Search

Having a good job and living in a nice community was not an unrealistic dream in the United States for the first half of the twentieth century. There was a golden age when U.S. companies built and nurtured the towns in which their workers lived. But that era began to decline in the early 1970s because of changes in the U.S. economy that allowed for more global competition and increased capital mobility. Through historical processes research an analysis of the end of the American Social Compact was applied to a small paper manufacturing community in Wisconsin. Following a series of corporate acquisitions, the community that was built to make and depend on paper is in decline. Workers and residents no longer have the leverage to make companies care about the communities in which they operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the dynamics between globalization and local culture in analysing how higher education has expanded in the Arab Gulf, namely through internationalization. In analysing patterns of higher education expansion, the paper contends that higher education expands through internationalization in part because Gulf states utilize higher education institutions to legitimate themselves and gain prominence as internationally competitive modern societies in a globalized world. At the same time, however, the Gulf states face push back from their more conservative, traditional constituents who criticize the state for liberalizing and "Westernizing" education. Hence, Gulf states simultaneously pursue what appear to be anti-liberal practices in public higher education institutions to manage state-society relations, thereby enabling them to maintain both national and global legitimacy. This effort to balance what appears to be two competing interests create a "dual higher education system" in the Arab Gulf. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines two seemingly contradictory aspects of the relationship between religion and ethnic identity among Gujarati Hindus and Jains in New York and London, two major sites of settlement for Gujarati immigrants. On the one hand, various Hindu and related sectarian movements in India have been globalizing by spreading to many parts of the Hindu diaspora, and creating the possibility for expansion and inclusiveness through universalist religious claims. On the other hand, ethnic and religious identity among many of these Gujarati Hindu and Jains becomes specific and exclusive. These simultaneous phenomena create contradictions between Indians' call for multiculturalism as immigrants in foreign societies and the exclusiveness of their identity developed through social networks that tend to promote Hindu nationalist ideologies. The paper examines three cases in order to illustrate the varying ways in which Gujarati Hindus and Jains represent and are represented by Hinduism and Hindu nationalism in the US and Britain, and the way in which those representations are an integral part of who is Gujarati in those contexts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper puts forward the proposition that, in the face of ever-increasing processes of globalization, we must take greater account of those forms of sociological theory developed outside the normal global informational flows of theoretical ideas. Post-colonial social theorists would remind us that even in spite of the general pattern in post-colonial societies of the centre/periphery relationship between (former) colonizer and colonized, it is usually the particularities of a society that determines its path of development after decolonization. Yet at the same time, globalization and world-systems theorists claim that nearly every nook and cranny of the planet is being interpellated into Empire, and that those particularities will soon lose anything but commodity status. Somewhere in between these two positions - both tainted by "first world" connections, both concerned with the position of "the periphery" but with no clear way to reconcile the two - lies the possibility for a global social theory, one that recognizes *both* the commonality of the pull of Empire and the particularities of the historical development of each society, and one that has the epistemological openness to deal with similarity and difference. This paper will present preliminary work that has been done by the Global Social Thought project, arguing that there needs to be an accounting for geographic authenticity - the claim that there is a geographic and global contextuality to the production of social-theoretical ideas - and that we need understand the global positioning of theory production, reception, and transmission of these ideas. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the modern, urban-centric, discourses on globalization the role of food and agriculture are under-theorized. This paper reconsiders the politics of food as the political face of world historical value relations. This perspective brings agriculture and food to the centre of analysis as global agriculture and food are inseparable from the reproduction of labor power. In an era characterized by the post-modern retreat into reified particularisms, the fetishization of the local, and the narrow preoccupation with the problematic of (over)consumption this paper argues for a return to the social problematic of labor and the local/global contextualization of its existence and reproduction. Consistent with the emerging literature on 'critical globalization studies' the alternative world historical methodology discussed in this paper possesses three advantages. First, it is self-consciously aware of the standpoint from which it sees the world, and thus capable of sustaining a theoretical and political project. Second, while emphasizing the world historical context of particular/local phenomena, its attention to the politics of social processes eschews 'abstract globalism' and the resulting macro/teleological narratives. And third, while profoundly interested in studying the particular and the concrete, it does not reify the latter as a given, and thus avoids the abstract particularism that characterize much of the post-modern fascination with reified locality and micronarratives. In this sense, the concepts such as 'global value relations', 'global working day', and 'global worker' are world-historically informed concepts posed at a less abstract level precisely to allow one to capture the 'unity of the diverse.' ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will map the recent developments of Mittal Steel, the most decentralized steel company on the planet, as to its implications towards the literature on deindustrialization. Specifically, this new economic geography will be contrasted to the premises of the New International Division of Labor thesis (NIDL). Empirically, this paper positions the model of corporate organization of Mittal Steel in contradistinction to the implications of the NIDL thesis for its economic geography. This will be done by taking the classic example of capital mobility in the NIDL thesis, the movement of capital from industrial towards industrializing countries and studying its applicability to the practices of Mittal Steel. This article provides an analogous counter case following the perspective of the NIDL thesis itself, a perspective from the old, industrialized city and large corporations. This counter case finds that contrary to the NIDL notion that manufacturing that can move to NICs will do so, instead has integrated both places of production into a common corporate model that also increases the productivity of the East Chicago facility. The counter case also reveals the nation-centric assumptions of the NIDL thesis. Mittal Steel is a transnational company that transcends the notion of a territorially bound national economy. This paper aims to use the classic target of the NIDL thesis, a cross-border capital flight to NICs, in order to explore the applicability of the NIDL thesis and to suggest elements of a new economic geography in manufacturing, a geography of global, decentralized production (GP). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global commodity chain (GCC) analysis has provided a valuable middle-range concept for the analyses of the global political economy that seek to ground economic globalization in concrete social and organizational relations of production. This paper seeks to extend the conceptual underpinnings of GCC analysis in three ways. First, it argues that the major contribution of the concept of GCCs is to provide us with a methodological framework for the analysis of the concrete organization of globalizations, rather than as a concept that is best used as an explanatory variable or theory in its own right. Second, the paper argues that GCC analysis should retain a notion of commodity chains driven by the owners of key assets within the production system. In keeping with this approach, the paper adds the concept of a 'technology driven commodity chain' to Gary Gereffi's typology of producer- and buyer-driven commodity chains. Third, the paper argues that contextual factors such as the territorial, economic and industrial policy and labour politics of GCCs should occupy a more central place within GCC analysis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the effect of the perception of police repression on the diffusion of five direct action tactics from the anti-globalization movement into New York and Toronto activist milieus. The paper considers the spread of black bloc, puppetry, affinity-group/spokescouncil decisionmaking models, blockades, street parties and jail solidarity. The paper focuses on the impact of police repression at five protest events as it examines the ways that activists explain the relationship between their experiences of repression and their tactical decision-making. It argues that the severity, focus and predictability of repression influence the process of deliberation which indirectly impacts the diffusion process. By influencing deliberation, police repression impacted the diffusion of the "Seattle tactics". ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of transnational architectural production in mega project developments in downtown Beijing. The study is situated within the ongoing debate about globalization and the production of new urban spaces. In the process of economic restructuring since the 1970s, local entrepreneurial city governments in the West have adopted urban mega project developments as a major strategy for urban regeneration. Previous studies have examined the rationale, mechanism and impact of mega projects in contemporary urban restructuring processes. However, little attention has been directed to the role of architecture and urban design in mega project development. What combinations of social forces determine the urban form of mega projects? What can the articulated urban form do? And what are the cultural meanings invested by various agencies in the new urban form? This paper addresses these questions through the lens of transnational architectural production in the process of rebuilding downtown Beijing. The study shows that local developers and politicians have consciously used signature design by international architects as a branding tool in marketing their urban mega projects, and in promoting Beijing as a new global city. By choosing modern, high-tech, and futuristic architectural designs by international architects, local elites have created a transnational urban space that caters to the needs of new city users. The paper argues that in post-industrial societies, as culture and economy have increasingly intertwined with each other, the articulation of spatial design has become a major force in the process of capital accumulation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One benefit of globalization is a continually shrinking world and a consequent denigration of local boundaries. Hence, the shelter from global accountability that these boundaries once provided has disappeared. Today, nation-states, multinational corporations, and even the global monitors, themselves--intergovernmental organizations (IGOs)--are being subjected to close scrutiny by a diverse array of "transnational posses" that are indefatigable advocates for human rights, the environment, the world's children, and a wide range of moral causes that can be conveniently lumped under the heading of "justice and fair play." This paper surveys the moral topography that motivates and facilitates the work of these global activists. Transnational posses perform an invaluable function that has long gone unattended because IGOs--like the middle-aged UN--are too weighted down with internal political squabbles to attend to the task for which they were created. Globalization is often faulted for transgressing boundaries; however, this paper argues that a redeeming virtue of globalization is that it facilitates transcending national and cultural boundaries, and thereby allows the commonalities among peoples to trump their differences. And, the coalitions formed as a result of these commonalities may be as close as mankind can hope to come to sharing a common morality. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examine ways in which gender is framed on discourses on the social and cultural implications of call center growth in India. Based on a field study conducted in call centers in Gurgaon, India in the summer of 2005, the paper draws on interviews with 25 call center agents and examines ways in which women experience this work. I argue that there is a universalizing discourse on empowerment, for women that does not adequately account for dimensions of class, nation, and patriarchy. I propose an intersectional approach to examining gender issues and suggest dimensions of class, caste, age, nation and patriarchy which need to be incorporated in understanding the lived experiences of women experiencing processes of globalization. By 2007 India will have one million call center workers mostly predicted to be women. (Nascomm, 2005, Unesco 2003). Addressing the gap that exists in sociological literature on the surge in call centers in India and their implications I call for more attention to these transnational processes. A gender analysis that incorporates an intersectional approach to understanding women's lived experiences is vital to understanding processes of globalization taking place, today ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract*The purpose of this paper is to delineate some of the sociological contours of this historical epoch referred to as "globalization," with particular attention to the need for "globalizing the community college." Anecdotal evidence suggests there is a need to introduce a sociology of globalization at the community college level, in particular in the teaching of introductory sociology courses. In this paper, the "realities" of globalization are discussed, as well as the "new language" of the global economy, six areas of globalization, and the notions of "globalization from above" and "globalization from below" are discussed. Resistance movements (globalization from below) are given special attention. Finally, an overview of a report "Global Education Initiatives in the Community College," is discussed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines several propositions in the cities and globalization literature to determine whether convergence, cooperation, or conflict are the best notions for understanding land use changes in contemporary global cities. Using the case of Mexico City, the paper focuses on politics as well as the role of democratization and decentralization in mediating the impact of global capitalism on local real estate development. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the meaning of globalization in rural places, as well as the emergence of rural globalities, and even of rural cosmopolitanisms. While the discussion about globalization has been mainly localized in urban places, and mostly in some core cities, rural places are also intertwined with globality, and can became important nodes in the production and circulation of capital, culture, and ideology. To account for this, I explore a new meaning for the concept of "global villages", not used in McLuhan's sense, but rather in terms of rural places that become truly global. As case studies, the paper addresses three "global villages" in Latin America: the Central Valley in Chile, a node in the global food system; Otavalo in Ecuador, a core of cultural representations; and La Realidad, in Chiapas, Mexico, a center of ideological production. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two of the most significant global trends in the contemporary period are migration and tourism. Importantly, these two trends both involve the flow of people across borders, whether in search of jobs and security or in search of leisure and luxury. This paper will explore the semi-permeability of borders under globalization. It will do so by examining the different ways that borders and technologies of border control are constructed to facilitate the entry of some but to deter the entry of others, By comparing the way that nations construct and enforce borders differently for different border crossers, much is revealed about the racialized, gendered, and classist divides that many borders enforce. This paper takes as a theoretical starting point the idea that borders are not only geographically constituted, but are socially constructed political sites that shift and change over time. An exploration of the contradictory treatment of migrant workers and tourists reveals the way that today's social construction of borders occurs, as well as the ways that national border performances are increasingly shaped by global imperatives, creating new channels of inequality in the globalized world. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines changes in the lives of Indo-Trinidadian women across two generations. The focus of the paper will be on their "work lives," broadly defined. The paper begins in the standpoint of women (Smith 1987; 2005) and explores the extended social relations shaping those experiences. It is based in intensive ethnographic field work among two generations of Indians in Trinidad. The analysis suggests that their lives have to be understood in the context of modernization and globalization processes in conjunction with Indians' attempts to find their place within the society in the post-colonial period. I argue that these women's lives reveal the often ambiguous and contradictory outcomes of such processes, and that women are not simply passive recipients of extended forms of ruling but active agents in carving out a niche for themselves as material and social conditions shift. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The declining significance of communism and the emergence of transitional economies are among the most noticeable historical transformations at the end of the twentieth century. At the same time when China's reform and the demise of Soviet-centered international regime were making the headlines, economic globalization is exerting its formidable influence in every corner of human society. The impact of globalization on post-communist societies is salient in many areas, for instance, the changing pattern of welfare spending and welfare reform attempts. The relationship between economic globalization and welfare spending has been extensively explored in advanced western democracies, middle income countries, and less developed countries (LDCs). Two camps emerged from the present literature: those who believed economic globalization leads to the retrenchment of the welfare state, also referred to as the "efficiency hypothesis"; and those who believed the contrary, arguing that economic globalization contributed to the increase of welfare expenditure, also referred to as the "compensation hypothesis". This paper situates this debate in the emergent transitional economies. Based on a sample of twenty-three transitional economies within a time span of ten years (1993-2002), this paper finds evidence supporting the "compensation hypothesis." That is, the increasing cross border trade and capital flows corresponds to increasing government expenditure on social protection and social welfare programs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper creates a four-category typology of U.S. responses to globalization in challenge to Samuel Huntington's "dead soul" essay. Huntington asserts that cosmopolitanism, or support of a global over a nationalist identity, is the exclusive perspective of elites and in direct opposition to the majority of U.S. citizenry. Using a sociological analysis of case studies of organizations and authors writing about globalism, important differences emerge not along an elite/citizenry dichotomy. Instead, social movements' and authors' perspectives differ based on the power analysis deployed (hierarchical/vertical vs egalitarian/horizontal) as well as attitudes towards global integration (supporter/skeptic). The paper concludes that even as U.S. public opinion has been circumscribed in a post-9/11 political climate, a variety of citizens exercise oppositional as well as hegemonic identities vis-à-vis economic globalization and imperialism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that for the full revitalization of South Africa to take place, a critical step is to engage the synergistic effects of "ubuntu" or "humanness", a philosophy that informs the thinking fo a majority of South Africans, and which has been suppressed by businesses informed by western value systems. "Ubuntu" acknowledges that people are not just rational beings, but are social beings who also possess emotions such as anxiety, hope, fear, anger, excitement and remorse. The position taken here is that openly recognizing these human dimensions and accomodating them in the workplace is good for business. The paper gives examples of situations in which "ubuntu" manisfests itself in the workplace, and provides lessons that can be learnt from those situations. Among the advantages that can arise from harnessing "ubuntu" are improvements in employee satisfaction, productivity, workplace harmony and, ultimately, the development of a vibrant economy that can enhance global competitiveness. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liberal democracies share important aspects of immigration politics. In this paper, I draw on Gary Freeman's typology of immigration contexts and Roger Brubaker's emphasis on the importance of cultural politics towards understanding immigration discourses in the United States, Canada and France. Based on the analysis of secondary sources, the main aim of this paper is to set the context for understanding immigrant experiences in the three settings. An emerging theme in the analysis, however, is the convergence of discourses on immigration in the three contexts. Specifically, for each of the three countries, I outline the particular processes of change in immigration politics and the impulses informing these changes. In doing so, I illustrate the ways these discourses are converging despite the specific cultural conflicts that shape them. While the particular cultural dynamics surrounding immigration in the three contexts emerge within particular national contexts and institutional structures, the paper concludes by emphasizing that processes of migration are part of global phenomena and the effects of global processes in changing national discourses should not be undermined. