Routledge Sociopathic Society: A People's Sociology of the United States

Charles Derber introduces and vividly explains the idea of a sociopathic society and why the idea has become necessary to understand today s world.Sociopathic society is rooted in governments and economies, not psychiatry. The book offers a new sociology of societies organized around antisocial values, which ultimately lead to societal and planetary self-destruction. Most of the sociopathic behaviors are perfectly legal and are perpetrated by governments, financial institutions, and corporate capitalism.Focusing on the United States, Derber connects the dots of Wall Street meltdown, guns and murder, uninhibited greed, the 1% and the 99%, a new crisis of unemployable surplus people, Hurricane Sandy and global warming, cheating scandals, and more including the war on democracy itself.Although the book brings together a breathtaking set of stories of a system run wild, it also offers hope, showing pathways for confronting and avoiding the many ways a society can commit sociocide. FEATURES OF THE BOOK" Review "Highly recommended. All levels/libraries." ―CHOICE “Charles Derber is one of our most astute and eloquent social critics. His political analysis is persuasive and is enlivened by graceful prose.” ―Howard Zinn "In this lucid and informed study, Charles Derber breaks through the necessary illusions and shows how the United States is being turned into a "sociopathic society," with control concentrated among intertwined economic, political, and military elites and reflections of its sociopathy rippling through every social stratum. But he also shows that there remains real hope that mass mobilization by currently fragmented social movements can reverse the sociopathic impetus. ―from the Foreword by Noam Chomsky About the Author Charles Derber is Professor of Sociology at Boston College. He is the author of Corporation Nation, Hidden Power and Greed to Green.