In this collaboratively authored book world-system scholars critically synthesize Asia's re-emerging centrality despite the myriad financial crises that have punctuated the end of the U.S.-dominated Cold War world order. From different vantage points the authors review the turbulent landscape of the region that points toward a new Asian world order as well as contradictory symptoms and signals. The text highlights the salience of Northeast Asia; the resurgence of Russia and Eurasianism; and the class, gender, and ecological implications of a conflict-ridden regional ascent for the future of the North-South divide and for the struggle between the spirit of Davos and the spirit of Porto Alegre.

In Asia the 1950s were dominated by political decolonization and the emergence of the Cold War system, and newly independent countries were able to utilize the transformed balance of power for their own economic development through economic and strategic aid programmes. This book examines the interconnections between the transfer of power and state governance in Asia, the emergence of the Cold War, and the transfer of hegemony from the UK to the US, by focusing specifically on the historical roles of international economic aid and the autonomous response from Asian nation states in the immediate post-war context. The Transformation of the International Order of Asia offers closely interwoven perspectives on international economic and political relations from the 1950s to the 1960s, with specific focus on the Colombo Plan and related aid policies of the time. It shows how the plan served different purposes: Britain’s aim to reduce India’s wartime sterling balances in London; the quest for India’s economic independence under Jawaharlal Nehru; Japan’s regional economic assertion and its endeavour to improve its international status; Britain’s publicity policy during the reorganization of British aid policies at a time of economic crisis; and more broadly, the West’s desire to counter Soviet influence in Asia. In doing so, the chapters explore how international economic aid relations became reorganized in relation to the independent development of states in Asia during the period, and crucially, the role this transformation played in the emergence of a new international order in Asia. Drawing on a wide range of international contemporary and archival source materials, this book will be welcomed by students and scholars interested in Asian, international, and economic history, politics and development studies.

Takeshi Hamashita, arguably Asia's premier historian of the longue durée, has been instrumental in opening a new field of inquiry in Chinese, East Asian and world historical research. Engaging modernization, Marxist and world system approaches, his wide-ranging redefinition of the evolving relationships between the East Asia regional system and the world economy from the sixteenth century to the present has sent ripples throughout Asian and international scholarship. His research has led him to reconceptualize the position of China first in the context of an East Asian regional order and subsequently within the framework of a wider Euro-American-Asian trade and financial order that was long gestating within, and indeed contributing to the shape of, the world market. This book presents a selection of essays from Takeshi Hamashita's oeuvre on Asian trade to introduce this important historian's work to the English speaking reader. It examines the many critical issues surrounding China and East Asia's incorporation to the world economy, including: Maritime perspectives on China, Asia and the world economy Intra-Asian trade Chinese state finance and the tributary trade system Banking and finance Maritime customs.

This volume explains China's economic rise and liberalization and assesses how this growth is reshaping the structure and dynamics of global capitalism in the twenty-first century. China has historically been the center of Asian trade, economic, and financial networks, and its global influence continues to expand in the twenty-first century. In exploring the causes for and effects of China's re surging power, this volume takes a broad, long-term view that reaches well beyond economics for answers. Contributors explore the vast web of complex issues raised by China's ascendancy. The first three chapters discuss the global and historical origins of China's shift to a market economy and that transformation's impact on the international market system. Subsequent essays explore the ability of large Chinese manufacturers to counter the might of transnational retailers, the effect of China's rise on world income distribution and labor, and the consequences of a stronger China for its two most powerful neighbors, Russia and Japan. The concluding chapter questions whether China's growth is sustainable and if it will ultimately shift the center of global capitalism from the West to the East.

At a particularly urgent world-historical moment, this volume brings together some of the leading researchers of social movements and global social change and other emerging scholars and practitioners to advance new thinking about social movements and global transformation. Social movements around the world today are responding to crisis by defying both political and epistemological borders, offering alternatives to the global capitalist order that are imperceptible through the modernist lens. Informed by a world-historical perspective, contributors explain today’s struggles as building upon the experiences of the past while also coming together globally in ways that are inspiring innovation and consolidating new thinking about what a fundamentally different, more equitable, just, and sustainable world order might look like. This collection offers new insights into contemporary movements for global justice, challenging readers to appreciate how modernist thinking both colors our own observations and complicates the work of activists seeking to resolve inequities and contradictions that are deeply embedded in Western cultural traditions and institutions. Contributors consider today’s movements in the longue durée—that is, they ask how Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, and other contemporary struggles for liberation reflect, build upon, or diverge from anti-colonial and other emancipatory struggles of the past. Critical to this volume is its exploration of how divisions over gender equity and diversity of national cultures and class have impacted what are increasingly intersectional global movements. The contributions of feminist and indigenous movements come to the fore in this collective exploration of what the movements of yesterday and today can contribute to our ongoing effort to understand the dynamics of global transformation in order to help advance a more equitable, just, and ecologically sustainable world.

This book is nothing short of a state-of-the-world address, delivered by a scholar uniquely suited to the task. Immanuel Wallerstein, one of the most prominent social scientists of our time, documents the profound transformations our world is undergoing. With these transformations, he argues, come equally profound changes in how we understand the world. Wallerstein begins his work with an appraisal of significant recent events -- the collapse of the Leninist states, the exhaustion of national liberation movements, the rise of East Asia, challenges to national sovereignty, dangers to the environment, debates about national identity, and the marginalization of migrant populations. Wallerstein places these events and trends in the context of the changing modern world-system as a whole and identifies the historic choices they put before us. The End of the World As We Know It concludes with a crucial analysis of the momentous intellectual challenges to social science as we know it today and suggests possible responses to them.