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World of Possibilities

Flexibility and Mass Production in Western Industrialization

Jonathan Zeitlin editor Charles F Sabel editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:16th May '02

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World of Possibilities cover

A bold and original reinterpretation of Western industrialization from the eighteenth century to the 1990s.

A bold and original reinterpretation of Western industrialization from the eighteenth century to the 1990s, World of Possibilities highlights the plurality of forms of successful industrial organization, past and present, throughout the Western world.This book retells the history of Western industrialization, revealing possibilities unexplored in the nineteenth century, variants of which have come to transform present day economies. It shows that economic actors have historically been more aware of the great strategic choices they faced than standard theory credits them with being, and this surprising acuity allows them to imagine and put into practice solutions which current theories of industrial organization have scarcely anticipated. The book is therefore at one and the same time a contribution to a substantive revision of the history of mechanized production and a propaedeutic in a form of explanation that approximates the knowledge of the actor to the knowledge of the theorist. The volume groups essays presented by a multinational team of historians and social scientists drawing on intensive primary research on a wide range of firms, regions, sectors and national economies in Western Europe and the United States from the eighteenth century to the 1990s.

'This excellent book … is a scholarly and rigorous academic text, drawing upon a wide range of multi-national research, impressive in its historical breadth and depth. It makes us think about how we think and write history … It is quite simply good history.' Labour History Review

ISBN: 9780521894432

Dimensions: 230mm x 154mm x 32mm

Weight: 838g

524 pages