Hegemony: The New Shape of Global Power

by John Agnew

Selling, buying and consuming are central components of the American experience at home and abroad, not the quest for empire. 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 an 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 and not the formation or management of an empire. John Agnew shows how this drive for global hegemony is now backfiring as production and service jobs move abroad and a new geography of power portends a world in which global hegemony is decreasingly American in either provenance or reward.

Genres: Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

About the author

Agnew is currently Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). From 1975 until 1995 he was a professor at Syracuse University in New York. Dr. Agnew teaches courses on political geography, the history of geography, European cities, and the Mediterranean World. From 1998 to 2002 he chaired the Department of Geography at UCLA.

He has written widely on questions of territory, place, and political power. He has also worked on issues of "science" in geography and how knowledge is created and circulates in and across places. He is best known for his work completely reinventing "geopolitics" as a field of study and for his theoretical and empirical efforts at showing how national politics is best understood in terms of the geographical dynamics of "places" and how they are made out of both local and long-distance determinants. Much of his empirical research involves Italy, Greece, and the United States.

Reviews

[Tessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, despite how dense it is. I recommend this book for anyone studying global studies/international relations, but I recommend that other readers find a partner or professor or fellow student/colleague to read it with in order to get anything out of it via discussion. Really good nonetheless.

[Ross Hennesy · Rating 3 out of 5]

who knew that geography could be so complicated?