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

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.

Urban resilience is the focus of a global policy discourse that is being mobilized by a wide range of organizations to reduce urban risk and respond to the shocks and stresses facing cities. This paper explores the process of "governing for resilience" through Durban's resilience journey as part of the 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) programme. From an insider perspective, it presents both 100RC and Durban's approaches to developing a resilience strategy. It reflects on the contestations that emerged as Durban and 100RC struggled over the meaning and practice of urban resilience. The paper develops a continuum of urban resilience approaches to analyse the conflicts that emerged as the global programme of urban resilience travelled to, and landed in, a South African city. The paper argues that a global framing of urban resilience needs to be responsive to a world of cities that share common risk trajectories but have different contexts and vulnerabilities.(1) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The minimalist, atomistic classical liberal definition of markets is dominant in the global political economy literature, if often implicitly so. But major shifts are occurring in the 21st century, including China's rise, which highlight the deficiencies of this definition and challenge us to develop fresh tools to conceptualize global markets. There are three ways in which China's emergence challenges established market conceptualizations: the continued resilience of China's authoritarian state-led capitalist economic model, China's positioning around notions of power and fairness in the global economy, and China's mixed preferences regarding global markets. The study of China's rise, far from only impressing upon us how different China is, shines a light on dynamics that are prevalent everywhere, yet suffer from a lack of attention. This paper argues that the political economy literature is limiting the development of richer conceptualizations of the market because it operates within three conceptual 'straitjackets': the notion of the pure market as ideal- type, the state-market dichotomy and the notion of a sequential progression towards a market economy. The fact that markets are an underdefined concept deprives us of useful tools for elucidating important questions about markets in the global economy and limits our capacity to evaluate China's impact on global markets. Drawing from diverse literatures, from comparative politics, to classical political economy and economic sociology, this paper develops an institutionally grounded set of tools, including a list of characteristics and a typology, to define, evaluate and compare markets, and inspire others to contribute to the endeavour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Before 1980, most people experiencing common nervous problems and who sought medical help complained of anxiety and were treated for anxiety. Similar experiences increasingly led to complaints of or treatment for panic attacks in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and to complaints of or treatment for mood disorders by the mid-1990s Today, such patient seem once again increasingly likely to complain of and be treated for anxiety. This paper reviews a series of mechanisms whereby company marketing can both transform the Perceptions of physicians and shape the experiences of those seeking treatment and the self-understanding of those not in treatment. These include the standard ploys of company sales departments to increase demand for products including celebrity endorsements the sponsoring of educational events and a host of reminders. The portfolio of marketing manoeuvres has grown, though, by translating educational events and celebrity events into the arena of scientific research: clinical trials have increasingly become part of the marketing of disorders and their treatments; ghost-written scientific papers are authored by celebrity researchers. The portfolio of marketing manoeuvres has also grown to encompass new ways of creating fashion through medical activism by setting up patient groups and disease awareness campaigns. The result is a transformation and growth in disorders tailor-made to fit ever more visible drugs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the emerging triad competition between the US, China and the EU, the control over infrastructures is increasingly contested. This paper asks how this conflict of connectivity influences the EU's infrastructure policy and what specific factors play a role when translating these global shifts into strategies. We develop a political-economic perspective that highlights the relevance of infrastructures for capitalist production and the pattern of dependencies between actors. Viewing the triad competition in infrastructural terms, we argue that the EU is in the process of becoming a geopolitically and geoeconomically oriented infrastructural policy actor. Two cases in the field of high-tech infrastructure are studied more deeply: the EU's development of the satellite navigation system Galileo and its strategy on 5G. They show that – despite the EU's geoeconomic approach – the particular mode of global competition in combination with internal political factors can hinder the translation of geoeconomic ambitions into specific policies. [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]

The paper examines, from a Southeast Asian perspective, the issues of globalization, regulation and gender and labor regimes in relation to the recent papers by Sylvia Walby (2001, 2002). The comments are linked to the conceptual debates and empirical evidence from the UK experience, which I argue, is too narrow a focus if one wants to discuss a process as broad as globalization. The paper then looks at the processes of the modernization of the gender regime and its connections to changing capital/labor relations by re-visiting the nation state, the impact of European Union regionalism and the relative power of the gender regime. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper introduces a collection of articles on ‘Transnational livelihoods and landscapes’. We outline the analytical value of grounding political ecologies of globalization in notions of livelihood, scale, place and network. This requires an understanding of the linkages between rural people to global processes. We argue that the exploitation of these linkages can, under certain circumstances, result in new options and markets for rural people in marginal regions, even though many rural societies also confront serious political, environmental and economic challenges that likewise derive from globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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 article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one on the coexistence of indigenization and internationalization, and another on international social service.