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes data from surveys on transnational household economies, family units which have migrants in the US remitting funds back to their relatives in Mexico. The twofold goals of this paper are to analyze this data using social scientific theories and to contribute to the fields of migration and economic sociology. The data comes from ethnographic work and ethnosurveys done in New York and in the Mixteca region of the Mexican state of Guerrero, in the towns of Huamuxtitlan and Tlapa in 2004. This paper seeks to explicate transnational household economies, the contexts in which they occur, and to articulate these bi-local household economies. The analysis starts by reviewing the growing importance of remittances and the relevant literature on migration. We will contrast our findings with common theories and conceptions about migration. A methodology appendix and some of the quantitative data obtained from the ethno-surveys and recommendations for non-profits are also available in sister papers. This study focuses on a relatively recent migrant community, one which offers an excellent site both to study the kinds of processes that interest us. The Mixteca region of Guerrero has a great deal of recent emigration, which means that a disproportionate percentage of its migrants are remitting to their families. The migrant destination, New York City, offers a good community infrastructure on which to build and remittances exemplify another kind of international capital flow in the middle of the global capital of the financial world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The steel industry is undergoing one of the most active and offensive structural reorganizations since the beginning of the crisis of Atlantic Fordism. Steel companies are again returning to prominence under a global, decentralized model of production, while simultaneously their embeddedness in industrial cities becomes fragmented. This reorganization has massive implications for life in the industrial city, and the positionality of the resident with respect to the city. Citizenship in the period known as Historical Fordism was characterized by orientation to the national state, social security, and an emphasis towards full employment and formal organizations, including labor. Historical Fordism institutionalized these characteristics in particular socio-spatial forms. These forms have been heavily inscribed in the everyday lives of industrial cities. Recent transformations in the steel industry, however, have repositioned Fordist-oriented citizenship, thus placing the industrial city as the site for the contestation of emerging forms of citizenship practices. This paper will argue firstly that Fordist socio-spatial relations have been produced and reproduced within viable industrial cities, such as the Calumet Region of Northwest Indiana. Second, this paper will preliminarily map contemporary transformations in the positionality and practices of citizenship in the context of a steel city currently undergoing global consolidation. Despite shifts in the positionality of citizenship, industrial citizenship practices are reproduced and valorized by the claims-making of industrial subjects in the city. My aim in this paper is to explore citizenship embedded in historical context through an underutilized case of everyday life in an industrial city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the crucial impact of exogenous factors (e.g. geopolitical context) and the endogenous dynamic between "self" (i.e. Japanese) and "other" (i.e. Koreans) on the nexus of nationhood and citizenship in a historically specific context of distinctive regime types in Japan. The Japanese case provides a formidable opportunity to revisit several prominent theories of nationhood and citizenship, which stipulate a mostly Western, nation-state centered narrative as Japan's development differs from the conventional narrative of nationhood and citizenship. During the imperial period, an authoritarian regime conducted an inclusive policy based on cultural assimilation and broad recognition of heterogeneity. The democratized Japanese nation-state in the aftermath of WWII implemented more exclusionary citizenship. Today, such exclusive practices are called into question by the former colonies, minority groups, and supranational institutions (i.e. U.N.). Based on archival research, this paper seeks to refine some of the dominant assumptions in the literature on nationalism and citizenship. This paper pays special attention to the changing role of the Korean minority in Japan because they are the focus of these changing policies and their mobilization (or lack thereof) informed the transformation of Japanese nationhood, citizenship and immigration policy. By identifying what constraints regime-type places on the types of citizenship available to a society and what social forces create and sustain dissonant voices in debates over nationhood, my study shows how the making of nationhood and citizenship-immigration policies is contingent on exogenous geopolitical factors as well as endogenous contentious relationships between state and non-state actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explanations of the location decisions of call centre firms have stressed the cost factors and the search for large pools of cheap labour. In this paper, these explanations are discussed and their limitations considered. The paper argues that insufficient attention has been paid to the enormous expansion that has been underway in this industry, and the reasons for the shift in the way that customer service is being re-organized. This shift entails replacing face-to-face and over-the-counter service with remote centres of workers who never see a customer in person but provide service through the mediation of telephones and computer screens. The existence of a thriving call centre industry in Singapore, a relatively high-wage, location in Southeast Asia, suggests that labour costs alone cannot explain the current shifts in the location of call centre firms. Rather, management costs as well as the social and cultural capital of local operators servicing local markets are under-emphasized factors influencing the initial decisions to locate and the ongoing decisions to remain in a given place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an analysis of foreign workers in Israel, this paper addresses questions concerning how researchers in the social sciences think about mobility, particularly in relation to globalization. In a general sense this paper attempts to conceptualize what we call the geopolitics of mobility. While data is derived from the Israeli case, the paper carries a broad conceptual scope and makes three claims which are applicable to the international level: (1) borders operate within a network of borders, in an associated arrangement of openings and closers, wherein the opening of a transnational border can be tied to the closer of a local border; (2) instead of signaling the increased mobility of labor - both in terms of its freedom of movement and occupational choice - as many of the dominant accounts would have it, foreign labor instead signals the emergence of a particular form of mobility that is at once highly patterned and restrictive, whose underside is heightened immobility, and, (3) borders, if we think of them as sites which produce differences, are not fetters on capital, but rather support its operation of power. This last point raises a general line of inquiry regarding the relation between capital and nation, whether they are in conflict and if so, how this conflict is regulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advocates argue that local currencies are a way to protect communities from globalization, incorporate unemployed or marginal community members into the economy, and strengthen local social ties. Worldwide, a variety of local currency programs have met with a good deal