PRELUDE TO
AN INTEGRAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
by Michel Bauwens
THIRD QUADRANT: THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOCIAL SYSTEM
table of contents
3.1 introduction/generalities on systems and their
evolution
- SYSTEMS THINKING
- EVOLUTION
3.2 historical epochs of the world-system
- INTRODUCTION: THE DYNAMICS OF HISTORY
extra: POSTMODERN CHALLENGES
extra: THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS
- PRE-HISTORIES
- HISTORY ACROSS TIMESCALES (GLOBAL HISTORIES)
extra: CIVILISATIONS
extra: REGIONAL HISTORIES
- PRESENT TIME - 20TH CENTURY
extra AUTOBIOGRAPHIES/TESTIMONIALS
extra: NON-EUROCENTRIC ANTHROPOLOGICAL ACCOUNTS
- WHAT'S NEXT / GLOBAL FUTURES
3.3 political systems: the state and its evolution
- INTRODUCTION: HISTORY OF POLITICAL SYSTEMS
20th CENTURY
21th CENTURY
- INTRODUCTION: HISTORY OF POLITICAL THEORY
- THE STATE
history of state form
the contemporary postmodern and/or global state
extra: THE DEBATE AROUND EMPIRE (BY TONI NEGRI)
3.4 political systems: topics
-COLONISATION
extra: CRITIQUES OF EUROCENTRISM
- DEMOCRACY
- GLOBAL GOVERNANCE
extra: INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS
- GLOBALISATION
extra: delinking / SAMIR AMIN
extra: CULTURAL GLOBALISATION
-HUMAN RIGHTS
- INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS / USA / EUROPE
- POWER
- REVOLUTION AND CHANGE
extra: MARXIST CONCEPTIONS
extra: 'REVOLUTION WITHOUT POWER'?
extra: ANTI-REVOLUTION
- SOCIAL EVOLUTION
- UTOPIAN SYSTEMS
- WAR
3.5 economic systems and their evolution
- INTRODUCTION
extra: NON-EUROCENTRIC ACCOUNTS
- PRECAPITALIST
ORIGINS OF MONEY/THE GIFT ECONOMY
ANTIQUITY
FEUDALISM
- CAPITALIST
NON-EUROCENTRIC ACCOUNTS
CAPITAL / THE MARKET
CRITIQUES
- THE CONTEMPERARY SYSTEM
non-European/Eurocentric accounts
postindustrial/informational
POSTINDUSTRIAL
COGNITIVE CAPITALISM
THE IMMATERIAL ECONOMY
- WHAT NEXT: AFTER CAPITALISM
peer to peer economics (cooperation)
3.6 economic systems: topics
- ALTERNATIVE ECONOMICS
extra: NEOLIBERAL ECONOMICS
- CONSUMERISM
-COOPERATION
-DEVELOPMENT
critiques of development
- ECOLOGY/ENVIRONMENT/SUSTAINABILITY
- FINANCIAL SYSTEM
-MANAGEMENT AND ORGANISATION
extra: ALTERNATIVES
- MONEY
- WORK
extra: UNIVERSAL ALLOWANCE
3.7 other systems
- FOOD (PRODUCTION) SYSTEMS
- MEDIA SYSTEMS
- RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS
- VARIOUS OTHER INSTITUTIONAL SYSTEMS
PSYCHIATRY
SCIENCE
- 3.1 introduction: generalities on systems and their
evolution
- SYSTEMS (AND SYSTEMS THINKING)
- Jan Smuts: Holism and Evolution
("one of the best ever written on the idea of holism" Bennett biblio)
- Le Systeme des Objets: la consommation des signes. Jean Baudrillard. Gallimard, 1968. (english: system of
objects, Verso Book)
- General Systems Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications. G. Braziller, 1968.
- La quark et le jaguar, Murray Gell-Mann Flammarion; 1994,
("Le quark, c'est le simple, et le jaguar, le complexe. Ce prix Nobel de physique essaie dans ce livre de décrire les " systèmes adaptatifs
complexes ", typiques du vivant, en opposition aux systèmes simples, mus par les lois immuables de la physique. Le livre, écrit sur un ton très
personnel, qui ne recule devant l'anecdote autobiographique, n'en est pas moins très dense par moment. La partie sur la mécanique quantique
notamment, est assez exigeante en attention de la part du lecteur. Le plus étonnant restant que dans ces chapitres, Gell Mann cherche à nous
présenter le fonctionnement d'un système " simple ". - remi sussan)
- EVOLUTION
- Eric Chaisson. The Life Era: Cosmic Selection and Conscious Evolution (New York, W.W. Norton & Company,
1989)
("Eric Chaisson is a great educator in the field of science, and author of many books including the seminal work, The Life Era: Cosmic Selection
and Conscious Evolution. He points to the vital importance of learning 'ethical' evolution NOW, in this generation. If we do so, he foresees: "Our
generation on Earth... is now participating in an astronomically significant transformation. We perceive the dawn of a whole new reign of cosmic
development, an era of opportunity for life forms to begin truly to fathom their role in the cosmos, to unlock the secrets of the Universe, indeed to
decipher who we really are and whence we came... The implications of our newly gained power over matter are nothing short of cosmic... As
sentient beings we are currently beginning to exert a weighty influence in the establishment of a "universal life" with all its attendant features, not
least of which potentially include species immortality and cosmic consciousness." -consciousevolution.net)
- 3.2 historical epochs of the world system
- INTRODUCTION: THE DYNAMICS OF HISTORY
- The dynamics of world history. Christopher Dawson. Sheed and Ward, 1957 ('auteurs et penseurs de la droite')
- Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah. Macrohistory and Macrohistorians. New York, Praeger, 1997.
("Moves towards a general theory of macrohistory through a comparative analysis of twenty macrohistorians. Included are such thinkers as Ibn
Khaldun, Comte, Vico, Marx, Hegel, Ssu-Ma Chien, Sarkar, Toynbee, Weber and Sorokin. For each thinker there is a diagram which presents their
macrohistory. The relationship between micro and macrohistory is explored as is between macrohistory and world politics. Numerous perspectives
on
what we can learn from macrohistory in understanding the future.")
- Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History. Yale Univ. Pr., 1953.
(recommended by Marchel Gauchet)
- Best, Steven. The Politics of Historical Vision: Marx, Foucault, Habermas. Guilford Press, 1995.
- Arthur Herman: 'The Idea of Decline in the Western Civilization'.
(Recommended Jan Geerincks)
- Marchel Gauchet. Philosophie des Sciences Historiques. Presse Universitaire de Lille, 1988
- Dhoquois, Guy Histoire de la pensée historique A. Colin 1991 (marx biblio)
- Mannheim, Karl Le problème des générations Nathan (collection essais et recherches) 1990
(interpreting the interplay of generations)
- Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History . Trans. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton, Princeton
University Press, 1967).
("The founder of sociology writing in the 14th century. A must ready for understanding deep social patterns. Heavily influenced Comte, Weber, and
others." - Sohail Inatullah)
extra: POSTMODERN CHALLENGES
- Eight Eurocentric Historians. By J.M. Blaut. The Guilford Press, New York, 2000. Pp. 228. ISBN 1-57230-591-6
("History is the ideological mainstay of modernity and the queen of its disciplines: it is within a putatively historical vision that the modern man
locates his subjectivity and legitimises his politics. Theories of history are thus the modern equivalents of ancient myths and medieval theodicies.
Unfortunately, most narratives of modernity are also, Blaut's present work amply demonstrates, irreducibly and irredeemably Eurocentric: they are
racist, polemical, self-aggrandizing and false. In the name of world-history, they propagate the worldview of supremacy and under the guise of
global sociology, they promote a regime of fate. To uncover the academic mask of modern historiography and reveal is mythical visage is thus
essential to any scheme of intellectual resistance against the modern indoctrination.
Blaut's work is an empiricist's unremitting haggling with the ideologues of modernity who wear the historians' masks. The list includes the arch
theorist of Western rationality (Max Weber), the advocate of technological determinism (Lynn White Jr.), the guru of Marxist diffusionism (Robert
Brenner), the evangelist of the 'European Miracle' (Eric L. Jones), the advocate of modern social power (Michael Mann), the champion of European
'Powers and Liberties' (John A. Hall), the mandarin of Euro-Environmentalism (Jared Diamond), and the guardian of Pax Americana (David
Landes). Common to these Eurocentric reflections are, of course, the perceptions and anxieties of the 'lords of the humankind'; those who believe
that theirs is the best of the worlds, and who therefore 'want to freeze history right where it is here and now.')
subtopic: THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS
- Progress and Pragmatism. By David Marcell. (Greenwood, 1974)
(the notion of progress from the Enlightenment to modernism)
- Nisbet, Robert. History of the Idea of Progress. New York: Basic Books, 1980.
- Frédéric Rouvillois, L'invention du progrès. Aux origines de la pensée totalitaire (1680-1730). Paris, Éditions KIMÉ,
Collection «Philosophie-épistémologie», 1996, 487 p.
(Livre magnifique sur une époque charnière de l'histoire de l'Occident.)
- J.B. Bury, The Idea of Progress, an inquiry into its growth and origin (New York: Macmillan, 1932) (a classic)
- Proges et religion: une enquete historique. Christopher Dawson. Plon, 1935. (rec 'penseurs et auteurs de la droite')
- PRE-HISTORIES
- The Time Before History. By Colin Tudge. NY: Scribner, 1996. 366p.
(how the human species arose in a geological and biologicial context, the last five million years, reviewed by Yes Magazine.)
- Sick Societies: challenging the myth of primitive harmony. By Robert Edgerton. Free Press, 1992.
(sd bib)
- Marshall Salhins : Age de pierre, âge d'abondance, Gallimard, 1972 .
- La dette de vie: aux origines de la monnaie. Philippe Rospabe. Mauss/La Decouverte, 1995.
(the original violence that gave rise to the money system, recommended by Etatsgeneraux.org)
- Dominique Lestel. Les origines de la culture. Flammarion 2002
("Ceci conforte les points de vue de nombreux éthologues et socio-philosophes, notamment en France Frédéric Joulian et Dominique Lestel (dont
nous commenterons prochainement dans cette revue le livre passionnant Les origines de la culture. Flammarion 2002) : il n'y a sans doute pas de
différences fondamentales entre les sociétés de primates d'aujourd'hui et celles des premiers hominiens. On étend d'ailleurs la réflexion à d'autres
sociétés, celles de certains oiseaux et des cétacés par exemple. La question reste par contre entière : pourquoi l'évolution des sociétés
d'hominiens a-t-elle divergé de celles des autres espèces animales à cultures voisines ? Deux autres questions secondaires se posent d'ailleurs :
qu'étaient les sociétés animales des ancètres des grands singes il y a 3 millions d'années, et en quoi les sociétés aborigènes actuelles ont-elles
évolué par rapport à celles des premiers hominiens ? - Automates Intelligents)
- The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State
by Allen W. Johnson et al. (rec Ray Harris)
- The Origins of Human Society (History of the World)
by Peter Bogucki
("The origins and development of human society are explored and illuminated in this compelling history. The book provides readers with an
understanding of the exhibition of humans and the cultures they established, from the first traces of humanity to the creation of early literate
societies.")
