This book is an introduction to the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), the economic community founded by Southeast Asian nations. It provides both economic profiles of the member nations and an explanation of the Community itself. This book also discusses the impact of China on the AEC. The book is a starting point for research into the region or into any member country, whether for academic or for business purposes. With over 170 tables and figures as well as an abundance of historical facts, the book offers data-based insights.

This text offers an unorthodox account of why and how global capitalism has entered a phase of unsustainable crises of accumulation and legitimacy, and examines the different exit strategies open to Latin American countries.

'Powerful' - Silvia Federici It's in our food, our cosmetics, our fuel and our bodies. Palm oil, found in half of supermarket products, has shaped our world. Max Haiven uncovers how the gears of capitalism are literally and metaphorically lubricated by this ubiquitous elixir. From its origins in West Africa to today's Southeast Asian palm oil superpowers, Haiven's sweeping, experimental narrative takes us on a global journey that includes looted treasures, the American system of mass incarceration, the history of modern art and the industrialisation of war. Beyond simply calling for more consumer boycotts, he argues for recognising in palm oil humanity's profound potential to shape our world beyond racial capitalism and neo-colonial dispossession. One part history, one part dream, one part theory, one part montage, this kaleidoscopic and urgent book asks us to recognise the past in the present and to seize the power to make a better world.

The ninth of a new, well-received, and highly acclaimed series on critical infrastructure and homeland security, Defense Industrial Base Protection and Homeland Security is an eye-opening account and an important reference describing a complex sector. This book was designed and written to serve and advise U.S. project designers, engineers, law enforcement and security specialists, building and grounds superintendents, and managers in charge of protecting critical infrastructure in the United States. This book discusses the elements comprising the defense industrial base sector, many of the security measures employed to protect the various entities involved, and provides guidance on improving the resilience of the defense industrial base infrastructure. This text is accessible to those who have no experience with or knowledge of the defense industrial base sector. If you work through the text systematically, you will gain an understanding of the challenge of domestic preparedness-that is, an immediate need for a heightened state of awareness of the present threat facing the defense industrial base sector members as potential terrorist targets. Moreover, you will gain knowledge of security principles and measures that can be implemented-adding a critical component not only to your professional knowledge but also give you the tools needed to combat terrorism in the homeland-our homeland, both by outsiders and insiders.

This book is primarily based on data from the third analysis of domestic energy consumption, and it combines the conclusive summarizes from the previous two investigations. The book sets out to extend the spatial dimension of the research to a global one and discusses future development of domestic energy consumption from a global perspective. Additionally, the book seeks to discover general rules and diversity features via comparison, domestic vs. global. Future predictions via observations and summaries of history are provided for the reader in this volume as well. The studies in this volume not only provide a basic and supportive index for academic research, but also provide readers with a concrete sketch for people to understand energy use in their day-to-day lives, and it provides policy makers with fundamental, need-to-know data.

The Economic Gulag: Patriarchy, Capitalism, and Inequality is a trenchant critical analysis of the devastating ravages of capitalist patriarchy in our modern society and its pervasive and increasingly destabilizing negative influence on our views and values regarding power, gender, wealth, and inequality. It extends the investigation begun in The Democratic Gulag (2015) that argued that we live in a social and ideological gulag dominated by the meta-ideology of patriarchy that has defined and circumscribed every aspect of the social experience of humanity for millennia to the detriment of all. The Economic Gulag explores how patriarchy is infused within capitalist theory and practice. It offers a socially democratic critique and alternatives to reform its dominance. Through the lens of critical theory and the use of current empirical and statistical research, The Economic Gulag deconstructs the modern neoliberal capitalist wealth myth and its underlying theory of homo economicus. This book exposes a system rife with deception, inequality, human exploitation, and misery that is touted as the unchallenged champion of democratic individualism and success. The Economic Gulag makes a powerful case for the pressing need to dismantle the democratic and economic gulags in which we live and replace them with a new ideal social democracy based on true economic equality and fairness in a post-patriarchal and post-capitalist world. It concludes with fifteen radical, powerful, and transformative recommendations for change that will provide the "shock therapy" required to usher in a new socially democratic order liberated from patriarchy and all its vestiges.

