Product Description

People around the world are confused and concerned. Is it a sign of strength or of weakness that the US has suddenly shifted from a politics of consensus to one of coercion on the world stage? What was really at stake in the war on Iraq? Was it all about oil and, if not, what else was involved? What role has a sagging economy played in pushing the US into foreign adventurism and what difference does it make that neo-conservatives rather than neo-liberals are now in power? What exactly is the relationship between US militarism abroad and domestic politics? These are the questions taken up in this compelling and original book. Closely argued but clearly written, 'The New Imperialism' builds a conceptual framework to expose the underlying forces at work behind these momentous shifts in US policies and politics. The compulsions behind the projection of US power on the world as a 'new imperialism' are here, for the first time, laid bare for all to see. This new paperback edition contains an Afterword written to coincide with the result of the 2004 American presidental election.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #128386 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

The Times Higher Education Supplement
"... [Harvey] makes an important theoretical contribution to understanding contemporary empire's vicissitudes."

Review
The prose is clear and direct, and pitched at the general reader rather than the academic specialist ... Harvey's analysis is impressive ... I hope many people beyond geography and academia read The New Imperialism ... As ever, Harvey's project provides us with a cognitive and moral map so that we can find our way into a more just, tolerant and sane future. (cultural geographies )

... [Harvey] makes an important theoretical contribution to understanding contemporary empire's vicissitudes. (The Times Higher Education Supplement )

The New Imperialism, then, merits the widest possible public. David Harvey is a social theorist known for a cool, analytical style born of interdisciplinary inquiry, coupled with a keen feeling for political significance. This book showcases his talent. (The Boston Pheonix )

David Harvey has written a profound, and profoundly disturbing, book. For thirty years his writings have taken aim at the complacent conviction that what exists works. Harvey is a scholarly radical; his writing is free of journalistic cliches, full of facts and carefully thought-through ideas. This book is beautifully crafted, its prose accessible, its narrative one of mounting intensity and urgency. The New Imperialism mounts a stunning indictment of our present institutions of power, while offering hopeful insights about how these institutions could be changed. (Richard Sennett, Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics )

John Cassidy, Times Literary Supplement
"Harvey has some valid points to make."

Customer Reviews

If the transational elite wont stop Bush will the US public?
Any new book by David Harvey is most welcome in this geographers' house, but I feel this book is a letdown in comparison to the old masters' venerable collection of works. Having now returned to his focus on what 'uneven spatial development' means under advanced capitalism, Harvey suggests what the US is seeking to do in Iraq is achieve economic hegemony through its control over oil. Nothing too revelatory there. Choosing to wade through US foreign policy gives the current war context, but doesn't add to the debate. The chapter entitled 'capital bondage' is a wonderfully simplified runthrough of his understanding of the logics of capital and the state, and hugely helpful if you have never come across it before. The substance of his argument (and thus the book) arrives when he unveils his 'accumulation by dispossession' principle, which suggests that Iraq is simply the backdrop to capital's most basic instinct: imperialist adventure when capital surplus accumulates. As such he is not adding much to the traditional Leninist view. Indeed, the new imperialism, he suggests within, is much like the old imperialism. His depth of knowledge about geopolitical outcomes, though, does present us with potential avenues of thought. Towards the end he talks about the tensions surrounding style of civil society political resistance to imperialism, and what the potential results of Bush's adventure will be, providing useful food for thought. Overall the book doesn't sit very well, and you would be hard pressed to suggest that the content is value for money. But as an introduction to his work in relation to current events I can see this book being a helpful tool, and it does highlight the centrality of controlling spatial relations in economic and political actions.