Diane Elson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex (UK). For almost 40 years, she has carried out research on gender and development, and is regarded as one of the 50 key thinkers on development – David Simon, ed., Fifty Key Thinkers on Development (Routledge, 2005). Her current research and teaching interests focus on global social change and the realization of human rights, with a particular focus on gender inequality and economic and social rights. Elson has served as a member of the U.N. Millennium Project Taskforce on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, and as vice-president of the International Association for Feminist Economics. From 1998 to 2000, she occupied the post of Special Advisor to the Executive Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women.

DAVID MCNALLY is Professor of Political Science at York University, Toronto. He is the author of five previous books: Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism (1988); Against the Market: Political Economy Market Socialism and the Marxist Critique (1993); Bodies of Meaning: Studies on Language, Labor and Liberation (2001); Another World is Possible: Globalization and Anti-Capitalism (2002; second revised edition 2006); and Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires and Global Capitalism (forthcoming 2010). His articles have appeared in many journals, including Historical Materialism, Capital and Class, History of Political Thought, New Politics, Studies in Political Economy, and Review of Radical Political Economics. His book on the economic crisis, Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance, will be published by PM Press in November. David McNally is also a long-time activist in socialist, anti-poverty and migrant justice movements.