An award-winning journalist's investigation into Amazon's true impact on inequality. The market value of Amazon.com has exceeded one trillion dollars. In 2020, its annual revenue increased by over 100 billion dollars. As the company insinuates itself ever further into our lives, Alec MacGillis investigates how it is reshaping society. With empathy and breadth, he tells the stories of those who've thrived and struggled in this rapidly changing environment, and shows how Amazon has even become a force in Washington, DC. The result is an intimate account of contemporary capitalism: its drive to innovate, its dark, pitiless magic, and its remaking of our world with every click.

Capitalism as a global system barely allows the needs of the majority of the world's population to be met. Whether from an industrialized country such as the US or from South Africa, the need for an alternative can be felt all over the world. It is clear nowadays that, due to the non-democratic nature and inadequacies of capitalism, another system must take its place. Such a process has already begun through the cooperative movement, which this book examines along with other initiatives. Featuring essays by international scholars and activists from various spheres of the anti-capitalist left, the work features many examples from the north and the south, to cover both the historically-advanced and late capitalist economies. It discusses such initiatives as participatory economics, the Mondragon experience, worker cooperatives in Europe and Latin America, solidarity economy in South Africa, and more. Written in an accessible manner, "Beyond Capitalism" will be an invaluable resource for any student of social movements and political thought and for anyone looking for alternative to today's ongoing systemic crises.

Since the beginning of China's economic reform in 1978, private manufacturing firms have played an indispensable role in, and have made a remarkable contribution to, the country's economic development. This book, based on extensive original research, explores the current development challenges for Chinese private manufacturing firms as China's integration with the global economy deepens. At the heart of the book are rich, nuanced empirical case studies of private manufacturing firms in the footwear and electrical equipment industries based in the city of Wenzhou, which was where private enterprise in China was pioneered in the 1980s. Particular subjects considered include the competition situation, the interaction of foreign and indigenous firms in both domestic and international markets, and the facilitating role of industrial development areas.

This book will let the reader into the world of migrant workers and how they have used their culture and heritage to reimagine and create a new socio-economic order through the production of cultural goods and services.

This is the story of Kwa Mai Mai; an economic trade zone that has captured the imagination of people who dared to dream. Kwa Mai Mai is the beginning of everything Johannesburg is meant to be, the City of Gold, a place where dreams deferred become true. The book tells a story of a people’s culture, wrapped in beautiful memories of life in villages left behind but collectively remembered by those who refuse to forget, lest they lose themselves in the concrete jungle that knows no mercy.

This is a story of how cultural memory, sacredly preserved and transported to new geographies, can serve both as cultural weapon that can be used to resist subjugation, while unleashing it as an economic weapon to turn those priceless traditions into tradeable commodities. The book narrates a story of how those who are the keepers of cultural memory can wield it as a weapon of survival and use its power to petition the entrepreneurial and creative spirits buried deep down in the souls of their true being.

The book raises an argument built on an assumption that if cultural memory can be stored and retrieved through artefacts, sites, ceremonies, myths and rituals, including texts, then Kwa Mai Mai assembles and converges these into one place and space of worship and celebration. This is a place where the hypervisibility of its bearers is always in a constant fight against being eclipsed by those who would rather pretend it did not exist – the City that created it.

The book combines both the author’s observation and interpretation gathered from ethnographic work of over four years, as well as the voices of those who reluctantly remained in this City when no other alternative presented itself, short of returning to the villages in absolute defeat.

Scholarly attempts to explain the development of liberal individualism over the course of modern history have tended to focus on key principles and doctrines. Here, O'Flynn shows that that as capitalism continues to grow, the theories, doctrines and moral precepts comprising liberal individualism change and evolve, while its vital social function is preserved. Scrutinising the development of liberal individualism in terms of its social function, connecting related doctrine and principles to the opportunities and obstacles to capital accumulation over the course of history.