- HISTORY ACROSS TIMESCALES (GLOBAL HISTORIES)
- The World to 1500. A global history. By L.S. Stavarianos. Prentice-Hall.
- Rome and China: a study of correlations in historical events. By Frederick J. Taggart. Berkeley: Univ. of California
Press.
(one of the few attempts to correlate history across civilisations)
- Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. By Charles Tilly. NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
- A Study of History. Arnold Toynbee. Oxford Univ. Press.
- The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. By Paul Kennedy. Random House.
- A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. By Manuel De Landa. Zone Bks, 1998.
(De Landa tracks three overlapping bodies of knowledge -- Lavas and Magmas, Flesh and Genes, and Memes and Norms over the last 1,000
years and describes how the three levels of analysis interact with each other. While this is a difficult read, it provides both historic as well as
scientific evidence for the theme of human emergence. Spiral Wizard gives it a Five Star ***** with the warning it is only for the serious learner who
can manage small print and very dense pages. )
- Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade. San Francisco, HarperCollins, 1988
(see also the update, Sacred Pleasure. San Francisco, HarperCollins, 1996.
"Decent macrohistory, great feminism, very readable. Brings in chaos and complexity to argue that we have moved from a partnership (the chalice)
to a dominator (the blade) cultural system, and now through human agency we can move back to a partnership system. Calls for transformative
knowledge. An excellent and important book. " Sohail Inatullah)
- William Irwin Thompson, At the Edge of History. New York, Harper and Row, 1971.
("Critical of the rationality of planning, of attempts that try to consciously plan the future. Thompson revokes myth and the unconscious. Unites
macrohistory, mythology, and visions of the future. Examines the structure of four stages in Plato, Vico, Blake, Marx, Yeats, Jung, and Mcluhan.
The future, like Being, is always more than we can ever know." - Sohail Inatullah)
- Brian Swimme, Thomas Berry: The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Age ( San
Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992)
subtopic: CIVILISATIONS
- The Evolution of Civilisations. An introduction to historical analysis. MacMillan.
- World Civilizations: the global experience. By Peter N. Stearns et al. New York: HarperCollins College Pubn.;
1996.
- Holding up a mirror: how civilisations decline. By Anne Glyn-Jones. 1996.
("the central dilemma of history is this: the dynamic that promotes economic prosperity arises largely from the conviction that the material world
alone constitutes the 'true reality'. Yet that same dynamic undermines the authority of moral standards and thus to the destruction of civilisations.
Shows in vivid detail how this played out in Greece, Rome, medieval Christendom, and contemporary society" Sunday Times)
subtopic: REGIONAL HISTORIES
- The Aztecs. Michael E. Smith . Blackwell 1996
("It is framed by narrative political history, but the core of The Aztecs is social history, a description of life in the Valley of Mexico and its surrounds
in the fifteenth century. For this Smith draws on a broad range of sources - native codices, accounts by the Spanish conquerors and later
chroniclers, and archaeology - but particularly on recent findings from archaeological excavations (including some of his own) designed to answer
particular questions. The result is quite lively, going into just enough detail about particular sites and documents to give some depth, and I found it
an engaging read. I recommend it to anyone interested in the Aztecs, both general readers like myself (approaching the subject for the first time)
and those with some background in the area seeking an overview. " )
- History of Western Civilization: A Handbook . William MacNeil; (Paperback The Rise of the West: A History of the
Human Community With a Retrospective Essay)
("most formidable world historian)
- The Making of Europe: an introduction to the history of European unity. Christopher Dawson. Meridian Bks, 1956
(rec 'auteurs et penseurs de la droite)
- PRESENT TIME - 20TH CENTURY
- "Between Two Ages: the 21st Century and the Crisis of Meaning"
(William Van Dusen Wishard's book, Between Two Ages, suggests that somewhere around the mid-nineteenth century a new period of western
history began to be visible to a few of the more perceptive of western thinkers. Wishard calls this period the "Interregnum." The values that had
united western civilization since roughly the middle ages were in state of accelerating disintegration. And whatever would come next... is still to
arrive. This period, the one we are now in, Wishard suggests, is an Interregnum, a time between ruling paradigms.
Wishard offers an excellent history of the twentieth century even as he states that "the book is not intended to be a history... [but rather] an
assessment of some of the highlights, trends and events that are shaping the Interregnum." rec Arlington Institute)
- Hobsbawm E.-J. 1) L'ére des empires 1875-1914 2) L'ére des révolutions 3) L'ére du capital Fayard
- Peter Conrad. Modern Times, Modern Places. Thames & London.
extra: AUTOBIOGRAPHIES/TESTIMONIALS
- Max Eastman. 'Einstein, Trotsky, Hemingway, Freud and other great companions: critical memoirs of some famous
friends. Collier Books, 1962.
extra: NON-EUROCENTRIC ANTHROPOLOGICAL ACCOUNTS
- "With the advent of several major critiques of anthropology's guilty past, most notably Talal Asad's _Anthropology and the
Colonial Encounter_ and Johannes Fabian's _Time and the Other_, anthropologists began their long journey towards
redressing their fear of the modern with an innovative series of Baudelairean meditations on the dialectics of modernity and tradition, urban and
rural, simple and complex. From Anna Tsing's _In the Realm of the Diamond Queen_ (1993) to Michael Taussig's
_The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America_ (1980), many ethnographies in the 1970s, '80s and '90s explored the
interstices *between* the pre-modern "exotic" and the modern quotidian, focusing on the interpolations of Western forms into "native" places (and
vice versa). "
- WHAT'S NEXT / GLOBAL FUTURES
- The Next Development of Mankind. Lancelot Law Whyte (also: The Universe of Experience)
(worked for 50 years on the expression of a new unified theory - strongly recommended by Philosphere)
- Jump Time. Jean Houston. Tarcher, 2000
(several deep trends converge to create the need for a quantum leap)
- De Quoi Demain. Dialogue entre Jacques Derrida et Elisabeth Roudinesco. Fayard/Galilee. 2001.`
("une historienne de la psychanalyse et un philosophe deconstructioniste dans un dialogue philosophique, une celebration du role continuellement
important des intellectuels 'de se meler de ce qui ne les regarde pas' - Le Monde)
- Dee Hock. Birth of the Chaordic Age (San Francisco, CA, Berret-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 1999)
("as founder and CEO of VISA International, he became aware that the fundamental problem facing modern society is the way we organize
ourselves. The "command and control structure" of most organizations are literally designed to cause inequality, environmental destruction, untold
human suffering and loss of spontaneity and creativity. He has founded the Chaordic Alliance to design social organization that are commensurate
with the biosphere and the higher values of human nature. Chaordic is a new word that connotes the appropriate synthesis of chaos and order.
"We are at the very point in time when a 400-year old age is dying and another is struggling to be born -a shifting of culture, science, society, and
institutions enormously greater than the world has ever experienced. Ahead, the possibility of the regeneration of individuality, liberty, community,
and ethics such as the world has never known, and a harmony with nature, with one another, and with the divine intelligence such as the world has
never dreamed.")
- Thomas Berry: The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (New York, Bell Tower, 1999)
("In his latest book Berry passionately calls upon our generation to reverse the pattern of environmental and species destruction and to commune
with nature and the whole Earth community. "Awareness that the universe is more cosmogenesis than cosmos might be the greatest change in
human consciousness that has taken place since the awakening of the human in the Paleolithic Period....To move from this abiding spatial context
of personal identity [the earlier view of reality] to a sense of identity with an emergent universe is a transition that has, even now, not been
accomplished in any comprehensive manner by any of the world's spiritual traditions." )
- 3.4 The state and its evolution
- HISTORY OF POLITICAL SYSTEMS
- Modelsky, George. Long cycles in World Politics. Macmillan Press.
- Marcel Gauchet, Le Desenchantement du monde. Gallimard, 1983. (+ Un monde desenchantee? Cerf, 1988,
debate)
(a classic, describes how Christianity itself emptied the world of sacrality to create the modern secular world of subject and object, and a work of
policitical history, touches on the genesis of democracy etc.. Already read, but worth rereading.)
subtopic: 20th CENTURY
- The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times. London, Verso (recommended
PortoAlegre2002.net)
- Terence K. Hopkins and Immanuel Wallerstein's, eds., The Age of Transition: Trajectory of the World-System,
1945-2025 (London: Zed Books, 1996).
- The Age of Extremes: a history of the world, 1914-1991. By Eric Hobsbawn. Pantheon, 1995. (sd bib)
subtopic: 21th CENTURY
- Giorgio Agamben, " Moyens sans fins. Notes sur la politique ". Collection Rivages poche/Petite Bibliothèque, 160
pages
(on the crisis of contemporary politics and for a new politics - Negri school of thought?)
- HISTORY OF POLITICAL THEORY
- Aubenque, Pierre, Alonso Tordesillas. Aristote politique. Collection Epiméthée. Presses Universitaires de France.
Paris, November 1993, 576 pages. (eminent specialist of classic Greece)
- Histoire de la philosophie politique. Alain Renaut. Calmann-Levy, 5 vol.
(detailed history - a monumental work - rec. Nouvel Obs)
- THE STATE
- Losing Control? Sovereignty in the Age of Globalisation: New York: Columbia Univ Pr, 1996.
(recommended Negri in Empire: "on the declining sovereignty of nation-states and the transformation of sovereignty in the contemporary global
system")
- Le concept d'Empire. Maurice Duverger. Paris: PUF, 1980.
(recommended by Negri in Empire: ("discusses two models, the Roman vs. the Chinese/Arab/Mesoamerican")
- The Ship of State: Statecraft and Politics from Ancient Greece to Democratic America. by Norma Thompson. (Yale
University Press, 243 pp., $35)
(The history and practice of statecraft: > "> Thompson invites her reader on a brisk and learned tour of several high points in the history of political
philosophy. Her destinations are the ancient Greek polis, the modern state, and democratic America. In the case of the ancients, her selection of
representative authors is unexceptional--Homer, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle--though the inclusion of epic poets, historians, and philosophers
invites a question about the omission of tragedians. For the moderns, her eclectic focus on Machiavelli, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary
Shelley, and Rousseau provides valuable and uncommon juxtapositions.)
subtopic: history of state form
- Tilly, C (1992) Coercion, Capital and European States AD 990-1992 Backwells, Oxford
- Le concept d'Empire. Maurice Duverger. Paris: PUF, 1980.
(recommended by Negri in Empire: ("discusses two models, the Roman vs. the Chinese/Arab/Mesoamerican")
- Les debuts de l'etat moderne: une histoire des idees politiques au XIXieme sicele. Bertrand de Jouvenel. Fayard,
1976. (rec. 'auteurs et penseurs de la droite)
subtopic: the contemporary postmodern and/or global state
- Gosta Esping-Andersen. Les Trois Mondes de l'Etat-Providence. Essai sur le capitalisme moderne. PUF, 1999.
("l'etat-providence, loin de rendre les individus dependants, les a liberes; de plus, il en existe en plusieurs versions - Le Monde des Debats)
- Cooper, Robert (2000) The Postmodern State and the World Order Demos/Foreign Policy Centre, London, 2nd
edition
- Kenichi Ohmae. The End of the Nation-State: the rise of regional economies. NY: Free Press, 1995.
