Globalization / anti-globalization: beyond the great divide: second edition

Held, David and McGrew, Anthony (2007) Globalization / anti-globalization: beyond the great divide: second edition , Cambridge, UK. Polity, 304pp.

Abstract

Is globalization being eclipsed by a resurgent geopolitics? Does the war on terror denote the end of globalization or a new phase of militarized globalization? Empire or globalization, which better describes the current global condition?
In the aftermath of September 11th, and the war in Iraq, there has been much talk of the end of globalization. These post-mortems for globalization, as this book argues, are entirely premature. In this completely revised and expanded monograph Held and McGrew test the claims of those who dismiss the continuing significance of globalization through a comprehensive assessment of contemporary global trends. This thematic exploration focuses upon the primary structures of world order namely: patterns of governance, organized violence, and cultural, ecological and economic exchange with particular emphasis given to global patterns of inequality, exclusion and domination. Each chapter discusses and evaluates the contending claims and counterclaims of the principal antagonists in the globalization debate: the globalists and anti-globalists.Building upon this analysis the author’s present the case for continuing to take globalization seriously as both a description and explanation of our current global predicament. Indeed globalization remains, they argue, a fundamental source of both intense controversy and conflict within and more significantly beyond the academy. For it resurrects, albeit in a new context, one of the foundational questions of political life namely: who rules, in whose interests, to what ends, and by what means? In this respect it engages one of the most important ethical and political debates of our times: can globalization be tamed? Whether a more just and stable world order is either desirable or feasible is explored in the concluding chapters which present an alternative ethical and political agenda for the twenty-first century – a global covenant of cosmopolitan social democracy. This book provides an assiduous study for all those who remain intrigued, confused or simply baffled by the controversy about globalization and its consequences for the twenty first century world order.

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