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An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including National Identity and Globalization.

Financial sanctions have become a major component of American foreign policy. Since 2015, the number of blacklisted actors has nearly tripled, coinciding with US financial campaigns against Iran, North Korea, and Russia. This paper centers an under-examined paradox of this proliferation: the complexity of lifting financial sanctions. Indeed, successful sanctions regimes necessitate both sticks (punitive sanctions) and carrots (economic incentives). Yet financial sanctions often limit the economic benefits promised to target states, as banks and other financial institutions risk hefty material and reputational costs if they are to cooperate with previously sanctioned actors. Thus, while financial sanctions are effective at producing negative market reactions against a target, they can be hugely damaging if market actors do not cooperate with the lifting of sanctions. To capture this dynamic, this paper leverages process-tracing to observe financial market reactions to sanctions relief in three key cases—Iran (2010–2015), North Korea (2002–2007), and Libya (1996–2008). It finds that in each case, the presence or absence of US Treasury blacklisting corresponds to the post-sanction willingness of financial actors to extend sanctions relief to targeted states. In doing so, this study identifies "reputational risk" as the primary causal mechanism limiting a target's reintegration into the global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applying theories from sociology and social psychology concerned with the intersection of culture and cognition to in-depth interviews, this paper empirically explores the Norwegian majority population’s perceptions of cultural diversities using a dual-process (DP) methodological and analytic approach. Globalization has produced a mix of new anxieties, opportunities, and curiosities, leaving most people juggling conflicting objectives of self-preservation and selfrealization, and making cognitive self-regulation and behavioural flexibility valorized skills of contemporary life. Instead of identifying xenophobic and cosmopolitan attitudes at opposite ends of a spectrum, the current paper argues in line with current research and theory in studies of DP cognition that they commonly co-exist, albeit in separate automatic and discursive cognitive systems, within the same individual. As a result, people’s perceptions of cultural and ethnic diversities tend to be ambivalent and contextually malleable – for example, in cases where their deep dispositions appear incompatible with their own self-concept or dominant cultural expectations. Most centrally, the current research proposes concrete strategies to elicit responses from both cognitive systems in the context of interpretive interviews. Secondly, the paper proposes clues that help to identify from which cognitive system interviewees’ conflicting cosmopolitan and xenophobic attitudes originate, thereby enabling researchers to further delineate the specific characteristics of these attitudes, including the mode of cultural learning through which they form, their flexibility or robustness to change, their role in behaviour motivation, and the extent to which they are conscious and controllable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article approaches the theme of the psychology of de/globalisation by taking up the example of Brexit as an historical conjuncture that hinges upon troublesome questions of sovereignty. Operating at the interface between history and psychology, and informed by liminality scholarship, the paper offers a broad genealogical sketch of three mutations in the semantics of sovereignty as a mode of power that implicates subjectivity. Theological (premodern), nationalist (modern), and neoliberal/economic (postmodern) variants share the mythical motif of absolute autonomy. An account of globalisation as the spatial spread of the events of an initially partial process across the whole of a global field offers a view of the psychological as a subjective field of intelligibility shaped by societal and political settings. Drawing upon data from a focus group study conducted just before the 2016 referendum, attention is given to the resurgence of the theme of sovereignty amongst ordinary people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to avoid the juxtaposition of globalization and de-globalization, we suggest that the current global changes are driven by a spatial dynamics, which we designate as ‘refiguration’. It is based on different spatial figures and different institutionalized figurations, so as to avoid reducing the dynamics to binary concepts of territorial and global forces or geopolitical spatial container thinking. In this paper, we first sketch the strengths and weaknesses of sociological models of globalization. We then point out some recent developments contradicting these models. Instead of interpreting them negatively (e.g. ‘de-globalization’) or reductively (e.g. ‘geopolitization’), we propose the concept of refiguration in order to capture and explain these current changes by stressing the logics of spatial figures, their interactions and conflicts. After clarifying the concept, we turn to the Internet infrastructure as an important case for understanding the current disjunctures and conflicts around globalization in terms of refiguration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the term ‘gender’ has been re-signified by the right-wing actors in contemporary struggles around globalization. First, we offer a chronology of debates concerning global diffusion of gender norms, tracing the consolidation of various groups into the anti-gender movement. The next section discusses how gender and globalization intersect in discursive strategies of anti-gender actors. We show that they target international institutions and norms portraying them as a western cosmopolitan force, claiming to speak on behalf of local populations and obfuscating their transnational embeddedness. The aim is to moralize and blur the boundaries between the local and the global—a strategy we call chameleon tactics. The final part examines how chameleon tactics unfolded in the specific context of the 2019 ICPD25 Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, and how an anti-globalist frame was used to blur the global identity of anti-gender organizations present there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A call for papers for Eighth International Conference on the Dialogical Self to be held at the Hague University, the Netherlands from August 19–22, 2014 is presented.

