Educator and humanitarian Fuller follows up his Somebodies and Nobodies
with this stimulating, scattershot manifesto on the fight against "rankism," or the abuse of power based on rank. While the notion subsumes racism, sexism and class inequality, rankism also addresses the thousand daily insults—inflicted by playground bullies, abusive bosses, officious bureaucrats, condescending academics and snobs—that everyone suffers in a hierarchical, status-conscious society. Fuller's program for a "dignitarian society" emphasizes fine-grained reform of institutions and interpersonal relations, with lots of committee meetings and frank dialogues with rankist reprobates. A physicist by training, Fuller advances a deliberately vague, liberalish policy agenda, featuring schemes for conducting "dignity impact studies before authorizing new uses of power." Fuller insists that the dispassionate discussion of provisional "models" of reality can resolve any dispute without recourse to rank-pulling; religious fundamentalists and rationalists, for example, should just "build a 'meta-model' that reconciles the antagonists' views on basic methodological issues." Fuller's high-mindedness sometimes verges on naïveté, but his provocative analysis illuminates a rich vein of social discontent. 20-city author tour. (June)
