Dr. S A Hamed Hosseini publishes The Routledge Handbook of Transformative Global Studies

Thursday, 2 July 2020

S A Hamed Hosseini, an expert in global studies from the School of Humanities and Social Science and the founder of Alternative Futures Research Network has led an international team of editors and authors to publish a novel handbook in the twin fields of globalisation and development studies: The Routledge Handbook of Transformative Global Studies.

Routledge handbook

Dr Hosseini said the multidisciplinary fields of critical global(isation) and development studies face serious challenges as the result of deepening interrelated global crises and the emergence of multiple innovative forms of global uprisings, popular politics, and (new) forms of resistance and emancipatory struggles.

“With 39 chapters (300,000 words) written by 54 authors from all across the continents, the handbook presents an inclusive range of cutting-edge perspectives on the most defining global changes and challenges of this pivotal century,” Dr Hosseini said.

The handbook promotes the idea that in the current global context of mounting uncertainties, it is no longer adequate to be critical. Rather, “the critical scholarship must become radically transformative.” And for this to happen, the scholarship itself needs to be radically transformed in response to the requirements of an emerging brave new world.

Professor James Goodman (UTS), A/Professor Sara Motta (UON), and Professor Barry K Gills (University of Helsinki) accompanied Dr. Hosseini, as his co-editors to create the book over two years.

The edited collection has so far received supports and endorsements from several leading global scholars in the field, such as Vandana Shiva, Susan George, Manfred B. Steger, Henry Veltmeyer, Brigitte Aulenbacher, and Adam David Morton.

“It’s full of original thinking and new takes on a changing, elastic, often scary world and how we try to understand it." - Susan George, President of the Transnational Institute. 

“Erudite and wide-ranging in its topics, this comprehensive volume combines insightful assessments of the deepening global crises of our time with the innovative construction of counter-hegemonic strategies for a variety of emancipatory struggles in both global and local arenas." - Manfred B. Steger, Professor of Sociology, the University of Hawai'i at Manoa and Global Professorial Fellow, Western Sydney University 

“…this stunning handbook…will take you on a mind-stretching voyage you do not want to miss. Highly recommended" -- Adam David Morton, Professor in the Department of Political Economy, University of Sydney

The first paragraph of the introduction chapter reflects the timeliness of its publication: “We finalise this introduction in mid-March 2020; a time marked by a global pandemic that is already having devastating consequences for diverse communities across political, social, and economic terrains. Embedded within this are emergent and potentially immense shifts in the current fragile economic and political global order. The new decade will perhaps be remembered as a pivotal moment in which trends towards increasing state and market authoritarianisms and multiple forms of progressive alternatives come head to head. Our hope is that this Handbook can contribute to the latter and to a radical transformative praxis which will enable us to come out of the ashes of breakdown into a new dawn of possibility.”

The volume is divided into three parts.

10 chapters in Part I (Theory in Transition) provide new analyses and theories of 21st Century global changes, creating the longer perspective needed to proactively conceptualise historical events as they unfold.

19 chapters in Part II (Transformation in the interregnum) discuss a wide range of socio-economic, socio-political, and socio-ecological challenges the world is facing today. These include the crises of democracy, global governance, inequality, insecurity, precarity, public health, education, displacement, social uprisings, war and violence, ecological catastrophes and climate change.

And finally, 9 chapters in Part III (Alternative futures) discuss progressive responses including ‘alternative modes of livelihood’ and communal solidarity beyond dependence on carbon, capital, commodity, constant growth, and corporate-led politics.

Hosseini is also the first author of the first chapter in the volume that articulates the theoretical foundations of the paradigmatic shift pursued throughout the handbook.

Researchers and students from around the world and across the fields of sociology, politics, anthropology, gender studies, international development, international relations, geography, political economy, ecological studies, and philosophy will find this an invaluable and fresh guide in the 21st century.

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