This book puts forward a new perspective on the planned economies of communist Eastern Europe, demonstrating in detail how economic practice in such countries was shaped by the interplay among planners, managers and Party apparatchiks. Based on extensive original research, including interviews with former employees of industrial enterprises, the book argues that shortages, chronic over-capacities and erroneous planning decisions were present from the very beginning, rather than the consequences of later plan mistakes. They were the natural outcome of a profound conflict between leaders' attempt to adapt the basic laws of economics to their ideology and interests, and the requirements for rational bureaucracy of an increasingly sophisticated economy. The book discusses the evolution of and debates about the planned economy, considers the practice of plan development and implementation, and provides very detailed examples of how the planned economy actually worked at the level of the factory, at the point where plans and managers interacted with workers and production.

Gendering Postsocialism explores changes in gendered norms and expectations in Eastern Europe and Eurasia after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The dismantlement of state socialism in these regions triggered monumental shifts in their economic landscape, the involvement of their welfare states in social citizenship and, crucially, their established gender norms and relations, all contributing to the formation of the postsocialist citizen. Case studies examine a wide range of issues across 15 countries of the post-Soviet era. These include gender aspects of the developments in education in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Hungary, controversies around abortion legislation in Poland, migrant women and housing as a gendered problem in Russia, challenges facing women's NGOs in Bosnia, and identity formation of unemployed men in Lithuania. This close analysis reveals how different variations of neoliberal ideology, centred around the notion of the self-reliant and self-determining individual, have strongly influenced postsocialist gender identities, whilst simultaneously showing significant trends for a "retraditionalising" of gender norms and expectations. This volume suggests that despite integration with global political and free market systems, the postsocialist gendered subject combines strategies from the past with those from contemporary ideologies to navigate new multifaceted injustices around gender in Eastern Europe and Eurasia.

This book examines the life and work of Ajit Singh (1940-2015), a leading radical post-Keynesian applied economist who made major contributions to the policy-oriented study of both developed and developing economies, and was a key figure in the life and evolution of the Cambridge Faculty of Economics. Unorthodox, outspoken, and invariably rigorous, Ajit Singh made highly significant contributions to industrial economics, corporate governance and finance, and stock markets - developing empirically sound refutations of neoclassical tenets. He was much respected for his challenges both to orthodox economics, and to the one-size-fits-all free-market policy prescriptions of the Bretton Woods institutions in relation to late-industrialising developing economies. Throughout his career, Ajit remained an analyst and apostle of State-enabled accelerated industrialisation as the key to transformative development in the post-colonial Global South. The author traces Ajit Singh's radical perspectives to their roots in the early post-colonial nationalist societal aspirations for self-determination and autonomous and rapid egalitarian development - whether in his native Punjab, India, or the third world - and further explores the nuanced interface between Ajit's simultaneous affinity, seemingly paradoxical, both with socialism and Sikhism. This intellectual biography will appeal to students and researchers in Development Economics, History of Economic Thought, Development Studies, and Post-Keynesian Economics, as well as to policy makers and development practitioners in the fields of industrialisation, development and finance within the strategic framework of contemporary globalisation.

American manufacturing is in obvious crisis: the sector lost three million jobs between 2000 and 2003 as the American trade deficit shot to record highs. Manufacturers have increasingly decentralized productive responsibilities to armies of supplier firms, both domestically and abroad. Many have speculated as to whether or not manufacturing is even feasible in the United States, given the difficulties. Josh Whitford's book examines the issues behind this crisis, looking at the emergence of a 'new old economy', in which relationships between firms have become much more important. Whitford shows that discussion of this shift, in the media and in the academic literature, hits on the right issues - globalization, de-industrialization, and the outsourcing of production in marketized and in network relationships - but in an overly polarized way that obscures as much as it enlightens. Drawing on the results of extensive interviews conducted with manufacturers in the American Upper Midwest, Whitford shows that the range of possibilities is more complex and contingent than is usually recognised. Highlighting heretofore unexamined elements of constraint, contradiction, and innovation that characterize contemporary network production models, Whitford shakes received understandings in economic and organizational sociology, comparative political economy, and economic geography to reveal ways in which the American economic development apparatus can be adjusted to better meet the challenges of a highly decentralized production regime.

The Tyranny Of Growth is a modern epic that exposes the lie of economic growth.

It provocatively recounts how the 2008 global financial meltdown and COVID-19 pandemic have become the leading cause of governments' and multilateral institutions' global spectacular failure. It brilliantly explains how a single number - GDP - came to have such bewildering power over our lives, despite its ruinous consequences.

