A provocative and timely call for a new approach to understanding international affairs.
A founder of a consulting firm argues for a new discipline called geofinance to meet the analytical demands of an ever changing world.
Vander Straeten (Tail Risk Management, 2017) contends that neither geopolitics nor geoeconomics is currently adequate as explanatory paradigms. Given four major trends—the increasing financialization of the world market, globalization, liberalization, and the rising significance of international markets in the wake of deregulation—a wholly new approach is necessary, one that not only captures the ways in which political currents shape the world financial landscape, but also how monetary forces profoundly impact geopolitical affairs. The author begins the book in search of a precise definition of geofinance and auditions several different iterations, but this one comprehensively covers the criteria he seems to be after: “Geofinance traditionally studies the links between financial power and geographic space, and it examines strategic prescriptions based on the relative importance of the balance of power between financial markets and nations as well as, more generally speaking, the balance of power among government-sponsored and private organizations across world history.” Vander Straeten distinguishes geofinance from its existing disciplinary competitors, discusses its methodological approaches, and makes a vigorous argument not only for its value, but also for its indispensability. The author discusses the dynamic causality that characterizes the relation between finance and politics, focusing not only on state actors, but also subnational forces like markets, private companies, international institutions, and even financially influential individuals. Finally, he specifically assesses a series of real-world case studies and issues predictions regarding the world’s geofinancial outlook. Vander Straeten is the founder and head of Value4Risk Geofinancial Risk Consulting and has more than 25 years of risk management experience behind him, an accumulated expertise that shows in his self-assured command of the material. His prose is flawlessly clear despite the often technical nature of the subject. As a result, the book is accessible to a nonscholarly audience, though it’s primarily addressed to an academic one. In addition, the author artfully balances the theoretical and practical aspects of his disciplinary proposal, explaining the intellectual framework of geofinance as well as furnishing concrete examples of its applications. In fact, one of the most striking features of the study is the running critique of the social sciences. Vander Straeten is unsatisfied with the general acceptance of causal determinism, preferring the “indeterminate complexity” that biology and mathematics generally accept. But he’s still wary of mathematics as the underpinning of a comprehensive analytical methodology. (He parenthetically provides an astute account of the limitations of big data.) The author limns an analogy between geofinance and Darwinian evolution in terms of the adaptability, progress, and the competitive striving for power of financial and political actors. But that comparison turns out to be threadbare—he could have just as easily likened his approach to Thucydides’ study of war or Machiavelli’s investigation of principalities. Still, vander Straeten makes an attractive argument for a new theoretical framework that’s both more comprehensive and more common-sensically devoted to the unvarnished exploration of human behavior than most of the social sciences.
A provocative and timely call for a new approach to understanding international affairs.Pub Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-984393-17-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An intriguing work of new ideas on the cutting edge of biology, though not for the uninitiated.
Lavishly illustrated examination of the theory of biological self-organization—territory unfamiliar to most.
The theory of self-organization is an attempt to answer the continuing and ancient question of how the organism develops from a solitary fertilized egg to achieve its final form in maturity. Pivar believes that biology as a discipline has no overarching theoretical principle to explain the process of ontological development. He begins with a detailed description of the tensile strength of the toroidal sphere and how that funnel bi-layer shape is an ideal flexible vessel designed to facilitate the progression from single cell to full-fledged organism. He posits that the specific pattern of development of the species is already encoded at the cellular level and elaborated through physical and chemical dynamic processes. While the genome can specify certain traits of the animal, it cannot account for the process of the developmental sequence of the emerging biological form. In a similar vein, he rejects the principle of random mutation or natural selection precisely because these Darwinian concepts stress the crucial input of the environment in promoting adaptive evolutionary change along a continuum. He describes and illustrates the developmental sequence of flora and fauna from the basic toroidal sphere, stating that every life form grows from the same hypothesized point of origin as the inner layer undergoes continuous embryological transformation that is specific to each animal, flower or insect. The presentation of the biological self-organization theory, unorthodox at best since it minimizes accepted doctrines in biology, is highly disorganized. By immediately discussing and defining the mechanical properties of the torus and more specifically the toroidal sphere, Pivar is launching the reader into highly unfamiliar–and often disorienting–territory, a situation worsened by liberal use of terminology that is discipline-dependent. It is only in the concluding chapters that the relation of the torus principle to ontological and philological development is clarified.
An intriguing work of new ideas on the cutting edge of biology, though not for the uninitiated.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 0-9749860-0-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
There are many universal, compelling issues left unexplored, but Aquan-Assee’s recovery and construction of the narrative...
A slightly out-of-focus, harrowing account of recovery from what a doctor called “horrific” injuries sustained in a 1997 Toronto motorcycle wreck.
Describing in the third person the days of his long coma, he notes the efforts of his family and friends to remain with him 24/7, attempting to keep him mentally and physically stimulated. Aquan-Assee then downshifts into a slow-motion first person account of his own frustrating efforts to regain physical and mental focus, fighting back memory loss and struggling to remember people’s names from one second to the next. Neither angle is entirely satisfactory to particularize what surely was a long and arduous battle by the 29-year-old to pull himself back, often by the fingernails, into a world in which he felt increasingly out of touch. For instance, he slides past crucial moments when doctors encouraged his family to “pull the plug,” and their subsequent refusal to do so, even when his life signs were little more than flickers. It would have been helpful to know the thoughts and emotions of his parents and siblings at those precious turning points, as well as the doctors’ reactions to his subsequent recovery–a feat admirably accomplished in spite of their negative proclamations regarding the prospects for his “quality of life.” These are the hot-button issues crying out for greater attention throughout. But Aquan-Assee’s focus remains narrow, limiting the potential audience.
There are many universal, compelling issues left unexplored, but Aquan-Assee’s recovery and construction of the narrative are triumph enough.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 0-973-2782-0-X
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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