Robinson - Global capitalism and the crisis of humanity

This exciting new study provides an original and provocative expos of the crisis of global capitalism in its multiple dimensions economic, political, social, ecological, military, and cultural. Building on his earlier works on globalization, William I. Robinson discusses the nature of the new global capitalism, the rise of a globalized production and financial system, a transnational capitalist class, and a transnational state and warns of the rise of a global police state to contain the explosive contradictions of a global capitalist system that is crisis-ridden and out of control. Robinson concludes with an exploration of how diverse social and political forces are responding to the crisis and alternative scenarios for the future.

WILLIAM I. ROBINSON is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is also affiliated with the Latin American and Iberian Studies Program and with the Global and International Studies Program. He has previously published seven books, including the award-winning Promoting Polyarchy (Cambridge University Press, 1996), A Theory of Global Capitalism (2004), and the award-winning Latin America and Global Capitalism (2008). He has published some fifty articles in academic journals such as Sociological Forum , Theory and Society , International Studies Review , International Sociology , Cambridge Review of International Affairs , International Relations , Global Society , Globalizations , Race and Class , New Political Economy , Third World Quarterly , and Radical Philosophy and hundreds of essays, book chapters, and articles in the popular press. He is a member of the editorial board of fifteen academic journals. In 2013 Robinson was elected chair of the Political Economy of the World-System section of the American Sociological Association (ASA). He is a member of the ASA, the Latin American Studies Association, the Global Studies Association, and the International Studies Association. He was a founding writer for and editor of Pensamiento Propio , a monthly journal of the Coordinadora Regional de Investigaciones Economicas y Sociales.

All intellectual labor is collective, part of the social labor process. The collective labor behind this study includes literally thousands of people who have contributed to my own intellectual and political development, many of whom I do not know personally. The best I can do to acknowledge my debt is to mention here those people who more immediately provided invaluable assistance in the research and preparation of this study and those who were the most proximate sources of inspiration. To start, I cannot thank enough Mario Barrera and Kent Norsworthy, both of whom carefully read and commented on every chapter. My former undergraduate student Anaiya Mussolini, a bright and multitalented young woman, read the entire manuscript, suggested where I could improve it, and helped me format the notes. Xuan Santos provided important comments on a draft of .

I do not think my graduate students in the doctoral program at the University of California some of whom have defended their dissertations and are now colleagues realize just what an inspiration they have been. Among them, I want to extend special thanks (in alphabetical order) to Yousef Baker, Veronica Montes (now Dr. Montes, Research Fellow at the University of Southern California), Steven Osuna, Cesar Che Rodiguez, Amandeep Sandhu (now Dr. Sandhu), Xuan Santos (now Dr. Santos, assistant professor of sociology at California State UniversitySan Marcos), Jeb Sprague, and James Walsh (now Dr. Walsh). There are many more, both graduate and undergraduate, whom I cannot mention here.

I would also like to thank friends and colleagues in several professional associations to which I belong. These include the Political Economy of the World-System section of the American Sociological Association; the Global Studies Association (North American chapter); and the Network for Critical Studies of Global Capitalism (this network has a website, http://netglobalcapitalism.wordpress.com/). Among the many colleagues active in these three and other professional associations who have supported my own career over the years, generously extended to me invitations, and stimulated the development of my ideas (even when they are in disagreement), I want to pay special thanks to Christopher Chase-Dunn, who now directs the Institute for Research on World-Systems at the University of California at Riverside; Jerry Harris, organizational secretary of the Global Studies Association (North America); Leslie Sklair, professor emeritus of the London School of Economics; Mark Hrubec, the director of the Center for Global Studies of the Czech Academy of Sciences; Immanuel Wallerstein at Yale University; and the late Giovanni Arrighi. A special thanks to Juan Manual Sandoval and my friends and comrades from the Red Mexicana de Accon Frente al Libre Comercio (REMALC) and the Seminario Permanente de Estudios Chicanos y de Fronteras (SPECHF) of the National Insitute of Anthropology and History (INAH) of Mexico.