The Economic Structure of International Law presents a rationalist analysis of the structure of international law. It employs social scientific techniques to develop an understanding of the role of law in international society. In doing so, it delves into the question of compliance and reveals the real-world circumstances under which states might adhere to or violate international law.

Joel P. Trachtman explores such topics as treaty-making and jurisdiction; the rise, stability, and efficiency of custom; the establishment of international organizations; and the structure and role of international legal dispute settlement. At the core of the book lies the question of the allocation of legal power to states. The Economic Structure of International Law presents policymakers and scholars with an over-arching analytical model of international law, one that demonstrates the potential of international law, but also explains how policymakers should choose among different international legal structures.

As the twenty-first century faces a crisis of democracy and sustainability, this book attempts to bring academics and alternative globalisation activists into conversation.

Through studies of global neoliberalism, ecological debt, climate change, and the ongoing devaluation of reproductive and subsistence labour, these uncompromising essays by internationally distinguished women thinkers expose the limits of current scholarship in political economy, ecological economics, and sustainability science.

The book introduces groundbreaking theoretical concepts for talking about humanity-nature links and will be a challenging read for activists and for students of political economy, environmental ethics, global studies, sociology, women's studies, and critical geography.

A grounded and instructive analysis of the ways globalization affects a border city. Every marker of social difference can be easily interpreted in the fashionable language of "borderlandso--and if so, as Victor M. Ortiz-Gonzalez reveals, the practical reality of the border region is often grossly misrepresented and its people woefully served. He argues that amid the tantalizing abstractions generated by the sweeping reconfigurations of globalization, people in cities like El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, on the U.S. - Mexican border, are actually living the gritty realities of a new world order. With descriptions of grassroots initiatives to confront the challenges and opportunities that NAFTA represents for the city, El Paso challenges us to acknowledge and address the conceptual and sociopolitical tasks of a world in which abstract representations and nonlocal interests override concrete situations. Ortiz-Gonzalez also provides an in-depth analysis of groups such as La Mujer Obrera, Unite El Paso, and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and their attempts to give local residents and workers more autonomy and power. Balancing ethnographic detail with precise theoretical insights, El Paso offers a compelling case study and a stirring call to understand both the conceptual challenge and the social urgency of the effects of globalization in local settings. Victor M. Ortiz-Gonzalez is coordinator of the Mexican and Caribbean Studies Program at Northeastern Illinois University.

For as long as there have been nations, there has been an “international”—a sphere of cross-border relations. But for most of human history, this space was sparsely occupied. States and regions were connected by long-distance commerce and the spasms of war, yet in their development they remained essentially separate. The century after 1750 marked a major shift. Fleeting connection gave way to durable integration. Culture, politics, and society were increasingly, and indelibly, entangled across continents. An Emerging Modern World charts this transformative period, addressing major questions about the roots of the present from a distinctly global perspective.

Why, for instance, did industrialization begin in England and not in China? Was there early capitalist development outside of the West? Was the Enlightenment exclusively a European event? Led by editors Sebastian Conrad and Jürgen Osterhammel, a distinguished group of historians tackles these issues, along with the roles of nomads and enslaved people in fostering global integration, the development of a bourgeoisie outside Euro-America, Hinduism’s transformation from local practices into a universal system, the invention of pan-Islamic identity, and the causes and effects of the revolution in time regimes. The world appeared to be undergoing such a radical renewal that the impression of an epochal watershed was widespread.

This fourth volume in the six-volume series A History of the World engages the political, economic, social, and intellectual ferment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries outside Europe and North America. In doing so, it bears witness to the birth of the modern world.

Imperialism as we knew it may be no more, but Empire is alive and well. It is, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri demonstrate in this bold work, the new political order of globalization. It is easy to recognize the contemporary economic, cultural, and legal transformations taking place across the globe but difficult to understand them. Hardt and Negri contend that they should be seen in line with our historical understanding of Empire as a universal order that accepts no boundaries or limits. Their book shows how this emerging Empire is fundamentally different from the imperialism of European dominance and capitalist expansion in previous eras. Rather, today’s Empire draws on elements of U.S. constitutionalism, with its tradition of hybrid identities and expanding frontiers.

