The Global Age

The final chapter in the Penguin History of Europe series from the acclaimed scholar and author of To Hell and Back After the overwhelming horrors of the first half of the twentieth century, described by Ian Kershaw in his previous book as being 'to Hell and back,' the years from 1950 to 2017 brought peace and relative prosperity to most of Europe. Enormous economic improvements transformed the continent. The catastrophic era of the world wars receded into an ever more distant past, though its long shadow continued to shape mentalities. Yet Europe was now a divided continent, living under the nuclear threat in a period intermittently fraught with anxiety. There were, by most definitions, striking successes: the Soviet bloc melted away, dictatorships vanished, and Germany was successfully reunited. But accelerating globalization brought new fragilities. The interlocking crises after 2008 were the clearest warnings to Europeans that there was no guarantee of peace and stability, and, even today, the continent threatens further fracturing. In this remarkable book, Ian Kershaw has created a grand panorama of the world we live in and where it came from. Drawing on examples from all across Europe, The Global Age is an endlessly fascinating portrait of the recent past and present, and a cautious look into our future.

A transnational approach to understanding and analyzing knowledge circulation. The contributors to this collection focus on what happens to knowledge and know-how at national borders. Rather than treating it as flowing like currents across them, or diffusing out from center to periphery, they stress the human intervention that shapes how knowledge is processed, mobilized, and repurposed in transnational transactions to serve diverse interests, constraints, and environments. The chapters consider both what knowledge travels and how it travels across borders of varying permeability that impede or facilitate its movement. They look closely at a variety of platforms and objects of knowledge, from tangible commodities—like hybrid wheat seeds, penicillin, Robusta coffee, naval weaponry, seed banks, satellites and high-performance computers—to the more conceptual apparatuses of plant phenotype data and statistics. Moreover, this volume decenters the Global North, tracking how knowledge moves along multiple paths across the borders of Mexico, India, Portugal, Guinea-Bissau, the Soviet Union, China, Angola, Palestine and the West Bank, as well as the United States and the United Kingdom. An important new work of transnational history, this collection recasts the way we understand and analyze knowledge circulation.

The age-friendly community movement is a global phenomenon, currently growing with the support of the WHO and multiple international and national organizations in the field of aging. Drawing on an extensive collection of international case studies, this volume provides an introduction to the movement. The contributors – both researchers and practitioners – touch on a number of current tensions and issues in the movement and offer a wide-ranging set of recommendations for advancing age-friendly community development. The book concludes with a call for a radical transformation of a medical and lifestyle model of aging into a relational model of health and social/individual wellbeing.

This book provides a comprehensive and concise overview of the main debates on citizenship and the implications of globalization. It argues that citizenship is no longer defined by nationality and the nation state, but has become de-territorialized and fragmented into the separate discourses of rights, participation, responsibility and identity.

Discussions on globalization now routinely focus on the economic impact of developing countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the former Soviet Union and Latin America. Only twenty-five years ago, many developing countries were largely closed societies. Today, the growing power of “emerging markets” is reordering the geopolitical landscape. On a purchasing power parity basis, emerging economies now constitute half of the world’s economic activity. Financial markets too are seeing growing integration: Asia now accounts for 1/3 of world stock markets, more than double that of just 15 years ago. Given current trajectories, most economists predict that China and India alone will account for half of global output by 2050 (almost a complete return to their positions prior to the Industrial Revolution). How is higher education shaping and being shaped by these massive tectonic shifts? As education rises as a geopolitical priority, it has converged with discussions on economic policy and a global labor market. As part of the Routledge Studies in Emerging Societies series, this edited collection focuses on the globalization of higher education, particularly the increasing symbiosis between advanced and developing countries. Bringing together senior scholars, journalists, and practitioners from around the world, this collection explores the relatively new and changing higher education landscape.

Many authors who discuss the idea of globalization see it as continuing pre-established paths of development of modern societies. Post-modernist writers, by contrast, have lost sight of the importance of historical narrative altogether. Martin Albrow argues that neither group is able to recognize the new era which stares us in the face. A history of the present needs an explicit epochal theory to understand the transition to the Global Age. When globality displaces modernity there is a general decentering of state, government, economy, culture, and community. Albrow calls for a recasting of the theory of such institutions and the relations between them. He finds an open potential for society to recover its abiding significance in the face of the declining nation state. At the same time a new kind of citizenship is emerging. This important book will provoke both radicals and conservatives. Its scholarship ranges widely across the social sciences and humanities. It is bound to promote wide cross-disciplinary debate.

"Polished, clear, insightful, and meaningful.... This volume amounts to nothing less than a complete rethinking of what progressive education can be at its best and how education can be reconceptualized as one of the central practices of a genuinely democratic and sustainable society.... It is the kind of book that has the potential to be transformative." Stephen Preskill, University of New Mexico "The editors and contributors are pioneers in the field of educational theory, policy, and philosophy.... They are opening new areas of inquiry and educational reform in ways that promise to make this book in very short time into a classic.... The practical applications and experiments included reveal the richness of grassroots initiatives already underway to bring educational theory and policy down to earth. While spanning the richest and deepest intellectual ideas and concepts, the stories told are the types that practitioners and teachers will be able to relate to in their daily undertakings." Madhu Suri Prakash, The Pennsylvania State University This volume – a landmark contribution to the burgeoning theory and practice of place-based education – enriches the field in three ways: First, it frames place-based pedagogy not just as an alternative teaching methodology or novel approach to environmental education but as part of a broader social movement known as the "Anew localism", which aims toward reclaiming the significance of the local in the global age. Second, it links the development of ecological awareness and stewardship to concerns about equity and cultural diversity. Third, it presents examples of place-based education in action. The relationship between the new localism and place-based education is clarified and the process of making connections between learners and their wider communities is demonstrated. The book is organized around three themes: Reclaiming Broader Meanings of Education; Models for Place-Based Learning; and Global Visions of the Local in Higher Education This is a powerfully relevant volume for researchers, teacher educators, and students across the fields of curriculum theory, educational foundations, critical pedagogy, multicultural education, and environmental education.

Europe's social model – its system of welfare and social protection – is regarded by many as the jewel in the crown. It is what helps to give the European societies their distinctive qualities of social cohesion and care for the vulnerable. Over recent years, however, the social model has come under great strain in many states within the European Union – unemployment, for example, remains stubbornly high. The resulting tensions have fuelled dissatisfaction with the European project as a whole, culminating in the rejection of Europe's proposed new constitution. Reform of the social model is therefore a matter of urgency. It has to go hand in hand with the quest to regenerate economic growth. The weaker performers in Europe over the past few years can learn a good deal from states that have coped more effectively. But more radical changes need to be contemplated in the face of the impact of globalization, rapidly increasing cultural diversity and changing demography. The author argues that the traditional welfare state needs to be rethought. We have to bring lifestyle change into the heart of what welfare means. Moreover, environmental issues must be directly connected to other citizenship obligations. These innovations have to be made at the same time as Europes competitive position is upgraded. This original and path-breaking book will rank alongside Beyond Left and Right, The Third Way and other works by Anthony Giddens that have helped reshape social and political thinking over recent decades.