Synthesising issues that are at the forefront of local and global politics and social movements of the twenty-first century, this book presents a powerful critique of global western culture, challenging many of its central assumptions and institutions. Hawthorne's detailed analysis is both perceptive and wide-ranging. She unpicks the structures of power and knowledge, law and international trade rules, as well probing into issues that intimately affect us in our daily lives, such as our perception of land, how food is produced and the changing shape of work. The book concludes with a compelling vision for a world inspired by biodiversity, and organised around the principle of diversity.

Americans have had an enduring yet ambivalent obsession with the West as both a place and a state of mind. Michael L. Johnson considers how that obsession originated, how it has determined attitudes toward and activities in the West, and how it has changed over the centuries.