This paper addresses a simple, but very important, question. How has the occupational class structure of major world or global cities changed in recent decades? This has major social and theoretical implications given the claims made by Friedmann (1986) and Sassen (1991) regarding social polarisation in world or global cities. The paper outlines and compares three positions regarding the changing occupational class structure of world cities and of Western societies in general: professionalisation, proletarianisation and social polarisation. The paper does not provide original empirical evidence. Instead, it provides a wide-ranging overview of evidence from existing studies in a range of cities in both Global North and South over the last 50 years. It concludes that whereas professionalisation is common to most global cities, there is little evidence for proletarianisation, and that polarisation is a contingent outcome in certain cities at certain times. The claims for a common universal pattern are rejected and variations in national economic, political and social structure and policy are argued to be more important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper serves as an introduction to the special section on Global Culture Revisited which commemorates the 30th anniversary of the publication of the 1990 Global Culture special issue. It examines the development of interest in the various strands of globalization and the question of whether there can be a global culture. The paper discusses the emergence of alternative global histories and the problematization of global knowledge. It examines the view that the current Covid-19 pandemic signals a turning point, or change of epoch, that marks the end of peak globalization (Gray, Mignolo). The paper also discusses the view that global was always a limited cartographic term which failed to adequately grasp our terrestrial location on the earth (Latour). Currently, there is considerable speculation about the emergent politics of a new world order, with civilizational states set alongside nation-states, opening up an epoch of greater pluriversality, and at the same time greater uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper outlines a cultural–psychological interpretation of the current European societies' socio-institutional crisis. To this end, preliminarily, the cultural psychological view of social behaviour is outlined, focusing on the idea that socio-political choices depend on how people make sense of their world. Second, the paper provides an interpretation of the current socio-political European scenario of crisis, based on the main results of a recent study that has mapped the cultural dynamics underpinning some European countries. The interpretation focuses on two complementary facets: on the one hand, the lack of symbolic resources (defined: semiotic capital) enabling people to perceive the collective dimension of life as a lived, subjectively relevant fact of experience; on the other hand, the relevance of a cultural form (defined: paranoid belongingness) that channels a trajectory of sensemaking consisting of the affective connotation of otherness in terms of threat and enemy. Third, the paper deepens the interplay between these cultural dynamics and the social, political and economic conditions that may have been triggered by them. In that perspective, the function of semiotic regulation played by the enemization of the other is highlighted. The conclusive part of the work is devoted to discuss implications the analysis suggests for policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I investigate how Instagrammers re-construct themselves as agentive and digitally mobile despite their physical immobility during the early COVID-19 pandemic. By examining four types of post that emerged or became popular during this period, I delineate how Instagrammers take subject positions to negotiate their (im)mobile selfhood in the online-offline nexus. I contend that as the Instagrammers negotiate their own invisibility and sociality during the lockdown, their physical bodies are reconfigured digitally as part of their multimodal self-presentation, troubling the traditional (im)mobile divide. While this study illuminates the democratic potential of Instagram, it also contemplates the extent of an individual's agency on a global scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary economic globalization is typically seen as a product of both trade and economic liberalization after the Second World War and of technological advances that have made it possible to overcome coordination and management of geographically dispersed production units. Trade liberalization and technological advances were certainly important variables, but I argue that it was neo-protectionist American policies of the early 1980s that provided the initial catalyst for globally networked production processes. American protectionism encouraged Japanese investment in the United States that allowed US car manufacturers to learn the essentials of network manufacturing as practiced by Japanese transplants in the United States. In the next stage of global network manufacturing, liberal trade played a much more pivotal role because the global supply chains could not obviously be maintained without liberal trade. In this paper, I also discuss the likelihood of a reversal and suggest that globalization is unlikely to reversed in a significant way. Liberal trade is essential to the integrity of global supply chain networks, but these new production processes have themselves created a firewall against future systemic protectionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ecology of governance organizations (GOs) matters for what is or is not governed, what legitimate powers any governor may hold, and whose political preferences are instantiated in rules. The array of actors who comprise the current system of global governance has grown dramatically in recent decades. Especially notable has been the growth of private governance organizations (PGOs). Drawing on organizational ecology, I posit that the rise of PGOs is both required and facilitated by disagreements between states that block the creation of what might be otherwise effective intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). In a form of "double-negative regulation," states block IGOs, which in turn leave open niches that are then filled by PGOs, which then both complement and sometimes substitute for state law. The organizational ecology approach outlined here extends and refocuses inquiry in systematic ways that give us a fuller understanding of how and why PGOs have emerged as one of the most striking features of the contemporary world order. The key innovations in this paper are to (a) shift the level of analysis from single agents or populations of agents to the entire field of GOs, including states, IGOs, and PGOs and (b) draw on principles of ecology to understand the composition and dynamics of systems of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalisation presents the opportunity for universities to have a world-wide presence