A World in Crisis

The 1970's witnessed widespread recognition of the world as a single, interconnecting whole. The 1980's have shown that this whole is not operating as a self-sustaining system. In short we appear to live in a world in crisis- manifesting itself in hunger, poverty, debt, conflict, statelessness and war, as well as in the accelerating degradation of the natural environment.

The geographical perspectives of World in Crisis? - in this completely revised and updated edition - show the interlinking nature of global, regional, and local problems and, further, that these are not uniquely economic, ecological, political or social, but all these and more.

Preface viii

Preface to the Second Edition x

1 Introduction: A World in Crisis? 1

2 The Geography of International Economic Disorder 16

3 Draining the World of Energy 79

4 Food Production and Distribution - and Hunger 101

5 The Use of Natural Resources in Developing and Developed Countries 125

6 Malthus, Marx and Population Crises 151

7 World Capitalism and the Destruction of Regional Cultures 175

8 The Individual and the World-Economy 200

9 The Question of National Congruence 229

10 The New Geopolitics: The Dynamics of Geopolitical Disorder 266

11 World-Power Competition and Local Conflicts in the Third World 289

12 The World-Systems Project 333

13 Epilogue: Our Planet is Big Enough for Peace but Too Small for War 355

List of Contributors 358

Index 361

R. J. Johnston is the editor of A World in Crisis, published by Wiley. Peter James Taylor, FBA, FAcSS is an English geographer. Born in Calverton in Nottinghamshire, he was Professor of Political Geography at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne between 1970 and 1996, before joining Loughborough University as Professor of Geography Since 2010 he was worked at Northumbria University. The 1970's witnessed widespread recognition of the world as a single, interconnecting whole. The 1980's have shown that this whole is not operating as a self-sustaining system. In short we appear to live in a world in crisis- manifesting itself in hunger, poverty, debt, conflict, statelessness and war, as well as in the accelerating degradation of the natural environment.

The geographical perspectives of World in Crisis? - in this completely revised and updated edition - show the interlinking nature of global, regional, and local problems and, further, that these are not uniquely economic, ecological, political or social, but all these and more.