When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, what will they say was the most crucial development at the dawn of the 21st century--the attacks of 9/11, or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations, and giving them...

Change is everywhere! Thanks to a global economy, the force of the Internet, and the explosion of mobile technology, we have entered into a new era, the shift age, in which change happens so quickly that it's become the norm. Houle identifies and explains the new forces that will shape our lives for the next 20 years.

The Editor in Chief of The Economist illuminates what global issues mattered in the last century—and how the ways in which we deal with them will shape our lives in the next
The attacks on September 11th, 2001, shook the rich West out of its complacency; suddenly, peace looked to be in peril. Even before that time prosperity was endangered, as campaigns mounted against the purported evils of capitalist globalization, such

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In Globalization Challenged, George Rupp, president of the International Rescue Committee, outlines the steps necessary to engage the contemporary conflict between traditional religious belief and Western secularism. According to Rupp, the key objective is to build a community that is inclusive without denying the validity of particular commitments. While he acknowledges the threat of "resurgent fundamentalism," Rupp also criticizes secularists who...

From Seattle to Genoa to Johannesburg, people march in the streets protesting global capitalism. They denounce Nike and McDonald's, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. Who would defend global capitalism? A young writer from Sweden, who started on the anarchist left and then came to understand the world better. Johan Norberg has traveled to Vietnam, Africa, and other hot spots in the battle over globalization. He has become a passionate...

Employs a critical Afrocentric reading of Western constructions of knowledge so as to overcome the dehumanizing tendencies of modernity. Afrocentricity is the most intellectually dominant idea in the African world, one that is having a growing impact on social science discourse. This paradigm, philosophically rooted in African cultures and values, fundamentally challenges major epistemological traditions in Western thought, such as modernism and...

"Americans have long considered themselves a people set apart. Yet American exceptionalism is built on a set of tacit beliefs about other cultures. From the founding exclusion of indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans to the uneasy welcome of waves of immigrants, from republican disavowals of colonialism to Cold War proclamations of freedom, Americans' ideas of their differences from others have shaped the modern world--and how Americans have viewed...

When a government program brought garment factories to rural Sri Lanka, women workers found themselves caught between the pressures of a globalizing economy and societal expectations that villages are sanctuaries of tradition. These women learned quickly to resist the characterization of "Juki girls"-female garment workers already established in the urban sector-as vulgar and deracinated, instead asserting that they were "good girls" who could embody...

A World History of Rubber helps readers understand and gain new insights into the social and cultural contexts of global production and consumption, from the nineteenth century to today, through the fascinating story of one commodity. Divides the coverage into themes of race, migration, and labor; gender on plantations and in factories; demand and everyday consumption; World Wars and nationalism; and resistance and independence ; Highlights the interrelatedness...