The Age of Transition: Trajectory of the World-System 1945-2025

Hopkins, Terence K.

ISBN 10: 1864030321 / ISBN 13: 9781864030327

Published by Pluto Pr Australia, 1996

About this Item

This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside.This book has soft covers. In good all round condition. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item,500grams, ISBN:9781864030327.

Seller Inventory # 2927807

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Age of Transition: Trajectory of the World-System 1945-2025
• Publisher: Pluto Pr Australia
• Publication Date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1864030321
• ISBN 13: 9781864030327
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Good
• Weight: 500 grams
• Seller catalogs:
  • Sociology

About this title

Synopsis

Everyone agrees the world is changing in the 1990s with the end of the Cold War and with a supposedly new globalization. But are these the essential changes? In order to see where the world is headed in the next quarter-century, it is crucial to analyse correctly where it has been since 1945. It is the contention of this book that the post-1945 world already saw its major moment of change in the years 1967-73, a moment in which there was a conjuncture of three major turning-points, each leading to a downturn. These comprise, in the short-term, the end of the world economic expansion in the current 50-year Kondratieff cycle; in the medium-term, the beginning of a decline in the dominant role of the USA; and in the long-term, intimations of a possible systemic disintegration of the 500-year-old capitalist world-economy. Separating out these effects, the book analyses what constitutes the long-term structural crisis of the world-system into which we have entered, and the very difficult period of transition which has begun. This concrete analysis of the coming decades in the light of the previous ones is a product of the world-systems analysis of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations. The period 1945-90 is analysed in terms of six main vectors: the interstate system, world production, the world labour force, world human welfare, the social cohesion of the states, and the structures of knowledge. The book concludes with two global overviews: one for 1945-1990, and one assessing global possibilities, 1990-2025. It paints a picture of dark days ahead, but one in which there are real historical choices.

Review

'Is there a crisis of world capitalism, or has a truly global economy finally begun to pay off on the original promise of the greatest good for the greatest number? Has the leader of that global realm, the United States, reached the end of its hegemonic predominance, or is it in the robust middle age of its tenure, now bereft of serious antagonists? The Age of Transition shows how a clear theory of history can illluminate the recent past, pose fundamental questions about the present, and offer well-grounded predictions about the ultimate trajectory of capitalism in our time. Their outlook is at once compelling and gloomy, a prophecy of a coming age of turmoil and disorder. Like Fukuyama's The End of History, this book will provoke a lively debate; unlike Fukuyama, Hopkins and Wallerstein know that we may forget about history, but history will not forget about us.' - Bruce Cumings, John Evans Professor of International History and Politics, Northwestern University