Politics, Volume 3 - Plasticity into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success: 03 - Softcover

Unger, Roberto Mangabeira

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844675165 ISBN 13: 9781844675166

Publisher: Verso Books, 2004

Synopsis

Plasticity into power works out, through historical examples, a major theme of Unger's work--the relation between institutional and organizational flexibility and the development of our collective ability to produce or to destroy. The message of the book is that the practical success of a society depends on its capacity for permanent innovation. Certain practices and institutions--the history and content of which Unger explores--can nurture this capacity. Unger pursues this topic through wide-ranging historical inquiries into the European escape from the recurring crises that foreclosed political and economic breakthroughs in the great empires of the past; the invention of revolutionary approaches to the governmental protection of wealth; and the social conditions of military success, viewed as sources of insight into the social foundations of economic growth. Throughout, Plasticity into Power exemplifies a conception of the relation between theory and history that remains faithful to the surprising, open-ended quality of lived experience.

About this title

Product Description:

Unusual book

Review:

"[Unger] does not make moves in any game we know how to play ... [His] book may someday make possible a new national romance ... [It] will help the literate ... citizens of some country to see vistas where before they saw only dangers--see a hitherto undreamt-of national future ..."--Richard Rorty

"A philosophical mind out of the Third World turning the tables, to become a synoptist and seer of the First."--Perry Anderson

About this edition

• Publisher: Verso Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1844675165
• ISBN 13: 9781844675166
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 232