- Apres l'Etat-nation. Une nouvelle constellation politique. Jurgen Habermas. Fayard, 2001.
extra: THE DEBATE AROUND EMPIRE (BY TONI NEGRI)
- Empire by Toni Negri and Michael Hardt
- Empire of Chaos. Samir Amin. Monthly Review Press, 1992.
- Socialism or Barbarism (2001) Meszaros
(3 books related to the debate around the concept of Empire, a global deterritorialised state that replaces imperialism: Hardt and Negri refer to the
work of Samir Amin, especially to his Empire of Chaos (Monthly Review Press, 1992), as the leading alternative view of
imperialism/empire to their own--one that differs sharply on the issue of center/periphery. See Hardt and Negri, Empire (pp. 9, 14, 334, 467).
Socialism or Barbarism (2001) and Mészáros' major theoretical work Beyond Capital (1995) were both published by Monthly
Review Press.)
- Labor of Dyonysus: a critique of the state form. By Toni Negri and Michael Hardt. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minn. Pr.,
1999.
- 3.4 Political systems: topics
- COLONISATION
- Marc Ferro. Histoire des colonisations, des conquetes aux independences, XIIIe-XXe siecle. Paris: Seuil, 1994.
- Frank Ansprenger. The Dissolution of Colonial Empires. London: Routledge, 1989.
- R. F. Holland. European Decolonialisation, 1918-1981. London: Macmillan, 1985.
- APPADURAI Arjun (2001), Après le colonialisme. Les conséquences culturelles de la globalisation Paris: Payot,
322 p. (English: Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.)
(Anthropologue d'origine indienne, Arjun Appadurai est professeur au département d'anthropologie, civilisations et langues de l'Asie du Sud à
l'université de Chicago. Co-fondateur avec son épouse historienne, Carol A. Breckenridge, de la revue Public Culture, il anime le Project for
Transnational Cultural Studies et dirige également le Chicago Humanities Institute. Auteur de nombreuses publications [1], son travail porte surtout
sur les phénomènes d'hybridation ethnique et culturelle dans les conditions techno-politiques de la mondialisation. Il s'efforce ainsi de mettre en
place une ethnographie « multi-située » (multi-sited ethnography) et interdisciplinaire de la globalisation, tentant de dépasser, par la même
occasion, le « paradigme de l'altérité » tel que celui-ci a prévalu lors de la fondation de l'anthropologie.)
- The Dynamics of Global Dominance European Overseas Empires, 1415-1980
by David B. Abernethy . Yale University Press October 2002
("In this survey of the rise and decline of European overseas empires, Abernethy asks how and why these farflung empires formed, persisted, and
finally fell. He identifies broad patterns, interweaving them with details of cross-cultural encounters and argues that relatively autonomous
profit-making, religious, and governmental institutions enabled west European countries to launch triple assaults on other societies. Indigenous
people also played a role in their eventual subjugation by inviting Europeans to intervene in their power struggles. Abernethy finds that imperial
decline was often the unanticipated result of wars among major powers. Postwar crises over colonies' unmet expectations empowered movements
that eventually took territories as diverse as the thirteen British North American colonies, Spain's South American possessions, India, the Dutch
East Indies, Vietnam, and the Gold Coast to independence. In advancing a theory of imperialism that includes European and non-European actors,
and in analyzing economic, social, and cultural as well as political dimensions of empire, Abernethy helps account for Europe's long occupation of
global center stage. He also sheds light on key features of today's postcolonial world and the legacies of empire, concluding with an approach to
the moral evaluation of colonialism." - frontlist)
extra: CRITIQUES OF EUROCENTRISM
- Eight Eurocentric Historians. By J.M. Blaut. The Guilford Press, New York, 2000. Pp. 228. ISBN 1-57230-591-6
("History is the ideological mainstay of modernity and the queen of its disciplines: it is within a putatively historical vision that the modern man
locates his subjectivity and legitimises his politics. Theories of history are thus the modern equivalents of ancient myths and medieval theodicies.
Unfortunately, most narratives of modernity are also, Blaut's present work amply demonstrates, irreducibly and irredeemably Eurocentric: they are
racist, polemical, self-aggrandizing and false. In the name of world-history, they propagate the worldview of supremacy and under the guise of
global sociology, they promote a regime of fate. To uncover the academic mask of modern historiography and reveal is mythical visage is thus
essential to any scheme of intellectual resistance against the modern indoctrination.
Blaut's work is an empiricist's unremitting haggling with the ideologues of modernity who wear the historians' masks. The list includes the arch
theorist of Western rationality (Max Weber), the advocate of technological determinism (Lynn White Jr.), the guru of Marxist
diffusionism (Robert Brenner), the evangelist of the 'European Miracle' (Eric L. Jones), the advocate of modern social power (Michael
Mann), the champion of European 'Powers and Liberties' (John A. Hall), the mandarin of Euro-Environmentalism (Jared Diamond), and
the guardian of Pax Americana (David Landes). Common to these Eurocentric reflections are, of course, the perceptions and anxieties of the
'lords of the humankind'; those who believe that theirs is the best of the worlds, and who therefore 'want to freeze history right where it is here and
now.' - amazon)
- The Colonizer's Model of the Worldby James M. Blaut
("James Blaut's book "The Colonizer's Model of the World" attacks most of the common assumptions and beliefs about why the West "rose" to
dominate much of the globe by the 19th century. Blaut systematically dismantles idea after idea, many of which have been taken for granted by
historians and laymen alike for years. For example, the idea that Europe's climate and soils are inherently better suited for agriculture than
elsewhere. In the end, however, Blaut still has to explain Europe's rise, so his answer is that since Europe was geographically closer to the
Americas and had the benefit of favorable winds and currents, these factors made the "discovery" of America possible. The resulting flood of bullion
from America into Europe allowed the Europeans to eventually pull ahead of the rest of the world. Blaut is surely on to something, but his
explanation is a little thin. Why didn't Africans discover Brazil? Nonetheless, this is an excellent book that will challenge your thinking and shake
your Eurocentrism (if you suffer from it) to the foundations. If you want a more detailed critique of individual historians such as Jared Diamond and
David Landes, check out Blaut's "Eight Eurocentric Historians.")
- DEMOCRACY
- Norberto Bobbio, L'état et la démocratie internationale. Études européennes. Bruxelles, Éditions Complexe, 1998.
(Excellent livre du plus grand théoricien politiste vivant. L'État et la structuration du politique.
A lire du même auteur son exellent Libéralisme et démocratie, Paris, Cerf, collection Humanités, 1996. Et aussi : Droite et gauche, Paris, Éditions
du Seuil. - Multitudes)
- La démocratie post-totalitaire, Jean-Pierre Le Goff, La découverte, 2002
(C'est par sa réussite que la démocratie semble se détruire elle-même. "Rien n'échoue comme le succès" rappelle aussi Marcel Gauchet dans "La
démocratie contre elle-même <gauchet3.htm> ". Je me réjouis que s'élabore enfin une véritable critique des idéologies libertaires que j'appelle de
mes voeux depuis quelque temps, pour comprendre en quoi le désastre de cette génération ne vient pas tant de nos adversaires que de
nous-mêmes. - Jean Zin)
- Agir dans un monde incertaine, essai sur la democratie technique. Par Michel Callon et al. Sueil, 2001.
(between direct democracy, and representative democracy, there is mixed form of cognitive democracy, or 'dialogic democracy' which helps in
decision-making on complex technical issues)
- Finley, Moses I. Démocratie antique et démocratie moderne Payot
- Jane Mansbridge, Beyond Adversary Democracy (Basic Books, 1980)
(based on field work, recommended by Phil Agre)
- Robert Putnam, "Making Democracy Work".
(recommended by Phil Agre for 'thought-provoking aspects', and pioneering of the concept of social capital)
- Graeme Gill, The Dynamics of Democratization: Elites, CivilSociety, and the Transition Process (St. Martin's Press,
2000).)
(Phil Agre: excellent book, with forcefully analytical arguments for the central role of civil society)
- GLOBAL GOVERNANCE
- Daniele Archibugi and David Held, eds, Cosmopolitan Democracy: An Agenda for a New World Order, Cambridge,
MA: Polity Press, 1995.
- Paul F. Diehl, ed, The Politics of Global Governance: International Organizations in an Interdependent World,
second edition, Boulder: Rienner, 2001.
- Derek Heater, World Citizenship and Government: Cosmopolitan Ideas in the History of Western Political Thought,
New York: St. Martin'sPress, 1996.
- Kimberly Hutchings and Roland Dannreuther, eds, Cosmopolitan Citizenship, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.
- Danilo Zolo. Cosmopolis: Prospects for World Government. Cambridge: Polity Pr, 1997
(recommended Negri)
-Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Modern World-System. NY: Academic Press.
3 books recommended by Greg Wilpert:
- Jurgen Habermas, Die postnationale Konstellation
- Prepetual Peace: Essays on Kant's Cosmopolitan Ideal
(brings together many political theorists on this issue - recoGreg Wilpert.
- David Held 1) Global Transformations and 2)Democracy and the Global Order.
- Global Citizenship and social movements: creating transcultural webs of meaning
for the new millennium. Janet J. McIntyre-Mills.
(Contents - intellectual courage and intellectual conformity - tools for transcultural ethical thinking
- ecological and critical humanism - the rights and responsibilities of global citizens - class, culture and sustainable global democracy - beyond
nationalism: striving for global democracy within conceptual space, cyberspace and geographical space - rec Geert Drieghe)
subtopic: INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS
- Akira Iriye. Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002) (Rec Foreign Policy)
- The World Bank: Its First Half Century (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 1997)
("offers a comprehensive account of the workings and influence of one the world's most prominent international financial institutions." Foreign
Policy)
- GLOBALISATION
- Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Touchstone, 1996,
367 pages.
- Global Transformations: Politics, economics and culture. By David Held et al. Polity Press, 1996.
('perhaps the most comprehensive introduction ... very balanced analysis', cfr. Giddens)
- Andre Gunder Frank and Barry Gills, The World System: Five Hundred years or Five Thousand. London,
Routledge, 1996.
("Are the units of macrohistory, civilizations or worldsystems? Did the world system really start in the 16th century or are world systems much more
historical, with the 16th century merely a shift within the framework of the already existing system? The central debate in this book is about
continuity and discontinuity in the worldsystem. Outstanding, if a bit overly world-systemesque, book with contributions from Frank, Gills, Amin,
Wallerstein, and Abu-Lughod.")
- Francois Chesnais. La mondialisation du capital. Paris: Syros, 1997.
- All Connected Now by Walter Truett Anderson.
