The Horizontal Society Book

In the past, says Lawrence M. Friedman, society was essentially vertical: that is, everybody understood his or her identity as it existed within hierarchical relationships--husbands outranked their wives, parents outranked their children, kings outranked peasants, and so on. But the modern world, particularly through the spread of a global mass culture, makes it possible for people to engage in more horizontal relationships, creating affiliations with other people with whom they interact as equals, and thereby creating an individual identity for themselves. The Horizontal Society is something like The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas L. Friedman (no relation): focused on sociopolitics rather than economics and drained of the New York Times columnist's snappy prose. Lawrence Friedman does try for a certain casualness, yet his constant use of phrases such as as we shall see and of course do not convey intimacy so much as the sense of a teacher delivering a lecture. To be sure, Friedman is a distinguished law professor, and The Horizontal Society does have its uses as an introduction to a certain way of thinking about the intersection of global mass culture with regional communities, whether organized by nationality, ethnicity, or some other characteristic. But one finds oneself wishing for more details. Friedman mentions intermittently, for example, that the coming together of gays and lesbians as a "virtual subnation" takes place, and that it is controversial. But how does it take place? And how does that controversy inform the identity of the community and its members? Likewise, he has little more to say about the Internet other than that "it constitutes a forum where people talk to each other across great distances." Well, yes, this is, of course, true, but there is perhaps something more to be said. Ultimately, The Horizontal Society would perhaps best be considered as a starting point for the reader's inquiry into the book's concerns, rather than an answer in and of itself. --Ron HoganRead More