An event hosted by the Cultural Transformation programme.
Published 5 Oct 2017
At the Legatum Institute, Professor Ferguson discussed his new book, The Square and the Tower: Networks, Hierarchies and the Struggle for Global Power, which proposes a whole new way of imagining the world; shaped by two distinct organisational forces: hierarchies and networks.
Professor Ferguson said that most history is hierarchical: it’s about popes, presidents and prime ministers. However, he suggested that we are missing the equally powerful but less visible networks that are transforming the established world order, including the rising influence of social media. It is only through understanding the rise and fall of these networks that we can transform our understanding of societies in both the past and the present.
Niall Ferguson is a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford, and a Senior Fellow of the Center for European Studies, Harvard. He is also a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation Distinguished Scholar at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. He has written fourteen books, including The House of Rothschild, Empire, The War of the World, The Ascent of Money, The Great Degeneration and Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist.
View Niall’s book here.