(The jacket cover says, "Anderson describes how we are entering an "age of open systems" as systems of all kinds - organizations, nations, ecosystems - change in
similar ways. Boundaries around systems are penetrated, challenged, renegotiated, relocated. Systems that were once relatively isolated develop new connections and
linkages to other systems. Anderson argues that this globalizing world is radically "uncentralized" even though people and societies are richly interconnected. All Together
Now shows how globalization is advanced even by anti-globalization movements, while global-scale problems such as climate change draw us together into the first
global civilization." - reco Greg Wilpert)
extra: SAMIR AMIN (proponent of de-linking from world system)
- Amin, Samir L'empire du chaos. La nouvelle mondialisation capitaliste L'Harmattan 1991
- Amin, Samir Les défis de la mondialisation L'Harmattan 1996
- " Au-delà du capitalisme sénile "
Dans la collection Actuel Marx Confrontation : 204 pages, 21,50 euros - PUF
("L'hégémonisme des Etats-Unis s'inscrit dans un projet post-colonial qui, loin d'être caractérisé par une atténuation des contrastes entre les
centres dominants (la triade) et les périphéries dominées (le reste du monde), en accentue au contraire la violence des contradictions (Nord-Sud).
La gestion " pacifique " du nouveau système impérialiste par les seuls moyens économiques dont dispose le capital dominant devient impossible et
le sera de plus en plus. Le recours à la violence politique, et donc à l'intervention militaire, est appelé à remplir des fonctions indispensables dans
le fonctionnement de ce projet prétendu " libéral ". C'est la raison pour laquelle cet impérialisme collectif ne peut pas se passer de l'hégémonisme
des Etats-Unis, qui est le seul Etat à pouvoir exercer les
fonctions indispensables de chef de file de la militarisation des interventions du Nord dans le Sud. Bien entendu, les Etats-Unis font payer à leurs
alliés subalternisés - l'Europe et le Japon - ce " service ", en des termes qui constituent alors une bonne partie de leurs " avantages
économiques " - multitudes)
subtopic: CULTURAL GLOBALISATION
- Benjamin Barber. Jihad vs McWorld: how the planet is both falling apart and coming together. Random House,
1995.
- Thomas Friedman. The Lexus & the Olive Tree. NY: Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, 1999.
- APPADURAI Arjun, Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. University of Minnesota Press, 2001
(Anthropologue d'origine indienne, Arjun Appadurai est professeur au département d'anthropologie, civilisations et langues de l'Asie du Sud à
l'université de Chicago. Co-fondateur avec son épouse historienne, Carol A. Breckenridge, de la revue Public Culture, il anime le Project for
Transnational Cultural Studies et dirige également le Chicago Humanities Institute. Auteur de nombreuses publications [1], son travail porte surtout
sur les phénomènes d'hybridation ethnique et culturelle dans les conditions techno-politiques de la mondialisation. Il s'efforce ainsi de mettre en
place une ethnographie « multi-située » (multi-sited ethnography) et interdisciplinaire de la globalisation, tentant de dépasser, par la même
occasion, le « paradigme de l'altérité » tel que celui-ci a prévalu lors de la fondation de l'anthropologie.)
- Georges Balandier. Le Grand Systeme. Fayard, 2000.
("l successeur de Gurvich se penche sur De Lillo et Sloterdijk pour percer les enjeux du cyberespecace et du biopouvoir mondial." Nouvel Obs)
- Jean-Loup Amselle. Branchements. Une anthropologie de l'universalite des cultures. Flammarion, 2000.
("a travers une serie d'exemples historiques, il montre que notre mondialisation actuelle ne fait que prendre la suite d'une foule de globalisations
anterieures", et que les cultures locales ont cree des hybrides creatifs - Nouvel Obs)
- HUMAN RIGHTS
- La Revolution des Droits de l'Homme. Marchel Gauchet. Gallimard, 1989.
- INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
- Geir Lundestad's, ed., The Fall of Great Powers: Stability, Peace and Legitimacy (Oslo: Scandinavian University
Press, 1994)
(In 1993, the Norwegian Nobel Committee convened a meeting of leading international analysts to discuss the role and influence of superpowers
throughout history. Their analyses , which includes essays by William H. McNeill, Istvan Deak, Alec Nove, Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Robert Gilpin,
Wang Gungwu, John Lewis Gaddis, and Paul Kennedy, among others.)
- Giovanni Arrighi, Beverly J. Silver, Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1999).
(a longer view of hegemonic transitions over the centuries-from Dutch to British, from British to American, from American to some uncertain future
hegemon)
- John Mearsheimer. Tragedy of Great Power Politics
("Intellectually, Mearsheimer is a product of the post-war tradition of neo-realist international-relations theory founded by Kenneth Waltz. The
postulates of the neo-realist paradigm are economical, and stark. States, the principal agents of the international system, can be treated as so
many black boxes or billiard balls, if our purpose is to analyse their inter-actions. Their differing domestic arrangements and pressures may be
ignored. For the main lines of any state's external policy are necessarily driven by the structure of the international system, whose anarchy-that is,
lack of any consensual jurisdiction-forces states to struggle for supremacy over each other, in an endless search for their own security. A great
power which fails to engage in a rational pursuit of hegemony will ultimately put its very survival at risk. This is the tragic fate evoked in
Mearsheimer's title.
But Mearsheimer breaks with Waltz in a number of crucial ways. First and foremost, he rejects the notion, developed by Waltz, that the logic of the
international system tends towards an equilibrium, since all states must pursue the same aim of security, and any state that exceeds this goal,
driving towards paramountcy over others, is bound to generate a coalition of its rivals against it. Aware of this inevitable backlash, great powers-in
Waltz's view-tend to become status-quo states, accepting balance-of-power constraints and acting defensively to uphold them. Mearsheimer's key
move is to reject this deduction of what he terms 'defensive realism'. The imperative of survival, he argues, is incompatible with any equilibrium
between states. For the only sure guarantee of survival, in an anarchic order, is primacy-that is, not balance with other powers, but predominance
over them. The reasons are simple and two-fold. How can any power know what would be a 'safe' margin of advantage over its neighbours, one
that would allow it to rest on its oars-and how could it predict the capabilities of its rival a decade or two into the future? These inherent
uncertainties of the international order compel states, however powerful, to seek more power: there is no resting-place for them." - The New
Republic - note this would seem to be a typical reductionist view since it completely obliterates the interiors of states!)
subtopic: INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS
- Akira Iriye. Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002) (Rec Foreign Policy)
- The World Bank: Its First Half Century (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 1997)
("offers a comprehensive account of the workings and influence of one the world's most prominent international financial institutions." Foreign
Policy)
subtopic: USA
- Joseph S. Nye. The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2002),
(Joseph S. Nye Jr. argues that the United States can remain on top, provided it emphasizes multilateralism.)
- Thomas J. McCormick's America's Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War and After, 2nd ed.
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).
subtopic: EUROPE
- David Calleo's latest book, Rethinking Europe's Future (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001),
(cogently analyzes the ins and outs of the European Union and its potential impact on U.S. power in the world.)
- POWER
- The Sources of Social Power. Michael Mann. Cambridge Univ. Press.
- Change the World without Taking Power (John Holloway)
- Les Contre-Pouvoirs. Miguel Benasayag
(both works are exemplary of a new tendency in political thoughts, towards diagonal approaches which intend to surpass the reformation/revolutio
dichotomy and want to 'resist' through the 'creation of new social relationships')
- Negri, Antonio Le pouvoir constituant. Essai sur les alternatives de la modernité PUF 1997
subtopic: REPRESSION AND CONTROL
- R.I, Moore's The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance
in Western Europe 950-1250 (Blackwell, 1992),
("This book is clearly influenced by Foucault's methods but with a much surer grasp of
history than that of most Foucauldians.")
- Discipline and Punish. Michel Foucault
- Deleuze's notion of the control society (in which book?)
- REVOLUTION AND CHANGE
- Bernard Yack, The Longing for Total Revolution: Philosophic Sources of Social Discontent >From Rousseau to
Marx and Nietzsche, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.
- Immanuel Wallerstein, The Politics of the World Economy: The States, the Movements, and the Civilizations.
London, Cambridge University Press, 1984.
("Sees the world as one economic (a single division of labor) and cultural system and examines the efforts of the social movements to transform the system. Looks at the
tension between the economic, which is global, and politics, which remains bounded by the nation-state.")
- _Avoiding Social and Ecological Disaster: The Politics of World Transformation. By Rudolf Bahro.
(Greg Wilpert: "Unfortunately, readings by Bahro in English are quite hard to come by. Also, he has only two main books with the rest being compilations of essays. Both
books have been translated, but are nearly impossible to find. If you can find it, the one to read is ...")
- Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems. 2002. Edited by Gunderson and
Holling, Island Press.
("Theme: the resilience of ecosystems, flexibility of institutions, and incentives in economics. Purpose - develop an integrative theory of adaptive change addressing the
dynamics of those human and natural systems. Looks like it embodies AQAL, evolutionary attention, time and scales.(that's for you, Mike). A section addresses the
dynamics of political discourses, legitimacy, roles of consensus and science, pathologies, common trajectories, and articulates some key questions. It looks like a good
thorough theoretical development. Good ol' MacArthur Foundation funded the project.")
- Francis Fukuyama. The End of History and the Last Man. Macmillan, 1992.
- Francis Fukuyama. The Great Transition: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order. New York: The
Free Press, 1999.
- Edgar Morin, Pour une Politique de Civilisation, Paris, Arléa, 2002, 79 p.
- The Politics of Nonviolent Action. By Gene Sharp
("My own research began in the 1960s with a preoccupation about these matters. How could one not simply oppose and denounce war and
violence, but also get rid of it? That seemed to me an important question. And it seemed clear to me that violence and war were often used
rationally to conduct a conflict and to gain certain objectives. If some of those objectives are non-compromise issues, then one possibility might be
to find another means of conducting the conflict that was not violence and was not war. Such an alternative way of conducting conflicts in fact
existed. This other technique for conducting acute conflicts had been called by a variety of names; I chose at the time to call it nonviolent action. I
spent quite a few years on such questions as "What is that technique of struggle, and what is its theory of power? What are its methods, what is
something of its history, how does it operate in conflicts against violently repressive regimes? And if it does succeed, why does it succeed and how
-- what are its mechanisms of change?" And that inquiry became the book.")
- Michel Onfray, Politique du Rebelle, Traite de resistance et d'insoumission. Grasset, 1997.