but newer institutions in developing countries have difficulty in embarking on such a journey. This paper presents a case study of an emerging university in East Africa and explores the challenges of high ambition while responding to globalisation. Interviews with senior administrators and academics showed that much time and effort was spent responding to funding issues and aid conditions, attaining international standards in research and teaching, and managing challenges of digital technologies against a background of limited infrastructure. In response to globalisation, we argue that emerging universities of this type should consider re-directing limited resources to focus on long-term projects for growing human capital through professional development while developing basic infrastructure needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To bring empirical scrutiny to the often very general and theory-driven debates on cultural globalization and to broaden the geographical scope of previous studies on the topic, this paper presents an analysis of the changes in the relative weight of national and global culture in the culture sections of quality European newspapers from 1960 to 2010. Through content analysis of newspaper articles, the paper examines how the composition of geographical origin of the cultural products discussed has changed over a half-century. The paper asks whether globalizing trends exist in newspaper coverage of culture or whether coverage of national culture remains dominant; to what degree is there variation, based on the art form discussed; and whether newspapers embedded in their national contexts differ from each other in these respects. The results show only a moderate increase in coverage of global products. However, clear trends were found that are associated with both the geographical origin of cultural products and the art forms discussed in the articles, highlighting that post-1960s cultural globalization is best understood as being intertwined with the rise of popular culture and the corresponding decline of traditional – and very European – highbrow culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to investigate modernity in contemporary Bangladesh, going beyond the Secularism–Islamism binary, and arguing that modernity in Bangladesh should be understood by considering the triangular confluence of the impact of the Bengal Renaissance, the rise of Islamism, and the consequences of globalization. Based on history, the paper describes the movements and mechanisms of liberalist and Islamist modernizing approaches and examines their impact on dominant modernization debates in present Bangladesh. This paper examines why secularism became so contested in Bangladesh, why the conservative branch of Islamic modernity became dominant, and the complexities that globalization has added to modernity in Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical studies of globalization seek to unmask how this stage of capitalist history reshapes patterns of uneven development around the world. While globalization can reproduce long-standing patterns of North–South unequal exchange, in this paper, I focus on how capital mobility and competition contribute to uneven development. Drawing primarily on Neil Smith’s theory of uneven development, I offer a theoretical discussion of how capital’s capacity to seesaw from place to place in its search for higher profits—and the spatial competition between places that this capacity triggers—constitutes a source of unevenness. Regions, nations, and localities adapt to capital’s seesaw by offering, among others, cheaper labor and lower environmental regulation costs. While this can work for a time, advantages are either eroded by the unfolding contradictions of capitalism or competed away by the emergence of new areas. In the last section, I offer a tentative illustration of this argument with a brief examination of pollution havens and Special Economic Zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the politics of diversity planning in one of Europe’s most socially and economically divided and globally oriented cities: London. The analysis draws on Latour’s writings on modes of politicisation to examine the processes and practices that shape contemporary urban governance. It uses the example of diversity planning to examine the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of urban politics. It shows that on the one hand diversity is represented in pragmatic, consensual and celebratory terms. Under prevailing conditions of contemporary global capitalism, the ‘what’ of diversity has been politicised into an agenda for labour market-building and the attraction of ‘talented’ individuals and foreign investment. However, at the same time this celebratory rhetoric represents part of a wider effort to deflect political attention away from the socially and economically divisive impacts of global models of economic growth and physical development. There is little discussion of the ways in which planning frameworks, the ‘how’ of diversity policy, are helping to generate new separations in and beyond the city. Moreover, despite claiming that policy is pragmatic and non-ideological, the paper shows how diversity narratives have become an integral part of broader political projects to orientate the city’s economy towards the needs of a relatively small cluster of powerful economic sectors. The paper concludes with reflections on the recent impacts of the vote for Brexit and the election of an openly Muslim London Mayor. It also assesses the broader relevance of a Latourian framework for the analysis of contemporary urban politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work on world city networks, urban polycentricity and megapolitan urban forms share an interest in the economic functionality of inter-city linkages. The intersection of these bodies of literature is in the often overlooked defining features of megalopolitan forms – their being the ‘hub’ that links national to international urban systems and the ‘incubator’ within national urban systems (Gottmann, 1976). With this intersection in mind, this paper measures the functional polycentricity of China’s Yangtze River Delta Region (YRDR) at different geographical scales from an intercity knowledge collaboration perspective. The paper uses data on co-publications as an indicator of knowledge linkages between cities within and beyond this megalopolis. The YRDR can be seen as functionally polycentric at the megapolitan scale but this functional polycentricity decreases with increases in the geographical scale at which interurban linkages are considered. Furthermore, a multi-scalar analysis of functional polycentricity helps identify the hub role of Shanghai. The results show that Shanghai’s knowledge hub role is currently present at the national scale. It may take some time for Shanghai to become a knowledge hub at the global