Introduction: What Is This Volume About?

In these early years of the twenty-first century, it can often seem that across the globe we are living in a world of crisis. When we began this book, there were bombings at the end of the Boston Marathon of 2013, an army coup in Egypt that overthrew the first democratically elected government, an armed conflict in Syria, the President of North Korea made bellicose threats against South Korea and the USA , and the shrinking of the Arctic ice sheet that was implicated in the extreme winter weather that the UK has faced in 2012–2013. ‘The war on terror’, the age of austerity, global warming and consequent climatic instability, disparities in wealth, and other issues add to the sense that social institutions are unable to cope with the major problems that the world faces. It is certainly the case, on the one hand, that states around the world are under enormous fiscal pressure, in large part brought about by the banking failures of 2008, which heralded the end of a long period of conspicuous consumption and an era of deregulation. On the other hand, the private sector, too, is under pressure, losing once-certain markets to new competitors, and ‘fat cat’ directors facing angry shareholders and governments seeking to curb their excess salaries and the bonus culture of those in charge of large corporations.