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THE AGES OF GLOBALIZATION by Jeffrey D. Sachs

THE AGES OF GLOBALIZATION

Geography, Technology, and Institutions

by Jeffrey D. Sachs

Pub Date: June 2nd, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-231-19374-0
Publisher: Columbia Univ.

In this history of the stages of globalization since the first foraging bands of humans, Sachs shows how the “rising scale of global interactions” has led to the crises of the 21st century—and what can be done.

“Humanity has always been globalized,” writes the author, as a result of the interplay of physical geography (climate, etc.), technology (systems of production), and institutions (from politics to cultural ideas). At each stage, humans have become more aware of and dependent on the wider world. By examining how interactions occur and how changes in one region affect another, we can learn lessons for today. The author’s scholarly overview, based on lectures given at Oxford University in 2017, identifies seven ages of globalization and explains how each prompted “scale-enlarging transformations.” Humanity progressed from foraging (Paleolithic Age) to farming (Neolithic) to horse power (Equestrian) to empire-building (Classical) to oceangoing vessels and the birth of global capitalism (Ocean) to the creation of the modern world (Industrial Age) to the present Digital Age. Sachs captures defining aspects of each age: The horse, for example, “offered the speed, durability, power, and intelligence to enable breakthroughs in every sector of the economy”; empire-building signaled “a new ethos of greed”; capitalist globalization of the 1500s sparked a “ruthless, violent” economic system. By the Industrial Age, most people remained poor and never traveled from their birthplace. “Most economic and demographic change,” writes Sachs, “has occurred…during the past two hundred or so years of our roughly three hundred thousand years as a species.” In 2020, with world population at 7.7 billion and rising at 70 million per year, the Digital Age faces “challenges of inequality, environmental crisis, and the fragility of peace” that cry out for “a new era of cooperation at the global scale” and the precepts of sustainable development.

An authoritative account of our “shared,” increasingly interdependent human journey.

(maps, charts, graphs)