Monday, October 31, 2011

New Book: Global Crises and the Crisis of Global Leadership, Edited by: Stephen Gill

Global Crises and the Crisis of Global Leadership
Edited by: Stephen Gill, York University, Toronto

                Paperback
                ISBN: 9781107674967
                Publication date:   October 2011
                320 pages
                £18.99
 
More information & ordering: 

Book Description

This groundbreaking collection on global leadership features innovative and critical perspectives by scholars from international relations, political economy, medicine, law and philosophy, from North and South. The book's novel theorization of global leadership is situated historically within the classics of modern political theory and sociology, relating it to the crisis of global capitalism today. Contributors reflect on the multiple political, economic, social, ecological and ethical crises that constitute our current global predicament. The book suggests that there is an overarching condition of global organic crisis, which shapes the political and organizational responses of the dominant global leadership and of various subaltern forces. Contributors argue that to meaningfully address the challenges of the global crisis will require far more effective, inclusive and legitimate forms of global leadership and global governance than have characterized the neoliberal era.

Table of Contents

Part I. Concepts of Global Leadership and Dominant Strategies: 
 
1. Leaders and led in an era of global crises Stephen Gill
2. Leadership, neoliberal governance and global economic crisis: a Gramscian analysis Nicola Short
3. Private transnational governance and the crisis of global leadership A. Claire Cutler


Part II. Changing Material Conditions of Existence and Global Leadership – Energy, Climate Change and Water: 
 
4. The crisis of petro-market civilization – the past as prologue? Tim Di Muzio
5. Global climate change, human security, and the future of democracy Richard A. Falk
6. The emerging global freshwater crisis and the privatization of global leadership Hilal Elver


Part III. Global Leadership Ethics, Crises and Subaltern Forces: 
 
7. Global leadership, ethics and global health – the search for new paradigms Solomon R. Benatar
8. Global leadership and the Islamic world – crisis, contention and challenge Mustapha Kamal Pasha
9. Public and insurgent reason – adjudicatory leadership in a hyper-globalizing world Upendra Baxi


Part IV. Prospects for Alternative Forms of Global Leadership: 
 
10. Global democratization without hierarchy or leadership? The world social forum in the capitalist world Teivo Teivainen
11. After neoliberalism – left versus right projects of leadership in the global crisis Ingar Solty
12. Crises, social forces and the future of global governance – implications for progressive strategy Adam Harmes
13. Organic crisis, global leadership and progressive alternatives Stephen Gill.

Reviews

'This book provides an insightful Gramscian analysis of the forms of privately-based expert leadership that characterizes the current global order. The authors explore the weak material foundation of this leadership - made evident by climate change, water shortages, and the end of cheap oil - and they point to the emergence of new potential sources of global leadership in professions (such as medicine) and a new global network of courts committed to a broad interpretation of human rights, in global social movements, and in the transformation-oriented traditions of a politically energized Islam.'

Craig Murphy, Professor of Global Governance, University of Massachusetts, Boston

'In this wide-ranging, interdisciplinary volume, radical political economist Stephen Gill and his collaborators trace the economic, political, social and ecological crisis-tendencies within contemporary global capitalism and trace their ramifications for emergent forms of political agency and leadership both in the global North and the global South. This book is an essential contribution to our understanding of global neoliberalism - and to the ongoing work of envisioning, and forging, alternatives to it.'

Neil Brenner, Professor of Urban Theory, Harvard University

Thursday, October 13, 2011

New Book: Adam David Morton, Revolution and State in Modern Mexico: The Political Economy of Uneven Development

Adam David Morton, Revolution and State in Modern Mexico: The Political Economy of Uneven Development (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011). Critical Currents in Latin American Perspective Series. ISBN: 978-07425-5489-4, £49.95. www.rowmanlittlefield.com

About the Book:

This groundbreaking study develops a new approach to understanding the formation of the post-revolutionary state in Mexico. In a shift away from dominant interpretations, Adam Morton considers the construction of the revolution and the modern Mexican state through a fresh analysis of the Mexican Revolution, the era of import substitution industrialization, and neoliberalism. Throughout, the author makes interdisciplinary links among geography, political economy, postcolonialism, and Latin American studies in order to provide a new framework for analyzing the development of state power in Mexico. He also explores key processes in the contestation of the modern state, specifically through studies of the role of intellectuals, democratization and democratic transition, and spaces of resistance. As Morton argues, all these themes can only be fully understood through the lens of uneven development in Latin America.

Centrally, the book shows how the history of modern state formation and uneven development in Mexico is best understood as a form of passive revolution, referring to the ongoing class strategies that have shaped relations between state and civil society. As such, Morton makes an important interdisciplinary contribution to debates on state formation relevant to Mexican studies, postcolonial and development studies, historical sociology, and international political economy by revitalizing the debate on the uneven and combined character of development in Mexico and throughout Latin America. In so doing, he convincingly contends that uneven development can once again become a tool for radical political economy analysis in and beyond the region.