Книга известного немецкого социолога, профессора Мюнхенского университета Ульриха Бека посвящена проблеме глобализации. Автор пытается ответить на двойной вопрос: что имеется в виду под глобализацией и где искать политическое решение проблемы.

East Asia's dynamic entrance into the global economy has provided a fruitful avenue for research in economic sociology. In this perceptive and timely volume, the authors theorize Asian capitalism and analyze the economic organization of East Asia. Presenting differing dimensions of a Weberian perspective, the authors first provide a theoretical grounding, then consider capitalism in East Asia comparatively, and finally contrast the economies of East Asia and Europe. The book shows how radically different social and cultural institutions can lead to economies that are organized in remarkably similar ways.

В "Апологии …" французский историк Марк Блок обосновывает как "легитимность" своего ремесла, право историка, в частности и моральное, заниматься тем, чем он занимается, так и "полезность" профессии историка в системе общественного разделения труда. Но сколь бы ни был высок социальный статус историка, позволяющий ему претендовать на особую внутреннюю автономию, в своих исследованиях прошлого он не вправе отстраняться от проблем современной действительности. Предметом исторического исследования согласно концепции автора является человек во времени. Автор исходит их позиции о том, что сознание человека не является единым на протяжении времени, а изменяется под воздействием тех или иных факторов и историку необходимо эту разницу учитывать. Блок убежден: знание прошлого должно помогать человеку "жить лучше".

Книга известного французского исследователя представляет концептуальный взгляд на исторические процессы, эволюцию сословий, анализ развития и структуры отношений собственности, истории права, актуальные для современного понимания общества в его развитии. До настоящего времени российскому читателю эта фундаментальная работа (в 2-х томах) была знакома в основном по множественным ссылкам из других исторических работ. Первая полная публикация на русском языке восполняет этот пробел.

In this book, Robert Boyer follows the origins, course and collapse of the ''new economy'' and proposes a new interpretation of US dynamism during the 1990s. He argues that the diffusion of information and communication technologies is only part of a story that also requires understanding of the transformation of the financial system, the reorganization of the management of firms and the emergence of a new policy mix. The book includes a long-term retrospective analysis of technological innovation, and an international comparison of OECD countries delivers an unconventional and critical assessment of the hope and the hype of the ''new economy''. The book proposes that the US way is not necessarily the only efficient one, as demonstrated by the experience of the Nordic countries, which manage to combine economic efficiency with social justice. The author argues that European economies would do well to take note and to explore a promising growth regime for the twenty-first century, one built upon health, education, training and leisure, this comprising the ''anthropogenetic model''.

Countries are looking for ways to compete and increase their share of exports; this has led to the lowering of national borders and greater co-dependence. To many, this climate of globalization signals the end of the nation-state as an effective manager of national economic policy. In "States Against Markets" the contributors challenge this perceived threat to the nation-state. They examine the fundamental issues of competitiveness and market power. Some topics covered include a discussion of whether or not globalization is really a novel development, an assessment of the success of globalization as a means of convergence and uniformity across nations, an update on the Hayek vs. Keynes debate, an analysis of how all parties involved can maximize the benefits of globalization and an appraisal of the nation-state.

After the Second World War, the economics of the western capitalist countries were based on a production system called fordism, but in the mid 1970s this system began to break down, and it has been in crisis since. But does resolving this crisis imply a complete break with the past, notably with the principles of Taylor and Ford? Based on an analysis of the transformations currently taking place in several international companies, this book reveals the complexities and subtleties of today's transitions.

