The great disruption / Zaki Laïdi ; translated by Chris Turner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Laïdi, Zaki.

Standardized Title:

Grande perturbation. English

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Social change.

Globalization.

Globalization--Economic aspects.

Economic history--1990-.

Economic history.

Physical Description:

vii, 260 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Polity, [2007]

Summary:

The dynamic that currently underlies global social change is the product of forces that are not of a single type or origin. As a consequence, that change is experienced as a process that uproots individuals but gives no guidance for the future, that destroys but does not reconstruct, that prescribes action but provides no reassurance. The radical uncertainty it engenders is an understandable source of anxiety: the rich countries are increasingly worried about competition from low-wage economies, while the wretched of the earth suspect their precarious existences will come under even greater pressure. Within each nation, the constantly growing gap between winners and losers exacerbates these fears. The Great Disruption is at its height. This book is an examination and interpretation of the enormous complex of social changes which, for want of a better word, we term globalization.

Contents:

Introduction: The 'Imaginary' of a New World 1

Part I Goodbye, Bodin? 9

1 Sovereignty Is No Longer One and Indivisible 11

From Government to Governance 12

2 The Redistribution of Sovereignty 16

Redistribution Towards the Market 16

Hayek Against Bodin 18

Redistribution Towards Civil Society 22

Civil Society and State Sovereignty 25

Why Are Law and Politics Not One and the Same? 29

3 Towards the Era of Operational Sovereignty? 32

Part II The Break-Up of the West 43

4 Governance Against Sovereignism 45

Why Does Europe Prefer Standards and Norms? 46

Governance Against Sovereignism: Proof by the Economy 53

Euro-American To-ings and Fro-ings 58

The Spectacular Inversion of Attitudes to Risk in Europe and America 59

The WTO and the Challenge of Collective Preferences 66

The Kyoto Litmus Test 72

The Conflict Around International Criminal Justice 78

Why Has America Gone Back to Carl Schmitt? 85

Why Is Europe Kantian? 90

5 The Self-Regulating Market 95

Why Are There Fewer Public Goods? 95

The Market Is Not External to Society 96

The Market Comes Off Its National Hinges 98

The Ideological Construction of Globalization 102

Lex Globalica 110

6 Is the State the 'Useful Idiot' of the Global Village? 118

The Hobbesian State 119

The Market State 122

The Politicization of World Trade 123

The State as Guarantor of the Openness of Markets 126

The State as Guarantor of Collective Preferences 128

The Cannibalization of the Welfare State? 133

Does Globalization Create a Demand for More State Intervention? 135

7 The New Property Question 140

The Return of Enclosures 140

The Tragedy of the Anti-Commons 144

Part III Reticence and Resistance 151

8 Is Alterglobalism a Syndicalism? 153

The Founding Moves of Alterglobalism 156

The Mobilizing Myth of the Tobin Tax 159

Why Alterglobalism Is Not a Trade Unionism 160

The Three Tendencies within French Alterglobalism 165

The Left and Alterglobalism 169

9 Why Does Globalization Generate Anxiety? 173

Age, Qualifications, Exposure and Socialization: the Quadrilateral of Representations 175

Populism or the Rejection of Complexity 178

Why Peoples Are Not Spontaneously Pro-Free Trade 180

The Abiding Influence of Mercantilism 187

10 The Cohort of Losers 192

Why Does Globalization Downgrade Unskilled Workers Even More? 193

The Global Social Ladder Kicked Away 196

Conclusion: There Is No Globalization without Difficulty...or without History 200.

Notes:

Translated from the French.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780745636641

0745636640

0745636632

9780745636634

OCLC:

163810826