Now, more than ever, the world needs growth-oriented and socially inclusive policymaking. Is the world giving up on the promise of ever-greater prosperity for all, on functioning democratic institutions, and on long-term peace? Is the special set of circumstances that led to the recent rapid growth in emerging markets unlikely to be present in the future? Will the second decade of the twenty first century end with “secular stagnation”? Does the rise of authoritarianism, populism, and fanatic nihilism—all experienced over the last few years—threaten to unravel what has been built painstakingly since the catastrophe of World War II? Kemal Dervis addresses these and similar questions in this thought-provoking series of essays written for Project Syndicate from 2011 to 2015. The essays are organized in three sections: global economic interdependence, inequality and the political economy of reform, and the specific challenge of Europe. The common theme is the need for growth-oriented and socially inclusive policymaking in an interdependent world. These kinds of policies offer the potential for another wave of unprecedented human progress aided by breathtaking new technologies. However, a huge and destabilizing disruption is possible if policymaking is not globally cooperative and is not focused on inclusion and greater equity. These essays synthesize the experience and analysis of a scholar and policymaker with national, regional, and international experience at the highest levels. Dervis exhibits a passion for combining strongly held values with political feasibility.

Annette Baier's aim is to make sense of David Hume's Treatise as a whole. Hume's family motto, which appears on his bookplate, was True to the End. Baier argues that it is not until the end of the Treatise that we get his full story about truth and falsehood, reason and folly. By the end, we can see the cause to which Hume has been true throughout the work. Baier finds Hume's Treatise of Human Nature to be a carefully crafted literary and philosophical work which itself displays a philosophical progress of sentiments. His starting place is an overly abstract intellectualism that deliberately thrusts passions and social concerns into the background. In the three interrelated books of the Treatise, his self-understander proceeds through partial successes and dramatic failures to emerge with new-found optimism, expecting that the exact knowledge the morally self-conscious anatomist of human nature can acquire will itself improve and correct our vision of morality. Baier describes how, by turning philosophy toward human nature instead of toward God and the universe, Hume initiated a new philosophy, a broader discipline of reflection that can embrace Charles Darwin and Michel Foucault as well as William James and Sigmund Freud. Hume belongs both to our present and to our past.

From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the “New Jim Code,” she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life. This illuminating guide provides conceptual tools for decoding tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we ourselves manufacture. Visit the book's free Discussion Guide here.

Women, queer and trans-spectrum throughout the world are still economically, politically and socially marginalized. This books seeks to understand gender in the 21st century. It explains in depth the background of gender according to different traditional perspective roles, challenges faced by gender and an understanding of Gender in the current generation of 21st Century. This book makes essential reading for all those interested in the intersections of class, education, social work in the 21st century. Students and researchers of sociology, women studies and education will find this book invaluable.