of success, but in the United States local currencies have a comparatively weak foothold. This paper focuses on scrip-based local currency projects in the United States, exploring them as a challenge to one of the most institutionalized and reified elements of exchange: the dollar. The paper reviews work on local currency and then uses archival research to compare local currency to national money systems; this comparison is used to suggest a course of research that uses local currencies to illuminate processes of institutional change and the formation of alternative forms of organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some literature on migration claims that national citizenship has lost its importance in the present era of globalization and suggests that citizenship rights are irrelevant and labor rights take precedence. However, this study on the immigrant women in Taiwan show that citizenship still remains central to these women’s migratory experiences. Based on action research in the past ten years, this paper analyzes the situations of immigrant women who originated from Southeast Asia and Mainland China and migrate to Taiwan through marriage. Their situations are closely related to their acquisition of formal and substantive citizenship. Moreover, although multicultural citizenship seems ideal and does provide prospects for challenging the exclusionary models of incorporation in globalization era, this paper illustrates how multiculturalism can soon be co-opted without changing the substantive rights or even formal rights of citizenship for the immigrants. This paper concludes that without linking the struggles for citizenship rights to the broader issues of capitalist globalization, immigrant women, especially those in economic needs, can barely practice substantive citizenship rights even if they ever obtain formal citizenship rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critical analysis of nationalism and ethnonational conflict, focusing on the nature and dynamics of nationalism and national movements in the Third World, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. Placing the analysis in a comparative-historical framework, the paper provides a theoretical approach that addresses the class nature of national movements and the class basis of national struggles in the age of globalization. It argues that, historically and today, the social forces behind nationalism and national movements have been various classes that are nationally based and intent on defending narrowly-defined class interests that are lodged in the nation-state. While nationalism, as an ideology, can be used by different segments of society against hostile outside forces, the critical issue in determining the nature and dynamics of national movements and ethnonational conflict is an understanding of the class basis of such movements and the class forces that are leading these movements in their struggle for national autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wave of popular protests against neoliberal orthodoxy and the resistance of governments across the Global South to the policy prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) suggest that globalization is in transformation. In this paper, we consider the future of globalization by examining the influential role of Keynsianism in the global economy over the past century and in the present struggle over the future organization of the world political economy. We organize our paper into four sections beginning with an outline of the historical roots of the Keynesian Revolution. Next, we examine the internationalization of Keynesianism placing particular emphasis on the Bretton Woods regime and its influence in the modernization strategy of Third World development (1945-1973). We then consider the crisis of Keynesianism (1973-1980) and the consolidation of neoliberalism (1980). Lastly we suggest that the present state of globalization centers on the struggle between neo-Keynesianism and neoliberalism or neo-colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a widely publicized human rights legal case filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) in U.S. courts, the so-called Unocal-Burma case (Doe v. Unocal). Before the case's recent, out-of-court settlement, it became a lightning rod for debates about corporate accountability, the "rule of law," and human rights politics in an era of globalization. Focusing on this case, the paper examines the ways and conditions under which law and legality figure as resources in counter-hegemonic globalization struggles. It employs qualitative research methods, including interviews with ATCA human rights lawyers and Free Burma movement activists in the San Francisco Bay Area. Engaging scholars such as Michael McCann and Gerald Rosenberg, the paper argues that the Unocal-Burma case and similar legal tactics targeted at corporations have the potential to alter the "political opportunity structure" for corporate accountability activists and (perhaps to a more limited extent) other human rights activists focused on abusive regimes and/or environmental justice. Such corporate ATCA cases appear to affect the political landscape by opening up new, counter-hegemonic avenues for: 1) institutionalizing the principle of "universal jurisdiction"; 2) corporate accountability agenda-setting and enforcement (beyond a voluntary approach); and 3) transnational human rights organizing in the context of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on recent global changes in terms of structural similarities and divergences in policies, activities, and institutions, this paper draws attention to the need of examining the mutual constitution of State and non-State actors. The paper offers a two pronged argument. First, the dynamics of globalization and directions of global changes are not predictable a priori. Second, the relationship between State and non-State actors are conditioned and shaped by contextual factors in the larger global political economy. The main position of the paper is developed through a review of literature and evidences drawn from India. The paper illustrates that State, non governmental organizations and other international organizations play complimentary roles in supporting and sustaining their positions in the era of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses upon the relation between expanding modes of European integration and the rise of right wing politics. This paper views Europeanization as a special case of globalization and it examines the political consequences of the diffusion of neo-liberalism in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critical analysis of the globalization process and its impact throughout the world. It examines the nature and dynamics of globalization and its economic, social, and political manifestations on a world scale, highlighting the historical and international dimensions of this process. The paper explores various theoretical and empirical issues concerning globalization and takes up a discussion of some of the major problems generated by this process – problems that are affecting societies around the world and will lead to the emergence of forces to effect social change and transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its theoretical and policy importance, little systematic research has focused on the relationship between foreign funding and grassroots mobilization of domestic movements. How does foreign support affect the political activity of domestic groups? Do foreign —supported social movements engage in different type of politics compared to those movements that do not receive such support? The paper examines why foreign funded resource rich movements in India have been unable to produce the massive mobilization found in other successful Indian movements, with access to fewer resources. This paper