Austerity budgeting in the public sector, selectively targeting the social state, is a long-established trait of neoliberal governance, but it has been enforced with renewed systemic intensity in the period since the Wall Street crash of 2008. The paper develops the argument that these conditions are defining a new operational matrix for urban politics. Examining some of the leading and bleeding edges of austerity's ‘extreme economy’ in the USA, the paper seeks to locate these developments in the context of mutating processes of neoliberal urbanism, commenting on some of its social and spatial consequences.

Austerity urbanism: American cities under extreme economy

The "Rise of the West" has been treated by economic historians as stemming from the onset of rapid economic growth, driven by technological advances. In contrast, all premodern and non-Western economies have been treated as showing only slow or no growth, interrupted by periodic crises. This is an error. Examined closely, many premodern and non-Western economies show spurts or efflorescences of economic growth, including sustained increases in both population and living standards, in urbanization, and in underlying technological change. Medieval Europe, Golden Age Holland, and Qing China, among other cases, show such remarkable efflorescences of impressive economic growth.Yet these did not lead to modern industrialized societies. The distinctive feature of Western economies since 1800 has not been growth per se, but growth based on a specific set of elements: engines to extract motive power from fossil fuels, to a degree hitherto rarely appreciated by historians; the application of empirical science to understanding both nature and practical problems of production; and the marriage of empirically oriented science to a national culture of educated craftsmen and entrepreneurs broadly educated in basic principles of mechanics and experimental approaches to knowledge. This combination developed from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries only in Britain, and was unlikely to have developed anywhere else in world history.

Efflorescences and Economic Growth in World History: Rethinking the "Rise of the West" and the Industrial Revolution

This study utilized a qualitative method with transgender female and male participants (N = 9) to identify types of microaggressions, or subtle forms of discrimination, that transgender people experience. Twelve categories of microaggressions were identified: (a) use of transphobic and/or incorrectly gendered terminology, (b) assumption of universal transgender experience, (c) exoticization, (d) discomfort/disapproval of transgender experience, (e) endorsement of gender normative and binary culture or behaviors, (f) denial of existence of transphobia, (g) assumption of sexual pathology/abnormality, (h) physical threat or harassment, (i) denial of individual transphobia, (j) denial of bodily privacy, (k) familial microaggressions, and (l) systemic and environmental microaggressions. Implications for counseling are discussed.

Interpersonal and Systemic Microaggressions Toward Transgender People: Implications for Counseling

The Eurocentric conventional wisdom holds that the West is unique in having a multi-state system in international relations and liberal democracy in state-society relations. At the same time, the Sinocentric perspective believes that China is destined to have authoritarian rule under a unified empire. In fact, China in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (656–221 BC) was once a system of sovereign territorial states similar to Europe in the early modern period. Both cases witnessed the prevalence of war, formation of alliances, development of the centralized bureaucracy, emergence of citizenship rights, and expansion of international trade. This book, first published in 2005, examines why China and Europe shared similar processes but experienced opposite outcomes. This historical comparison of China and Europe challenges the presumption that Europe was destined to enjoy checks and balances while China was preordained to suffer under a coercive universal status.

War and state formation in ancient China and early modern Europe

List of illustrations New preface Preface - 1993 Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The comparative study of science 2. Arabic science and the Islamic world 3. Reason and rationality in Islam and the West 4. The European legal revolution 5. Madrasas, universities, and sciences 6. Cultural climates and the ethos of science 7. Science and civilization in China 8. Science and social organization in China 9. The rise of early modern science Epilogue: educational reform and attitudes towards science since the eighteenth century Selected bibliography Index.

The rise of early modern science : Islam, China, and the West

This is the first book in a Western language to explore the history, iconography, and legal contexts of Chinese tortures and executions from the antiquity till their abolition in 1905 The book questions the logic by which states justify tormenting individuals and the varied ways by which human beings have exploited the symbolism of bodily degradation for political claims.

Death by a Thousand Cuts

Xu Guangqi was one of the first promoters of Western science in China, worked together with the Jesuit Matteo Ricci on translations of Western science, was one of the first Chinese converts, a high-ranking statesman, organizer of a major calendar reform, introduced Western weapons into the Chinese army, etc. etc. The current volume is a composite profile of this complex figure that is solidly anchored in Chinese (and Western) primary sources. A major achievement.

Statecraft and intellectual renewal in late Ming China : the cross-cultural synthesis of Xu Guangqi (1562-1633)

Histories of racist thought tend to give only incidental treatment to the depiction of
China in modern race theory. Meanwhile, scholarship on Western views of China frequently
alludes to anti-Chinese racism but rarely analyzes high-brow race theory. This
article aims to contribute to the understanding of both racist thought and Western views of China by examining the notions about China elaborated by Arthur de Gobineau,
one of the leading race theorists of the nineteenth century. Gobineau's depiction of
China is subjected to a close reading within the framework of his vision of world history,
followed by consideration of the reception of his racial ideas and their possible
political influence. The discussion highlights the compatibility of racist thought with
antiprogressivism and antimodernism.

Gobineau on China: Race Theory, the "Yellow Peril," and the Critique of Modernity

Introduction Gregory Blue and Timothy Brook 1. The West, capitalism and the modern world-system Immanuel Wallerstein 2. China and Western social thought Gregory Blue 3. Capitalism and the writing of modern history in China Timothy Brook 4. Toward a critical history of non-Western technology Francesca Bray 5. The political economy of agrarian Empire and its modern legacy R. Bin Wong Bibliography.

China and Historical Capitalism: Genealogies Of Sinological Knowledge

Zheng He’s Maritime Voyages (1405-1433) and China’s Relations with the Indian Ocean lists selected sources in thirteen languages and reflects global scholarship of Zheng He’s seven maritime expeditions and the early-modern communication network linking China and the Indian Ocean World.

Gregory Blue

Papers

Death by a Thousand Cuts

Statecraft and intellectual renewal in late Ming China : the cross-cultural synthesis of Xu Guangqi (1562-1633)

Gobineau on China: Race Theory, the "Yellow Peril," and the Critique of Modernity

China and Historical Capitalism: Genealogies Of Sinological Knowledge

Zheng He’s Maritime Voyages (1405-1433) and China’s Relations with the Indian Ocean World