Suchergebnisse

1.Britain: a decade of crises, 2008-2022 -- 2. The British Empire: finessing the collapse, 1942-56 -- 3. European Union: particular anxieties, deeper issues, 2008-22 -- 4. Britain's Financial Crisis: debts, bail-outs and austerity, 2008-10 -- 5. European Union: the migration crisis, 1999-2015 -- 6. Brexit Crisis: unpacking some of the lessons, 2016-22 -- 7.The Covid-19 Pandemic, 2020 -- 8. The Disaster in Ukraine: tracking the failures of political elites, 1991-2022 -- 9. Re-imagining Britain: crises, identity and representation,1973-98 -- 10. On Living in a Rich Country. - 11. Afterword.

The period 2008-2022 has seen the British state/government embroiled in a number of full-blown crises, each impacting the fundamental operations of the state and demanding, therefore, urgent responses from the government of the day. In the first case, the 2008 near-collapse and partial nationalization of the banking system consequent upon decades of irresponsible credit creation coupled to permissive regulation; in the second , the migration crisis of 2015, which saw waves of refugees moving through Europe, provoking anxious responses from European Union member states and opening-up related political debates in Britain; thus, third , the 2016 referendum in regard to membership of the European Union, which the London-based elite clearly thought they would navigate easily before, to their evident shock, losing, an event itself precipitating further extraordinary Westminster manoeuvring; and then fourth the 2020 Covid- 19 pandemic, met with an initial casual sangfroid before the government, its actions informed by epidemiological modelling, made an abrupt shift to 'lockdown', with dramatic social and economic consequences. To these episodes, whose impacts run down to the present, could be added, fifth, the 2022 disaster in Ukraine where the British state/government has chosen to involve itself by supporting one set of combatants in a conflict where presently, after more than a year of fighting, there is little sign of a means to the resolution of the violence. This book examines the crises and tracks how each developed; how state/ government failings in one case were rehearsed in the next; and, more generally, how these crises have been amplified by the decades-long celebration of globalization theory; and, finally, at how following the most recent crisis the future might unfold, hence the ideas of deglobalization, resilience and, more speculatively, the possibilities of democratization. P. W. Preston is Emeritus Professor of Political Sociology in the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, UK.

Maps of East Asia -- Complex change and the logics of forms-of-life -- Argument making in social science -- Substantive theoretical traditions -- Livelihood investigated -- The shift to the modern world in East Asia -- Colonialism and modernity : the overall trajectory -- Colonialism and modernity : disentangling the issues -- Successor elites and the pursuit of national development -- The dissolution of state-empires -- The formation of successor elites -- Power, authority and dissent -- Development issues faced -- East Asia in the changing global system -- The region in overview -- Globalization and the end of history -- East Asia : success and its costs -- Elite projects and post-colonial goals -- States, masses and the idea of democracy -- Collective memory and national pasts -- Performance and problems -- Afterword -- Annex 1: Population and gdp -- Annex 2: Health and education -- Annex 3: Rural and urban employment -- Annex 4: Military expenditures -- Annex 5: List of films on China -- Annex 6: List of films on East Asia -- Annex 7: Images: commentary and permissions -- Bibliography.

Conclusion: Continuing ConcernsNotes; Chapter 2: Sitting on the Dock of the Bay: Partial Views of Change-Singapore, Tokyo and Hong Kong; The Old Canteen of the World Trade Centre, Singapore; The Coffee Shop of the Tokyo Edo Museum, Tokyo; The Fast Ferry from Central to Hung Hom; Any Lessons?; Notes; Chapter 3: The Historical Development Experience of East Asia: Growth, Regional Networks and the Developmental State; The Shift to the Modern World in East Asia; Pre-contact Civilizations and the Colonial Era; General Crisis: The Failure of the State-Empire System

The shift to the modern world in East Asia was accomplished in part via the experience of colonial rule in the late nineteenth century. Following imperial crisis in the 1930s and 1940s, independent nation states formed from which the political structure of East Asia is based today.

"The shift to the modern world in East Asia was accomplished in part via the experience of colonial rule as Europeans, Americans and Japanese in the late nineteenth century constructed elaborate colonial empires throughout the region. Local reactions included collaboration, resistance and learning - and the latter fed into locally made nationalisms that fuelled popular revolts against foreign rule. When the system went into crisis with numerous wars during the 1930s and 1940s, local nationalists took their chance and lodged claims to independence. As the fighting subsided it became clear that empires were no longer tenable, and independent nation states began to be constructed. Today they form the underlying political structure of the burgeoning region of East Asia"--

Tracking the intermingled intellectual and moral response of elites and masses to the loss of empire in the years following the end of the Second World War, this book explores how the elite in Britain sought to fashion a new identity for itself, how this was promulgated amongst the wider population and how ordinary people responded. These responses can be uncovered in elite designs including policies, plans, declarations; high art such as novels, theatre, fine arts and art-house films as well as through the medium of popular culture like radio, film, television, newspapers and magazines. These layers of meanings can be found in the slow development of the public sphere, as events produced reactions that laid down ideas that run into the present. The collective upshot has been the creation of a shifting, contested and finally unsustainable idea of what it is to be 'British'.

"An exploration of the recent financial crisis which argues that the hitherto dominant intellectual and policy paradigm of neo-liberalism has been fatally weakened and will in due course be replaced. The implications of the crisis for politico-cultural identities and our sense of ourselves as members of an ordered society are explored"--

National pasts in Europe and East Asia -- The scale and pace of change recalled -- Available lessons : private memories and wider European agendas -- Europe : general crisis, collapse, and recovery -- Uncomfortable lessons : the European Union and the USA, 1989/91-2008 -- Reading the ongoing changes : European identity -- Sweeping change in East Asia : political leaders and the experience of violence -- East Asia : general crisis, collapse, and national development -- Contested compromises : national pasts in Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Bangkok -- Japan/China : national pasts and the reordering of East Asia -- Europe and East Asia : intermingled pasts and changing identities -- Afterword: War is failure

Against the claims of the proponents of globalization, this book asserts that the system is always in flux and states and polities are always adjusting.