Global Capitalism

In the past two decades, industrialization on a world scale has undergone significant shifts. This volume develops a new set of conceptual categories for analyzing new patterns of global economic organization. The contributors to this volume explore and elaborate the global commodity chains (GCCs) approach, which reformulates the basic conceptual categories for analyzing new patterns of global organization and change. The GCC framework allows the authors to pose questions about contemporary development issues that are not easily handled by previous paradigms and to more adequately forge the macro-micro links between processes that are generally assumed to be discretely contained within global, national, and local units of analysis. The paradigm that GCCs embody is a network-centered, historical approach that probes above and below the level of the nation-state to better analyze structure and change in the contemporary world.

Lauded by the New York Times as "brilliant and persuasive", and published in more than thirty-five foreign editions, George Soros's The Crisis of Global Capitalism became an instant classic. A must read for anyone concerned with the complex market forces that rule our global economy and that have thrust us into a state of financial flux and international economic insecurity.

Now Soros takes a whole new look at the arguments he made in that book, incorporating the very latest in global economic and political developments. He shows how the recovery following the economic meltdown of 1998 may have been a false dawn, leaving us in a much more precarious position than we realize. He also explores surprising connections between events like the war in Kosovo and the economic wealth of nations. And he offers new insights into the fates of Russia, Asia, Europe and the United States.

Demonstrating that our still unquestioning faith in market forces blinds us to crucial economic instabilities, Open Society provides an inspiring vision of how to fix the flaws in the system - suggestions that have already influenced leaders at the IMF, the World Bank, and in many national governments.

Marshalling facts and the latest research findings, the author systematically refutes the adversaries of globalization, markets, and progress. This book will change the debate on globalization in this country and make believers of skeptics.

Capitalism now reigns triumphant -- but in the process has created dramatic inequalities of wealth and left many individuals feeling disconnected. Backed by enthusiastic support from a wide array of legislators, corporate leaders, Nobel laureates, environmentalists, and social and political activists, The Ownership Solution shows how to humanize and localize free enterprise by using ownership as a means for engaging more people in its design.

This text elaborates theories on the situation of the foreign direct investment and multinational enterprises. It considers the unique characteristics of contemporary capitalism; and what must be done if it is to survive and in the 21st century.

David A. Westbrook argues that we live in "the city of gold"--a global, cosmopolitan polity where politics are done through markets, and where global capital markets, not states, have become the dominant force in our social life.

Soldiers in a Storm: The Armed Forces in South Africa's Democratic Transition is a study of the role of the military in the creation and development of South Africa's new post-apartheid system. Philip Frankel asserts that the armed forces played a far greater role in the end of apartheid than is currently acknowledged in the literature, and that the relatively peaceful negotiations that ended apartheid would not have been possible without the participation of the South African Defense Force and two major liberation armies.

Frankel also examines the topics of military disengagement, civilianization, post-authoritarian political behavior on the part of militaries, and the process of democratic consolidation. He also discusses how many of these themes have been explored in the context of Latin America, and he points out that this is the only book that places these themes within the context of South Africa. This is an important case study with universal implications.