Business As Usual

Situates the current crisis in the historical trajectory of the capitalist world-system, showing how the crisis was made possible not only by neoliberal financial reforms but by a massive turn away from manufacturing things of value towards seeking profit from financial exchange and credit. Much more basic than the result of a few financial traders cheating the system, this is a potential historical turning point. In original essays, the contributors establish why the system was ripe for crisis of the past, and yet why this meltdown was different. The volume concludes by asking whether as deep as the crisis is, it may contain seeds of a new global economy, what role the US will play, and whether China or other countries will rise to global leadership. Contributors include: Immanuel Wallerstein, David Harvey, Saskia Sassen, James Kenneth Galbraith, Manuel Castells, Nancy Fraser, Rogers Brubaker, David Held, Mary Kaldor, Vadim Volkov, Giovanni Arrighi, Beverly Silver, and Fernando Coronil. The three volumes can purchased individually or as a set.

Craig Calhoun is President of the Social Science Research Council and University Professor of the Social Sciences at New York University. His most recent book is Nations Matter: Culture, History, and the Cosmopolitan Dream. Georgi Derluguian is Associate Professor of International Studies and Sociology at Northwestern University and author of Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus: A World-System Biography.