From World Order to Global Disorder: States, Markets, and Dissent - Hardcover

Brunelle, Dorval

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0774813601 ISBN 13: 9780774813600

Publisher: UBC Press, 2007

Synopsis

Anti-globalization activism world-wide attests to the tensions between globalization and civil society. To better understand this fraught relationship, Dorval Brunelle compares two social orders separated by a half-century. The post-World War II order entailed a broad vision uniting three complementary objectives - security, justice, and welfare - which were entrusted to a network of international and national institutions. In contrast, globalization, with wealth as its only objective, is undermining and overhauling the values and institutions of the previous order, including the United Nations and the welfare state.

From World Order to Global Disorder demonstrates the profound effect of globalization on relations between the state, civil society, and markets, as well as on collective and individual rights. As neo-liberalism evolves into globalization, governments are eschewing their role as public guardians and are instead bartering the very assets and resources their citizens’ labour and activism created and preserved. However, no constitution makes governments owners of collective assets: governments are merely trustees. In this context, the world’s citizens have a tremendous task before them: in the wake of the welfare state, their social forums are indispensable in the quest for a more just and equitable world.

About this title

About the Author:

Dorval Brunelle is professor of sociology and director of the Observatory of the Americas at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal.

Review:

The authoritative account of the rise of the global social justice movement by an ‘insider,’ who also happens to be one of Canada’s leading social scientists. Dorval Brunelle’s book will be of interest to political scientists, economists, sociologists, and citizens with an appetite to discover what lies behind the headlines about lost jobs, world trade talks, growing inequalities, and popular unrest in much of the world. (Duncan Cameron, Associate Publisher of rabble.ca, where he writes a weekly column on public affairs)

The French philosopher and activist, Jean Rostand, said: “It is horrible to see everything one detested in the past coming back wearing the colours of the future.” Dorval Brunelle’s wonderful new book explains how economic globalization has erased the international consensus for justice that emerged out of the horrors of World War II and exposes this new system for the regressive force it really is. (Maude Barlow, National Chairperson, Council of Canadians)

... the issues that Brunelle tackles in this book are vast, complex, and impossible to resolve. ... The author does an admirable job of theorizing some of these issues. The book’s theme consists of nothing less than the evolution of the global economy since the closing of the Second World War and he posits some novel and interesting connections on how this behemoth has changed over the past two decades. ... In short, this volume provides an important overview of the global political economy and where it is heading in the first decade of the twenty-first century. (Peter Urmetzer, University of British Columbia Okanagan Canadian Journal of Sociology, Vol. 33, 2008 2008-01-01)

In this important book, Dorval Brunelle revisits the post–Second World War international order and finds that its foundational principles are as valid today as they were then. He concludes that efforts to reform international institutions cannot address the global democratic deficit, and advises civil society that the only public space within which they can effectively challenge globalization is national. This book deserves a wide international readership. (Kari Polanyi Levitt, Development Economist and author of Silent Surrender: The Multinational Corporation in Canada)

About this edition

• Publisher: UBC Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0774813601
• ISBN 13: 9780774813600
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224