Integrating environmental and world-systems analyses in chapters ranging from the ancient to the contemporary, from the global to the local, from West to East, and from North to South, this book is the first collection to analyze environmental issues from the world-systems perspective. The introduction provides Immanuel Wallerstein's fullest explication of the role of ecological constraints in the world-system. Early chapters diagnose the increasing environmental threats to global sustainability and suggest ways to arrive at an integrated theoretical understanding of those threats. The work then shows the historical and geographical range necessary to do justice to ecological considerations in chapters considering ancient civilizations, capitalism, the circumpolar North, the dam-builders of Asia, and the polluters of East Central Europe. The final chapters analyze the successes and limits of environmental movements in the United States, South Africa, and South Korea.
Author(s): Walter L. Goldfrank, David Goodman, Andrew Szasz
Series: Studies in the Political Economy of the World-System
Publisher: Praeger
Year: 1999
Language: English
Pages: 288
Contents
List of Illustrations
Series Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I
1. Ecology and Capitalist Costs of Production: No Exit
2. The Horsemen and the Killing Fields: The Final Contradiction of Capitalism
3. Ecosociology and Toxic Emissions
4. Extending the World-System to the Whole System: Toward a Political Economy of the Biosphere
Part II
5. Ecological Relations and the Decline of Civilizations in the Bronze Age World-System: Mesopotamia and Harappa 2500 B.C.–1700 B.C.
6. Economic Ascent and the Global Environment: World-Systems Theory and the New Historical Materialism
7. The Development of the Risk Economy in the Circumpolar North
8. Modernism, Water, and Affluence: The Japanese Way in East Asia
9. Wastelands in Transition: Forms and Concepts of Waste in Hungary Since 1948
Part III
10. Success and Impasse: The Environmental Movement in the United States and Around the World
11. Globalization, Democratization, and the Environment in the New South Africa: Social Movements, Corporations, and the State in South Durban
12. The Emergence of South Korean Environmental Movements: A Response (and Challenge?) to Semiperipheral Industrialization
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y
Z
About the Contributors