But ultimately the book strives to illuminate a new way of imagining the world. 

The late twentieth century has witnessed the establishment of new forms of capitalism in East Asia as well as new market economies in Eastern Europe. Despite the growth of international investment and capital flows, these distinctive business systems remain different from each other and from those already developed in Europe and the Americas. This continued diversity of capitalism results from, and is reproduced by, significant differences in societal institutions and agencies such as the state, capital and labour markets, and dominant beliefs about trust, loyalty, and authority. This book presents the comparative business systems framework for describing and explaining the major differences in economic organization between market economies in the late twentieth century. This framework identifies the critical variations in coordination and control systems across forms of industrial capitalism, and shows how these are connected to major differences in their institutional contexts. Six major types of business system are identified and linked to different institutional arrangements. Significant differences in post-war East Asian business systems and the ways in which these are changing in the 1990s are analysed within this framework, which is also extended to compare the path-dependent nature of the new capitalisms emerging in Eastern Europe.

The eighth of a new, well-received, and highly acclaimed series on critical infrastructure and homeland security, Government Facilities Protection and Homeland Security is a reference source that is designed to serve and advise project designers, engineers, security specialists, managers, building and grounds superintendents, and/or supervisors and responsible-managers-in-charge. It is intended help employers and employees handle security threats they must be prepared to meet on a daily basis. In the post-September 11 world, the possibility of threats to government buildings, military installations, embassies, and national monuments -is very real. Thus, the need is clear and so is the format and guidelines presented in this text to improve protection and resilience of all government facilities. This book describes the sector-wide process required to identify and prioritize assets, assess risk in the sector, implement protective programs and resilience strategies, and measure their effectives.

Almost 15 years ago, in The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman popularized the latest wave of globalization as a world of giant corporate supply chains that tripled world trade between 1990 and 2010. Major corporations such as Apple, Dell, and GE offshored manufacturing to low-cost economies; China became the world's factory, mass-producing and exporting computers and gadgets to Western shoppers. This paradigm of globalization has dominated global trade policy-making and guided hundreds of billions of dollars in business investments and development spending for almost three decades. But we are now on the cusp of a new era. Revolutionizing World Trade argues that technologies such as ecommerce, 3D printing, 5G, the Cloud, blockchain, and artificial intelligence are revolutionizing the economics of trade and global production, empowering businesses of all sizes to make, move, and market products and services worldwide and with greater ease than ever before. The twin forces of digitization and trade are changing the patterns, players, politics, and possibilities of world trade, and can reinvigorate global productivity growth. However, new policy challenges and old regulatory frameworks are stifling the promise of this most dynamic, prosperous, and inclusive wave of globalization yet. This book uses new empirical evidence and policy experiences to examine the clash between emerging possibilities in world trade and outdated policies and institutions, offering several policy recommendations for navigating these obstacles to catalyze growth and development around the world.

The growing gap between the most affluent Americans and the rest of society is changing the country into one defined-more than almost any other developed nation-by exceptional inequality of income, wealth, and opportunity. This book reveals that an infrastructure of inequality, both open and hidden, obstructs the great majority in pursuing happiness, living healthy lives, and exercising basic rights. A government dominated by finance, corporate interests, and the wealthy has undermined democracy, stunted social mobility, and changed the character of the nation. In this tough-minded dissection of the gulf between the super-rich and the working and middle classes, Ronald P. Formisano explores how the dramatic rise of income inequality over the past four decades has transformed America from a land of democratic promise into one of diminished opportunity. Since the 1970s, government policies have contributed to the flow of wealth to the top income strata. The United States now is more a plutocracy than a democracy. Formisano surveys the widening circle of inequality's effects, the exploitation of the poor and the middle class, and the new ways that predators take money out of Americans' pockets while passive federal and state governments stand by. This data-driven book offers insight into the fallacy of widespread opportunity, the fate of the middle class, and the mechanisms that perpetuate income disparity.