scale given its not-so-strong international links and relatively weak local links. The paper concludes with some suggestions for future research agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the arrival of digital nomads in Cluj, Romania. I focus upon double dispossession, in which 'digital nomads' allegorise technocapitalist fantasies by appropriating Roma identity on one hand, and in which Roma are evicted to make way for the arrival of Western digital nomads and tech firms on the other. While Roma are materially dispossessed as Cluj siliconises, they are doubly dispossessed by the conjuration of the deracinated digital nomad/Gypsy. As I suggest, this figure discursively drags with it onto-epistemological residues of 19th-century Orientalism – a literary genre that emerged within the heart of Western European empires. The recoding of the nomad today, I argue, indexes the imperiality of technocapitalism, or techno-imperialism. Double dispossession, as a phenomenon, illuminates that prior histories bolster, and are consumed by, globalising techno-imperialism. Postcolonial and postsocialist studies offer frameworks for understanding this update, as well as the accumulative and multifaceted dispossession that siliconisation inheres. I thus argue for a connected rather than comparative approach in understanding double dispossession, one focused upon connections across time, space and genre. A connected approach remains rooted in community organising and housing justice struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing theoretical interpretations contend that modernization is a global but diverse and multidimensional process. Yet, a systematic analysis of multiple forms of modernity and modernization 'is the major challenge to current social and political theory' (Wagner). The paper aims at revealing limitations of current theoretical interpretations of modernization and demonstrating systematically essential features of modernity. I describe the crucial criteria of modernization and suggest an integrated approach within which the most influential theories are simultaneously applied as coherent explanations. Such a synergic application allows identifying concomitant dimensions of modernity and modernization. The proposed approach significantly differs from a prevailing theoretical discourse on modernity and modernization. It demonstrates universal features of modernization along with civilization variability and uniqueness of cultural programs, antinomic emancipation trends, permanence of change and innovations, increase of efficiency, competitiveness and the quality of life. All these dimensions relate to a set of consistent interpretations of a complex multi-effects phenomenon, which minimizes the existing conceptual contradictions. The elaborated model supports the notion of modernization as a continuous transition to novel forms of social order which respond to emerging challenges and global competition while an invariant criterion of modernization is the boost in the capabilities of people to make their choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper expands upon Leslie Sklair's concept of 'iconicity' to understand gentrification as a 'glocal' process wherein elites attempt to brand cities and exclude undesirable populations to attract capital investment. By focusing on the creation, commercialisation, and maintenance (via punitive policing) of iconic architectural and cultural spaces, I attempt to shed light on the economic, cultural, and political practices that have emerged in response to the ripening contradiction between increasing transnational investment in cities and worsening inequality/displacement in urban areas throughout the globe. Utilising this 'icon model of gentrification' to investigate ongoing gentrification within Mexico City, I illustrate the usefulness of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the insertion of urban infrastructure into the risk-taking world of financialisation, techniques for capturing added value from underlying revenue streams, from securitisation and derivatives to the structuring of bond and equity returns, have come to the fore. A value model, based on extraction through interest and dividends paid, as well as multiple fees, in our view, has benefited investors and financial intermediaries alike. Through the example of Carlsbad desalination plant in San Diego, California, the paper sets out to show how a piece of drinking water infrastructure was translated as a value asset to match the needs of institutional investors in the USA and beyond. The geography of value capture and its distribution globally is shown to be not simply financially innovative, but also spatially innovative and perhaps best understood through its topological spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the highly competitive landscape of global cities and entrepreneurial urbanism, the development goals of cities are increasingly framed through discourses of 'innovation'. In this paper we critically examine this relationship through a case study exploring the attempt to build a nanotechnology sector in Edmonton, Alberta. Adopting a collaborative research methodology involving citizen engagement and urban touring, we explore participant representations of Edmonton as an 'innovative city'. The conversations we had with participants follow some common themes within an emerging literature on innovation geographies, for instance as related to network collaborations and quality of life. However, participants furthermore articulated innovation pathways which were more closely linked to local identities and values within the city, including negative place narratives. We argue that paying attention to these 'virtues of place' can assist cities to counteract trends towards the homogenisation of urban innovation strategy, and affix the 'innovative city' to more socially robust articulations of the future prosperity and the possibility of place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advice of management consultancies on urban policy is particularly influential in moments of crisis involving entrepreneurial principles. As global experts, management consultants appear as appropriate assistants for steering growth-oriented, competitive urban development. In order to show how consultants turn the urban into an entrepreneurial project to be managed, I discuss the literature on urban policy and consultants then examine the activities of private management consultancies in six German cities. Empirically, I first explore the specificities of urban policy advice given by globally operating consultancies (their methodological approach and the projectisation of the urban; global networks and comparative–competitive thinking; fast databases; reputation; externality). Second, I critically reflect on how the consultants' advice is fundamentally reshaped by local actors in the process of policy making (through participation, appropriation, slowdown and politicisation). The paper thus critically evaluates the rise of expertise–policy relations and calls attention to mechanisms for patching the fractures of the entrepreneurial city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fate of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), currently under negotiation, has been called into question. At issue is the inclusion of the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism that has been included in the NAFTA, CAFTA, and many bilateral agreements. Authorizing corporations and investors to bring disputes directly against governments for adopting regulations negatively impacting market share or future profitability, this mechanism has generated significant opposition, particularly in Europe. This paper probes the factors driving the struggle over this political project. Revealing the mechanisms operating to secure the inclusion of ISDS in the TTIP, these findings contribute to the interdisciplinary debates that have emerged around the rise of a transnational capital class and the transformation of the state. These developments have significant normative implications, the analysis of which contributes to a critical tradition that seeks to uncover processes that have been naturalized and reveal strategies for political contestation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demographically and economically, there is an ongoing global shift that has resulted in the uneven development and distribution of monetary, human and knowledge capital. This paper first examines and consolidates economic, social and urban theories of growth and decline and demonstrates how globalisation has conceptually shifted the spatial scale and trajectory of urban change theories. The examination of the population trajectories of the 100 largest American cities from 1980 to 2010 demonstrates that the majority either grew or shrank continuously. This trend counters early cyclical models and supports the argument that globalisation has altered population trajectories. Second, conceptualisations of urban shrinkage trajectories are reviewed and a two-dimensional trajectory typology encompassing both economic and demographic change is presented. The diversity of urban shrinkage experiences is demonstrated through the application of the typology to the 20 largest shrinking American cities, 12 of which experienced overall population loss and simultaneous economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the experiences of Kenyan students in the Soviet Union, Bulgaria and other communist states between 1958 and 1969. Existing studies of student mobility from Kenya in this period have concentrated on the experiences of students in the USA, a theme familiar to many readers because of Barack Obama’s family history. By contrast, and by using recently released sources from the British archives and material from Tom Mboya's papers at the Hoover Institute Archives, the article analyses the political debates that centred upon this much larger group of students who travelled East. The article demonstrates how newfound freedoms of movement were tempered by racism, colonial obstruction and domestic political considerations. The global opportunities that seemed to be presented by decolonization proved to be a chimera. The article locates the experiences of the students in a broader context of debates around decolonization and globalization, but emphasizes the importance of the students' experiences at home and abroad to the process of state-building being undertaken in Kenya at this time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing out of writings on Global (North) cities, urban globalisation research (UGR) has expanded its canon to engage with an increasing diversity of cities and locations. Yet, this broadening has been uneven and controversial in its theoretical horizons and empirical universe. Focusing on the latter, this paper combines bibliometric, demographic, economic and georeferenced data to assess how UGR maps onto internationally documented cities (n: 1692). Our study analyses city-themed publications by city location, demographic size and home-country income (2000–2014). Drawing on social science publications indexed in English (Scopus database), our results provide grounds for cautious optimism: recent publications offer broader, though still uneven coverage. The moving spatial average of publication counts also implies that the topical centre of published research gravity is shifting away from Euro-America. Yet, UGR lags in its coverage of the urban geographical universe, failing to keep pace with the economic/demographic trends that are resulting in southward/eastward shifts in worldwide urbanisation. Furthermore, while smaller cities and those in lower-income countries are still sidelined, cities in upper-middle income countries exhibit the largest gaps between observed and expected publication values. In our conclusion, we contend that urban bibliometrics could be further mobilised to identify publication foci and lacunae. Applied to cities on and off the map and a broader universe of urban knowledges, bibliometrics could help move contentious debates forward, identifying newer paradigms that may be engaging the world of cities beyond the globalisation umbrella and charting out multiple and complex topical relations across variegated worlds of urbanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines the factors that have contributed to shaping the crisis in the culture of tolerance and moderation in Arab societies and its limits. I look at the dilemmas and risks necessitated by the problematic issues surrounding tolerance in contemporary Arab societies. I present a brief theoretical framing of the concept of ‘tolerance’ and a look at its manifestations in the structure of Arab societies. I also examine the variables shaping the content, meaning, and philosophy of tolerance in the structure of contemporary societies at large and of Arab societies in particular. The paper suggests that political, economic, social, and structural transformations have negatively affected Arab societies, which have then contributed to the culture of tolerance in Arab communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research on the globalisation of services in economic geography continues to develop in multiple directions, some service industries are still largely under-researched. The hotel industry is one of the most striking examples. Given that the hotel sector is much more global in terms of number of countries covered by each company than many other service industries, one of the crucial aspects of hotel sector globalisation that requires attention from a geographical perspective is the territorial embeddedness of expanding hotel groups in the variety of institutional, political and economic contexts. Grounded in the global production