World in crisis? Geographical perspectives / edited by R.J. Lohnston and P.J. Taylor

The word crisis is frequently used to describe problems of the contemporary world, and we hear of ecological, employment, environmental, debt, demo graphic, energy, food, rural and urban crises to name but a few. So is there a world in crisis? And what is the value of a geographical perspective?

The chapters in this book all specially commissioned for it - adopt a global perspective, built around the realization that the world is a single economy in which everything is linked to everything else, and everywhere is linked to everywhere else. That economic system makes demands on the physical environment, structures political activities at the international and national scales, generates problems of food, hungerand apparent overpopulation, provides constraints to individual free dom, threatens local cultures and produces a geography of life chances. Most importantly of all, it has developed the awesome power to destroy us all, and the planet on which our survival is based.

Whether the current situation is truly a global crisis is open to question - indeed the contributors are not agreed among themselves. But there is no doubt that the problems are severe and their under standing crucial to the future of human life. This book provides important essays to aid in the development of that under standing, and clearly demonstrates the value of geographical perspectives.