"Michel Onfray était donc là pour présenter Politique du rebelle, Traité de résistance et d'insoumission (éditions
Grasset, cf. Regards de septembre 1997), prolongement politique de l'hédonisme qu'il développe de livre en livre depuis presque dix ans (le
Ventre des philosophes, Cynismes, l'Art de jouir, la Sculpture de soi, la Raison gourmande). Entendons-nous: Onfray est " hédoniste ", mais n'en
reste pas à Aristippe de Cyrène; de même qu'il est "cynique" mais se démarque de Diogène sur bien des points; il est "libertaire", sans se satisfaire
des cadres de pensée hérités des diverses traditions anarchistes; il est "de gauche", mais ni communiste ni socialiste; "non engagé", mais acteur
de telle ou telle lutte, et semeur de résistances. Ni mouton ni berger, c'est bien comme pensée singulière que nous l'avions invité, comme artisan
de ce que Deleuze appelait le "devenir révolutionnaire des individus", avec, en exergue, la devise nietzschéenne: "Il m'est odieux de suivre autant
que de guider." "Réconcilier chacun avec son corps en son entier", ainsi Onfray définissait-il l'hédonisme en ouverture. Ou encore: "Jouir et faire
jouir" sans faire de mal à quiconque (Chamfort), puisque la jouissance de l'autre donne sens à la mienne. C'est ce qui, pour Onfray, fonde la
possibilité de passer de l'hédonisme personnel à l'hédonisme politique: le monde est plein de misère "sale", non médiatique, celle des sans-grade,
privés de tout et accablés dans leur corps, hors et dans la sphère du travail. Après Proudhon, Weyl et Bourdieu, Onfray entreprend de développer
la philosophie dont cette misère est porteuse. Michel Onfray parle à la première personne: il a connu la misère familiale, les dominations
patronales, la vie dans l'entreprise, la tentation d'adhérer au PCF, détruite par sa découverte des réalités soviétiques, la découverte de la pensée
libertaire française, de Deleuze et Foucault. Michel Onfray raconte tout cela avec simplicité et clarté, se réclame d'une "mystique de gauche", dans
la mesure où cet engagement n'est pas illusoirement déduit de considérations théoriques, mais "épidermiques": "On ne choisit pas ses
engagements, on est choisi par eux", résume-t-il. Ses engagements: loin de toute "moralisation" comme de toute "théologie négative" sur l'horreur
ineffable mais peuplant les discours, Onfray regarde aussi bien les camps de concentration que le capitalisme, d'abord comme une réduction du
corps à l'état d'objet, et ne voit guère d'issue libératrice sans la révolution des individualités et de leur rapport à autrui: car les relations de pouvoir
sont partout et il n'est pas de pouvoir central sans elles. Autrement dit, on se saurait espérer de révolution sociale authentique si ces relations
"entre individus" se dissolvent dans des "fonctions" ou des "structures" hiérarchiques. D'où son "éloge absolu de Mai-68", non nostalgique (Onfray
avait neuf ans...), comme trace à réactiver dans l'ensemble des relations inter-individuelles, à l'entreprise comme au lycée ou dans le couple. En ce
sens, ajoute-t-il, "la révolution n'est pas pour demain mais pour ce soir, dans nos rapports à autrui".
Un tel projet ne saurait que se défier des petitesses politiques, de tout pouvoir (social, de parti, de syndicat, etc.), et de tout ce qui ne préserve pas
l'individualité dans la lutte collective, pour des objectifs concrets (logement, droit des immigrés, emploi, 35 heures, etc.). Michel Onfray entend
"faire entendre une voix libertaire au quotidien".
- Pitirim Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics. Boston, Porter Sargent, 1957.
("Still one of the best analysis of cultural, social and economic patterns. After the current age of chaos, Sorokin believes a bright integrated
spiritual/material future is ahead. " - rec. Sohail Inatullah)
- Cornelis Castoriadis. Political and Social Writings. Volume 3: 1961-1979. Recommencing the Revolution: From
Socialism to the Autonomous Society. Trans. and ed. David Ames Curtis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1993. 405 pp.
- Barbara Marx Hubbard. Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of our Social Potential, (Novato, CA, New
World Library, 1998)
(""The foundation of the social potential movement is the emergence of the cocreative person, which has been the work of the human potential
movement. We have been preparing for this path for thousands of years, through the great religions and ethical traditions... Yet only in our
generation have we gained the actual powers of cocreation -- the ability to become an integral part of the creative process of nature and evolution.
"In traditional religious language, we were created in the image of God and are becoming every more godlike. In evolutionary language, we were
created by the process of evolution and are becoming coevolutionary with that proces!
s. In cocreation we bring forth two strands -- our spiritual essence and our scientific and social capacities -- to participate in the creation. When
these strands blend, a new human is born; a universal human, a cocreator, a unique and personal expression of the divine.")
subtopic: MARXIST CONCEPTIONS
- Amin, Samir et al. Transforming the Revolution: social movements and the world-system. Monthly Review Press.
- Marx beyond Marx. By Antonio Negri. NY: Autonomedia, 1991.
- Revolution Retrieved. By Antonio Negri. Red Notes, 1988.
- Steve Wright's book, _Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism_ Pluto
Press.
(first comprehensive history in English of the Italian autonomist workerist movements. The book is both a history of the movements and an analysis
of central texts, and I have found it full of information and insightful analyses. A history was sorely needed in English, and this book serves that
purpose and much more - Multitudes)
extra: 'REVOLUTION WITHOUT POWER'?
- Change the World without Taking Power (John Holloway)
- Les Contre-Pouvoirs. Miguel Benasayag
(both works are exemplary of a new tendency in political thought, towards diagonal approaches which intend to surpass the reformation/revolution
dichotomy and want to 'resist' through the 'creation of new social relationships')
subtopic: ANTI-REVOLUTION(ARIES)
- Burnham, The Machiavellians
("appreciative study of political and social thinkers who have understood the mythic nature of revolutionary ideals and the centrality of power in
human relations. Kelly reads this study as a warning against "Bonapartism" and "plebiscitary democracy," but I find no hard evidence for this
interpretive view. The thinkers Burnham highlights-Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, Robert Michels, and Max Weber-argued that charismatic
leaders and successful manipulators of revolutionary rhetoric are an inevitable part of the modern political scenery. It is hard to make sense of The
Machiavellians as a defense of an American constitutional democracy standing up against Mediterranean-style fascism. If that is the book's
message, why does Burnham talk up thinkers who, we are told, considered authoritarian and elitist rule an inescapable human destiny? " - Hudson
Institute)
- SOCIAL EVOLUTION
- Erwin Laszlo, Evolution -- The Grand Synthesis, 211 pp. Boston:
Shambhala Publications Inc, 1987.
("This is a basic textbook for anyone interested in evolutionary futures studies. Articulates extensive and intensive dimensions of evolution.")
- Peter Manicas, A History and Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1989.
("Great philosophical storytelling. Tells the history of the social sciences, what turns were taken, what was missed. How the modern social
sciences developed this century. Great reading leaving one with valuable insights into Herder and Hegel, Comte and Marx, among others.")
- Pitirim Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics. Boston, Porter Sargent, 1957.
("Still one of the best analysis of cultural, social and economic patterns. After the current age of chaos, Sorokin believes a bright integrated
spiritual/material future is ahead.")
- UTOPIAN SYSTEMS
- Russell Jacoby, The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture in an Age of Apathy, forthcoming from Basic Books
- Manuel, F. E., & Manuel, F. P. (1979). Utopian thought in the Western world. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
- WAR
- Kaldor, M. (1999) New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era, Cambridge: Polity Press.
- 3.5 Economic systems and their evolution
- GENERAL HISTORY
- Maddison, Angus. The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective . OECD, Development Centre Studies.
(provides a comprehensive view of the growth and levels of world population since the year 1000. In this period, world population rose 22- fold, per capita GDP 13 fold and
world GDP nearly 300 fold. The biggest gains occurred in the rich countries of today (Western Europe, North America, Australasia and Japan). The gap between the world
leader - the United States - and the poorest region - Africa - is now 20:1. In the year 1000, the rich countries of today were poorer than Asia and Africa. The book has several
objectives. The first is a pioneering effort to quantify the economic performance of nations over the very long term. The second is to identify the forces which explain the
success of the rich countries, and explore the obstacles which hindered advance in regions which lagged behind. The third is to scrutinise the
interaction between the rich and the rest to assess the degree to which this relationship was exploitative. The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective is a "must" for all
scholars of economics and economic history, while the casual reader will find much of fascinating interest. It is also a monumental work of reference.)
- McNeill, William H. ('universally acclaimed world historian')
- Castel, Odile Histoire des faits économiques : les trois âges de l'économie mondiale Dalloz 1997
extra: NON-EUROCENTRIC ACCOUNTS
- The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. by Kenneth Pomeranz
("Pomeranz is a history professor at the University of California^-Irvine and the author of The Making of a Hinterland: State, Society, and Economy
in Inland North China, 1853^-1937 (1993), an academic study that investigated the role of steam-powered transportation (among other
developments) in the growth of China's Shantung Province. He is also the coauthor of the more popularly accessible The World That Trade
Created (1999). Now he looks at the question of why sustained industrial growth began in northwestern Europe but not East Asia. To even ask the
question can bring charges of Eurocentrism, but Pomeranz acknowledges the role of colonialism in Europe's growth. He emphasizes, though,
Europe's access to America's resources as one of two contributing factors to industrial growth, the second being the widespread availability within
Europe of coal as a fuel. After challenging the convention that Europe held an edge before 1800, he traces with scholarly diligence the diverging
patterns of growth between Europe and China.
Pomeranz uses that European invention--economics--to overturn Eurocentrism, establishing beyond cavil a New Fact in our world.
Never again will Europeans imagine they stood alone in the doorway of economic growth. Pomeranz and his colleagues in the new
sinology have reintroduced the Central Kingdom and its stunning historical sources, and Pomeranz has written the one essential
book.")
- Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350
by Janet L. Abu-Lughod
("In this important study, Abu-Lughod presents a groundbreaking reinterpretation of global economic evolution, arguing that the modern world
economy had its roots not in the sixteenth century, as is widely supposed, but in the thirteenth century economy--a system far different from the
European world system which emerged from it. Using the city as the working unit of analysis, Before European Hegemony provides a new
paradigm for understanding the evolution of world systems by tracing the rise of a system that, at its peak in the opening decades of the 14th
century, involved a vast region stretching between northwest Europe and China. Writing in a clear and lively style, Abu-Lughod explores the
reasons for the eventual decay of this system and the rise of European hegemony. ")
- Europe and the People Without History by Eric R. Wolf
("Wolf breaks the paradigm that the world ever was full of isolated pockets of civilized people void of contact with others. By tracing routes of fur
trade, slave trade, early movements of people, materials and ideas, Wolf examines the world before Europe "civilized" the world. He is able to show
how contact with European traders change the lifestyles of groups of people who already had fully developed cultural, linguistic and political
traditions. How trade, bureaucracy, military force and violence influenced the people with whom the traders contacted illustrates the fact that
"globalization" is hardly a recent phenomenon. ")
- peter gran. Beyond Eurocentrism: A New View of Modern World History (1996).
("Readers are more likely to value Beyond Eurocentrism for its details than for its revisionist interpretation of the last 125 years. Armed with
impressively broad, but often uneven, knowledge about the nine disparate countries that underpin his comparative analysis, Peter Gran challenges
the world histories of William McNeill, Immanuel Wallerstein, Eric Wolfe [sic], Erik [sic] Hobsbawm, and others as too focused on "Western
countries, their elites, and high cultures" (p. 4). Instead, [End Page 447] Gran proposes that the development of modern nation-states can be
understood in terms of "four different hegemonic logics," based on whether rulers disguised class conflict with an ideology based on caste (the
"Russian road," also followed by Iraq), regionalism (the "Italian road," also taken by India and Mexico), gender (the "tribal-ethnic" road, exemplified
by Albania and the Congo), or race (the "bourgeois-democratic" road, exemplified by Great Britain and the United States). Gran, who teaches world
history and Islamic history at Temple University, not only traces the political economies of these nine countries, but also includes fascinating
thumbnail sketches of their cultural histories and of their domestic historiographies. Along the way, he offers some stimulating comparative essays
on caste and gender. ")
- PRECAPITALIST
subtopic: ORIGINS OF MONEY/THE GIFT ECONOMY
- A CHARGE DE REVANCHE. par Mark Rogin Anspach. Ed. du Seuil, 2002, 140 p., 19 euros.