During the 1990s, many scientific publications, economic manuals and mass media pundits held that a correct representation of the industrial history of the 20th century would break this period down into three phases. The first phase was thought to involve “semi-craft” production, characterised by a wide variety of goods made by self-organised professional workers seeking to satisfy a demand that emanated from the upper social categories, these being the only persons who could access such custom-made items. Then came a phase of “mass production”, characterised by the manufacturing of large series of standardised goods by unskilled workers whose efforts were strictly defined and prescribed. Thanks to the economies of scale that were made possible by this system, it was supposedly during this period that the working classes acceded to a consumption of industrial products. Lastly, the century’s third and final phase of productive activity, called “lean production”, was said to have appeared in the 1990s, first in Japan before diffusing across the rest of the world. This system was said to have enabled a manufacturing of diversified, high-quality and competitively priced goods, thanks to employees’ and suppliers’ joint efforts towards a continuous improvement in performance (the purpose being to satisfy a market that was becoming increasingly competitive and globalised). This final phase was said to have signalled the end of the so-called Taylorian division of labour, assimilated with a separation of design and execution. The MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) researchers put together an International Motor Vehicle Programme (IMVP) to orient research into automobile manufacturers and into variations in their levels of productivity. It subsequently devised the lean production theory to account for the system of production it was describing. The IMVP stated that this system “would change the world”, and that it was imperative that American and European firms adopt it (Womack et. al., 1990). This thesis, which was widely successful internationally in both professional and scientific circles, nevertheless raised a greater number of questions, and even outright criticism. This in turn led to a new wave of research throughout the 1990s - initiatives that enabled more operative types of theoretical formulation. The purpose of the present book is to present these latter formulations. History however moves quickly. The “system that was going to change the world” was not able to keep the country where it was said to have originated from going into a protracted and painful crisis. Nor did it prevent some of the companies who allegedly embodied its principles from being forced to ally themselves with (or even be taken over by) foreign groups - only to be restructured and discover that they had much to learn from foreigners who were reputedly less efficient. Methods that had been attributed to the Japanese and which had seduced economic and political leaders (as well as many university professors and researchers) began to lose their charm. One intellectual fashion replacing another, now a new “Anglo-Saxon” model, based on the search for short-term profitability and a consequence of the power that has been acquired by institutional investors (pension funds, mutual funds, etc.) is supposedly forcing itself on the rest of the planet - just as 10 years ago people had been saying that lean production was sure to be the wave of the future. The disillusion is as blinding as it is fascinating. It makes it difficult to learn from the past and causes analysts to repeat the same mistakes - notably that which consists of seeing a new phenomenon as a potentially general and irreversible tendency without first examining the conditions that led to its birth or which are necessary if it is to spread. It is crucial that analysts avoid falling prey to faddish thinking again, whatever the nature thereof. Observers have to engage in conceptual clarifications and carry out meticulous analyses. This has been the goal of the “GERPISA International Network” (Group for the Permanent Study of and Research into the Automobile Industry and its Workers), an association of researchers who have been focusing on the automobile industry in an attempt to verify the validity of the IMVP’s thesis. The GERPISA has been studying automobile firms’ trajectories as well as the spaces in which such companies have deployed their activities from the late 1960s through the late 1990s. This has been achieved via two international research programmes: “The emergence of new industrial models” (1993-1996) and “The automobile industry between globalisation and regionalisation” (1997-1999). The authors of the present book, who managed the scientific aspects of these two programmes, present here the conclusions that they have personally drawn from them, enhanced by findings from research on the automobile industry since its birth. The present book provides an analytical structure that could readily inspire research into other sectors of activity. For the moment, the automobile sector is the only one to have been subjected to systematic investigation at a worldwide level. The stakes are high in this debate. At a scientific level, they involve an understanding of the full diversity of the various forms that the relationship between capital and labour has assumed, wherever this relationship is being renewed on a daily basis (i.e., in those firms and economic and political spaces where such activities are deployed). At a practical level, we focus on the conditions underlying firms’ durable profitability (and thus longevity), thereby assessing the room to manoeuvre for each of the actors involved: shareholders, banks, executives, employees, labour unions, suppliers, the State and local authorities – with consideration being given to each actor’s own economic and social outlook. The first chapter of the present book suggests a framework for analysing the process that gives birth to a “productive model”. The purpose is to build a definition that can be used operationally. The six following chapters are devoted to the “profit strategies” that can become possible, depending on the state of the market or labour; and to the “productive models” by which these strategies (such as they have been defined up until now in the automobile industry) can be implemented. Each chapter presents the development of one (or two) productive model(s); the profit strategy it implements; the means it activates; the “company governance compromise” in which it is embedded; the firms that have successfully embodied it (and those who have failed); the crises it has known; and finally the future that can be predicted for it. The conclusion provides an overview of the way in which these productive models have evolved over time, and specifies both the conditions in which firms can be profitable as well as the room for manoeuvre that actors have at their disposal.

