Children of a New World or A Better Globalization

Children of a New World: Society, Culture, and Globalization

Author: Paula Fass

"In this remarkable volume, Paula S. Fass, a pioneer and pace-setter in the burgeoning field of children's history, demonstrates that a knowledge of history is essential to understanding contemporary controversies over child protection, the commercialization of childhood, multiculturalism in public schools, and the impact of globalization."
—Steven Mintz, author of Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood

Paula S. Fass, a pathbreaker in children's history and the history of education, turns her attention in Children of a New World to the impact of globalization on children's lives, both in the United States and on the world stage. Globalization, privatization, the rise of the "work-centered" family, and the triumph of the unregulated marketplace, she argues, are revolutionizing the lives of children today.

Fass begins by considering the role of the school as a fundamental component of social formation, particularly in a nation of immigrants like the United States. She goes on to examine children as both creators of culture and objects of cultural concern in America, evident in the strange contemporary fear of and fascination with child abduction, child murder, and parental kidnapping. Finally, Fass moves beyond the limits of American society and brings historical issues into the present and toward the future, exploring how American historical experience can serve as a guide to contemporary globalization as well as how globalization is altering the experience of American children and redefining childhood.

Clear and scholarly, serious but witty, Children of a New World provides a foundation for future historicalinvestigations while adding to our current understanding of the nature of modern childhood, the role of education for national identity, the crisis of family life, and the influence of American concepts of childhood on the world's definitions of children's rights. As a new generation comes of age in a global world, it is a vital contribution to the study of childhood and globalization.

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A Better Globalization: Legitimacy, Reform and Governance

Author: Kemal Dervis

The huge costs of armed conflict, the great challenge of state failure, and the slow pace of international actions to address world poverty all point to weaknesses in the global institutional framework and the need for much more effective international cooperation. In this book, Kemal Dervis argues that it is time to build a new international governance structure, breaking away from a system that reflects the post World War II world toward one that is appropriate to the realities and requirements of the 21st century. He proposes a reform of the international institutional architecture based on high-level governance in both the political and economic domains by a renewed and modernized United Nations. Navigating between careful realism and bold idealism, he formulates a coherent vision encompassing both institutional reform and new ideas for policies supported by the specialized institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, the UN agencies themselves, and regional institutions such as the regional development banks.

In this plea for "better" globalization, Dervis proposes that, under the legitimizing umbrella of the UN, the specialized institutions deal with the deep causes of the obstacles to poverty reduction and instability rather than their immediate manifestations. He recognizes the great potential that more and freer trade can have for accelerating growth throughout the world. He also stresses, however, that for this potential to be unleashed, the hearts and minds of people must be won by transforming not only the WTO framework but the entire governance of the international economic system into something that is perceived as more legitimate and more responsive to the concerns of the developing world as well as wealthy and creditor nations.

Foreign Affairs

In this social democratic proposal for reforming global governance, Dervis, a Turkish economist and former government minister who now heads the UN Development Program, argues that the central weakness of the international system is that it reflects outdated post-World War II realities rather than today's globalized, communication-driven economy. With the postwar system disintegrating, the legitimacy of U.S. power eroding, and new threats looming, he calls for an ambitious reform of economic and security institutions, built around democratic values and new commitments to human security. Dervis' most controversial recommendation is also his central one: that the UN should become responsible for the governance of economic and security relations, led by a reformed Security Council and a new Economic and Social Security Council. In Dervis' view, only the UN has the requisite legitimacy and ability to foster cooperation across the realms of security, trade, human rights, and development. The book's analysis of the failings of the current system is more persuasive than its institutional proposals, and Dervis never addresses concerns about lost sovereignty or the resistance of major powers to the construction of new authorities above the nation-state.

What People Are Saying

Francis Fukuyama
One of the most imaginative solutions to the problem of reorganizing the United Nations.
—Professor of International Political Economy, Johns Hopkins University

Erdal Inonu
Concrete proposals for introducing the missing human and social elements into the mechanical processes of globalization.
— former Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey

Giuliano Amato
The author's proposals are both idealistic and practicable. Decision makers have no excuse . . . they cannot ignore this book.
—: former Prime Minister of Italy

Abdullah Gul
Dervis addresses the key challenges of our time with imagination and determination.
— Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Turkey

Ernesto Zedillo
For out-of-the-box ideas on [global governance], this is certainly the book to read.
— former President of Mexico