Hegemony: The New Shape Of Global Power (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: marketplace society, spatial transaction costs, transnational liberalism, United States, Cold War, Soviet Union (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is an important and challenging book, based on not only wide reading but also deep thinking over several decades. It is a tour de force that should be widely used to stimulate thinking about global futures beyond the simplistic offerings of too many politicians and commentators." Environment and Planning A "This innovative, lucid study of "new geographies of power" can and should be read by a wide audience, including all undergraduates majoring in humanities and social science disciplines." CHOICE "It is an excellent manuscript, mounting an effective and scholarly challenge to a great deal of rather simplistic recent work on American Empire. His arguments about hegemony are convincing, and they are interesting. Perhaps the most compelling is his attempt to show that hegemony is not simply a national project, as most of the Empire genre he criticises argue, but a global project inextricably implicated with the ways in which capitalist globalization work." Leslie Sklair "In Hegemony, which is a contribution to the literatures on both globalization and US foreign policy, John Agnew offers some cogent arguments about the rise of US hegemony and its effects on other countries. He convincingly critiques international relations theorists who characterize the United States as an empire...[and] provides a welcome riposte to international relations theorists who focus solely on territorial power." International Studies Review "An excellent and noteworthy addition to the literature...the book offers a much-needed bridge between the recent literature on American empire in geography (with its tendencies toward critical geopolitics) and new cultural histories of American neocolonialism...Hegemony deserves to be widely read...and Agnew...applauded for his tight, compelling, and path breaking work." Historical Geography

Product Description

Hegemony tells the story of the drive to create consumer capitalism abroad through political pressure and the promise of goods for mass consumption. In contrast to the recent literature on America as empire, it explains that the primary goal of the foreign and economic policies of the United States is a world which increasingly reflects the American way of doing business, not the formation or management of an empire. Contextualizing both the Iraq war and recent plant closings in the U.S., noted author John Agnew shows how American hegemony has created a world in which power is no longer only shaped territorially. He argues in a sobering conclusion that we are consequently entering a new era of global power, one in which the the world the US has made no longer works to its singular advantage.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 284 pages
• Publisher: Temple University Press (April 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592131530
• ISBN-13: 978-1592131532
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,069,539 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ignore the other review, read this book!, January 26, 2007

By	Tony (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This is an original book which claims and makes an argument with historical analysis that contemporary globalization has developed out of the US geopolitical role in the world. So, rather than technology or capital simply driving globalization, the US has mediated the emergence of the world of flows that we see around us now every day. This argument will not be popular with either parts of the extreme left which sees the world as on automatic economic pilot or the US nationalist right which views the US as a blameless victim of foreign plots and subterfuge (pace Lou Dobbs). For the rest of us, except apparently a student of the author's who got a bad grade (see the other review), this book is well worth reading.

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read, September 24, 2007

By	Gina Dewinter "Gina" (France) - See all my reviews

This book was extremely helpful in explaining Hegemony and the global environment to me as a Global Health Student.

1 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars One of the worst books for the subject..., December 12, 2006

By	Super Discounts - See all my reviews

This is perhaps one of the worst books I have read on the subject as it circumvents real answers and provides circular logic without taking a definitive stance. After talking to the author, I believe the book falls into the author's "opinion" and nothing more substantive than that.