Possible Futures

Craig Calhoun, Series Editor

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The Possible Futures series gathers together leading social scientists to address the significance of the global economic crisis in a series of short, accessible books. Each volume takes on the past, present, and future of this crisis, suggesting that it has an informative history, that the consequences could be much more basic than stock market declines, and that only fundamental changes—not fiscal band-aids—can head off future repetitions.

CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE: Immanuel Wallerstein, David Harvey, Saskia Sassen, James Kenneth Galbraith, Manuel Castells, Nancy Fraser, Rogers Brubaker, David Held, Mary Kaldor, Vadim Volkov, Giovanni Arrighi, Beverly Silver, and Fernando Coronil.

Series Introduction [PDF]

Volume I, Business As Usual

The Roots of the Global Financial Meltdown

Edited by Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian

Table of Contents [PDF] | Introduction [PDF]

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Much more basic than the result of a few financial traders cheating the system, Business As Usual shows how the current financial crisis was made possible by both neoliberal financial reforms and a massive turning away from manufacturing things of value to make profits from trading financial assets. In original essays, the contributors establish how the Great Recession is related to crises of the past and yet why this meltdown was different. The volume concludes by asking whether the crisis—despite its severity—contains seeds of a new global economy, what role the United States will play, and whether China or other countries will rise to global leadership.

Volume II, The Deepening Crisis

Governance Challenges after Neoliberalism

Edited by Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian

Table of Contents [PDF] | Introduction [PDF]

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Response to financial meltdown is entangled with basic challenges to global governance. Environment, global security, ethnicity, and nationalism are all global issues today. Focusing on the political and social dimensions of the global financial crisis, contributors examine changes in relationships between the world's richer and poorer countries, efforts to strengthen global institutions, and difficulties facing states trying to create stability for their citizens.

Volume III, Aftermath

A New Global Economic Order?

Edited by Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian

Table of Contents [PDF] | Introduction [PDF]

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The global financial crisis revealed deep problems with mainstream economic predictions, as well as the vulnerability of the world's richest countries and the enormous potential of some poorer ones. China, India, Brazil, and other countries are growing faster than Europe or America and have weathered the crisis better. Is their growth due to following conventional economic guidelines or to strong state leadership and sometimes protectionism? These issues are basic to the question of which countries will grow in coming decades, as well as to the likely conflicts over global trade policy, currency standards, and economic cooperation.

Also in the Possible Futures Series

Russia: The Challenges of Transformation

Edited by Piotr Dutkiewicz and Dmitri Trenin
Foreword by Craig Calhoun

In Russia, a group of leading Russian intellectuals and social scientists join with top researchers from around the world to examine the social, political, and economic transformation in Russia. This timely and important book of orginal essays makes clear that neither politics nor economics alone holds the key to Russia's future, presenting critical perspectives on challenges facing Russia, both in its domestic policies and in its international relations. It also explores how global order—or disorder—may develop over the coming decades.

Published: NYU Press/SSRC

Citation: Possible Futures (New York: NYU Press/SSRC).