Globalization Matters
Engaging the Global in Unsettled Times

By addressing the major contemporary challenges to globalization, this study explains why and how the global continues to matter in our unsettled world.

Manfred B. Steger (Author), Paul James (Author)

9781108470797, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 August 2019

308 pages, 6 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.1 cm, 0.6 kg

'Magnificent. Two of the most seasoned analysts of globalization comprehensively update the history and thoroughly reappraise the theory. A flowing, engaging, compelling case that 'globalization matters'.' Jan Aart Scholte, Göteborgs universitet, Sweden and Universität Duisburg-Essen, Germany

At the turn of the twenty-first century, globalization - both the process and the idea - bestrode the world. Widely acclaimed by political and economic pundits as the most important phenomenon of our time, it took the world by storm. Two decades later, it has come under sustained attack by the re-invigorated forces of the extreme right and radical left. Does globalization still matter in our unsettled world? Responding in the affirmative, this study develops and applies a new framework of an 'engaged theory of globalization' to analyze some of today's most pressing global challenges: the rise of national populism, ecological degradation, rapid urbanization, new sources of insecurity, and the changing landscape of higher education. Offering a comprehensive appraisal of globalization in our unsettled times, the authors explain why and how transplanetary interrelations continue to matter in a world that is wavering between globalist expansion and nationalist retrenchment.

1. Introduction: what is happening to globalization?
2. Mapping a new genealogy of 'globalization'
3. Rethinking the dominant framework of globalization theory
4. Considering the subjective dimensions of globalization
5. Outlining an engaged theory of globalization
6. Excavating the long history of globalization
7. Examining the promise of global studies
8. Making sense of the populist challenge to globalization
9. Confronting the global urban imaginary
10. Living in the unsettled world of the Anthropocene
11. Concluding reflections
Appendices
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Geopolitics [JPSL], Political ideologies [JPF], Comparative politics [JPB]