The article discusses the pattern of the upper level of the world city network of knowledge as published in a series of earlier papers. The authors' aim is to update the findings and relate to the general world city discussion. The article addresses how the structure of the world cities of knowledge network has changed since 2000 in favour of south-east Asian and south European cities. The authors use bibliometric data on the world's 100 largest cities measured in terms of research output. The article also discusses the concept of world cities as an understanding that many cities are global service centres.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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 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]

The Chinese press, instead of acting purely as a state propaganda instrument, now functions as ‘Party Publicity Inc.’ — that is, a quasi-business that seeks to make huge profits on the one hand and to legitimate the Party mandate by promoting its image on the other. The accelerated pace of media conglomeration following China's accession to the World Trade Organization has sharpened this trend. This study examines the impact of press ecology in Shenzhen, a national trend-setter for ‘Party Publicity Inc.’, before and after conglomeration. We observe that press conglomeration has (a) engendered a more centralized management structure and operation; (b) replaced duopolistic competition with market monopoly and greater price-fixing abilities; (c) continued to rely on state office subscription; (d) dampened journalists' enthusiasm for political reform in favor of economic interest; (e) developed a two-tier Publicity Inc. to serve both the Party and the market; and (f) provided an opportunity for overseas expansion. Marketization does not trigger political reform, but pre-empts pressure for political change. The Party Publicity Inc. in its conglomerate form represents a complicitous accommodation between power and money engineered by a post-Communist bureaucratic-authoritarian regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that analyses of food security highlight fundamental contradictions at the heart of the globalization project. It examines the concept of food security and evaluates how national strategies to promote it have been undermined by economic liberalization since the 1980s. It finds that unless current policies are drastically reformed, traditional patterns of food insecurity will continue to hinder development in the South. It also identifies new problems of malnutrition, in the form of obesity, that are set to ravage populations in the North and South. The diffusion of obesogenic environments is allied to globalization and presents a new challenge for public health policy. Globalization and health are inherently linked and, by reconceptualizing the concept of food security, this paper draws attention to this link and argues that such connections should inform national policy in an era of globalization. Imbalances in power throughout the food chain help explain food insecurity in the past and present. The paper concludes that, as in the past, purposeful public intervention is required to promote food security. [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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

This paper studies the largest 250 companies in Australia in the early 1990s and their network of interlocking directorates. It examines the institutional profile of Australian big business and the impact of globalisation. It finds that international capital has not, as yet. made major inroads into the core of Australian big business although global finance capital has had a major impact on its mode of operating. It argues that the greatest area for structural change is the privatisation of government-owned enterprises. Following the precedents of US and international studies the paper then explores key features of the theory of financial hegemony. The paper uses network analysis of interlocking directorships to assess the centrality of banks and the direction of ties among big businesses. Australian banks are heavily interlocked and 'attract' executives of other companies to their boards but they do not constitute the core of the intercorporate network as in the US. As outlined by Australian scholars the systemic conditions of capitalist hegemony in this country involve uncritical acceptance of big business leadership. These conditions privilege all large, Australian public companies (the 'private sector') as the core institutions of class power. Centralisation and hierarchy within big business parallels these conditions of public culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper investigates the internationalization of the commercial real estate markets of France and Germany, markets typically ignored in comparative political economy. Although both markets are embedded in Continental European capitalism, their trajectories of internationalization are variegated. After exploring how processes of internationalization are processed within each country, we show how these processes have played out in the commercial real estate markets of France and Germany. The French state played a key role in guiding processes of internationalization: the introduction of new tax regimes allowed French property companies to raise capital at the stock exchange. The case of Germany demonstrates the continued importance of the banking sector for real estate investment markets. Although the typical characteristics of the French and German political economies are strengthened in this process, agents also feel the need to respond to the interests of international investors by creating Real Estate Investment Trust-like systems to absorb domestic and foreign capital. [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]

