ABSTRACT
The Year Book of World Affairs appears as an annual which, since 1947, has been published by Stevens, London, under the auspices of the London Institute of World Affairs, an independent, international research and teaching organisation for the study of world affairs. The dominant values and structures of the contemporary world are treated in a number of papers, with particular reference to topics such as race, transnational relations, bipolarity and tripolarity. Where value-judgments cannot be avoided it is important to face them openly. The study of as complex a subject as world affairs calls for a synoptic approach which draws together the disciplines of sociology, history, law, economics, geography, psychology, anthropology and the natural sciences. Thus, a series of papers on the human environment includes those by specialists in archaeology, biochemistry, biology and investigative medicine.