Empire identifies a radical shift in concepts that form the philosophical basis of modern politics, concepts such as sovereignty, nation, and people. Hardt and Negri link this philosophical transformation to cultural and economic changes in postmodern society—to new forms of racism, new conceptions of identity and difference, new networks of communication and control, and new paths of migration. They also show how the power of transnational corporations and the increasing predominance of postindustrial forms of labor and production help to define the new imperial global order.

More than analysis, Empire is also an unabashedly utopian work of political philosophy, a new Communist Manifesto. Looking beyond the regimes of exploitation and control that characterize today’s world order, it seeks an alternative political paradigm—the basis for a truly democratic global society.

From the flights of the Wright brothers through the mass journeys of the jet age, airplanes inspired Americans to reimagine their nation’s place within the world. Now, Jenifer Van Vleck reveals the central role commercial aviation played in the United States’ rise to global preeminence in the twentieth century. As U.S. military and economic influence grew, the federal government partnered with the aviation industry to carry and deliver American power across the globe and to sell the very idea of the “American Century” to the public at home and abroad.

Invented on American soil and widely viewed as a symbol of national greatness, the airplane promised to extend the frontiers of the United States “to infinity,” as Pan American World Airways president Juan Trippe said. As it accelerated the global circulation of U.S. capital, consumer goods, technologies, weapons, popular culture, and expertise, few places remained distant from the influence of Wall Street and Washington. Aviation promised to secure a new type of empire—an empire of the air instead of the land, which emphasized access to markets rather than the conquest of territory and made the entire world America’s sphere of influence.

By the late 1960s, however, foreign airlines and governments were challenging America’s control of global airways, and the domestic aviation industry hit turbulent times. Just as the history of commercial aviation helps to explain the ascendance of American power, its subsequent challenges reflect the limits and contradictions of the American Century.

Empires and the Reach of the Global brings the history of empires into sharp focus by showing how imperialism has been a shaping force not just in international politics but in the economies and cultures of today’s world. Focusing on both the strengths and limits of imperial power, Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton describe the creation and disintegration of the reigning world order in the period from 1870 to 1945.

Using the British, Japanese, and Ottoman empires as case studies, the authors trace the communication, transportation, and economic networks that were instrumental to empire building. They highlight the role of empires as place-making regimes that organize geographic space as distinct territories. Militaries and missionaries, workplaces and households, all served as key domains of interaction within these territories, as colonial officials sought to manage the customs and lifeways of indigenous populations. Imperial connections contributed to the shrinking of time and space, but colonial encroachments also provoked opposition, which often played out in locations of everyday activity, from fields and factories to schools and prisons. Colonized territories sponsored a variety of forms of organized resistance, with full-fledged nationalist movements erupting onto the global scene in the interwar period.

Ballantyne and Burton stress that empire was not something fabricated in European capitals and implemented “out there.” Rather, imperial systems, with their many racial, gendered, and economic forms, affected empires in all of their parts—the metropole as well as the farthest outpost.

"Empire's Law is first rate -- a 'must read' for students of international law, politics and ethics. It includes excellent contributions by key theorists and impressive case studies. This provocative and original collection should be read and taught in classes on both the undergraduate and graduate level."
Jean L. Cohen Professor of Political Science, Columbia University

"This remarkable collection of essays illuminates -- more fully than any other volume -- the world order costs of the Iraq War, especially the radical denial of the relevance of international law in the US's pursuit of global empire. To understand this overarching geopolitical challenge of the early 21st century, citizens the world over should treat Empire's Law as required reading."
Richard A. Falk, Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice Emeritus, Princeton University and currently Visiting Professor of Global and International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