(La vengeance appelle la vengeance : tuer celui qui a tué est sans fin, puisque le vengeur devient à son tour victime. Sans fin ? Jusqu'à ce que le
sacrifice se substitue à la vengeance, car, alors, celui qui reçoit le don doit le rendre. Le cercle vertueux de la réciprocité positive se substitue au
cercle vicieux de la réciprocité négative. Au lieu de tuer celui qui a tué, il s'agit de « donner à celui qui va donner », puisque le don, en créant une
dette, oblige celui qui a reçu à rendre : la circularité est à la base de toute relation sociale. Jusqu'ici brillant, mais classique, le livre de Mark
Anspach, en basculant dans l'économie, devient exceptionnel : car il nous montre comment, dans l'échange économique aussi, on a besoin de
cette réciprocité positive qu'est le don. )
- Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economics. K. Polanyi. Doubleday, 1968.
- L'enigme du don. M. Godelier. Fayard, 1996.
- Marshall Salhins : Age de pierre, âge d'abondance, Gallimard, 1972 .
(English: Sahlins, M. (1972). Stone age economics. Chicago: Aldine.)
- La dette de vie: aux origines de la monnaie. Philippe Rospabe. Mauss/La Decouverte, 1995.
(the original violence that gave rise to the money system, recommended by Etatsgeneraux.org)
- Hyde, L. (1983). The gift: Imagination and the erotic life of property. New York: Vintage. [Great book!]
subtopic: ANTIQUITY
- The Ancient Economy. M.I. Finley. London: Hogarth Pr.
- Àsia before Europe. Economy and civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750. By K.N.
Chaudhury. Cambridge Univ. Press.
- Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire. by Michael Rostovzeff. (Oxford: Clarendon Pr., 1926.
(recommended Negri)
- Finley, Moses I. Esclavage antique et idéologie moderne Les éditions de Minuit 1981
- Finley, Moses I. L'économie antique Les éditions de Minuit 1975
- Meillassoux, Claude Anthropologie de l'esclavage PUF 1998
subtopic: FEUDALISM
- The Feudal Transformation, 900-1200. By Jean Pierrre Poly and Eric Bournazel. NY: Holmes & Meier, 1991.
- La face cachée du Moyen Age. Les premiers pas du capital , Joshua. 1988, La Brèche. (rec Actuel Marx)
- CAPITALIST
- La face cachée du Moyen Age. Les premiers pas du capital , Joshua. 1988, La Brèche. (rec Actuel Marx)
- Braudel, Fernand. Civilisation and Capitalism. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
- Braudel, Fernand. Afterthoughts on Material Civilisation and Capitalism. Johns Hopkins Univ Pr, 1977
- Frank, Andre Gunder. World Accumulation 1492-1789. NY: Monthly Review Press/Macmillan
- Goldstein, Joshua. Long Cycles. Prosperity and War in the Modern Age. Yale Univ. Press.
- Lieberman, Victor. TITLE?
(demonstrates worldwide coalescing of large states in all regions of the world betzeen 1450 and 1830. Recommended Lingua Franca world
systems summary)
subtopic: NON-EUROCENTRIC ACCOUNTS
- The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. by Kenneth Pomeranz
("Pomeranz is a history professor at the University of California^-Irvine and the author of The Making of a Hinterland: State, Society, and Economy
in Inland North China, 1853^-1937 (1993), an academic study that investigated the role of steam-powered transportation (among other
developments) in the growth of China's Shantung Province. He is also the coauthor of the more popularly accessible The World That Trade
Created (1999). Now he looks at the question of why sustained industrial growth began in northwestern Europe but not East Asia. To even ask the
question can bring charges of Eurocentrism, but Pomeranz acknowledges the role of colonialism in Europe's growth. He emphasizes, though,
Europe's access to America's resources as one of two contributing factors to industrial growth, the second being the widespread availability within
Europe of coal as a fuel. After challenging the convention that Europe held an edge before 1800, he traces with scholarly diligence the diverging
patterns of growth between Europe and China.
Pomeranz uses that European invention--economics--to overturn Eurocentrism, establishing beyond cavil a New Fact in our world.
Never again will Europeans imagine they stood alone in the doorway of economic growth. Pomeranz and his colleagues in the new
sinology have reintroduced the Central Kingdom and its stunning historical sources, and Pomeranz has written the one essential
book.")
- Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350
by Janet L. Abu-Lughod
("In this important study, Abu-Lughod presents a groundbreaking reinterpretation of global economic evolution, arguing that the modern world
economy had its roots not in the sixteenth century, as is widely supposed, but in the thirteenth century economy--a system far different from the
European world system which emerged from it. Using the city as the working unit of analysis, Before European Hegemony provides a new
paradigm for understanding the evolution of world systems by tracing the rise of a system that, at its peak in the opening decades of the 14th
century, involved a vast region stretching between northwest Europe and China. Writing in a clear and lively style, Abu-Lughod explores the
reasons for the eventual decay of this system and the rise of European hegemony. ")
subtopic: CAPITAL / THE MARKET
- Defalvard, Hervé Essai sur le marché La Découverte, (Syros) 1995 (marx biblio)
- Madjarian, Grégoire Quatre saisons de la société marchande L'Harmattan 1993 (marx biblio)
- Marx, Karl Le caractère fétiche de la marchandise et son secret (1872) Allia
- Hernando De Soto , The Mystery of Capital (Basic Books, 2000):
(recommended Phil Agre, celebrated and insightful)
extra: CRITIQUES
- George Soros: The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered. NY: Public Affairs, 1998. (sd bib)
- THE CONTEMPORARY SYSTEM
- WALLERSTEIN Immanuel, L'Histoire continue. Édition de l'aube, La Tout d'Aigues, 132 p. 11,5 x 19. 75 F. ISBN
2-87678-479-3
( L'économie-monde capitaliste entre-t-elle dans une période chaotique, alors que la confrontation Nord-Sud est au coeur de la lutte politique
mondiale ? Qui va poser les limites aux petites guerres Nord-Sud déclenchées par le Sud ? Un nouvel ordre mondial est-il susceptible de se
dessiner dans la première moitié du XXIe siècle ? Telles sont les questions essentielles que pose I. Wallerstein dans cet ouvrage qui donne les clés
pour comprendre le monde actuel, ses conflits et ses enjeux.)
- Crouch Colin, Streeck Wolfgang Les capitalismes en Europe La Découverte 1996 (marx biblio)
- Mandel, Ernest Le troisième âge du capitalisme Éditions de la passion 1997 (remarx biblio)
- Karl Polanyi, La Grande Transformation, Gallimard, 1944
(La fin du libéralisme depuis sont effondrement en 1929, de l'utopie d'un marché autorégulateur étendu au travail, aux ressources naturelles et à la
monnaie. Annonce le compromis fordiste des 30 glorieuses. -etatsgeneraux.org)
- François Perroux, L'économie du XXè siècle, PUG, 1961
(Structures de développement, divisions sociales, contraintes, rareté, monopoles, économie dominante. )
- Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Modern World-System. NY: Academic Press.
extra: non-European/Eurocentric
- Blaut, James L. The Colonizer's Model of the World. ('on the myth of the European miracle, cfr. Lingua Franca)
- Frank, Andre Gunder. ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. California (Un Pr?).
- Goody, Jack. Title?
(comparative evolution in Eurasia, by British anthropologist, recommended by Lingua Franca)
- Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy.
Princeton.
(recommended Lingua Franca as better than Gunder Frank)
- Wong, R. Bin. China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience. Cornell.
(recommended non-eurocentric approach by Lingua Franca)
- Samir Amin. Eurocentrism. NY: Monthly Review Pr., 1989.
-Arif Dirlik. The Postcolonial Aura. Boulder: Westview Pr.; 1997.(recommended Negri)
- Black Athena. By Martin Bernal.
(important book because it restores the influence of Egyptian and Hellenistic sources for the European tradition, instead of just seeing
Greco-Roman influences, recommended by LR Goldnerm, and it is a critique of narrow eurocentrism; though the book itself has inspired
subsequent more radical reinterpretations by afrocentrists)
- Asia in the making of Europe. By Donald Lach. (recommended by LR Goldner)
- "With the advent of several major critiques of anthropology's guilty past, most notably Talal Asad's
_Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter_ and Johannes Fabian's _Time and the Other_, anthropologists
began their long journey towards redressing their fear of the modern with an innovative series of Baudelairean
meditations on the dialectics of modernity and tradition, urban and rural, simple and complex. From Anna Tsing's
_In the Realm of the Diamond Queen_ (1993) to Michael Taussig's _The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in
South America_ (1980), many ethnographies in the 1970s, '80s and '90s explored the interstices *between* the
pre-modern "exotic" and the modern quotidian, focusing on the interpolations of Western forms into "native" places
(and vice versa). "
- POSTINDUSTRIAL/INFORMATIONAL
- The Corrosion of Character: the personal consequences of work in the new capitalism. By Richard Sennett. Norton
& Co, 1998. (sd bib)
subtopic: POSTINDUSTRIAL
- Daniel Bell. Coming of postindustrial society.
- Alain Tourraine. Post-industrial society. Random House, 1971.
subtopic: COGNITIVE CAPITALISM
- Tarde, Gabriel. (1962) The Laws of Imitation, translated by E.C. Parsons with introduction by F.Giddings, reprint,
Gloucester, MA, Peter Smith.
- Maurizio Lazzarato, "PUISSANCES DE L'INVENTION ; LA PSYCHOLOGIE ECONOMIQUE DE GABRIEL TARDE
CONTRE L'ECONOMIE POLITIQUE"
- "Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme" de Boltanski et Chiapello
- La place des chaussettes. Christian Marazzi. L'eclat, 2001.
(Pour Christian Marazzi , le travail est promis à de nouveaux développements. Tous les domaines où l'activité humaine est matière à langage
peuvent être réquisitionnés, le travail domestique en particulier. Ainsi, les prophéties millénaristes sur la fin du travail n'ont guère d'autre but que de
leurer ceux qui n'ont pas de travail, et l'engagement du langage sur le marché de l'emploi, aux lieux et places de la force ou de la qualification, met
l'ensemble de la population en situation de travail, sans pour autant en assurer la rémunération. «Travailler en communiquant», tel est le nouveau
mot d'ordre de notre époque OR "emphase sur un capitalisme sémiotique qui met au travail le langage, les formes symboliques de la socialité"
reco Multitudes)
- Corsani et alli , "Vers un capitalisme cognitif" l'harmattan 2001)
( accent mis sur un troisième capitalisme, d'abord marchand puis industriel, celui ci, en adéquation avec le développement du general intellect, de
l'intellectualité de masse , muterait en capitalisme cognitif - reco Multitudes)
- Henri Laborit, La nouvelle grille: De la biologie à la société de l'information
(Dimensions biologiques et cognitives de l'individu et de la socialisation.