It is through a gradual evolution, rather than by grand design, that the somewhat fragmented economic policies of the EU now appear to be heading towards a rather more robust and coherent economic governance. EU Economic Governance and Globalization considers the following crucial question as the EU enters its final stage of institution-building; will the economic institutions of the EU push ahead to reform its rigid national economies and open them up to globalization and international competition?Focusing on telecommunications, air transportation, currency competition, taxation, eastern enlargement and transatlantic relations, the contributors to this book question whether EU standards, regulatory regimes, and policies are flexible enough to bring about a dynamic and open economy. This book will be of interest to scholars of European and regional studies and international political economy, as well as policy analysts and policymakers.

The rapidly increasing importance of China, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan both in Asia and in the world economy, represents a trend that is set to continue into the 21st century. This book provides an authoritative assessment of the 20th century performance of these countries, and in particular the factors contributing to the acceleration of Asian growth in the latter part of the century. The contributors look at Asia within a global perspective and detailed comparisons are drawn with Australia and the USA. Contributions from leading experts offer a comprehensive review of the procedures necessary to establish valid international comparisons for countries with very different economic histories and levels of development. These include methods of growth performance measurement and techniques of growth accounting. The Asian Economies in the Twentieth Century will be an indispensable new tool for policy analysts, international agencies and academic researchers.

The emergence of China since 1979 has been a hallmark in the global economy, not only in the past but also in this century. This comprehensive book provides an analytical view of the remarkable economic development of the most exciting economy in the world. China's impressive economic growth has propelled it from being one of the poorest countries in the world to becoming its third largest economy. It is a complex economy with a mix of characteristics resulting from being both a transition economy and a developing country, which also points to the challenges that it still faces. This book explains China's remarkable transformation from a centrally planned to a more market-oriented economy through examination of the institutional reforms necessary to support such marketisation and eventual global integration. Although no book will be able to be completely comprehensive given the scale of the economy and the remarkable pace of transformation over three decades, this study highlights the key areas giving an overview of the major developments in China's economy, enabling its prospects of continuing growth to be assessed. With topical discussion incorporating recent data and developments, this book will be a stimulating read for academic researchers, postgraduate students in economics, international business, Chinese and area studies, as well as anyone interested in understanding the Chinese economy.

Capitalism dominates economies all over the world and is a key force in the process of globalization. What makes it such a uniquely dynamic social and economic force, however, is open to debate. The essays in this book take up this issue, offering theories on both what encourages and what blocks capitalism.
In "On Capitalism" leading economists, sociologists, and political scientists develop ideas and insights into the dynamic of capitalism as a global economic order. Unlike studies that focus only on localized descriptions of what has made capitalism function in a specific place, these essays examine the general mechanisms that account for dynamic or rational capitalism. As each chapter shows, the mechanisms motivating and facilitating today's global capitalism are not rooted in the materialist domain of incremental capital accumulation, but in the realm of ideas and institutional structures. Taken as a whole, these essays offer a rich account of the interconnectedness of the economic, political, and religious institutions of modern capitalism.

The US is facing enormous challenges as it enters the second decade of the twenty-first century. Some of these major issues are environmentalism and its claim of global warming; the danger from terrorism generated by Islamic fundamentalism; and affordable, quality health care. Additionally, education in America remains an unresolved dilemma contributing to America's lack of economic competitiveness. Andrew Bernstein argues that the US government is pushing the nation toward socialism in its attempt to resolve America's problems. The government's increasing control of the banking industry, its massive bailouts of auto makers, and its proposal of emissions legislation are also examples of the expansion of government's power. Bernstein argues that whatever the intentions of the government, or its illusions about the workability of its proposals, morally upright and practical solutions can only come from moving to the opposite end of the political-economic spectrum: the establishment of laissez-faire capitalism. In Atlas Shrugged, and in her non-fiction works, Ayn Rand developed a systematic body of thought, a comprehensive philosophy she dubbed "Objectivism." This philosophy has been neglected by most professional intellectuals, but it is now beginning to be seriously studied in academic philosophy departments. Objectivism provides the moral and philosophic validation of the political-economic principles of individual rights and free markets. Analysis of today's gravest social and political issues within this philosophic framework, as undertaken by Bernstein in this volume, constitutes a unique way of identifying rational solutions to these pressing issues.