argues that by making constituency support irrelevant, internationalization through financial assistance has transformed conflict movements to consensus movements — a model that follows an institutional-resource-dependent, project based, non-conflictual strategy. The paper draws on the theoretical and empirical literature in two fields - the social movement literature and the literature on NGOs to suggest the mechanisms by which foreign funding may affect grassroots mobilization. It suggest a simple theoretical model of the relationship between foreign funding and mass mobilization. These arguments are examined with respect to primary data gathered in India on two different social movements — the women's movement dependent on foreign aid and the Dalit (Scheduled Caste) movement which has relied on indigenous sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a descriptive piece about the social, cultural, and economic implications of tourism on a local barrio in Havana, Cuba. It is taken from two summer ethnographic fieldwork in a barrio located within Havana, Cuba. To organize my paper, I use four images to speak of how tourism in Cuba shows that tourism is not merely a phenomenon to be discussed within the framework of globalization but that tourism in effect replicates the colonialist narrative. The four images/types underscore the themes of work, race, the commodification of culture, and a return to colonialist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past fifty years, the field of arts and culture in Western societies has become more differentiated, more international, more market-oriented, and less hierarchical. Concomitantly, cultural classification systems – the ways in which members of these societies classify the supply of cultural artifacts and develop corresponding rules of behavior and practices – have changed. However, significant cross-national differences can be observed as regards the strength and timing of these changes, which seem closely related to wider social and cultural conditions in the countries involved. The CCST project ('Cultural classifications Systems in Transition') aims at qualifying and clarifying the evolution of cultural classification systems since the 1950s through a large-scale, comparative study of France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States. A central part of this study is a comprehensive content analysis of how the supply of cultural products has been classified within the daily press since 1955. This paper focuses on cross-national differences in the internationalization of cultural classification systems. The aim of our paper is twofold: (i) to give an outline of the theoretical background and methodology of the CCST-project and (ii) to map and elucidate cross-national similarities and variations in the international orientation of newspaper arts and culture coverage during our research period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative efforts commonly used in the social sciences has framed the Mediterranean as a region characterized by convergence. In Western Mediterranean societies, the existing division between North and South along with the differences in socio-economic changes of Southern Europe compared to Northern and Eastern Europe make comparative agendas problematic. The Mediterranean age continues to be a space in constant transformation, as it had already been characterized by Ferdinand Braudel (1985) many years ago. This paper presents a comparative effort that enables an analysis of the Mediterranean in the context of globalization that is further elaborated in the recently published book The Mediterranean in the Age of Globalization (Transaction Publishers). This effort is developed using the case of globalization and migration across several countries across Western Mediterranean societies. The aim of this paper is to reflect the problems around comparative work taking various settings as examples: the sociological tradition, the migration axis as an interpretative key, as finally, the Mediterranean as the background for unity and comparative studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By investigating how Taiwanese business people and their families establish and negotiate their privileged transnational capitalist class status and interest in coastal Chinese economic zones, this paper concerns with the formation of a transnational capitalist class in the process of the global economy. Since the early 1990s, Taiwan has become one of the major foreign investors in China. As a result, a large number of Taiwanese business investors and managerial professionals have worked and resided in China. This paper analyzes how the daily arrangements of food, social space, maid services, language, transportation, network and factory management are the crucial sites in which Taiwanese construct and maintain their relatively economic position of advantage in China. I focus on those moments, processes and strategies that produced and negotiate the class meaning, boundary, and relation between Taiwanese business people and the Chinese within specific cross-Strait political economy. I conclude this paper with three points. First, the process of constituting a transnational Taiwanese capitalist class in China is socially situated within the contexts of cross-Strait economy and politics, and within the different social and geographical locations in China. Second, Taiwanese business people?s negative perceptions and assumptions of Chinese women and men as social and economic Others set up the cultural foundation for them to construct difference and the relations of domination between themselves and the Chinese. Finally, the process of establishing and maintaining specific patterns of transnational Taiwanese capitalist class status in China has created and reinforced boundaries, tension, and uneven power relations Taiwanese business people and their families and the Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Globalization, Biodiversity, and Resistance in Mexico: A Twenty-First Century Perspective of the World This paper develops global outcome scenarios and provides analytical support for them based on a case study of Mexico. Neoliberal economics, political science, and sociology offer various theoretical perspectives of globalization and its outcomes; with general agreement in certain areas and distinct differences in others. There is general agreement that globalization itself is an observable phenomenon. However, its comparative impacts on the environment, culture, income inequality, poverty, and other important socioeconomic indicators are often debated. Thus, a review of these theoretical accounts of globalization and its outcomes is central to this paper, with particular emphasis on the role of States, international institutions, transnational capital, economic convergence, and political ideology. The analytical narrative of Mexico presents a sociological perspective of the historical relationship between globalization and the disparity in wealth between traditional industrialized States and States that pursue policies of international economic integration. An empirical research design is proposed to analyze outcomes of globalization in Mexico. The case study of Mexico reveals a seventy-five year history of land redistribution and subsequent shift toward privatization from the 1970?s to the 1990?s. This analysis of Mexico provides a clear context for comprehending global trends in the historical process of world economic integration. Mexico is well situated for this analysis because of its critical significance as a partner in the North American Free Trade Agreement, and its recent proposal to converge economies in Central America and Southern Mexico, Plan Puebla-Panama. From this analysis emerge several distinct global outcome scenarios and certain implications for transnational public policy. These implications