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This paper will argue that the collapse of advanced industrial society is inevitable on a global scale in the near-term (i.e., in a matter of decades from present), and that, furthermore, it will be irreversible. Industrial society, generally, will be seen as an aberration or anomaly in human history, one costly in terms of human life and suffering, as well as ecological devastation, lasting no more than three hundred years from the start of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain in 1750 CE to its terminus in circa 2050 CE. If humanity is to survive, it must be in much smaller numbers, and with far less impact on the planet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The boundaries between tourism and migration are blurry. This blurring has been beneficial for the governments of wealthy countries enabling them to import a large and flexible temporary workforce that can be directed toward regions and industries where there are labour shortages. Such is the case with the Australian Working Holiday Program (AWHP); a historically tourism-focused cultural exchange program that began in 1975. Since the 1990s, the Australian Government has leveraged the AWHP to support several of Australia's critical industries. This has been achieved through the tweaking of mobility infrastructures that link Working Holiday Makers' (WHMs) ability to stay in Australia to employment conditions. Such conditions increase precarity among WHMs, directing them towards remote regions and industries where there are evident labour shortages. While these mobility infrastructures significantly benefit Australia's economy, they result in WHMs being highly vulnerable to exploitation. Such vulnerability is layered with WHMs from less wealthy, non-English-speaking countries facing the highest levels of vulnerability. This study investigates the way mobility infrastructures in the AWHP influence WHMs' mobilities, as well as how such mobilities are experienced in uneven and unjust ways. There is urgency to interrogate the role that such programs play in contributing to unjust mobilities, and to query the attendant implications for sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reads the sale of citizenship via citizenship‐by‐investment (CBI) programmes through an offshore lens. Scholarship on offshore industries has long positioned citizenship sales as part of offshore capitalism—without exploring the phenomenon in any depth. Research on CBI, in turn, has with some notable exceptions neglected the phenomenon's offshore nature. This paper argues that CBI is an outgrowth and increasingly integral part of offshore capitalism, offering a new form of what Susan Roberts calls "regulatory arbitrage", aiding elite wealth accumulation and power. The paper establishes this relationship by examining the countries and firms selling citizenship, their marketing strategies and customers and, crucially, the nature of the product which rests on the three "offshore pillars", as described by Ronen Palan—virtual residency, easy incorporation, and secrecy. Conceptualising CBI as an offshore provision can transform how the phenomenon is understood and opens new avenues of thinking about its socio‐structural role and impact in an unequal world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview the Head of the Chair of Sociology of Public Administration of the School of Sociology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Vladimir P. Vasiliev, shares his assessments of the results and significance of the UN climate Conference held in November-December 2023 in the UAE (Dubai). He examines the current dynamics of the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement, the key provisions of the reports of the World Health Organization and the International Energy Agency, and focuses on the discussions that unfolded at the conference on the use of fossil fuels and the transition to renewable energy sources. It is noted that the process of implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is currently facing a number of serious obstacles, both economic and socio-political in nature. Meanwhile, failure to implement the SDGs is fraught with a sharp aggravation of the problems of global inequality, food security and climate migration, especially dangerous for the most vulnerable groups of the population. It is noted that under these conditions, the Russian Federation is pursuing a long-term climate policy aimed at achieving a balance between anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and their absorption, in a way that is consistent with national interests and priorities of socio-economic development. Hopefully, scientists from Lomonosov Moscow State University will be able to contribute both to improving the environmental policy of the Russian Federation and to defining the global climate agenda. And for this, in turn, it is important to develop and strengthen the dialogue between the leading scientific schools of Moscow State University.

AbstractFor centuries, international reparations were commonly exacted as a form of victor’s justice after war. Following World War II, however, the bitter legacy of the Treaty of Versailles and West Germany’s compensation of Nazism’s victim shifted this practice, ushering in a novel moral economy of international reparations. Yet, while recent decades have seen increased transnational activism around reparations, as well as interstate aid payments and official apologies, international reparations remain infrequent, and agreements often fail to end financial claims. This paper argues that one explanation for this lackluster record is a central paradox relating to finality. Though international reparations are designed to settle accounts and provide a basis for deeper reconciliation, by opening issues of traumatic memory to public debate, they often achieve the opposite effect and inspire a cascade of further financial claims. As evidence, we examine three cases of international reparations’ occurrence and rejection: Germany’s reparations for Nazi-era crimes, the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) formation following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and reparations negotiated but removed from the 1973 Paris Peace Accords. Employing process tracing methods on archival documents, we demonstrate in each case how this paradox helps explain international reparations’ limitations as a practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops both a critique of the Southern criminology project but also argues that a continued focus on the global organization of the economy should sit central in anti‐imperialist social science. Southern criminology, reflective of other trends in 'decolonization', has not placed a sustained critique of domination and exploitation central, viewing decolonization as possible without a radical upending of the global economy. This paper asserts that understanding imperialism through a materialist lens uncovers the structural forces at play in reshaping globally evolving and expansive economic infrastructures which generate and distribute surplus value. To illustrate the importance of this point for anti‐imperialist criminology, we engage with critical logistics studies which