This book argues that there is no single best institutional arrangement for organizing modern societies. Therefore, the market should not be considered the ideal and universal arrangement for coordinating economic activity. Instead, the editors argue, the economic institutions of capitalism exhibit a large variety of objectives and tools that complement each other and can not work in isolation. The various chapters of the book ask what logics and functions institutions follow and why they emerge, mature and persist in the forms they do.

Is Japan totally exceptional or is it a typical market economy? Is the poor macroeconomic performance of the nineties down to archaic institutions or short term monetary and budgetary policies? The contributions to Japanese Capitalism in Crisis show that there can be a middle ground between these extremes and delivers two benefits: a deeper understanding of long term development and an extension of existing theory. A regulationist approach is used to examine how the periods of growth and crisis can be attributed to the institutions which govern capital accumulation. This book should prove to be invaluable to students and researchers studying the economies of Japan and other east Asian countries as well as all those interested in patterns of boom and recession worldwide.

Работа выдающегося историка Фернана Броделя, крупнейшего представителя французской исторической школы "Анналов", посвящена развитию цивилизаций Запада и Востока. На русском языке книга публикуется впервые. "Грамматика цивилизаций" была написана в 1963 г. и задумывалась автором как учебник для системы среднего образования во Франции. Однако для учебника она оказалась слишком сложна, зато была с огромным интересом встречена научными кругами мира, свидетельством чего стали переводы на многие языки. В отличие от других фундаментальных исследований автора, она написана в значительно более доступной форме, что облегчает восприятие концепции Броделя не только специалистами, но и широкой читательской аудиторией. Рекомендуется также преподавателям истории всех уровней образования.

В этой небольшой книге воспроизведен текст трех лекций, прочитанных мной в университете Джонса Гопкинса (США) в 1976 году. Эти лекции в англий- ском переводе получили заголовок "Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism", а затем были пе- реведены на итальянский под заголовком "La Dinamica del Capitalismo". В настоящем издании пер- воначальный текст приведен без каких-либо исправле- ний; при этом читателю следует иметь в виду, что эти лекции были написаны до выхода в свет книги "Ма- териальная цивилизация, экономика и капитализм" в 1979 году в издательстве "Арман Колен". Поскольку указанный труд к этому времени был почти полностью завершен, меня попросили дать в лекциях его самое общее изложение. Ф. Б.

"Игры обмена" - это сложный мир экономических коммуникаций. Фернан Бродель исследует различные уровни коммерческой деятельности - труд разносчиков, торговлю на дальние расстояния, работу международных бирж и кредитных учреждений. Он прослеживает, как их сложное взаимодействие влияло на общество, социальную иерархию и целые цивилизации. Одна из главных задач Броделя - сопоставление рыночной экономики и капитализма, определение точек их соприкосновения, степени независимости и характера противоборства.

В заключительном томе своего труда Фернан Бродель излагает мировую экономическую историю, "организовав" ее во времени и пространстве. Она предстает как чередование господства нескольких миров-экономик, объединенных не только единым центром, но и едиными временными ритмами. Рассматривая причины подъема и упадка этих миров, проблемы формирования национальных рынков и региональные особенности промышленной революции, автор в хронологической последовательности верифицирует свои основные гипотезы, изложенные в предыдущих томах.

Фундаментальный трехтомный труд Фернана Броделя представляет собой всестороннее исследование экономической жизни человечества в переломную для его судеб эпоху становления капиталистических отношений. Первый том, названный «Структуры повседневности: возможное и невозможное», посвящен различным сферам материальной жизни. Работа насыщена богатейшим материалом, касающимся различных сторон повседневной жизни людей позднего средневековья и раннего нового времени — как в Европе, так и далеко за ее пределами. Книга будет интересна не только специалистам в области истории и экономики, но и самому широкому кругу читателей.