This book examines the origins of globalization in the 1980s, the developments that triggered the Great Recession, and the political and economic forces that contributed to the disintegration of globalization as a force for change in the modern world. After Globalization explains what happened--and what comes next.
By situating the period from 1980 to 2020 as one moment within the 500-year history of the globalization, Robert Schaeffer's book enables a dialogue between two otherwise vying traditions of thought: globalization literature and world-systems analysis. The book's consistent world-historical account lays bare long-standing, but short-sighted misconceptions of globalization and carefully unpacks the shifts in meanings as well as the political and economic consequences of its main buzzwords, from globalization itself to crisis, nationalism, and (dis)integration. A fascinating, at times chilling history of the present that every globally-minded social scientist will want to read. Manuela Boatca, University of Frieberg
Robert Schaeffer has written a revelatory history of the last forty years of global capitalism. Schaeffer rejects the common view that globalization was driven by the removal of government constraints on private capital. Instead, he argues, and demonstrates convincingly, that it was the product of very definite government actions - actions that have come a cropper in the wake of the Great Recession and the pandemic. Schaeffer shows how an event like the financial crash of 1987, which economists have attributed to machine trading, was in fact the result of Reagan administration policy. And he shows how Trump's economic policies, overshadowed by his bigotry and disdain for democracy, did in fact contribute to the end of this era of global capitalism.John Judis, Journalist and author of The Politics of Our Times
After Globalization is an excellent overview and analysis of what has happened during the wave of economic globalization in the last decades of the 20th century and the early decades of the 21st century. It discusses why left-wing and right-wing populist resistance to the neoliberal globalization project have emerged and discusses likely further developments as a new period of deglobalization begins. The book will be great for upper division undergraduate global studies, sociology and political science courses.Christopher Chase-Dunn, University of California-Riverside
