The Age of Global Transformations: the Human Dimension (dedikált példány) [antikvár]

FOREWORDThis book is the result of a research project in the frame of the Institute for World Economics on the different aspects of gloablisation. The volume is focussing on the human dimensions of transformation in the early years of the 21st century. In every couple of centuries of human history, at least of the Western world, there was a comprehensive radical socio-economic change characterised as transformation with profound influence on political, economic and social structures. New interests and values emerged, institutions were replaced, relations rearranged. Much has been written over the years on transformations. At the beginning of the 21st century there is however a rare coincidence of profound transformations in a number of areas, in population dynamics, in human settlements in science and technology, economics, social structures, in the role and functions of the states and in the global power structure. These processes are interrelated and have a major influence on people, on the different countries and on international relations. In my research work, I drew the attention already during the 1970s to the fact that epoch-making changes started in the global system, with far-reaching consequences. My book on the "Future of Global Governance" published in 1994 offered a comprehensive analysis of those changes (Simai, 1994). The ongoing research programme of the Institute for World Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on globalisation is a continuation of that study. It places the transformations in a broad interdisciplinary context in a world, which is more like a great Tower of Babel than a global village. Political, economic and social conditions vary immensely throughout the world, influenced by the size, natural endowments, development level, economic structure, political and institutional patterns, and competitiveness of countries. Among the external factors the global (or regional) regulatory framework influencing the relationships between the participants in the act of exchange, the degree of competitiveness, the role of oligopoly or monopoly, the degree and the character of the fusion or interconnectedness of the markets for goods, capital, services and labour, are some of the most important. These factors are not constant, and their variations (fluctuations) reflect the diversity of the market system on the one hand, and on the other trans-7