The discipline of comparative political economy (CPE) relies heavily on aggregate, country-level economic indicators. However, the practices of multinational corporations have increasingly undermined this approach to measurement. The problem of indicator drift is well documented by a growing critical literature and calls for systematic methodological attention in CPE. We present the case for a rocky but ultimately rewarding middle road between indicator fatalism and indicator faith. We illustrate our argument by examining two important cases—Sweden's recent export success and the financialization of non-financial corporations in France. A careful parsing of the data suggests corrections to common characterizations of the two cases. Swedish exports have been reshaped by intragroup trade among foreign subsidiaries of domestic corporations. The growth of financial assets held by French firms is attributable to the growth of foreign direct investment and to cumulative revaluation effects, while what remains of financialization is concentrated among the very largest firms. Based on these findings, we propose a methodological routine that parses data by zooming in on the qualitative specifics of countries, sectors, and firms, while using all available options for disaggregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘New urban politics’ in the 1980s coincided largely with a process of intense restructuring and globalisation. Mindful of the specific problems of transposition of American concepts to the European case, this paper revisits the Frankfurt urban regime. Based on interviews with decision-makers in 2008, the paper argues that today’s Frankfurt regime has turned its attention inward. The region, while still important for the structured coherence of the global city, has been depoliticised as problematic issues tend to be sectoralised and cast in technological terms. The global has lost its lustre as a self-explanatory concept for urban development and urban politics has regrouped as a set of functionalist specialty discourses such as that of the creative city. As city politics was re-localised, it also became largely devoid of traditional political conflict. Instead, questions of social justice and diversity were partly integrated into the formal and bureaucratic political process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores how the so-called Bilbao effect and Barcelona Model are diffused internationally through what may be called urban policy tourism: short trips made to Bilbao and Barcelona by policy-makers to learn from their regeneration in the past 15 years. The paper reveals for the first time the substantial extent of this practice and contextualises it within a wider phenomenon of urban policy transfer and the international ‘motion’ of urban policies. Although both models are internationally known for a set of elements, this research shows that in fact the messages mutate and shift as they circulate through the policy circuits. Ultimately, however, the popularity of the Bilbao and Barcelona models suggests a process of global urban policy convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The recent financial crisis has been punctuated by a discussion of the future of global financial governance in terms of a 'regulation/deregulation' formula. This paper argues for a broadening of this frame by taking seriously recent claims of performativity. To place changes associated with financial globalization in a more complicated critical context, this paper explores the ways in which global finance has often entailed a redrawing of the boundaries between the financial and the everyday. To develop this argument, the paper focuses, in particular, on practices of payday lending and on recent regulatory changes which have performed payday lending in a particular set of ways. Reading payday lending as both a repertoire of market devices and a set of dividing practices, this paper concludes that regulation performs the object it seeks to manage by invoking ambiguous, and not singular, territories of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between globalisation and institutional change is an issue frequently debated in economic geography and the social sciences. Some see firms, whatever their national culture or heritage, as facing common market forces that undermine self-determination and predict convergence towards a global best practice. Others are sceptical, arguing that different country-specific 'varieties of capitalism' have market-distorting effects, resulting in path dependence that limits the strength of global incentives to converge at the firm level. Others still are unconvinced by both these arguments. As such, this paper seeks to better understand globalisation's impact on institutions and firms by documenting the effect of global finance and its affiliated agents on institutions and firms. Specifically, I examine the experiences of firms in both Japan and the US that sponsor pension funds to see if they have had similar experiences and behaviours in both jurisdictions. I find that American and Japanese pension sponsors, despite clear manifestations of societal differences, have in fact had very similar experiences. So, some of the predictions held by path dependence and the varieties of capitalism are not confirmed in this case. However, because convergence towards a 'best practice' corporate pension offering is also rejected, the paper concludes that new research that focuses on the impact of financial markets on institutions and firms offers important insights for explaining the outcomes in both places. [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]

There are striking similarities between today's early 21st century trade political economy and its late 19th century equivalent. Ascendant populist nationalism, escalating trade protectionism and tariff wars, growing discontent over globalization's distributional impacts and fast emerging economic superpowers disrupting the global order are features shared by both periods. This comparative historical analysis explores what lessons and conclusions we may draw from the past late 19th century world that can be applied to today. Integral to this discussion are the prospects of our early 21st century world experiencing a similar endgame of global conflict, as transpired around a century ago. In revisiting the past to better understand the present and future, this paper first evaluates empirical similarities between the trade political economies of both periods. It then applies theories and concepts of economic nationalism, globalization and interdependence in developing deeper conclusions and arguments. Brexit, Trump and their historic parallels serve as primary focal points in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short paper considers 'maritime history' as a sub-discipline of history. It examines its origins and defines maritime history as the study of humankind's relationship with the sea. It reviews that relationship and stresses the economic dimension and the need for an understanding of the business of shipping. The relevance of maritime history is examined in the contexts of the world today and historiography. In the former, the paper views the maritime dimension as crucial. On the historiographical aspect the concept of globalisation is considered in terms of a process and an outcome. In both cases, an understanding of maritime history is seen as vital. [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]

