Reconstruction or Confusion
Francis Fukuyama's The Great Disruption
Bryan McGraw
July 1, 1999
The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order, by Francis Fukuyama (Plough Publishing, 1998) 409 pp., $25.00The prophets of doom abound. In dark tones, they warn that our nation is falling into a "moral sewer"; they argue that our economy is built on chimerical fantasies; they all but predict the collapse of Western civilization. The Pollyannas also abound, assuring us that we need not worry about anything of the sort. The stock market is surging and the information technology revolution will usher in a new age of prosperity, equality, and progress. The best is yet to come. In his latest work, The Great Disruption, Francis Fukuyama counsels that both indeed are quite right and (of course) quite wrong. Western industrialized society has gone through wrenching changes, but it need not be the end quite yet. Maybe. If sociology is dead, as the editors of Lingua Franca seem to remind us every chance they get, someone forgot to tell Fukuyama. This sociology Ph.D. and one-time United States State Department official has made a career of provocative, sweeping books offering big answers to big questions. After declaring that history is finished and that trust, not Alan Greenspan, makes societies work better, Fukuyama now sets out to explain the origins of norms in societies and the outcome of Western social norms over the last forty years or so, a period he calls the Great Disruption. Anyone mildly conscious realizes that our society has changed profoundly since the early 1960s. Crime rates, illegitimacy (and all of its associated social pathologies), and illicit drug use have escalated. Our cities, once teeming engines of growth, are now urban nightmares. These are just a few of our recent accomplishments. ...
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