Globalisms: Facing the Populist Challenge (Globalization) - Hardcover

Steger Professor Of Global Polit, Manfred B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1538129442 ISBN 13: 9781538129449

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019

Synopsis

Rather than reaching the “end of ideology” predicted only three decades ago, we find ourselves in the throes of an intensifying ideological struggle over the meaning and direction of globalization. Noted scholar Manfred B. Steger introduces readers to the clashing political belief systems of our time: market globalism, justice globalism, and religious globalism. He shows how these “globalisms” have developed and how their competing ideas articulate and legitimize particular political agendas. He focuses especially on the ways this battle of ideas has been extended through the unexpectedly powerful surge of antiglobalist populism, an ideological contender that stands in tension to pluralist values of liberal democracy. Explaining the origins, impacts, and consequences of the recent populist challenge, Steger considers the future prospects for the established globalisms in what promises to be a tumultuous decade—as global problems such as climate change, pandemics, transnational terrorism, financial crises, and cyber-warfare threaten humanity’s collective future.

About this title

About the Author

Manfred B. Steger is professor of sociology at the University of Hawai’i-Manoa and Global Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. He has served as an academic consultant on globalization for the US State Department and as an adviser to the PBS television series Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism. He is the author or editor of twenty-seven books on globalization and social and political theory, including The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror (2008); Globalization: A Very Short Introduction (2017); and Globalization Matters: Engaging the Global in Unsettled Times (with Paul James, 2019).

Review

In this newly revised edition, Steger examines the relatively rapid rise of national-populism and its antiglobalization rhetoric. Antiglobalist populism is emerging as the latest ideological force to counter the hegemony of neoliberal market globalism. While it is too early to predict its cumulative impact, Steger proposes possible scenarios of the populist backlash. This is an important and timely analysis of an increasingly hostile ideological global battle—a disturbing but essential read. (Eve Darian-Smith, University of California Irvine)

Manfred Steger offers a thoughtful and well-written analysis of globalization, focused on a frequently overlooked side of the process—the role of ideas. He shows how advocates of the contemporary ‘market globalism’ use language that makes it appear, falsely, as the only possible option. He points out the contradictions of that form of globalization, which proclaim the ideal of individual freedom while relying on state coercion and newly footloose financial capital to impose cutbacks in wages and social programs on unwilling populations around the world. Steger provides insight into the prospects of the alternatives to market globalism coming from the political left and from the religious and the nationalist right. (David M. Kotz, University of Massachusetts Amherst; author of The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism)

Written by one of the foremost contemporary scholars of emergent global imaginaries, Manfred Steger’s Globalisms offers a comprehensive and accessible overview of the competing ideologies of globalization that have transformed the world’s political landscape during the last three decades. This newest edition considers the wide-ranging geopolitical implications of the post-2008 global financial crisis and more recent authoritarian populist electoral victories. It also outlines possible future scenarios for inherited projects of globalization in relation to questions of political ideology, economic and environmental governance, and social justice. An invaluable intellectual resource for students and scholars alike. (Neil Brenner, Harvard University)

Edition details

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1538129442
• ISBN 13: 9781538129449
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 4
• Number of pages: 240