networks (GPNs) approach, this paper aims to address this lacuna in empirical and theoretical terms. Drawing from extensive research carried out in Poland, Estonia and Bulgaria, the paper examines the impact of post-communist transformations on the expansion of international hotel groups into Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and analyses how different hotel GPNs interact with the various contexts across the region. It is argued that the ways in which post-communist transformations influence the expansion of hotel groups into CEE depend upon the degree of territorial embeddedness of the hotel group, which, in turn, is reflective of the group’s business model and the architecture of its GPN. In theoretical terms, the paper illustrates how, to better account for the particularities of CEE, the GPN approach can incorporate the ‘alternative approach’ – the theory of post-communist transformations that challenges the neoliberal orthodoxy which drove the post-communist restructuring in the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caritas in Veritate, the first social encylical of Benedict XVI, tackles the problems of global development and progress towards the common good of all peoples. Taking its cue from the encyclical’s discussion on migration as an ‘aspect of integral human development’ (CV, 62) this article examines the experience of contemporary migrant women and the transnational family vis-à-vis Caritas in Veritate. The paper begins with an overview of Caritas in Veritate followed by a look at the effects of the global economy on women and a discussion on the effects of transnationalism to women and their families, especially with women-away transnational families. The paper then explores the points of convergence and divergence between Caritas in Veritate and the experience of migrant women and the transnational family and ends with a brief conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from ethnographic research of expatriates who use meetup.com and similar digitally based social organizing platforms to access events in Paris, this paper explores how on- and offline meet-up rhetoric and routines contribute to the production of a mobile “sense of place” for people who have relocated or traveled alone. By highlighting how participants may use digital media to create a sense of belonging to an “international community” extendable across a series of local places, this research diverges from earlier studies that have focused on how migrants use media to maintain connections to a “homeland” or to reconstitute the home abroad. Although the paper celebrates new agencies afforded by mobile place-making, particularly for women, I suggest that as professional labor trends increasingly assert the value of placeless-ness, tools that combine communication with location-based digital organizing will only grow in importance and the “support” provided by them should be continually interrogated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues that policy space ownership dynamics, political and historical institutional variables determine the implementation of reforms advocated within the context of the international transfer of public sector reform models to Africa. Through the case of the Malawi Hospital Autonomy reforms, this paper demonstrates that although policies transferred by international donor organisations to African countries through aid conditionality may be initially adopted so as to secure the much-needed developmental aid, the actual implementation of such reforms is not an automatic process. This is due to contextual factors, which in part include the neo-colonial struggle for policy ownership in the face of conditionality, path dependency tendencies and veto players that are constrained by deeply entrenched political and historical institutional proclivity that lead to policy stability even in the context of coercive policy transfer pressures. Taking a qualitative approach, the analysis combines the use of primary and secondary data. The study findings show that while other African countries successfully implemented such reforms, Malawi has not, due to specific implementation, historical, political and institutional factors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper provides a detailed examination of the construction of Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA). The paper begins by reviewing recent work which has reconceptualised how airports are understood in spatial terms. It then describes the development of Hong Kong’s new airport, discussing the spatial format of the new airport design at HKIA, and the relationship between aviation and non-aviation uses. Next, it examines the impact of the airport on the rapidly shifting territorial politics of Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta within the wider Chinese state. The paper argues that this case study must be assessed as part of a wider project of state territorial restructuring. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Akeel Bilgrami’s paper considers the populist surges of our times in three countries: Trump’s America, Brexit Britain, and Modi’s India, distinguishing the special features of each, and philosophically and politically analyzing the relations that populism bears to both liberalism and the capitalist political economies of liberal-democratic societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the concept of 'strategic identity' as a bridge between the indigenous peoples' struggle for self-determination and their search for solidarity in the context of globalization, with a focus on the Lumads, or indigenous peoples in southern Philippines. The paper begins with an encounter with a global actor affecting a local community. We realize the impact of powerful, well-networked forces that challenge even the operation of the state. Without trivializing the threats associated with this model of globalization, we also insist that a realistic and hopeful approach may emerge if we acknowledge the many 'selves' in the indigenous peoples' self-determination. At the heart of this proposal is a matrix that unpacks the complex ways that local, national, sectoral, and global actors can engage in conflict or solidarity with these strategic identity assertions. Solidarity work, then, becomes diversified and strategized in response to the evolving multiple indigenous identities that modernity paradoxically both endangers and engenders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social science literature on identity politics around questions of race and ethnicity is profuse, prolix and contentious. Indigenous identity politics have seen a parallel growth and are equally complex. While there are analogies and overlaps, indigenous identities and social movements are neither conceptually nor empirically a sub-set of ethnic identities. The central issue of indigenous groups is the place of first