Old bureaucratic hierarchies are being replaced by more flexible business structures. The mobility of electronic capital undermines the balance of power between capital and labour which was once the basis of the welfare state. Governments are less confident of the merits of the public domain and of the effectiveness of public action, and increasingly abdicate responsibility to the initiative of the private sector. Globalisation brings new possibilities but also new risks, ranging from the degradation of the environment to the concentrated control of the media by transnational corporations. Globalisation affects people's experience of work, jobs are less secure and changing work patterns means it can no longer serve as a basis for organising communities.
Job insecurity compels individuals to continually reassess and re-invent themselves.
In this book, Hutton and Giddens define the immense economic, political and cultural change that is globalisation, and bring together some of the best and most interesting writers and thinkers in the world to reflect on these trends. On the Edge contains essays by Manuel Castells , Paul Volcker , George Soros , Jeff Faux and Larry Mishel , Vandana Shiva , Arlie Russel Hochschild , Robert Kuttner , Ulrich Beck , Richard Sennett , Polly Toynbee and Anthony Giddens and Will Hutton . The contributors discuss capitalism as a form of culture and way of life, and ask whether capitalism has any viable political rivals at the start of the new millennium. We're In , and The State to Come . A former editor of the Observer and Economics Editor of the Guardian , he is now Chief Executive of the Industrial Society.