Conflicts and New Departures in World Society

Book excerpt: This third volume in the World Society Studies series focuses on a central theme: how market mechanisms can correct the world welfare deficit and also resolve the environmental crisis through processes of sustainable development. The two editors trace how such objectives have been addressed since the 1960s, and describe the parameters of the debate. Conflicts and New Departures in World Society contains original research on confluences and fissures in emerging world society, in both international and domestic arenas.The sixteen contributors offer an unusually wide range of perspectives. Topics include peace and war, core-periphery situations, and social and labor conflicts. Marek Thee traces the quest for a demilitarized and nuclear-free world. Johan Kauf-mann analyzes the role of the United Nations in the post-cold war era. Jill Crystal concentrates on the human rights environment in the Arab World. H.C.F. Mansilla comments on the destruction of the tropical forests in Bolivia. Other contributors include Bruce Russett, Christian Suter, John Foran, Beverly Silver, and Georg Kohler.Conflicts and New Departures in World Society gives intellectual substance to the still nebulous notion of a world society. It does so not by advocacy, but by indicating parallel social, economic, and political conditions that compel new interactions between advanced and developing lands. This books will be of interest to sociologists, environmentalists, and political theorists and scientists.