successfully shows how transnational projections of power reshape and sustain the global system of production and consumption, with which comes a series of harms and dispossessions. The variegated and fractured social orders which the revolution in circulation have required rearticulating policing, security and criminalization across multiple horizons and locations of social life. In terms of developing critical approaches to Southern criminology, a focus on critical logistics studies offers, by way of example, the possibility of grasping concrete legal orders, criminalization, and oppression central in producing the current regime of neo‐colonial circulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The financial haemorrhaging of lower income countries in the form of capital flight is a leading cause of global economic inequality. On an annual basis, trillions of dollars bypass the already starved fiscal spaces of nations mired in poverty, making their way instead to lucrative offshore bank accounts governed by secrecy jurisdictions. The present article relates this phenomenon to the institutional architecture of the global financial system and provides causal evidence that structural adjustment programmes implemented at the behest of international financial organizations amplify such capital flight. In particular, by isolating exogenous variation in policy conditionalities through the use of instrumental variables, we find that trade liberalization, financial sector reforms and privatization measures mandated by the International Monetary Fund in developing contexts substantially increase financial outflows occurring via current and capital account transactions. Our findings thus document the contribution that structural adjustment makes to an underappreciated facet of contemporary global inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intellectual property rights have played an increasingly important role in the global economy since the 1994 TRIPS Agreement. The nature of this role has since come under the spotlights: do intellectual property rights foster innovation or rent seeking? Do they promote knowledge diffusion and development, or do they skew global competition in favor of Western economies? This article explores some of the most striking developments that recently occurred in the world economy, namely, the rise of inequalities and the emergence of the secular stagnation, in the light of the intellectual property rights debate. This article contends that income inequalities, both between and within countries, are partially driven by monopoly rents accumulated by a minority of large Western corporations (inequality between countries) and redistributed to a minority of employees (within countries). In both cases, the imbalance of profit and wage distribution may be contributing to global slow growth by depressing investments and consumption, ushering in an era of secular stagnation, thereby explaining some of the current trends in the global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global interpersonal inequality is increasingly driven by inequalities within countries while the role of inequality between countries diminishes. Is this due to globalization? To answer this question, we use comprehensive global panel data at the country-decile-group level for the past half century and exploit the geographic diffusion of liberalization policies to identify the effect of globalization. Across countries, we find that income gains are substantial for countries at early stages of the globalization process, but the 'marginal returns to globalization' diminish as globalization rises, eventually becoming insignificant for the most globalized countries. Within countries, gains from globalization are largest for the richest ten percent of national income distributions, resulting in substantial increases in national income inequalities. A simple quantitative model is consistent with these empirical results. Over the past half century, globalization has promoted a dual trend of income convergence across countries and income divergence within countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Writing 'global' intellectual histories involves historicising the transnational lives of key concepts. In this article, we argue that interdependence became a key concept in global inequality debates of the 1970–1980s. While ideas about interstate dependency have a long history, interdependence saw a remarkable breakthrough from the late 1960s onwards, partly in tandem with a liberal global egalitarianism, calling for the moral duties of 'rich nations' to alleviate poverty in 'poor nations.' Interdependence took centre stage in writings on international affairs and inequality within and between nations in the 1960s–1980s, both in the US and in Ghana. We first examine the work of American foreign policy intellectual Robert Tucker, and the conservative backlash against liberal global egalitarianism in late 1970s US. We then investigate writings on African regionalism by Ghanaian political economist S.K.B. Asante in the 1980s. A critique of interdependence shaped debates on global inequality, distribution, and justice amongst both American and African intellectuals. Coming from different perspectives and places, both Asante and Tucker were critical of the descriptive value of the concept of 'an interdependent world.' Interdependence was an ambiguous notion, which could be used to 'cover-up' persisting power structures in a world of very unequal nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How have intellectuals from around the world thought about inequality in the world? In light of the call for a less Eurocentric history of ideas as well as recent debates about global inequality, this article introduces a special issue on the global intellectual history of an unequal world. The issue supplements the already available scholarship in at least four ways: it delves further into other kinds of inequalities than first and foremost economic inequality; it historicises key concepts in the intellectual history of an unequal world; it incorporates fine-grained analysis of indigenous languages and concepts; it extends the analysis of historical inequality vocabularies to how inequalities were critiqued. Moreover, this introduction sheds lights on possible methodological approaches for an intellectual history of global inequality. There is a need to go against a modular approach to the history of ideas to embrace the dialectic between the specific situatedness of our topics of research and 'global' contexts. Questions of transfer, circulation, connections, or diffusion of ideas need to be asked on an empirical case to case basis. We therefore propose location, temporality and legitimisation/critique as key analytical concepts when exploring historical thinking on an unequal world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ethiopian empire retained its political independence through the European Scramble for Africa. The imperial elites oversaw the transformation of the empire into a territorially-bounded state, part of an international system of states regulated by international law and by international institutions such as the League of Nations, and later the UN. Ethiopian intellectuals were keenly aware that