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A viable citizenship program is pivotal for state development, and to let official policy determine politics as taught by T. J. Lowi. National states based on national-state citizenship are weaker and weaker before the key challenges of our times. That is why citizenship programs are more and more focused on innovation policies to integrate ius sanguinis, ius soli, citizenship on investment and citizenship on performance. This paper provides a strategic innovation policy by linking development and global citizenship. Innovative law-making, citizenship policy innovation, and development are dramatically interconnected to evolve a scenario in which citizenship represents a key intangible asset to generate tangible wealth in open horizons where free circulation of tangibles or intangibles is strategic and linked to downsizing the bureaucratic burdens, the local power centers by evolving a much leaner and higher organizational standard of citizenship: legally, isotropically, and socially. This results in a new theory of social systems as a useful tool for the management of the complexity of social relations, breaking territorial boundaries, and making them cosmopolitan (Beck, 2006. The cosmopolitan vision. Cambridge: Polity Press). In order to achieve this, the present study will be approached and related with cosmopolitism and development, aiming to bring new contours of study to this subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the question of when generalizations risk compromising the utility and accuracy of a theory and seeks to show how a balance can be struck between generalized and context-specific analyses in disciplines like international sociology, political economy, and comparative politics. For this purpose, the paper reviews three theoretical approaches to agri-food system change, placed at different levels on the ladder of generality. It then considers these approaches in relation to India's changing agri-food system. Finally, the paper discusses the general and the particularistic features of the Indian case and examines their implications for theories relating to global governance and international political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to describe the overall pattern of flows of international students and to determine the factors that can explain the variation of countries' attractiveness. In a second step, it assesses the position of the European Union as a whole in these flows at the global level. Is the EU strong enough in the global competition to attract the best brains? Besides, it shows how attractiveness factors can vary according to the profile of a sample of European Union member countries. In the third section of the paper, we raise some reflexions on the relations of the EU with its neighbourhood with respect to the flows of international students. In fact, the EU may not be able to maintain its status as a major power if it does not better regulate its relations with neighbour countries, especially in the domain of higher education and students' mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines four international fashion magazines - Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Marie Claire and Vogue - published in five countries around the world. Based on content analysis, publishers' marketing data, and interviews with editorial and publishing staff, the paper argues that the field of magazine production is structured by a double- or multiple-audience property which leads to structural homology in the fields of media production generally. Precisely because fashion magazines are simultaneously commodities and cultural productions, in which the not-entirely-separate interests of advertisers, the fashion world and readers come into play, all kinds of contradictions emerge to affect their contents. Focusing on international edition launches and magazines markets, the paper also engages with the meaning of journalistic independence and gives its own Gallic twist to globalisation theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the strong criticism by Elias against the nation-state paradigm in sociology. Elias pointed his attention on sociologists of the twentieth century but particularly criticizes the analytical model of Parsons (AGIL), which seems to him an abstract combinatory of variables (pattern variables) without any references in social contexts. The sociology in the twentieth century is an apologetic of nation-state and, in Parsons, of the hegemonic role of the United States in the world. In fact, during the twentieth century many authors (historians and sociologists) tried to overcome the nation-state paradigm in the social sciences. The author of the paper analyses the contribution of Toynbee, Braudel, C. Schmitt, Huntington, Wallerstein and Hard-Negri. These attempts are based on different unit analysis: the civilization and its clash in the case of Toynbee and Huntington, the world economy in the case of Braudel and Wallerstein, and power in the case of C. Schmitt and Negri-Hardt. The author appreciates these attempts but his conclusion is that the concept of global society can better serve as unit analysis for a construction of a new paradigm in the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relying on a review of recent literature (and, sometimes, older publications), this paper attempts to highlight issues relating to the ‘spatial turn’ in religious studies. It outlines a series of developments in the study of religions related to issues in space, location and territory that have been enhanced by the intellectual framework of globalism and the empirical context of globalization. The challenges of such a geographic focus on religions are epistemological, theoretical and methodological. An examination of new and not-so-new issues in geographic approaches to religion shows how topical the perspective is, and how necessary it is to think the geography of religion beyond the boundaries of geography. In what ways do these new regimes of territoriality, these new concepts of religious space, and these new methods to understand the changes of material and cultural expressions of religion, whether wide-scale or local, partake on a paradigmatic shift? And how promising is it? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this essay is to analyse social inclusion from two distinct points of view. On the one hand, in order to underline the complex nature of the paradigm of social inclusion, we will sketch a critical approach to the notion of exchange, a notion which has had an enormous influence on the field of social relations at large. On the other hand, we wish to explore also the ethical concept, and jurical practice, of ‘hospitality’. This is particularly important today because of the growing magnitude of globalisation and migration, phenomena which define the ways in which ‘outsiders’ relate to each other in many contemporary societies. The paper analyses the issue of social inclusion under two distinct headings. The first, which involves a critique of the economic idea of exchange, attempts to highlight the limits and contradictions that beset this paradigm, which has become such an intrinsic aspect of our lives today, when it imposes itself onto the entire range of social relationships. Under the second heading, which re-examines the ethical and juridical topic of ‘hospitality’, we try to take another look at the problem of migratory movement and all its paradoxical aspects in the light of current processes of globalisation of markets. These two issues