Through ethnographic research at the Graduate School of East-West Medical Science (GSM) at Kyung Hee University in South Korea, this paper examines how a hybrid research team translates Korean medicine (KM) into scientific languages through the mobilization of laboratory science in a global knowledge-making field. Paying attention to the asymmetric power relationship between KM and science, I show that the richness and liveliness of KM is truncated as it enters the global scientific field. This lab study examines: (1) KM's double approach to local KM and global scientific fields; (2) the lab's political function in relation to biomedicine and science; and (3) the identity crisis and reconstruction of KM caused by its scientific translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many economists, the current period of globalized finance lacks an apparent material anchor such as gold once was. This paper contends that in an important way the anchoring function is currently undertaken by financial derivatives. These contracts are not just about risk management and speculation. Critically also, they are commensurating the values of different financial assets, including different currencies. In so doing they can be seen to be imposing a competitive benchmark into the management of financial assets. Indeed, via this benchmarking, derivatives bring the management of labour to the fore in the stabilization of global financial markets, just as it was at the centre of adjustments under the Gold Standard in the nineteenth century. The paper explains this role of derivatives at the centre of contemporary global finance via a comparison with the way in which gold anchored the globalization of the late nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The academic analysis of the labour market impacts of globalization has been dominated by neoclassical approaches both in the extensive work on developed countries and the more limited, but growing literature on developing countries. However, in many developing countries the positive impacts predicted for workers in (unskilled) labour-abundant economies have not been observed. This suggests that heterodox approaches may have an important contribution to make in analysing labour market outcomes. The paper contrasts the neoclassical and heterodox interpretations, reviews previous empirical studies of South Africa, and presents new data and analysis of the South African manufacturing sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neo-liberal economic globalization and acceleration in information and communication technologies have strengthened the competitiveness of transnational corporations by making it easier for them to stretch their global commodity chains to developing countries. Such control from a distance threatens national states' capacity to regulate TNCs and their impact upon environment, labour and human rights in developing countries. This has prompted anti-TNC sentiments and campaigns that challenge brand-named TNCs on labour exploitation in the south. These changes have triggered discussions on setting labour standards in the international arena. With the WTO distancing itself from the 'social clause', this has prompted the TNCs, NGOs and other stakeholders to self-regulate by introducing codes of conduct. Concentrating on the clothing industry, this paper examines the emergence of company and multi-stakeholder codes of conduct that require the involvement of subcontractors and NGOs in developing countries. The moving of ethical codes to developing countries condenses and reproduces, under the twin pressures of competitiveness and social auditing, the paradoxes of ethical transnational production in the internal organizations of local firms. These paradoxes are demonstrated from a case study of a workplace in China. The paper ends by outlining three paradoxes and commenting on the development of a managerialist 'audit culture' in workplace practices as commodification of ethical code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic geographers have tended to neglect human mobility, and yet international labour migration constitutes significant flows that shape and are shaped by institutionally specific economic spaces. Three underlying themes run through the paper. First, the role of social networks in mediating relationships between flows and spaces. Second, the recomposition of the spatiality and temporality of flows in response to Europeanization and globalization, evident especially in the emergence of increased but differentiated skilled labour mobility. And, third, the locking into space - however temporarily - of inherently 'sticky' flows of labour mobility. These themes are investigated through an exploration of how the human capital, knowledge and financial capital embedded in migrants are created and articulated by migrants' local and trans-local relationships in their spaces of origin and destination. Finally, the paper reflects on some of the ways in which the intersection of migration flows and spaces mediate patterns of uneven regional development in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, the globalization of the manufacturing enterprises requires collaboration across frontiers. In order to attain effective collaboration, the information about the product life cycle must be captured and administrated in a way that supports the decision taken during the product development. In this context, the manufacturing process information needs to be shared between manufacturers. This paper introduces the SPEED (Supporting Plastic enginEEring Development) system designed to facilitate the sharing of injection-moulding information between interested parties via the Internet. Both the architecture and the functionality of the SPEED system are presented and described in this paper through a case study. The evolving issues are addressed. Finally, closing remarks and conclusions of the system are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]