Business as Usual: The Roots of the Global Financial Meltdown

by Craig Calhoun (Editor), Georgi Derluguian (Editor)

Overview

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: Giovanni Arrighi, Gopal Balakrishnan, Manuel Castells, Daniel Chirot, Fernando Coronil, Nancy Fraser, James K. Galbraith, David Harvey, Caglar Keyder, Beverly J. Silver, and Immanuel Wallerstein.

The three volumes can purchased individually or as a set.

Business as Usual is the first part of a trilogy comprised of the first three books in the Possible Future series.

Volume 1: Business as Usual
Volume 2: The Deepening Crisis
Volume 3: Aftermath

The three volumes are linked by a common introduction and can be purchased individually or as a set.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814772775
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	05/01/2011
Series:	Possible Futures , #2
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Craig Calhoun is Director of the London School of Economics and Global Distinguished Professor of Sociology at New York University. His most recent book is The Roots of Radicalism: Tradition, the Public Sphere, and Early Nineteenth-Century Social Movements.

Georgi Derluguian is Associate Professor of International Studies and Sociology at Northwestern Universityand is the author of Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus: A World-System Biography.

Table of Contents

Series Acknowledgments 7

Series Introduction: From the Current Crisis to Possible Futures Craig Calhoun 9

Introduction Craig Calhoun Georgi Derluguian 43

1 The End of the Long Twentieth Century Beverly J. Silver Giovanni Arrighi 53

2 Dynamics of (Unresolved) Global Crisis Immanuel Wallerstein 69

3 The Enigma of Capital and the Crisis This Time David Harvey 89

4 A Turning Point or Business as Usual? Daniel Chirot 113

5 Marketization, Social Protection, Emancipation: Toward a Neo-Polanyian Conception of Capitalist Crisis Nancy Fraser 137

6 Crisis, Underconsumption, and Social Policy Caglar Keyder 159

7 The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Toward a New Economic Culture? Manuel Castells 185

8 The Convolution of Capitalism Gopal Balakrishnan 211

9 The Future in Question: History and Utopia in Latin America (1989-2010) Fernando Coronil 231

Notes 265

About the Contributors 293

Index 297

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“A brilliant and inspiring collection of analyses from world-renowned international social theorists and political economists, far-reaching in its implications for our understanding, not just of the current crisis, but of its historical roots and the importance of politics to the future of global socio-economic structures.”
-Kate Nash,author of The Cultural Politics of Human Rights

“There may be a silver lining to the global financial meltdown of 2008, for it has made possible a book such as this one. In Business as Usual, Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian have brought together some of ‘the best and brightest’ in the business and given them a most unusual task: to tell the story of the financial crisis in all its complexity, in a manner that is both clear and precise. The result is critical social science at its best: more than explanation, prediction or prescription, this book offers the promise of actual understanding.”
-Ivan Ascher,University of Massachusetts, Amherst

"The high quality of the wide-ranging essays makes this volume a worthwhile addition to library collections and a valuable resource for both students and specialists wanting to explore the complex roots of the financial crisis."
-M. Perelman,Choice

Editorial Reviews

"There may be a silver lining to the global financial meltdown of 2008, for it has made possible a book such as this one. In Business as Usual, Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian have brought together some of & the best and brightest in the business and given them a most unusual task: to tell the story of the financial crisis in all its complexity, in a manner that is both clear and precise. The result is critical social science at its best: more than explanation, prediction or prescription, this book offers the promise of actual understanding."

Ivan Ascher

"A brilliant and inspiring collection of analyses from world-renowned international social theorists and political economists, far-reaching in its implications for our understanding, not just of the current crisis, but of its historical roots and the importance of politics to the future of global socio-economic structures."

Kate Nash

"The high quality of the wide-ranging essays makes this volume a worthwhile addition to library collections and a valuable resource for both students and specialists wanting to explore the complex roots of the financial crisis."

Choice - M. Perelman

"Calhoun and Derlugians co-edited book will be important for sociologists because of the wide range of arguments enlisted in an attempt to correlate the various parameters and focus discussion on specific theoretical aspects of the crisis."

Critical Sociology

A brilliant and inspiring collection of analyses from world-renowned international social theorists and political economists, far-reaching in its implications for our understanding, not just of the current crisis, but of its historical roots and the importance of politics to the future of global socio-economic structures.”
-Kate Nash,author of The Cultural Politics of Human Rights

From the Publisher