Emerging Issues In The 21st Century World-system: Volume I, Crises And Resistance In The 21st Century World-system (contributions In Economics And Economic History, No. 230)

As one-half of the latest edition of Immanuel Wallerstein's Political Economy of the World System series, this collection offers cutting-edge theoretical directions to explain the structural crises of the 21st-century world- system. Contributors argue that the capitalist world system has reached a critical bifurcation point, a short period which will be characterized by a sudden shift in the long-term structural forces that have created and sustained the world as we know it. Writers challenge conventional thinking about the most significant structural crises that face the 21st-century world-system, including terrorism, debt, the growth of megacities as global actors, the emergence of a powerful transnational capitalist class, and the world ecological crisis. Immanuel Wallerstein (who provided the foreword to these volumes) is probably the most prominent advocate of world-systems theory, but as this collection of 32 articles demonstrates, there are a number of advocates of this perspective within the American Sociological Association. Presented by Dunaway (sociology, Virginia Tech) the papers explore a number of issues of crisis and resistance to the structural system of global politics and economics and offer analyses designed to extend the scope of world systems theory to deal with issues of the environment, urbanization, and superpower hegemony. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) The September 11, 2001, terrorist assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon threw U.S. citizens into their first "shock of recognition" (Wilson 1955) that the world's hegemonic power is accountable for the harm it does to other societies. V. 1. Crises And Resistance In The 21st Century World-system -- V. 2. New Theoretical Directions For The 21st Century World-system. Edited By Wilma A. Dunaway ; Foreword By Immanuel Wallerstein. Includes Bibliographical References And Indexes.