Ce n'est pas seulement pour tenir compte de la part biologique de la domination que nous devons nous intéresser à Henri Laborit mais surtout
pour sa vision, dés 1974, d'une société de l'information permettant de dépasser la hiérarchie dans une société planétaire basée sur l'autonomie,
alternative écologique à l'économie thermodynamique qui nous mène à notre perte. C'est un précurseur des analyses de l'économie en terme
d'énergie et surtout du passage de la force de travail aux capacités cognitives, analysant la plus-value comme captation d'information. Enfin,
l'autonomie et l'autogestion, sous leur forme biologique, r> évèlent leur dimension d'intégration, d'ouverture et de dépendance. On ne peut ignorer
son utopie écologiste d'une autogestion organique même s'il faut y introduire d'autres dimensions et y mettre beaucoup plus de "précaution". - rec
etatsgeneraux.org )
- Nick Dyer-Whitheford. Cyber-Marx, cycles and circuits of struggle in High-Technology capitalism. Univ. of Illinois
Pr., 1999.
("well-researched overview on contemporary Marxist responses to the information age" -Soderbergh copyleft essay)
- The Gifts of Athena . Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy by Joel Mokyr Princeton University Press
Due/Published December 2002, 336 pages, cloth
ISBN 0691094837
("The growth of technological and scientific knowledge in the past two centuries has been the overriding dynamic element in the economic and
social history of the world. Its result is now often called the knowledge economy. But what are the historical origins of this revolution and what have
been its mechanisms? In The Gifts of Athena, Joel Mokyr constructs an original framework to analyze the concept of "useful" knowledge. He
argues that the growth explosion in the modern West in the past two centuries was driven not just by the appearance of new technological ideas
but also by the improved access to these ideas in society at large--as made possible by social networks comprising universities, publishers,
professional sciences, and kindred institutions. Through a wealth of historical evidence set in clear and lively prose, he shows that changes in the
intellectual and social environment and the institutional background in which knowledge was generated and disseminated brought about the
Industrial Revolution, followed by sustained economic growth and continuing technological change. Mokyr draws a link between intellectual forces
such as the European enlightenment and subsequent economic changes of the nineteenth century, and follows their development into the
twentieth century. He further explores some of the key implications of the knowledge revolution. Among these is the rise and fall of the "factory
system" as an organizing principle of modern economic organization. He analyzes the impact of this revolution on information technology and
communications as well as on the public's state of health and the structure of households. By examining the social and political roots of resistance
to new knowledge, Mokyr also links growth in knowledge to political economy and connects the economic history of technology to the New
Institutional Economics. The Gifts of Athena provides crucial insights into a matter of fundamental concern to a range of disciplines including
economics, economic history, political economy, the history of technology, and the history of science" - frontlist)
subtopic: THE IMMATERIAL ECONOMY
- The Dream Society. Rolf Jensen. McGraw-Hill, 1999.
('on the shift from information to imagination' - Monde des Debats)
- The Experience Economy
- AFTER CAPITALISM?
- Ravi Batra, The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism. London, MacMillan Press, 1978. First Edition. Second
edition, Dallas, Venus Books, 1990.
("One of the few writers to accurately predict the total collapse of communism. Convincing macrohistory of Western, Russian and Hindu civilisation.
A future vision of a spiritual renaissance in the early part of the next century. - rec Sohail Inatullah)
- David Korten (1999) The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism (rec Greg Wilpert)
- After Capitalism: From Managerialism to Workplace Democracy. by Seymour Melman Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.
511pp.
("Melman presents a large array of evidence to show that decentralized, democratic decision-making actually increases economic productivity by
creating a more natural social environment, empowering workers to learn and take responsibility for solutions, and eliminating inefficiency by
fostering information flow. While his focus is not on human psychology or social behavior, I found workplace democracy to be generally consistent
with the economic predictions of game theory and the evolutionary theory of reciprocal altruism. Where individuals interact repeatedly, cooperation
becomes the best strategy and democracy a necessity ? both politically and economically.")
subtopic: peer to peer economics (cooperation)
- Kropotkin, P. (1902). Mutual aid: A factor in evolution. Boston: Extending Horizons.
- 3.6 the economic system: topics
- ALTERNATIVE ECONOMICS
- Hazel Henderson, Building a Win-Win World: Life Beyond Global Economic Warfare. San Francisco,
Berret-Koehler Publishers, 1996.
("Henderson continues her rethinking of economics arguing that economists are still the "thought police" of this century. Looks at globalism, the
information economy, and efforts at new social and wealth indicators. Positive and inspiring without being mushy new agish.")
- Hazel Henderson. Beyond Globalization: Shaping a Sustainable Global Economy.
("written for the New Economics Foundation which is campaigning for it throughout the world. She writes; "The terms "global," "globalization," and
"world" are based in anthropocentric (human-centered) perspectives. They do not include the perspectives of planet Earth (as seen from space),
nor those of all other life forms with which humans share the planetary biosphere. Thus "planetary" is an ecological term embracing natural
systems that provide Humanity's life support...redesigning these human systems, institutions and processes is a pre- requisite for all efforts to
rebalance our societies for ecologically sustainable, equitable human development.")
- Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution. By Paul Hawken. Little, Brown & Co., 1999.
("this masterwork lays out the strategy for sustainability and an even higher quality of life: "Natural Capitalism is about the possibilities that will arise
from the birth of a new type of industrialism, one that differs in its philosophy, goals, and fundamental processes from the industrial system that is
the standard today. In the next century, as human population doubles and the resources available per person drop by one-half to three-fourths, a
remarkable transformation of industry and commerce can occur. Through this transformation, society will be able to create a vital economy that
uses radically less material and energy. This economy can free up resources, reduce taxes on personal income, increase per-capita spending on
social ills while simultaneously reducing those ills, and begin to restore the damaged environment of the earth. These necessary changes done
properly can promote economic efficiency, ecological conservation, and social equity.")
- David Korten (1999) The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism (rec Greg Wilpert)
- Christher Chase-Dunn and Terry Boswell (2000) The Spiral of Capitalism and Socialism
(A book from the perspective of world-systems theory and market socialism - rec. Greg Wilpert)
- Amartya Sen, Un nouveau modèle économique Odile Jacob, 2000
(Le développement comme liberté, capacité effective. Le but n'est pas la croissance économique mais le développement humain. -
etatsgeneraux.org)
- Johan Galtung, Economics in Another Key. London, Polity Press, 1997.
("A range of theories that go beyond criticizing neo-classical economics to showing how we can create a different type of economics that creates
structural, civilizational and individual peace. " - rec Sohail Inatullah)
subtopic: NEOLIBERAL ECONOMICS
- Hayek on Hayek. an autobiographical dialogue. Univ. of Chicago Pr.; 1994.
- CONSUMER SOCIETY/CONSUMERISM
_ La Societe de Consommation: ses mythes et ses structures. Gallimard, 1985
(English: Consumer Society, Sage)
- COOPERATION
- The Evolution of Cooperation. Robert Axelrod. Basic Books, 1994. (sd lib)
- Sampson, Edward E. (1993). Celebrating the Other: A Dialogic Account of Human Nature. Westview Press.
- Kropotkin, P. (1902). Mutual aid: A factor in evolution. Boston: Extending Horizons.
- Argyle, Michael (1991). Cooperation: The Basis of Sociability. London: Routledge.
- DEVELOPMENT
- The End of the Third World. Newly Industrializing Countries and the Decline of an Ideology. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex: Penguin, 1987. (landmark book describing the breakdown of the post-WWII 'development paradigm', to
be replaced by the neoliberal 'Washington consensus'.
- Globalisation and the Postcolonial World. The new political economy of development. By Ankie Hoogvelt.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Pr., 1997.
(recommended in exellent portoalegre.net essay)
- Arturo Escobar. Encountering Development: the making and unmaking of the Third World. Princeton Univ Pr, 1995
(recommended Negri)
..subtopic: critiques of development
- Development Dictionary. Wolfgang Sachs.
(La mouvance anti-développentiste est présente au sein des O.N.G., des mouvements écologistes et de l'intelligentsia à peu près partout dans le
monde mais de façon très minoritaire avec quelques points forts, en Inde, au Mexique, au Quebec, en Belgique et en Suisse. Il existe deux
réseaux qui en regroupent les principaux représentants : l'INCAD (International Network for Cultural Alternatives to Development) basé à Montréal,
Centre interculturel de Montréal, 49l7 rue St-Urbain, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H2T2Wl et le Réseau Sud/Nord cultures et développement,
l72 rue Joseph II Bruxelles, Belgique. Le premier publie la revue Interculture (2 éditions, en français et en Anglais), Le second publie le
bulletin Quid pro quo en français, anglais et espagnol. Le principal ouvrage de réference est "The development dictionary", edited by Wolfgang
Sachs, Zed books, Londres, l992. Cet ouvrage traduit dans de nombreuses langues, sauf le français, regroupe des contributions des principaux
représentants de ce courant.)
- Gilbert Rist, "Le développement. Histoire d'une croyance occidentale". Presses de Sciences Po, Paris 1996. p.
377.
- Gilbert Rist. Faut-il refuser le développement ? PUF, Paris, l985.
- Marc Poncelet, Une utopie post-tiersmondiste, la dimension culturelle du développement, L'Harmattan, Paris,
1994.
(Ce travail de redéfinition du développement porte toujours plus ou moins sur la culture, la nature et la justice sociale. "La dimension culturelle,
comme le note Marc Poncelet, semble confèrer une dimension humaine à une problèmatique trop sèchement environnementaliste. Elle procure un
supplément d'âme, un entregent social, une profondeur philosphique aux indicateurs humains" )
- La décroissance, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen. Éditions Sang de la Terre.
(against the development and sustainability paradigms)
- ECOLOGY/ENVIRONMENT/SUSTAINABILITY
- Economie et écologie , Franck-Dominique Vivien, Repères, 1994
(Rapports de l'économie et de l'écologie depuis les physiocrates. - rec etatsgeneraux.org)
- FINANCIAL SYSTEM
- George Soros. The Alchemy of Finance: Reading the Mind of the Market. John Wiley & Sons, 1994.
- Chesnais François, (dir.) La mondialisation financière : genèse, coût et enjeux La Découverte, (Syros) 1996
(marx biblio)
- Chesnais, François La mondialisation du capital La Découverte 1997 (marx biblio)
- MANAGEMENT/ORGANISATION
- Jean-Michel LARRASQUET; LE MANAGEMENT A L'ÉPREUVE DU COMPLEXE : Tome I. Une archéologie du
savoir gestionnaire.Tome II. Aux fondations du sens. Paris - Montréal, L'Harmattan, (Coll. Anthropologie du Monde
Occidental) 1999.
(Le premier tome se livre à une présentation critique des théories novatrices des vingt dernières années concernant le management alors que le
deuxième tome met en question le rationalisme technico-organisationnel qui sous-tend la plupart de ces approches et propose des pratiques
alternatives de management. )
- Boyer Robert, Durand Jean-Pierre L'après fordisme La Découverte, (Syros) 1993 (marx biblio)
- Coriat B., Weinstein O. Les nouvelles théories de l'entreprise Librairie Générale Française 1995 (marx biblio)
- Coutrot, Thomas L'entreprise néo-libérale, nouvelle utopie capitaliste ? La Decouverte (marx biblio)
- Coutrot, Thomas Mythes et réalités de l'entreprise néo-libérale La Découverte 1998
- Le Goff, Jean-Pierre Le mythe de l'entreprise La Découverte 1995 149 F
- Le Goff, Jean-Pierre Les illusions du management La Découverte 1996
- Burnham's Managerial Revolution (1941).
