VOLUME 1: THE PRECARIAT…& UNDEREXPLORED DIMENSIONS OF BEIJING’S FOREIGN POLICY…

Europe’s social landscape is changing, especially in times of economic crisis, which will affect the future quality of civil societies. In recent years the biggest shifts in the social fabric of the US and Europe were driven by the discussion on precarization of labor and its links with Occupy and Indignados movements: Precariat is not only the definition of a new social category or group, but rather an attempt to capture the contemporary human condition in terms of modern capitalism. One leading theorist has called it a new social class “in statu nascendi” and others the “unclass” .

Besides clearing out the theoretical approaches in interviews with Z. Bauman, J. Butler and G. Standing, this issue offers many other interesting analyzes on social riots, mutiny against capitalism and “street performance” by children of the “debt culture.” Our aim is to analyze the origins and character of protests which engulfed large parts of Europe and the US.

As the spotlight of international attention turns towards Asia, it inevitably sheds most light on the biggest, most powerful and influential state of this area, namely the People’s Republic of China. The course charted by its foreign policy exerts an ever greater influence on many crucial problems occupying the international community’s agenda. At the turn of 2012 and 2013 we have witnessed a once of a decade transition of power to the next (5th) generation of party state leadership, led by Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang. This is a good moment to turn our gaze both backwards to the road China travelled in the last three decades of “reform and opening” and onwards towards possible future directions of the PRC’s foreign policy.