peoples in relation to the nation-state system. This takes different forms in old world states of Asia and Africa to those of new world settler (ex-colonial) states of the Americas and Australasia. While the major issues of the indigenous peoples have expanded beyond their national boundaries, their modes of participation in the national political arenas vary. They share a gradual nationalization of indigenous movements, including stronger links with sociopolitical forces of the respective countries in the region, a heightened consciousness of global processes and the broadening and enrichment of their socio-cultural and economic objectives. This paper looks at trans-national dimensions of indigenous social movements and identity politics in relation to nation-state policy regimes and examines the varying routes taken by indigenous peoples to achieve their goals. Keywords [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central concern of this paper is the linkages between contradiction and social change, as developed in the work of Nishida Kitarō, a critical social philosopher who explored the nature of social contradiction vis-à-vis local agency, global structures, and social change. Building on Nishida’s conceptual framework, I trace social change to the ontological nature of social contradiction as manifest in myriad social phenomena. This then provides a critical lens for analyzing the contemporary development of community-supported agriculture (CSA). Indeed, the growing popularity of CSAs across the USA makes visible a host of social contradictions, including those between local and global food production and between local consumption and global distribution. Invoking Nishida to peel back the layers of contradiction and assess the potential social impact of CSAs, we address two broad questions. First, what is the nature of contradiction as a fundamental aspect of social life? Second, how can the notion of contradiction help us frame the role of CSAs as a force for social change? In this manner, Nishida’s interpretation of social contradiction shapes our understanding of CSAs, while our understanding of CSAs further refines our assessment of Nishida. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This comparative descriptive study sought to determine the impact of glocalization on international social work education. Using quantitative methods, this study reports objective findings for a randomly selected, non-probability, purposive sample of 178 faculty members who were geographically distributed among faculties and departments of social work at 22 universities in eight Arab countries. The primary research instrument used was a standardized paper and pencil questionnaire. Data analysis of the responses of the faculty members found that participants’ attitudes were equally weak on the track of glocalization and international social work education. This could be attributed to the variables of faculty members, social work students, university textbooks, quality of library services, methods of teaching, field practicum, and quality of student evaluation. In contrast, the attitudes of the faculty members averaged on the track of glocalization and international social work education, which could be attributed to the variable of social work curricula. The analysis also revealed a marked absence of sustained contact with social work professionals and scholars from other regions and societies of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses two basic questions in the globalization literature: (1) is globalization a threat or an opportunity? And (2) how far does market deepening actually encourage genuine substantive democracy in the world? Many scholars have argued that globalization has resulted in increasing inequality and marginalization of the poor, which is not conducive for democracy. Drawing on the case of India, this paper, however, argues that the rolling back of the welfare state and the demise of developmentalism led to the mobilization of the masses against the elitist and exploitative agenda of globalization. As a result, a counter-hegemonic vibrant civil society has emerged, which challenges the hegemony of the elites and channels the empowerment agenda of the subaltern groups. This new politics of the subaltern is grounded on the idea of social justice and citizenship rights, which is redefining the nature of the Indian state and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the past decade India has become the financing hub for cricket, a broadcaster in its own right, and an agenda-setter in the management of all forms of the game. What some commentators have called the ‘Indianization’ of cricket extends beyond business: it is a social, political, and cultural phenomenon. For five seasons, the Indian Premier League (IPL) has offered a glimpse of this phenomenon, prompting enthusiasm from young fans and those who stand to profit from the new league, and resistance from traditionalists. This paper discusses the material and symbolic roles the IPL has come to play in global cricket. It begins with an overview of the IPL’s history, discusses how the IPL is changing the global business of cricket, and explores how the IPL is challenging the traditional culture of the sport. The paper concludes with arguments about the IPL as a grand spectacle, and a cultural phenomenon that, despite its problems, might prove its critics wrong. Throughout, the paper treats the IPL as a useful case study not only in the business of sports, but also more widely in our theoretical and empirical studies of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The task of this paper is to point out the relevance of Karl Marx for Internet Studies. Marxian concepts that have been reflected implicitly or explicitly in Internet Studies include: (1) dialectics; (2) capitalism; (3) commodity/commodification; (4) surplus value, exploitation, alienation, class; (5) globalization; (6) ideology/ideology critique; (7) art and aesthetics; (8) class struggle; (9) commons; (10) public sphere; (11) communism. The paper provides a literature overview for showing that, and how, Marxian concepts have been used in Internet Studies. Internet Studies to a certain extent analyse the Internet, economy and society in Marxist-inspired studies terms, yet do not acknowledge the connection to Marx and thus seem superficial in their various approaches discussing capitalism, exploitation and domination. We argue that it is time to actively remember that Marx is the founding figure of Critical Studies and that Marxian analyses are crucial for understanding the contemporary role of the Internet and the media in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interlocking network model has provided a framework for examining world city networks for over a decade. However, it implicitly adopts a ‘brute force’ perspective in which intercity linkages are forged by cities’ sheer