults -- Zionism in South Africa -- The global challenge of antisystemic religious protest -- Islamic fundamentalism -- Protestant fundamentalism in North America -- "Terror in the mind of God" -- Some examples of religious violence -- Understanding religious violence -- Constructing the citizen-activist -- What are the real dangers? -- The GNP and the construction of the doctrine of perpetual growth -- The depletion of natural capital -- The depletion of political capital -- The depletion of social capital -- Capital and public policy -- Activities of citizen-activist -- Indices and goals for well-being -- The means and prospects for change: attaining zero economic growth -- Rebuilding and maintaining natural capital -- Restoring political capital -- Rebuilding social capital.