Global Capitalism: A Sociological Perspective Miguel A. Centeno, Joseph N. Cohen The global financial crisis has challenged many of our most authoritative economic ideologies and policies. While global capitalism was only recently heralded as a cure to the world's ills, it is now held responsible for vanishing wealth and rising insecurity. After thirty years of reshaping the world to conform to the market, governments and societies are now calling for a retreat to a yet undefined new economic order. In order to provide a guide to what the twenty-first-century economy might look like, this book revisits the great project of Global Capitalism. What did it actually entail? How far did it go? What were its strengths and failings? By deconstructing its core ideas and examining its empirical record, can we gain clues about how to move forward after the crisis? Miguel Centeno and Joseph Cohen define capitalism as a historically-evolving and socially-constructed institution, rooted in three core economic activities -trade, finance and marketing - and identify the three key challenges that any new economic system will need to surmount inequality, governance, and environmental sustainability. […] Miguel Angel Centeno is Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University. Joseph Nathan Cohen is Assistant Professor of Sociology at CUNY, Queens College.