economic size. This paper develops a complementary ‘sorting process’ perspective in which linkages are viewed as arising from the complex process through which firms are sorted into cities. It describes a new statistical test and associated computer program (ONEMODE) that permit the identification of linkages forged by a menon-random firms-into-cities sorting process. Such linkages warrant particular attention because they are driven by deeper but often unknown forces. Networks implied by both perspectives are illustrated and shown to exhibit several expected similarities and differences. These networks provide complementary views of the global urban system that can be combined to obtain more comprehensive understandings of the world city network. The paper concludes by discussing the approach’s limitations and directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is widely observed that the global geography of innovation is rapidly evolving. This paper presents evidence concerning the contemporary evolution of the globe’s most productive regions. The paper uncovers the underlying structure and co-evolution of knowledge-based resources, capabilities and outputs across these regions. The analysis identifies two key trends by which the economic evolution and growth patterns of these regions are differentiated—namely, knowledge-based growth and labour market growth. The knowledge-based growth factor represents the underlying commonality found between the growth of economic output, earnings and a range of knowledge-based resources. The labour market growth factor represents the capability of regions to draw on their human capital. Overall, spectacular knowledge-based growth of leading Chinese regions is evident, highlighting a continued shift of knowledge-based resources to Asia. It is concluded that regional growth in knowledge production investment and the capacity to draw on regional human capital reserves are neither necessarily traded-off nor complementary to each other. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper makes a case for conviviality as a currency for frontier Africans. It argues that incompleteness is the normal order of things, and that conviviality invites us to celebrate and preserve incompleteness and mitigate the delusions of grandeur that come with ambitions and claims of completeness. Conviviality encourages frontier Africans to reach out, encounter and explore ways of enhancing or complementing themselves with the added possibilities of potency brought their way by the incompleteness of others, never as a ploy to becoming complete, but to make them more efficacious in their relationships and sociality. Frontier Africans and conviviality suggest alternative and complementary modes of influence over and above the current predominant mode of coercive violence and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper engages with Jahoda's (2012) and Moghaddam's (2012) papers and examines Jahoda's stand of not seeking to define culture because of the problems posed by the term. It is argued that clarification of a concept can be achieved through systematic analysis of definitions of a term and an acceptable definition can be co-constructed. Definitions are seen important where social policies are to be formulated. Moghaddam's concept of "omniculturalism" is found problematic in addressing issues related to reli-gious fundamentalism as it does not contest the policies and values of neo-liberalism enshrined in globalization. We suggest an alternate twin strategy that will first address problems of structural inequalities and injustice, followed by intergroup dialoguing involving various religious groups to deal with the processes that lead to creation of the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances the proposition that a dialectical appreciation of the politics of state-institutionalized human rights in colonial and neoliberal hegemonic (imperial) contexts helps to shed light on why Adivasi facing development displacement and dispossession are unlikely to advance their political and existential interests through recourse to an estatized human rights mechanism embedded in global and national political and economic structures imbricated in the historical projects of colonialism and imperialism (globalization of capitalism). Adivasi social movement inspired ‘human rights’ (and related conceptions) informed by an anti-colonial/imperial project that transgress these trajectories continue to provide the primary political impetus for asserting the continued place of Adivasi (see Kapoor, 2011 for an elaboration on such assertions). The paper is informed by funded research into ‘Learning in Adivasi social movements in eastern India’ (2006–2009), the author’s relationship with Adivasi and rural movements/activism in this region since the early 1990s, and secondary literature addressing the politics of human rights in Adivasi contexts of development displacement and dispossession. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper looks into the historic development of political Islam in Bangladesh, the third largest Muslim country of the world. Identifying origins and sociology of Bengali Muslims, this paper finds that development of political Islam took place in Bangladesh mainly in four phases: the Turkish war and the founding of the Khilafat movement during the First World War; the Oil crisis in the 1970s and the boost of Islamic institutions and practices in Bangladesh’s political discourse, mainly supported by the Middle Eastern countries; the Soviet–Afghanistan war and its linkage with Bangladeshi radicals in the 1990s; and by the globalization of war between Al-Qayeda and West and its implication on Bangladesh through the rise of extreme groups. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper makes a contribution to the fledgling literature on policy mobilities and mutations. Using the example of the internationalization of the Business Improvement District (BID) model, it argues that conferences constitute important arenas in and through which both the mobilizing and embedding of urban policies can occur. Focusing on a two-day conference that took place in Sweden in 2009, it uses the language of trans-urban policy pipelines in order to capture the formation of relationships over distance as a means of comparing, educating and learning about the experiences of other cities. Revealing the complex architectures and ecologies that have underpinned the movement of this model from one country to another and from one city to another over the last two decades or so, the paper uses a combination of ethnographic techniques together with semi-structured interviews and questionnaires with organizers and participants to produce a single-site but relationally thickened description of the place of conferences in facilitating the movement of policies across space. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]