have never been so interconnected as they are today, especially if it is the case that the problem posed by the growing phenomenon of migration in democratic and multi-ethnic societies, which are more and more involved in difficult relationships with ‘outsiders’, is bound to reappear, for good or for ill, on the level of social inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human mobility is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. While labour migration has been widely and deeply investigated – through theoretical and empirical analysis – other forms of mobility have received much less attention. Students' mobility is a peculiar form of temporary movement that can be considered as neither migration nor tourism. It is rapidly growing: in the period 1975–2005 the number of tertiary education students abroad increased fourfold, from 0.61 million to 2.73 million, following the trend of the internationalization of economy and globalization of culture. In 2009 almost 3.7 million tertiary students were enrolled outside their country of origin, an increase of more than 6% from the previous year. In this paper we analyse the international mobility of university students, using a unique data set built through surveys conducted at the Sapienza University of Rome. The data collected cover a rich array of information on students' characteristics and backgrounds, provenance places, family conditions, individual aspirations, and job preferences. The empirical analysis of those data offers an opportunity for understanding a relevant part of mobility decisions of (prospective) highly qualified workers. The Sapienza University, moreover, is at present the largest university in Europe for number of students and a pole of attraction for both European and non-European students. This allows us to enlarge our analysis at a global level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political changes related to globalization apparently produce similar effects on old and new democracies. All over the world, comparative research on democratization has showed that political distrust is a common variable affecting the whole of the State and the relationship between citizens and democracy. Nevertheless, political discontent in old democracies has stimulated citizens to adopt new attitudes and modes of political participation, while in newly democratized countries citizens tend to withdraw from politics as a consequence of institutional distrust. In fact, in many new democracies, although adhering to the normative meaning of the democratic regime, distrust of democratic institutions is associated to citizens' negative feeling about political efficacy, low levels of political interest and political participation, and also preference for democratic models which exclude political parties and/or parliaments. This paper evaluates the meanings and consequences of the contemporary phenomenon of political discontent in Brazil and Latin America and discusses its implications for democratic theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the issue of reflexivity in the different spheres of society, affected by the processes of globalization. The author argues that each sub-system of society is more or less differentiating itself according to a (prevailing) code or register of reflexivity. Global contextualism changes the way people manage the distinction between the particular and the universal (i.e. their perceived 'different identities') according to a plurality of reflexive processes. A differentiating universalism emerges within the different spheres of society (the market, the political system, the associational or third-sector system, and the system of families and informal primary networks). In principle, within these spheres many different codes of reflexivity can be detected. The four types of reflexivity detected by M.S. Archer can be correlated with the different spheres/sub-systems of society in order to see how the latter change their operations and overall configuration. In conclusion, it is shown that the thesis of 'reflexive modernity' is a reductive and an undifferentiated way of looking at what is happening in our globalizing society. The differentiation of reflexivity does not represent a further stage of modernity but, rather, it generates an 'after-modern' society through what the author calls 'relational reflexivity'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalisation has affected the industrial trajectories of developing countries, producing an increasing disarticulation between the management of production and regimes of labour control. While production regimes have been projected into the global arena, labour regimes have remained apparently anchored to regulatory mechanisms provided by local social structures, and gone through increasing processes of informalisation. Examining the case of the Indian garment sector, this paper argues that the informalisation of labour should not be conceived as necessarily taking place 'in the shadow of the state'. In fact, in the case presented here, the state was a strong active agency behind the process of informalisation, which it supported through formal policies and through its progressive alignment with the interests of capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay's aim is to explore the potential for relieving suffering with which clinical sociology can provide social actors. The author carries out a theoretical reflection of culture's function in human societies. Culture is an instrument for social actors, to give a meaning to what is happening at each moment. If culture does not grant an effective interpretation of reality, phenomena of disease can arise. This can happen for many different reasons, such as incoherent cultural representations or conflicts between different cultural issues. The paper outlines the kinds of cultural disease that can occur, as well as the possible causes of each. It also sets a link between cultural disease and the contemporary, general lack of cognitive references, due to historical changes - such as globalization - that have been happening too fast to be fully accepted by all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many have argued that one of the reasons for the irresistible trend of liberal democracy is the irreversible process of globalization. The logic assumes that globalization is not only an inseparable prerequisite for promoting economic development but also the dynamic to transform political structures into liberalism in less democratic countries, because economic development within countries creates new middle classes around the world, with their natural demands for more participation in decision and political pluralism. In other words, all societies will evolve to a point where they will adopt liberal democratic institutions. In turn, the resulting new world order will be characterized by international cooperation through market economies and liberal democracy. This paper investigates the ideological origin of globalization by inspecting Fukuyama's theory of the 'end of history'. It argues that this belief is a continuance of modernization theory and reminiscent of functionalist concepts by Western scholars concerning the development of less developed countries. The difference is that globalizers cleverly cover their ethnocentrism with Hegel's philosophy, as it implies that the Western system is some perfect theory that all people will eventually accept as their cultures and societies evolve into a Western superior state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]