"Right now there can't be enough discussion of America's role in world politics ... This is a much-needed collection from leading scholars."
Neil Stammers, Senior Lecturer in the Department of International Relations and Politics, University of Sussex

What is the legacy of the war in Iraq? Can democracy and human rights really be imposed "by fire and sword"? This book brings together some of the world's most outstanding theorists in the debate over empire and international law. They provide a uniquely lucid account of the relationship between American imperialism, the use and abuse of "humanitarian intervention", and its legal implications. Empire's Law is ideal for students who want a comprehensive critical introduction to the impact that the doctrine of pre-emptive war has had on our capacity to protect human rights and promote global justice.

Leading contributors including Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin, Jurgen Habermas, Ulrich Preuss, Andrew Arato, Samir Amin, Reg Whitaker, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck tackle a broad range of issues. Covering everything from the role of Europe and the UN, to people's tribunals, to broader theoretical accounts of the contradictions of war and human rights, the contributors offer new and innovative ways of examining the problems that we face. It is essential reading for all students who want a systematic framework for understanding the long-term consequences of imperialism.

Amy Bartholomew is an Associate Professor in the Department of Law at Carleton University.

Free-market capitalism, hegemony, Western culture, peace, and democracy—the ideas that shaped world politics in the twentieth century and underpinned American foreign policy—have lost a good deal of their strength. Authority is now more contested and power more diffuse. Hegemony (benign or otherwise) is no longer a choice, not for the United States, for China, or for anyone else.

Steven Weber and Bruce Jentleson are not declinists, but they argue that the United States must take a different stance toward the rest of the world in this, the twenty-first century. Now that we can’t dominate others, we must rely on strategy, making trade-offs and focusing our efforts. And they do not mean military strategy, such as “the global war on terror.” Rather, we must compete in the global marketplace of ideas—with state-directed capitalism, with charismatic authoritarian leaders, with jihadism. In politics, ideas and influence are now critical currency.

At the core of our efforts must be a new conception of the world order based on mutuality, and of a just society that inspires and embraces people around the world.

"Globalization" is here. Signified by an increasingly close economic interconnection that has led to profound political and social change around the world, the process seems irreversible. In this book, however, Harold James provides a sobering historical perspective, exploring the circumstances in which the globally integrated world of an earlier era broke down under the pressure of unexpected events.

James examines one of the great historical nightmares of the twentieth century: the collapse of globalism in the Great Depression. Analyzing this collapse in terms of three main components of global economics--capital flows, trade, and international migration--James argues that it was not simply a consequence of the strains of World War I but resulted from the interplay of resentments against all these elements of mobility, as well as from the policies and institutions designed to assuage the threats of globalism. Could it happen again? There are significant parallels today: highly integrated systems are inherently vulnerable to collapse, and world financial markets are vulnerable and unstable. While James does not foresee another Great Depression, his book provides a cautionary tale in which institutions meant to save the world from the consequences of globalization--think WTO and IMF, in our own time--ended by destroying both prosperity and peace.

A new account of globalization’s decline as the natural outworking of market economics.
 
Globalization as we know it is over. Governments continue to embrace regressive industrial policies, geopolitical tensions are rising higher and higher, and resurgent far-right movements are threatening the foundations of contemporary democracies. In this book, Jamie Merchant traces the roots of this decline beyond the oft-blamed Cold War failures. Instead, Merchant argues that the great political and economic changes of the last decade are due not to globalization but to the long-term decay of the market-based economic order. By historicizing this period of globalization and decline, Endgame illuminates a path forward for both the global economy and international politics.