(Orwell's statements are especially noteworthy because the division of managerial empires depicted in Burnham's work furnished the backdrop of
Nineteen Eighty-Four.) Orwell found Burnham's writing both fascinating and distasteful. Contrary to Brookhiser's and Kelly's attempts to treat
Burnham's classic as a transitional Marxist work, Orwell correctly read it as the work of a genuine man of the Right. But the key is not, as
Burnham's critics often tell us, his early view of Nazi Germany as a successful managerial state that would supposedly triumph over "the primitive
economy" of Stalinist Russia (note that this faulty prediction was made in 1941). More to the point, according to Orwell, is that Burnham scoffs at
the ideal of equality and, despite his retention of a certain Marxist vocabulary, seems to have more in common with fascist elitists than with the
Marxist Left. - Hudson Institute)
- Whyte's ORGANIZATION MAN
(an early classic, but Kenneth Smith says 'it hardly scratched the surface of these issues')
- Earl Shorris, SCENES FROM CORPORATE LIFE
("explorations of the totalitarian potential of corporate culture" - Kenneth Smith).
extra: ALTERNATIVES
- After Capitalism: From Managerialism to Workplace Democracy. by Seymour Melman Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.
511pp.
("Melman presents a large array of evidence to show that decentralized, democratic decision-making actually increases economic productivity by
creating a more natural social environment, empowering workers to learn and take responsibility for solutions, and eliminating inefficiency by
fostering information flow. While his focus is not on human psychology or social behavior, I found workplace democracy to be generally consistent
with the economic predictions of game theory and the evolutionary theory of reciprocal altruism. Where individuals interact repeatedly, cooperation
becomes the best strategy and democracy a necessity ? both politically and economically.")
- MONEY
- Le Prix de la Verite. Marcel Henaff. Seuil, 2002.
(les rapports entre echange et don, dette et offrande, une histoire des formes d'echange economique, recommende par Le Nouvel
Observateur)
- Dominique MÉDA, Qu'est-ce que la richesse? Paris, Aubier, collection ALTO, 1999, 423 p. (ISSN-2-7007-3676-1)
(Bien que moins intéressant que son premier (Le Travail, une valeur en voie de disparition) ce livre vaut le déplacement, surtout pour la dernière
section portant sur l'idée de «Vouloir la civilisation».)
- WORK
- Yann Moulier Boutang. De l'esclavage au salariat: economie historique du salariat bride. Paris: PUF, 1998.
(recommended Negri: "the relationship between wage labor and slavery in capitalist development")
- Robert Castel, Les Métamorphoses de la question sociale, Folio
(Histoire du salariat de la tutelle au statut. - rec etatsgeneraux.org)
- Dominique Meda. Le travail, une valeur en voie de disparation (reco Multitudes)
- GORZ André, Métamorphoses du travail, quête du sens, critique de la raison économique, Ed. Galilée, Paris,
1991. 303 pages. (reco Multitudes)
- MANIFESTE CONTRE LE TRAVAIL par Robert Kurz, Ernst Lohoff et Norbert Trenkle
éd. Léo Scheer, 2002, 110 p., 10 euros.
(En a-t-elle nourri des réflexions sur le travail, la crise du fordisme ! De l'Etat social actif au revenu inconditionnel de citoyenneté, s'étire un
continuum de projets qui ambitionnent de perpétuer l'intégration par le labeur en dépit du sous-emploi endémique. Tous ont en commun de
regarder le travail comme une vocation naturelle de l'homme : gauche et droite entendent à tous prix promouvoir l'emploi. Contre ce parti du
travail, le groupe Krisis, un collectif d'intellectuels critiques allemands, défend l'idée que c'est du travail lui-même qu'il faut faire table rase. Il ne
s'agit pas de nier le caractère indispensable de l'activité humaine. Il s'agit de convaincre que la forme prise par celle-ci dans le système de
production marchande moderne est devenue, en raison de la troisième révolution industrielle, hautement toxique.)
- Travailler pour vivre, de Jean-Claude Lavigne et Ignace Berten, aux éditions de l'Atelier,
- Travailler autrement, aux éditions Bayard.
- À l'origine de la sociologie du travail, proudhonisme et marxisme", P Rolle,
in "le travail et sa sociologie, essais critiques l'harmattan 1985
- le droit à la paresse" de Lafargue
(aussi bien comme la critique du travail annoncé par le titre que comme une extraordinaire analyse des aspects productifs et créateurs du travail)
- Karl Marx, Travail salarié et capital
(Le salariat est l'autre face du capitalisme. C'est le travail comme marché, avec ses oscillations dramatiques, c'est aussi le productivisme du
capitalisme et la division du travail mais aussi l'opposition du capital et du travail dans la lutte des classes déterminant le partage des gains de
productivité. - etatsgeneraux.org)
- Bertocchi, Jean-Louis Marx et le sens du travail Éditions sociales
- Bouffartigue P., Eckert H. Le travail à l'épreuve du salariat L'Harmattan 1997
- Clot, Yves Le travail sans l'homme ? La Découverte 1995 (marx biblio)
- Collin, Denis La fin du travail et la mondialisation L'Harmattan 1997
- Nadel, Henri Marx et le salariat L'Harmattan 1994
subtopic: UNIVERSAL ALLOWANCE
- André Gorz, Misères du présent, richesse du possible , Galilée, 1997
(Au lieu de subir précarité et chômage nous pourrions nous libérer du travail et développer les activités autonomes grâce à l'Allocation
Inconditionelle de Ressource. Décisif. - etatsgeneraux.org)
- 3.7 other systems
- FOOD (PRODUCTION) SYSTEMS
- Near a Thousand Tables': Eight Food Revolutions. Felipe Fernández-Armesto
("The author of ''Near a Thousand Tables'' is not intimidated by big subjects; among his recent works are ''Millennium,'' ''Civilizations'' and ''Truth: A
History.'' In comparison with these, the history of food might seem a paltry subject, but not to Felipe Fernández-Armesto, a skilled provocateur who
knows that the history of eating is the history of mankind, viewed from the underbelly and from the ground up. In fact, Fernández-Armesto's real
subject is man's extraordinary powers of invention when it comes to finding and preparing food, an inventiveness he himself reflects by creating a
mini-epic of eight chapters that document eight revolutions in our sometimes heroic, sometimes comic, sometimes pathetic quest to improve upon
mere survival. All this is condensed into 224 pages of text, the literary equivalent of turning a stockpot of broth into a bouillon cube." - TNR)
- "That the politics of food, and in particular, the organic food movement, are moving steadily forward into the
mainstream consciousness is evidenced by the bestseller status conferred upon two excellent recent books, The
Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan and Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, and by
the decisions of a growing number of supermarket chains to offer organic foods.
Fatal Harvest is divided into seven parts. Of particular interest is Part Two, which provides a rousing response
to myths perpetuated by multinational agricultural corporations." (Village Voice)
- MEDIA SYSTEMS
- Guy Debord. The Society of Spectacle.
- Jacques Ellul. Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes. Vintage Books, 1973.
- Noam Chomsky. Manufactured Consent.
- The Electric Meme. Robert Aunger.
("Robert Aunger est un anthropologue aux horizons très divers. Il présente son ouvrage, et selon lui, "comme devant apporter enfin à la
mémétique les fondements qui lui manquaient encore pour en faire une science véritablement dure".
Nous avons commencé à lire le livre, afin de vous le présenter en détail dans notre prochain numéro. Disons seulement ici que l'une des
hypothèses (qui donne son titre à l'ouvrage) est que les mêmes sont des réplicants, un peu analogues aux prions, qui prennent naissance et se
dupliquent en mutant dans la matière cérébrale, sous forme d'entités quasi-biologiques. Ils se transmettent d'individus en individus par les supports
langagiers et autres moyens de la communication symbolique, comme les prions se transmettent par la consommation de viande contaminée.
Mais c'est dans le cerveau qu'ils vivent et meurent - quand ils meurent.
Le livre ouvre de nombreuses perspectives nouvelles sur la culture, les contenus de connaissance et la conscience. De plus, étant écrit de façon
très pédagogique, il incite le lecteur à ajouter ses propres hypothèses à celles de l'auteur - peut-être est-ce d'ailleurs là une forme de
contamination recherchée par l'auteur. - Automates Intelligents)
- RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS
- Books by Pierre Legendre
(La science des religions, toujours en procès, ne se limite pas aux démarches descriptives, elle s`interroge sur les montages du religieux, la quête
des valeurs et la zone d`ombre où se jouent les cernements de l`identité. Par ce biais, elle puise dans les autres discours (disciplines) qui
racontent de l`humain sa facture, ses structures, ses systèmes, ses fonctionnements, ses quêtes et ses crises; discours dits de sciences humaines,
aux confins d`une question philosophique: qu`en est-il de la vérité de l`humain? L`ensemble de l`oeuvre de Pierre Legendre témoigne de cette
recherche. Disons simplement, quitte à le clarifier plus bas, qu`il s`agit chez lui de cerner la fonction symbolique: au coeur de l`humain se montre
cette étonnante capacité de s`auto-différencier du monde au point d`instaurer par le fait même et une béance et un devenir autre pour lui-même,
deux faces d`une même condition de vie. C`est que cette différence signale une présence tout à fait unique dans le monde en ce que rien ne
détermine au préalable l`agir de l'humain. Ce qu`il crée l`est d`emblée en vue de la transformation des conditions de son existence et les mises-en
place des justifications, et de sa présence et de son agir.
Pierre Legendre a récemment déposé sur la table deux forts ouvrages, suite de ses Leçons déjà publiées, Dieu au miroir. Études sur
l`institution des images et La 901e conclusion. Étude sur le théâtre de la raison. Ces Leçons ont une visée: éveiller aux herméneutiques
constitutives, celles qui élucident l`institution de la vie. Soulignons immédiatement deux contextes de la démarche de Legendre, l`un très large, la
question de la mimésis, l`autre, plus proche de la personnalité de l`auteur et présenté par lui-même <son oeuvre répond à une quête. Le titre Dieu
au miroir évoque toute une problématique: fabriquer l`homme pour qu`il ressemble à l`homme. La question des images et la reproduction de
l`humanité. Les exégèses juives, puis chrétiennes, du Texte sacré ont jonglé avec quelques interrogations: l`Imago Dei, thème évocateur du lieu
de ressemblance: Dieu peut-il tenir le miroir?[...] Ou serait-il miroir pour l`homme, et à quelles fins?
- Marcel Gauchet, Le désenchantement du monde
(Une histoire politique de la religion : religion, hiérarchie, individu, autonomie, progrès, histoire. )
- Marcel Gauchet, La religion dans la démocratie Gallimard, 1998
(Privatisation de la religion, société de marché et politique comme représentation (spectacle) en l'absence de projet collectif. -etatsgeneraux.org)
- VARIOUS OTHER INSTITUTIONAL SYSTEMS
subtopic: PSYCHIATRY
- Castel, Robert L'ordre psychiatrique Les éditions de Minuit 1977 149 F
subtopic: SCIENCE
- Thomas Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Univ of Chicago Pr., 1970
(introduced the view of science as a series of succeeding paradigms)
