Product Description: We live in a rapidly changing world in which politics is becoming both more and less predictable at the same time: this makes political geography a particularly exciting topic to study. To make sense of the continuities and disruptions within this political world requires a strongly focused yet flexible text...read more

Product Description: The essays in this collection show how electoral geography has shifted from empiricist activity towards a closer involvement with the wider issues addressed by social scientists. They illustrate the potential contributions that electoral geographers can make towards the understanding of global, national and local societies...read more

'Peter J. Taylor has produced a sweeping, empirically grounded, defense of cities as fundamental building blocks of long-term, large scale social structures; a way of freeing social science from state-centric bias; and indeed, mankind's hope. However, the single greatest strength of this complex, seductive, argument is the insistence on treating cities relationally, as process. Here the key to understanding the significance of cities is by studying them in terms of the dynamic networks they form and in their relations to states.'- Richard E. Lee, Binghamton University, US'The founding father of the famous Globalization and World Cities Research Network and think-tank on worldwide links between cities presents this fascinating overview on cities in geohistory. By moving cities to the centre stage, Peter Taylor proposes that concern for states tell only part of the macro-social story of humanity. Cities have been, and are, the engines of innovation. This impressive new book provides new insights into why cities succeed or fail. The book is in the class with broadminded presentations like Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel.'- Christian Matthiessen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark and President, International Geographical Union s Commission on Urban Geography'This is a 'big' book by Peter Taylor. It tells of the extraordinary world-making powers of cities across the ages, it explains why a state-centric social science has constrained recognition of these powers over the last two centuries, and it outlines a new 'indisciplinarity' to help us make sense of a human condition increasingly forged out of the urban. Anyone troubled by the social sciences as we know them, ought to read this book.'- Ash Amin, Cambridge University, UK and author, Land of StrangersAccepting that cities are extraordinary, this book provides an original city-centred narrative of human creativity, past, present and future.In this innovative, ambitious and wide-ranging book, Peter Taylor demonstrates that cities are the epicenters of human advancement. In exploring cities as sites through which economies flourish, by harnessing the creative potential of myriad communication networks, the author considers cities from varying temporal and spatial perspectives. Four stories of cities are told: the origins of city networks; the domination of cities by world-empires; the genesis of a singular modern creative interval in which innovation culminates in today s globalised cities; and finally, the need for cities to act as centres for human creativity to produce a more resilient global society in the current crisis century.Providing a long-term view through which to consider the role of cities in attending to incipient crises of the twenty-first century, this closely argued thesis will prove essential for students and scholars of urban studies, geography and sociology, and all those with a professional interest in, or personal fascination for, cities.Contents: Preface Part I: Setting Down and Setting Up 1. A Cities' Perspective 2. Conceptual Toolkits Part II: Narrative I: Beginning Conjectures 3. City and State Beginnings: Western Asia's Great Creative Interlude 4. Geographies of Beginning Creative Interludes Part III: Narrative II: World-systems 5. Normal History 6. Making the Modern World-system: Western Europe's Great Creative Interlude Part IV: Narrative III: Prospective Conjectures - Where Are We and Where Are We Going? 7. Working in an Urban World 8. Towards Green Networks of Cities for the Twenty-first Century References Index

Product Description: A striking consequence of contemporary globalization has been an increase in the importance and prestige of cities. Whereas only a generation or so ago cities were commonly viewed as ‘problems’, the sites of society’s ills, today they are more readily seen as ‘solutions’, places where twenty-first century dilemmas can most successfully be resolved...read more

Product Description: In the mid 1980s, the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction (ICMI) inaugurated a series of studies in mathematics education by comm- sioning one on the influence of technology and informatics on mathematics and its teaching...read more

Ambitiously identifying fresh issues in the study of complex systems, Peter J. Taylor, in a model of interdisciplinary exploration, makes these concerns accessible to scholars in the fields of ecology, environmental science, and science studies. Unruly Complexity explores concepts used to deal with complexity in three realms: ecology and socio-environmental change; the collective constitution of knowledge; and the interpretations of science as they influence subsequent research.For each realm Taylor shows that unruly complexity-situations that lack definite boundaries, where what goes on "outside" continually restructures what is "inside," and where diverse processes come together to produce change-should not be suppressed by partitioning complexity into well-bounded systems that can be studied or managed from an outside vantage point. Using case studies from Australia, North America, and Africa, he encourages readers to be troubled by conventional boundaries-especially between science and the interpretation of science-and to reflect more self-consciously on the conceptual and practical choices researchers make.

With the advent of multinational corporations, the traditional urban service function has 'gone global'. In order to provide services to globalizing corporate clients, the offices of major financial and business service firms across the world have formed a network. It is the myriad of flows between office towers in different metropolitan centres that has produced a world city network. Through an analysis of the intra-company flows of 100 leading global service firms across 315 cities, this book assesses cities in terms of their overall network connectivity, their connectivity by service sector, and their connectivity by world region. Peter Taylor's unique and illuminating book provides the first comprehensive and systematic description and analysis of the world city network as the 'skeleton' upon which contemporary globalization has been built. His analyses challenge the traditional view of the world as a 'mosaic map' of political boundaries. Written by one of the foremost authorities on the subject, this book provides a much needed mapping of the connecting relationships between world cities, and will be an enlightening book for students of urban studies, geography, sociology and planning. (view table of contents)

This volume provides students with a series of critical insights into the economic, political, social, cultural and ecological dimensions of change at every geographical scale from the global to the local. (view table of contents)

(view table of contents)

(view table of contents)

Product Description: Is it America s historic destiny to be the last of the hegemons ? Hegemonic states are very special countries that have simultaneously dominated the world both economically and politically and it seems increasingly likely that no country can follow the USA in this role...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

(view table of contents)

This textbook provides students with a series of challenging and revealing perspectives on the trends, trajectories and ideas of the 1990s. Twenty geographers from all over the world have been especially commissioned to address the questions of how and why the world has changed, is changing, and will continue to change. After an editorial introduction on the nature of global and local change, the book is divided into five parts, concerned with geoeconomic change, geopolitical change, geosocial change, geocultural change, and geoenvironmental change. The editors have provided contextual introductions to each part and a conclusion stressing the links between these aspects of change. Among the issues the authors consider are the collapse of socialism, the reconfiguration of North Atlantic capitalism, the hypermobility of capital, the rise of ferocious nationalisms, global environmental change, the power of international media, the social movements associated with environmentalism and feminism, and the new fervour of old religions. Taken as a whole, this book provides the student with a series of critical insights into the economic, political, social, cultural and ecological dimensions of change at every geographical scale from the global to the local. R.J. Johston is the editor of "The Dictionary of Human Geography" and Peter J. Taylor is the author of "Political Geography". (view table of contents)

Product Description: Since the first publication of World Government in 1990, the world political stage has changed beyond all possible expectations. The end of the Cold War has seen the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the demise of communism. The Middle East has seen both the Gulf War and movements toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians...read more

Product Description: A novel and stimulating account regarding the past, present and future elements of the world's geopolitical system, especially the reality of the new world order of the 21st century. Each chapter is an original contribution from prominent Anglo-American workers in political geography...read more

Product Description: Book by Taylor, Peter J. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Political geography has been one of the major growth areas within geography in recent years. Presenting a great deal of new research findings, new thinking and comprehensive overviews of key aspects of the subject, the contributors to this volume review past progress and current trends and discuss the areas where political geographers should undertake future research...read more

Product Description: Book by Taylor, Peter J.