Inequality endangers the fabric of our societies, distorts the functioning of democracy, and derails the globalization process. Yet, it has only recently been recognized as a problem worth examining. Why has this issue been neglected for so long?In Inequality: A Short History, Michele Alacevich and Anna Soci discuss the emergence of the inequality question in the twentieth century and explain how it is related to current issues such as globalization and the survival of dem...

Finding ways to understand the nature of social change and social order-from political movements to market meltdowns-is one of the enduring problems of social science. A Theory of Fields draws together far-ranging insights from social movement theory, organizational theory, and economic and political sociology to construct a general theory of social organization and strategic action. In a work of remarkable synthesis, imagination, and analysis, Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam propo...

This groundbreaking collection explores the profound power of Social Reproduction Theory to deepen our understanding of everyday life under capitalism. While many Marxists tend to focus on the productive economy, this book focuses on issues such as child care, health care, education, family life and the roles of gender, race and sexuality, all of which are central to understanding the relationship between economic exploitation and social oppression.In this book, leading writers suc...

Globalization and Capitalist Geopolitics is concerned with the nature of corporate power against the backdrop of the decline of the West and the struggle by non-western states to challenge and overcome domination of the rest of the world by the West. This book argues that although the US continues to preside over a quasi-imperial system of power based on global military preponderance and financial statecraft, and remains reluctant to recognize the realities global economic converg...

This widely adopted text starts with the fundamentals--what is economic growth, what is development, and what is the relationship between these two concepts? The authors examine orthodox theories of growth grounded in different schools of economics (classical, neoclassical, Keynesian, neoliberal) before considering critical alternatives (Marxist, socialist, poststructuralist, and feminist). The book elucidates the basic ideas that underpin contemporary controversies and debates surrounding...

This exciting new study provides an original and provocative exposé of the crisis of global capitalism in its multiple dimensions - economic, political, social, ecological, military, and cultural. Building on his earlier works on globalization, William I. Robinson discusses the nature of the new global capitalism, the rise of a globalized production and financial system, a transnational capitalist class, and a transnational state and warns of the rise of a global police state to contain th...

A pioneering book that takes us beyond economic debate to show how inequality is returning us to a past dominated by empires, dynastic elites, and ethnic divisions.The economic facts of inequality are clear. The rich have been pulling away from the rest of us for years, and the super-rich have been pulling away from the rich. More and more assets are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Mainstream economists say we need not worry; what matters is growth, not dist...

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Economic Geography presents students and researchers with a comprehensive overview of the field, put together by a prestigious editorial team, with contributions from an international cast of prominent scholars.Offers a fully revised, expanded, and up-to-date overview, following the successful and highly regarded Companion to Economic Geography published by Blackwell a decade earlier, providing a comprehensive assessment of t...

"Erudite and thought-provoking. . . . a stimulating, historically grounded exploration of the subject . . . rewarding." — Financial TimesA few centuries ago, capitalism set in motion an explosion of economic productivity. Markets and private property had existed for millennia, but what other key institutions fostered capitalism's relatively recent emergence?With Conceptualizing Capitalism, Geoffrey M. Hodgson offers readers a more precise co...

"We are the 99%" has quickly become the slogan of our political era as growing numbers of Americans express concern about the disappearing middle class and the ever-widening gap between the super-rich and everyone else. Has America really entered a New Gilded Age? What are the political consequences of the growing income gap? Can democracy survive such vast economic inequality? These questions dominate our political moment--and Larry Bartels provides answers backed by sobering data.

The study of the International Political Economy (IPE), like the IPE itself, is plural and unbounded. Despite what partisans sometimes say, rather than there being ‘one way’ of studying the IPE that is the ‘right way’, we find across the world great variation in IPE scholarship in terms of focus, questions, and methods. How then can we make sense of this and understand the field as a whole rather than simply learn one part of it?This Handbook is designed to address precise...

This new and comprehensive volume covering the subfield of comparative political economy provides a detailed overview over its intellectual roots, clarifies its contents, and introduces the readers to key debates while identifying new and exciting avenues for future research. Ideas, interests, and institutions have traditionally been the main focus points of this field, but the volume argues that culture provides an additional and often neglected area, providing the 'glue' that keeps natio...