The Sources of Social Power: Volume 4, Globalizations, 1945 2011

Resumen del libro

Distinguishing four sources of power - ideological, economic, military, and political - this series traces their interrelations throughout human history. This fourth volume of Michael Mann's analytical history of social power covers the period from 1945 to the present, focusing on the three major pillars of postwar global order: capitalism, the nation-state system, and the sole remaining empire of the world, the United States. In the course of this period, capitalism, nation-states, and empires interacted with one another and were transformed. Mann's key argument is that globalization is not just a single process, because there are globalizations of all four sources of social power, each of which has a different rhythm of development. Topics include the rise and beginnings of decline of the American Empire, the fall or transformation of communism (respectively, the Soviet Union and China), the shift from neo-Keynesianism to neoliberalism, and the three great crises emerging in this period - nuclear weapons, the great recession, and climate change.

Michael Mann is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Power in the 21st Century: Conversations with John Hall (2011), Incoherent Empire (2003) and Fascists (Cambridge University Press, 2004). His book The Dark Side of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2004) was awarded the Barrington Moore Award of the American Sociological Association for the best book in comparative and historical sociology in 2006.