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Beyond Progress

An Interpretive Odyssey to the Future

In this dynamic portrait of the human community as it enters the twenty-first century, Hugh De Santis argues that in a world of dwindling resources, economic inequality, and unremitting violence, the belief in endless progress can no longer be sustained.

Explaining that we have arrived at a great historic divide, De Santis asserts that the old modern order is giving way to an age of "mutualism." He draws on world history and the study of international relations to explore the emerging future, in which new forms of social and political identity and regional associations and alignments will be needed to solve global problems. Demonstrating that mutualism will require a dramatic change in the way states, international institutions, corporations, and local communities interact, De Santis argues that this transformation will be especially difficult for the United States, which will have to abandon its exceptionalist identity and rejoin a world it can no longer escape.

324 pages | 6 x 9 | © 1996

History: General History

Political Science: Diplomacy, Foreign Policy, and International Relations

Table of Contents

Introduction
1: The New Ideology
2: Endism and the American Self-Image
3: The Meaning of Historical Change
4: The Search for Order
5: Modernity and the Messiah of Progress
6: The End of Progress
7: The New Realities
8: The Epoch of Mutualism
9: Facing the Future
Notes
Index

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