Power Play: The Fight to Control the World's Electricity.SHARON BEDER Sharon Beder is a visiting professor in the School of Social Sciences, Media and Communication at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia. Her research has focussed on how power relationships are maintained and challenged, particularly by corporations and Corporations such as Enron Enron A U.S. energy-trading and utilities company that housed one of the biggest accounting frauds in history. Enron's executives employed accounting practices that falsely inflated the company's revenues, which, at the height of the scandal, made the firm become the seventh fought long and hard to deregulate deregulate To reduce or eliminate control. One of the major forces in the financial markets in the 1970s and 1980s was the federal government's decision to deregulate interest rates. the world's electricity supply. They argued that private industry could provide cheaper and better power to more people. The fall of Enron, widespread blackouts in California and Auckland, New Zealand New Zealand (zē`lənd), island country (2005 est. pop. 4,035,000), 104,454 sq mi (270,534 sq km), in the S Pacific Ocean, over 1,000 mi (1,600 km) SE of Australia. The capital is Wellington; the largest city and leading port is Auckland. , and electricity rationing rationing, allotment of scarce supplies, usually by governmental decree, to provide equitable distribution. It may be employed also to conserve economic resources and to reinforce price and production controls. in Brazil suggest that this might not be the case. Beder takes a hard look at all aspects of this situation. She reports that electricity wasn't always a public utility. In the early 20th century, several large corporations competed with municipalities for the business. In fact, Beder gives these companies credit for inventing public relations public relations, activities and policies used to create public interest in a person, idea, product, institution, or business establishment. By its nature, public relations is devoted to serving particular interests by presenting them to the public in the most as practiced by corporations today. About 100 years ago, companies were spending heavily on lobbying efforts and propaganda campaigns to shift public opinion to the view that private utilities represented free enterprise. The stock market crash of 1929 changed that because some of these companies crashed with it. Federal legislation reined in the power of such companies, and those Depression-era laws held until the 1990s. Then, countries around the world began to return power supplies to private enterprises. Since then, more than 100 countries have privatized electric companies, in some cases because of pressure from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Beder examines why this latest shift occurred and how it has affected energy consumers around the world. New Pr, 2003, 400 p., b&w illus., hardcover, $25.95. |
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