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This project is about a form of corporate predation that entails both policy influence and cultural legitimation. Neoliberal explanations of the inability of citizens to thrive in the current socio- economic condition typically rest on a combination of victim-blaming and appeals to the individualistic rhetoric that assumes we all enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom of choice. It is common for corporate lobbyists, and politicians under their influence, to argue against consumer protection on the grounds that such efforts are paternalistic, and that they therefore undermine consumer sovereignty. By this logic, illnesses that are highly correlated to diet are problems that consumers can avoid, and it is not the duty of food companies or government to prevent consumers from making "bad choices." Implicit in this moralistic narrative is that consumers have sufficient knowledge about the alternatives to enable them to make "good choices." Major food lobbies use their political influence to oppose government regulations of food, based on the reasoning that consumers deserve the right to choose. Food industry groups also will sometimes invest heavily to prevent legal requirements to disclose information that might enable consumers to make informed choices, creating a predatory double-bind. In this essay, I discuss how the rhetoric of choice is employed by the food industry, how it is formulated within the political context of the United States, and how that rhetoric poses threats to food systems globally.

Liberal societies depend on wide adherence to norms of civility in the interactions of everyday life and in maintaining hierarchies of social structure. Norms of civility often are instrumental in appeals to reason and in the informal enforcement of social order. The virtue of civility fits well within the ideals of liberalism because it is grounded in beliefs about the mutual benefits of moderation, temperance, tolerance and respect. However, civility can be at odds with arguably more compelling virtues, particularly justice. Few of us would wish to coexist with others in a continued state of incivility, and the aim of this essay is not to dismiss the value and importance of civility to communication in everyday life. Rather, the essay explores a potentially dysfunctional aspect of civility, namely, the problem of using appeals to civility to silence dissenting communication and expression about fundamental questions of social justice. Liberalism is premised on a strong belief in the benefits of 'equality of opportunity' in all spheres of life, but not all liberals give primacy to social justice as a virtue that is essential to a good society. Civility is unquestionably useful, but there are compelling reasons to assume that when calls for civility stem from asymmetrical efforts to regulate communication, the likelihood of unjust outcomes is increased significantly. This condition is a pathological affliction that is familiar to actually existing liberalism, and it is the central concern of this essay.

Placing struggles for communication rights within the broader context of human rights struggles in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this broad-based collection offers a rich range of illustrations of national, regional and global struggles to define communication rights as essential to human needs and happiness

"Communication Rights and Social Justice offers historical perspectives on struggles to use the instruments of state and political participation - power, inter-governmental treaties and declarations, and various forms of political advocacy and protest politics - to articulate the concept of communication as a fundamental right. The contributions make up an intergenerational and multi-vocal dialogue. Different generations of scholars, activists and practitioners, who have been engaged with mobilizations at different times, present their views; some adopt a more academic style, others reflect autobiographically on personal experiences. The collection acknowledges the plural geo-cultural roots that compose what have eventually become a network of transnational mobilization dynamics that are increasingly global, digitally mediated, multi-stakeholder and faced by new and forthcoming challenges. It makes an original and welcome contribution to understanding a vital history that will only grow in worldwide importance"--

The essays in this Special Issue explore the power and appeal of modern liberalism, even among the vast populations for whom its egalitarian promises go unfulfilled. For more than 30 years, we have seen dramatic growth in inequality worldwide, resulting from increasingly draconian economic policies – including severe austerity measures in the economic 'periphery' and sustained assaults on welfare and public service policies in affluent 'core' countries – along with a scandalous global financial crisis that calls into question the sustainability and legitimacy of the current politicaleconomic trajectory. During that same time, the media and communication industries have played a variety of key roles – as chronicler, cheerleader, infrastructure provider and highly profitable beneficiary – in bringing about this political-economic and ideological project, sometimes called "neoliberalism," which has profoundly eroded the promise and realities of liberal democracy. Media institutions are implicated as subject and object in this pattern of erosion, which favours a thin stratum of elites, with injurious consequences for much of the rest of humanity, the latter of whose taxes and labor have paid disproportionately for the new boom in incomes for the financial class. In order to reconceive democracy in more substantive and egalitarian forms, media and communication scholars and practitioners need to address the critical questions about the organization of our lives by capital and seek to re-establish the value of publics and public goods. But first, we need to agree that the limits of liberalism are real, since such a consensus is not a foregone conclusion.