for policy are then discussed, and questions for further comparative transnational analysis of globalization are raised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the forces that have influenced changes in the way history is written. Specifically, the paper investigates systematically changes in the modern world history teaching in three Chinese societies in East Asia, namely, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The main objective is to examine differences in the organization of and emphasis on world history instructional content in junior and senior secondary school textbooks to better understand the meaning and implications of these changes that are embedded in this school subject. For an investigation of textbook content, a total of 26 world history textbooks from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong have been selected. The focus is on the inclusion and presentation of the historical figures in these textbooks by specifically looking at the historical characters mentioned within the chronological. By applying both a cross-time and cross-sectional analysis of these textbooks, it is hoped that some adequate and meaningful theoretical explanations for school curricular reform and social change might begin to emerge. The paper concludes by discussing how world educational models might have had an effect in shaping the local realities of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effect of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the stimulation of cross-border relationships among North American labor unions. While NAFTA helped catalyze cross-border linkages among some unions in North America, for many unions the trade agreement did not have this effect. This paper analyzes the variation in NAFTA?s effect among industrial unions, arguing that NAFTA was a necessary but not sufficient catalyst of cross-border labor cooperation and collaboration. In order for transnational relationships to coalesce, a combination of ideological and organizational factors had to be present, the most important of which are not economic, but rather political. They include autonomy from national governments, and a union ideology and culture that facilitates transnationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about the social meaning of risk and strategies to reduce the sense of uncertainty in a fluid, globalized world. First the paper attempts to sort out the bundle of meanings assumed by risk, then shows that risk has been an accompanying feature of modernity. It moves on to make the claim that there is still something specific about the increased sense of uncertainty and the proliferation of risk talk under the process we refer to as globalization. Antiglobalizationist social movements react precisely to this predicament and use localization as a risk-reducing strategy. Yet their localization strategies differ left and right. This the paper shows through the analysis of a movement that erupted around food. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discussion of regional community has so far concentrated on Europe and America. As Asian countries begin to emulate the European Union, the crisscrossing labor migration trails test the viability of the emerging idea of Asian community. This paper follows the politics of Asian community that seeks to formulate a new transnational democratic space. My concern is a new global integration of Asia and local differentiations mediated by legal and cultural politics. My discussion is two-fold: I explore the ways that the politics of law drawing on national and transnational frameworks produce migrant workers as juridical and political subjects; and I also examine the constitutive effects of the politics of law on global capitalist order and democratic practices. In specific, I explore the encounters of three groups of migrant works in South Korea: Koreans from China, Koreans from North Korea, and migrant workers from Southeast Asia. The experiences of these groups constitute parts of the same problem ? migrant laborers organized by both global capitalist and national politics. The dyadic framework of nationalism and transnationalism produces the fragmentation of Korean Chinese, North Koreans, and other guest workers. Singularized as a national or non-national entity, the experience of each is mapped on different spaces of transnational and (South) Korean history: Korean Chinese as ?returnees,? North Koreans as ?defectors,? and other guest workers as ?transnational workers.? This fragmentary politics obscure their shared and different experiences of work resulting from their positions in local and regional economy. My discussion in this paper draws on my research in Korea and China from November 2001 to December 2002. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The context of globalization facilitates the construction of social relations that transcend national boundaries. Based on the argument that diaspora provides a framework for understanding immigration processes within the dynamics of globalization, this paper explores the ways diaspora extends our understanding of immigrant communities. As a type of community, diaspora communities illustrate three-way relationships that include the homeland or country of origin, the host society or country of residence, and the larger diaspora community that extends over a number of nation-states. In this paper, I take the Lebanese diaspora in New York, Montreal, and Paris to illustrate that diaspora illuminates the understanding of global social networks and ties that are related to immigrant groups. Following a brief theoretical discussion of diaspora, this paper focuses on the analysis of Lebanese immigrant forms of attachment. Based on in-depth interviews and participant observation in three cities, this paper illustrates the forms of solidarity shared by Lebanese immigrants. First, the multiple forms of belonging that Lebanese immigrants have ? to their homeland, host society, and larger diaspora ? emphasize that immigrants share ?vertical connections? that exist simultaneously. The paper follows to illustrate the forms of global solidarity that members of the Lebanese immigrant community seek and maintain. Given their experience with migration, Lebanese immigrants believe that they are more capable of bridging the particular interests that are based on national or ethnic attachments and the universal ones that are not tied to a territory or a nation-state. That is, as immigrants consciously discard traditional forms of attachments to the homeland, they are propelled to advance universal legal and civil causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we highlight some of the key findings from our forthcoming book, From Amsterdam to Amazonia: A Sociological Inquiry into How Matter, Space, and Technology Shape Globalization. We examine the financial, technological, and political dynamics that have globalized the world economy since the beginnings of capitalism over 500 years ago through the prism of the world?s largest iron ore mine, Carajas in the Brazilian Amazon. Our goals in this paper are a) to understand the profoundly local characteristics of Carajás, an enormous and very local hole in the ground, in pristine jungle remote from industry, dug by enormous machines to extract huge volumes of raw material to send to industrial centers half-way around the world in huge trains and ships; b) to explain how local processes?driven by capital, shaped by matter and space, and mediated by technology?are materially intensified and spatially expanded toward globalization; and c) to examine the local and global consequences of these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much opposition to globalization rests on the assumption that globalization will lead to a race to the bottom concerning core labor standards. Yet, in fact, more countries subscribe to more