A uniquely broad perspective that challenges current ideas about worldwide cultural and political change. An intervention into current debates about globalization, nationalism, imperialism, and culture, this book offers a cogent critique of much of what is being said about globalization, by both the Right and the Left. In doing so, it charts the complex processes of globalization, drawing out their historical and philosophical roots and outlining the connections between cultural, political, and economic life that globalization has made, historically and in our day. The author's orientation toward political theory and comparative civilizations-a rarity in globalization studies-allows him to detect in specific terms what is most dangerous and opportune in what is happening in the world today. Mohammed A. Bamyeh makes a compelling argument that we are witnessing a process typified by massive disjunctions between political, cultural, and economic logics on a world scale. Bamyeh demonstrates how the disruptions caused by globalization, while they blur our vision and block our rational approaches, also possess the potential to liberate the autonomous and convivial human possibilities and capabilities long shackled by such modernist institutions of governance as the nation-state. Mohammed A. Bamyeh is associate professor at New York University, where he teaches comparative civilizations, social theory, and historical sociology. He is the author of The Social Origins of Islam (1999).

Soaring income inequality and unemployment, expanding populations of the displaced and imprisoned, accelerating destruction of land and water bodies: today’s socioeconomic and environmental dislocations cannot be fully understood in the usual terms of poverty and injustice, according to Saskia Sassen. They are more accurately understood as a type of expulsion—from professional livelihood, from living space, even from the very biosphere that makes life possible.

This hard-headed critique updates our understanding of economics for the twenty-first century, exposing a system with devastating consequences even for those who think they are not vulnerable. From finance to mining, the complex types of knowledge and technology we have come to admire are used too often in ways that produce elementary brutalities. These have evolved into predatory formations—assemblages of knowledge, interests, and outcomes that go beyond a firm’s or an individual’s or a government’s project.

Sassen draws surprising connections to illuminate the systemic logic of these expulsions. The sophisticated knowledge that created today’s financial “instruments” is paralleled by the engineering expertise that enables exploitation of the environment, and by the legal expertise that allows the world’s have-nations to acquire vast stretches of territory from the have-nots. Expulsions lays bare the extent to which the sheer complexity of the global economy makes it hard to trace lines of responsibility for the displacements, evictions, and eradications it produces—and equally hard for those who benefit from the system to feel responsible for its depredations.

An Observer Architecture Book of the Year

Soaring income inequality and unemployment, expanding populations of the displaced and imprisoned, accelerating destruction of land and water bodies: today’s socioeconomic and environmental dislocations cannot be fully understood in the usual terms of poverty and injustice, according to Saskia Sassen. They are more accurately understood as a type of expulsion—from professional livelihood, from living space, even from the very biosphere that makes life possible.

“Saskia Sassen’s Expulsions describes the global forces that make ever more tenuous and fragile most people’s grip on the places where they live.”
—Rowan Moore, The Observer

“Coupled with her earlier work, this may be a paradigm breaking/making work.”
—Michael D. Kennedy, Contemporary Sociology

“Once again, sociologist Sassen uses her considerable knowledge to think creatively at both the local and global levels…In place of the principle of inclusion in the pre-1980s Keynesian era, the planet is increasingly dominated by a principle of exclusion of people, land, natural resources, and water. Sassen presents a powerful conceptual analysis and an equally powerful and timely call to action.”
—M. Oromaner, Choice

The Eyes of the World focuses on the lives and experiences of Eastern Congolese people involved in extracting and transporting the minerals needed for digital devices.

The digital devices that, many would argue, define this era exist not only because of Silicon Valley innovations but also because of a burgeoning trade in dense, artisanally mined substances like tantalum, tin, and tungsten. In the tentatively postwar Eastern DR Congo, where many lives have been reoriented around artisanal mining, these minerals are socially dense, fueling movement and innovative collaborations that encompass diverse actors, geographies, temporalities, and dimensions. Focusing on the miners and traders of some of these “digital minerals,” The Eyes of the World examines how Eastern Congolese understand the work in which they are engaged, the forces pitted against them, and the complicated process through which substances in the earth and forest are converted into commodified resources. Smith shows how violent dispossession has fueled a bottom-up social theory that valorizes movement and collaboration—one that directly confronts both private mining companies and the tracking initiatives implemented by international companies aspiring to ensure that the minerals in digital devices are purified of blood.