Despite prognostications of the end of history, the 21st century has posed new challenges and a host of global crises. This book takes up the current global economic crisis in relation to new and changing dynamics of territory, authority, and rights in today 's global system. The authors explore long simmering conflicts in comparative perspective, including settler colonialism in South Africa, Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine. They discuss indigenous struggles against environmental land grabs and related destruction of indigenous lands by the US nuclear weapons complex. The book uniquely considers the sacred in the context of the global system, including struggles of Latina/o farm workers in the U.S. for social justice and for change in the Catholic Church. Other chapters examine questions of civilizations and identity in the contemporary global system, as well as the role of world-regions.

Chapter 1 'œCrisis, What Crisis?'?, Immanuel Wallerstein; Chapter 2 Long-Term World-Systemic Crises, W. L. Goldfrank; Chapter 3 Belated Decolonization, Gershon Shafir; Chapter 4 Democratizing Global Governance, Christopher Chase-Dunn, Bruce Lerro; Chapter 5 Violence, the Sacred, and the Global System, Michelle M. Jacob; Chapter 6 Farm Labor and the Catholic Church in California, Alberto López Pulido; Chapter 7 Treadmills, Rifts, and Environmental Degradation, Andrew K. Jorgenson, Brett Clark; Chapter 8 Islam, Immigration, LaïcitÃ(c), and Leitkultur, Bahar Davary; Chapter 9 A Critical View of Wallerstein's Utopistics from Dussel's Transmodernity, Ramon Grosfoguel; Chapter 10 The Quasi-Europes, Manuela BoatcÄ¿; Chapter 11 Neither Global nor National, Saskia Sassen; Chapter 12 The Global Street Comes to Wall Street, Saskia Sassen;