Historical Materialism and Globalization

Now that Soviet style socialism has collapsed upon itself and liberal capitalism offers itself as the natural, necessary and absolute condition of human social life on a worldwide scale, this book insists that the potentially emancipatory resources of a renewed, and perhaps reconstructed, historical materialism are more relevant in today's world than ever before. Rather than viewing global capitalism as an eluctable natural force, these essays seek to show how a dialectic of power and resistance is at work in the contemporary global political economy, producing and contesting new realities and creating conditions in which new forms of collective self determination become thinkable and materially possible. It will be vital, topical reading for anyone interested in international relations, international political economy, sociology and political theory.

Mark Rupert is Associate Professor of Political Science, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. Hazel Smith is reader in International Relations at the University of Warwick. She has been seconded to the UN World food Programme in DPRK as Programme Adviser since August 2000.