Integrating environmental and world-systems analyses in chapters ranging from the ancient to the contemporary, from the global to the local, from West to East, and from North to South, this book is the first collection to analyze environmental issues from the world-systems perspective. The introduction provides Immanuel Wallerstein's fullest explication of the role of ecological constraints in the world-system. Early chapters diagnose the increasing environmental threats to global sustainability and suggest ways to arrive at an integrated theoretical understanding of those threats. The work then shows the historical and geographical range necessary to do justice to ecological considerations in chapters considering ancient civilizations, capitalism, the circumpolar North, the dam-builders of Asia, and the polluters of East Central Europe. The final chapters analyze the successes and limits of environmental movements in the United States, South Africa, and South Korea.

IntroductionEcology and Capitalist Costs of Production: No Exit by Immanuel WallersteinThe Horsemen and the Killing Fields: The Final Contradiction of Capitalism by Peter E. GrimesEcosociology and Toxic Emissions by Albert Bergesen and Laura ParisiExtending the World-System to the Whole System: Toward a Political Economy of the Biosphere by J. Timothy Roberts and Peter E. GrimesEcological Relations and the Decline of Civilizations in the Bronze Age World-System: Mesopotamia and Harappa 2500 B.C.-1700 B.C. by Sing C. ChewEconomic Ascent and the Global Environment: World-Systems Theory and the New Historical Materialism by Stephen G. Bunker and Paul S. CiccantellThe Development of the Risk Economy in the Circumpolar North by Ilmo MassaModernism, Water, and Affluence: The Japanese Way in East Asia by Gavan McCormackWastelands in Transition: Forms and Concepts of Waste in Hungary since 1948 by Zsuzsa GilleSuccess and Impasse: The Environmental Movement in the United States and around the World by Robert K. SchaefferGlobalization, Democratization, and the Environment in the New South Africa: Social Movements, Corporations, and the State in South Durban by Christine Root and David Wiley with Sven PeekThe Emergence of South Korean Environmental Movements: A Response (and Challenge?) to Semiperipheral Industrialization by Su-Hoon Lee and David A. SmithIndex