human rights conventions, declarations, and treaties than ever before. A transnational movement combating child labor has emerged. But what do these phenomena have an impact? This paper studies what influences actual change in the structure of the labor market measured by the percentage of children aged 10 to 14 working. It examines if and under which conditions there is a coupling between formal endorsement (ratification) and change (reduction of child labor rates) and, more specifically what role international non-governmental organizations play (NGOs). The time frame spans from 1960 to 1990. My guiding thesis is that pressures and influences accruing from the world society, especially in form of links via international NGOs, can better account for the decline of child labor rates, as predicted by the world society approach, than the particular characteristics of the respective countries. This guiding thesis leads to the three questions I will address in this paper: (1) Is there a measurable post-ratification effect on child labor rates if countries ratify the child labor convention (C138) of the International Labour Organization (ILO), the oldest surviving governmental human rights organization? (2) What is the cumulative effect of international governmental and NGOS on child labor rates? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The struggle to define the political and economic terms for globalization is one of the key political issues of our time. A major venue for this struggle is the discourse of globalization, a narrative of power and knowledge through which the political terms for globalization are defined. In this paper, I build upon a theory of globalization as a complex process involving economic, political and discursive dimensions developed in earlier work. I explore a new chapter in Brazilian-U.S. conflicts over the politics of globalization, focusing on the 2003 meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Free Trade Association of the Americas (FTAA). The data for this paper are policy statements, political speeches, and Brazilian media sources. At the WTO and FTAA meetings, Brazilian President Lula employed the neoliberal globalization discourse as a strategy to promote economic sovereignty, supporting the interests of Brazilian companies and resisting those of foreign capital. The Brazilian government pursued this strategy implicitly; in contrast to its explicit strategy during the 1970s and 1980s when it protected the growth of a local computer industry by using the informatics policy to restrict foreign investment. In 2003, the Brazilian government thus pursued those goals in a new form, using the neoliberal discourse to advocate open markets and the eradication of ?barriers to trade.? In this paper, I analyze the political and economic conditions shaping these changes in the Brazilian discourse, highlighting their implications for the Brazilian project of national sovereignty and the politics of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalisation, new technologies and economic policies have coincided with a general trend in Western labour markets away from permanent, secure, salaried positions, with clearly defined hours of work, to jobs with ‘flexible’, casual and informal terms and conditions of employment. One of the key issues raised by these developments concerns the social and personal consequences of this trend towards less structured working patterns. This paper provides an account of the experience of highly deregulated and casualised forms of work within the UK Direct Selling industry. The paper is drawn from an intensive ethnographic study inside the world of high value direct sales (double glazing, fitted kitchens etc.). The nature of the employment relationship in this industry has long been associated with no fixed hours of work, predominantly commission only earnings and ‘fictitious’ self-employment. However, while addressing these important issues, this paper goes further than merely providing evidence of the power imbalances, economic uncertainty, work/life imbalance and impediments to non-work based relationships inherent in unregulated forms of employment. One of the key issues emerging from this research concerns the way in which both the isolation and uncertainty emanating from this form of work contributes to the formation and maintenance of an insular insider culture that, ironically, deflects participants’ attention from its exploitative features. The paper is likely to be of interest to anyone concerned with employment futures, flexibility and the demise of secure employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper analyzes trends in within-country income inequality during the second half of the 20th century. Broad trends were visible in two distinct sub-periods: during the 1950s and 1960s inequality declined greatly in most countries, whereas in the 1980s and 1990s it mostly increased, though more mildly. But there were many exceptions, and through the period distinct ?macro-regional? regimes of inequality were emerging. We confirm the relevance for inequality of Esping-Andersen?s three ?welfare state regimes? referring to English-speaking, Nordic, and continental West European countries. We add three more macro-regions ? Latin America, East Asia and South Asia. Intra-regional variations in inequality are much less than inter-regional variations. But these macro-regions were not static. They had trajectories of inequality. The Anglos were at first among the most egalitarian, only later developing the greater inequality supposedly characteristic of ?liberal? regimes. The Nordics became the most egalitarian in the middle of our period. The continentals began as the most unequal OECD group but then became almost as equal as the Nordics. Latin America began as the most inegalitarian region of all and became even more so, though in the 1990s its countries began to converge toward the mid-point of their previous range. East Asia did remain fairly egalitarian, while South Asia converged from great variety toward a middling level of inequality. Though pressures toward more inequality strengthened from 1980, regional responses remained varied and path-dependent. Though one paper cannot explain all these complex changes, a less static, more historical macro-theory is clearly needed, breaking with the dualism of dynamic economic markets versus ?sticky? states, involving dynamic interactions between economic, ideological, military and political power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies a decoupling research lens, emergent from within the neo-institutional approach, to reexamine and problematize the link between individualization in late-modern societies and the cross-national adoption of organizational models. Based on a content analysis of journal items dealing with one individualistic organizational model, that of Human Relations (HR), in an as yet un-individualized society, that of Israel in the 1950s-1960s, the paper highlights the decoupling of meaning from practice. It shows that, as against most accounts of the neo-institutional approach, individualization of society does not constitute a precondition for the cross-national diffusion of organizational models. In its travel from the liberal-individualistic US to collectivistic Israel, the individualistic meaning and interpretation ascribed to the model in its context of origin, has been decoupled and replaced by an interpretation highlighting the contribution of the model to the collective good. Focusing on the decoupling of meaning from practice and on the interpretation ascribed to similar practices in different institutional settings allows for the problematization of the assumption of diffusion and global homogenization characterizing most institutional studies of cross-national diffusion of organizational models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]