Search results for ""author jonathan friedman""

Although the United States is currently the world's only military and economic superpower, the nation's superpower status may not last. The possible futures of the global system and the role of U.S. power are illuminated by careful study of the past. This book addresses the problems of conceptualizing and assessing hegemonic rise and decline in comparative and historical perspective. Several chapters are devoted to the study of hegemony in premodern world-systems. And several chapters scrutinize the contemporary position and trajectory of the United States in the larger world-system in comparison with the rise and decline of earlier great powers, such as the Dutch and British empires. Contributors: Kasja Ekholm, Johnny Persson, Norihisa Yamashita, Giovanni Arrighi, Beverly Silver, Karen Barkey, Jonathan Friedman, Christopher Chase-Dunn, Rebecca Giem, Andrew Jorgenson, John Rogers, Shoon Lio, Thomas Reifer, Peter Taylor, Albert Bergesen, Omar Lizardo, Thomas D. Hall.

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Modernity and Identity is a groundbreaking collective work which announces a radical new departure within contemporary debates on modernism and postmodernism. While dominant conceptions of both modernism and postmodernism are centered around motions of statis and fixity, for most of the otherwise quite diverse writers in this book, modernity is a matter of movement, of flux, of change and of unpredictability. Modernity and postmodernity are shown to mean, not the 'end of the subject' but the transformation and creation of new forms of subjectivity. Anthropological concepts are brought squarely into the heart of the modernity controversies, which are then recast in the context of tradition, globalization and of the crisis of identity in a newly de-centred world system. The possibility of a third way is opened up, rejecting the opposition between the impersonal rationality of high modernism and the rationalist anti-ethics of postmodernism. The vision in this book is that of another modernity, which counter-poses Baudelaire to Rousseau, and loyalist ethics to abstract blueprints for social and political reorganization. This book will be essential reading for students of sociology, cultural studies, literary theory, anthropology, urban studies and philosophy.

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Friedman and a distinguished group of contributors offer a compelling analysis of globalization and the lethal explosiveness that characterizes the current world order. In particular, they investigate global processes and political forces that determine networks of crime, commerce and terror, and reveal the economic, social and cultural fragmentation of transnational networks. In a critical introduction, Friedman evaluates how transnational capital represents a truly global force, but geographical decentralization of accumulation still leads to declining state hegemony in some areas and increasing hegemony in others. The authors examine the growth and increasing autonomy of indigenous populations, and the massively destabililizing effect of migration processes. They describe the rapid increase in criminalization of ethnic and immigrant groups as well as an increase in class stratification, creating new forms of social confrontation and violence. In addition to ethnic, identity-based conflict there are analyses of transnational criminal networks, which also represents disintegration of larger homogeneous territories or hierarchical orders. The authors ask us to reevaluate the dynamics of globalization—the contradictions of centralization and fragmentation around the world—as we discover how best to transform these conditions for the future. This research was originally funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. Globalization, the State and Violence will be a valuable reference in anthropology, social theory, international politics and economics, ethnic conflict, immigration, and economic history.

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