Western capitalism in transition Global processes, local challenges [Hardcover]

This book is a critical exploration of capitalism in transition, bringing together cutting edge, world renowned scholars who reflect from different disciplinary points of view.
Since its emergence at the end of the 17th century, industrial capitalism as a specific form of organization of society has set recurrent challenges to its own persistence, and until today, it has proved to be successful to develop new ways of accumulation based on its capacity of adaptation. Is this process of transition now accelerating or reaching an end point?

The book is structured in three main sections:

1) the transformations of welfare societies and capitalism with a focus on South European welfare states and their (in)capacity to tackle poverty; 2) the transformation of work and migration with a special attention to informality and the question of social rights; and 3) the transformation of cities and their urban movements.

Drawing principally on the work of Karl Polanyi and Enzo Mingione, authors in this collection engage with the primarily Western themes of welfare capitalism and social fragmentation. Economic sociology and critical urban studies are the main disciplinary influences, though the authors and likely readers lie beyond these traditional boundaries.
Introduction: The embeddedness of changing capitalism
Alberta Andreotti, David Benassi, Yuri Kazepov

A child of its times: the 'new urban sociology' in context and its legacy
Michael Harloe (University of Salford and LSE)

I. CAPITALISM, WELFARE AND POVERTY
Realization Crises and the Politics of Everyday Life
David Harvey (CUNY, Graduate Center)

The underclass and international comparison, variety and universalism
Barbier Jean-Claude (University of Paris)

The Mediterranean welfare states between recalibration and change in the cultural paradigm
Nicola Negri (University of Turin) and Chiara Saraceno (Collegio Carlo Alberto)

Urban poverty and sociall“+