A globe shows the world we think we know: neatly delineated sovereign nations that grant or restrict their citizens’ rights. Beneath, above, and tucked inside their borders, however, another universe has been engineered into existence. It consists of thousands of extraterritorial zones that operate largely autonomously, and increasingly for the benefit of the wealthiest individuals and corporations.
In her new book, The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks The World -- named one of the best 10 books of the year by the Washington Post, and a notable book by the New York Times Book Review – Atossa Abrahamian traces the rise of this hidden globe to thirteenth-century Switzerland, where poor cantons marketed their only commodity: bodies, in the form of mercenary fighters. Over time, economists, theorists, statesmen, and consultants evolved ever more sophisticated ways of exporting and exploiting statelessness, in the form of free trade zones, flags of convenience, offshore detention centers, charter cities controlled by foreign corporations, and even into outer space. By mapping this countergeography, which decides who wins and who loses in the new global order—and helping us to see how it might be otherwise—The Hidden Globe fascinates, enrages, and inspires.
Abrahamian will discuss her book—and the interaction between extraterritorial zones and the international system of human rights—with Pozen Center Communications Specialist Peter Baker.
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian is a journalist whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York magazine, the London Review of Books, and other publications. The author of The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen and a 2024 New America National Fellow, she has worked as an editor at The Nation, an opinion editor at Al Jazeera America, and a reporter for Reuters. She grew up in Geneva and lives in Brooklyn.
Peter Baker is the Communications Specialist for the Pozen Center. His journalism, essays, and reviews, which often touch on human rights issues, have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, and other magazines. His first novel, Planes (Knopf, 2022), deals with daily life in the shadow of post-9/11 extraordinary rendition.