Ethiopia had joined this international system from a subordinated position and that its sovereignty remained at risk. The struggle for sovereignty was fought not only at a diplomatic level, but also at a narrative level. Afäwärḳ Gäbrä-Iyyäsus's 1908 Traveller's Guide to Abyssinia and Käbbädä Mikael's 1949 Ethiopia and Western Civilisation pushed back against the European depiction of Ethiopia as intrinsically inferior and intrinsically unable to develop. Both Afäwärḳ and Käbbädä rejected the rigid determinism of stagist models of development, and argued that Ethiopia and Europe were natural allies by virtue of their shared Christian heritage. Global power hierarchies rigidified Ethiopia's domestic power hierarchies. The article shows how the way in which Afäwärḳ and Käbbädä defended Ethiopia's place in an unequal world had important consequences on their vision of domestic nation building, resulting in hierarchical assimilationist policies that marginalised Ethiopia's non-Christian citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Great Divergence" is the historical process that gave rise to the persistent gap in the per capita income between different regions of the world, about two centuries ago. Conventional explanations attribute its origin to the exceptional features of European societies. In this article I synthesize the challenges to this position and argument that ignores the importance of coercion and its relationship with technological innovation, institutions and culture. Coercion was not a sufficient condition for the Great Divergence, but it was necessary for the formation of persistent economic gaps between regions of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rising inequality is a ubiquitous problem, encompassing every geographical region and nation in the world. Inequality can be contended to have replaced unemployment as our most vital economic issue. After nearly six decades of declining inequality from the time of the First World War, the process has reversed itself with a vengeance, and we may be about to surpass the very high levels of inequality that prevailed in 1914. The causes are multifarious, including accelerating globalisation, plutocratic politics, excessive emphasis on 'meritocratic' pay, declining public expenditure, and social protection combined with the high rates of return on 'capital' compared to the overall economy's growth rate. Inequality between nation-states may be declining because of the rise of China, but within countries, inequalities are increasing everywhere. Excessive inequality prevents social mobility and contains the seeds of social conflict and even civil wars. Most crucially, excessive and rising inequality makes democratic politics and governance unsustainable. High inequality may be a causal factor behind the decline of democracy and the rise of autocracy and populism that we are witnessing globally. In the ultimate analysis, the reduction of inequality necessitates wealth taxes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractEven though Environmental tax policy impacts inequality theoretically, empirical studies remain scanty not only in the context of volumes and the estimation approaches but are also focused on selected advanced countries, communities, households, and emerging countries, the neglect of the global or big picture effect, which is essential for measuring the overall effect of the collective and individual country-concerted efforts in addressing this global cancer. We provide empirical evidence in the global context using the novel method of moments quantile regression. We found that Income Inequality across the globe is sharply reduced by restrictive environmental tax policy, a finding that has ramifications for global sustainable development, particularly in dealing with the ravaging effects of Covid-19.

Extrapolating a recent conceptualization of caste from India to the global level, this article argues that persons experience cross-national inequalities via their citizenship as a caste marker. Rather than imagine castes as features of the fixed pre-modern Hindu social order, the article posits that castes are variable modern ascriptive social hierarchies subject to contestation and change in which economic and social distinctions are maintained through physical and symbolic violence. The study shows how, globally, nation-states exert physical and symbolic violence to normalize cross-national inequalities instituting a global citizenship-based caste order. This approach recognizes the importance of both global material relations emphasized by world-systems approaches and of symbolic structures central to global institutionalist approaches. The study also underscores persons' positions and experiences confronting nation-states' might. Power struggles concentrated on nation-states result in variability of global relations' mutually reinforcing material and symbolic dimensions. The author uses caste features that appear 'essential' (i.e. ascriptive social closure, 'ethnic,' 'religious,' and 'purity' distinctions) as heuristics for identifying possible locations of caste construction and contestation, and identifies citizenship rules, nation-states' territorial nature, nationalism, and visa, border, and naturalization rituals as such caste development sites. Vulnerable groups (stateless persons, refugees, migrants) both challenge the citizenship caste order and experience viscerally its physical and symbolic violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: First developed in the 1980s, one of the most essential ideas in international business research has the been the concept of emerging markets. Since the start of the twenty-first century, empirical research has shown that there is no clear correlation between long-term real growth in gross domestic product and real equity returns in firms active in emerging markets. The purpose of this paper is to develop an explanation for both the pervasiveness and endurance of the emerging market discourse despite empirical evidence that substantially questions its very robustness. Design/methodology/approach: The author offers a "weak form" critique of the emerging market discourse that identifies weaknesses and gaps in the emerging market concept and offers suggestions on how to modify it without fundamentally rejecting its conceptual and ideological core. This paper also offers a "strong form" critique of emerging markets as a discourse arguing that the discourse itself is actually propagated to maintain and reinforce global economic inequality and should, therefore, be fundamentally transformed. Findings: Based on the strong form critique of emerging markets discourse, this paper shows how a three-phase process allows emerging market discourse to engender strategic and public policy practice. Scholars and educators play a pivotal role through their writing and discursive interactions with students and executives in their classroom. The centrality of scholars and educators is supported by the broader media ecosystem as well as being reinforced by interactions between executives and policymakers. Practical implications: This paper makes the case that international business scholars and educators should play a leading role in fundamentally transforming the emerging market discourse and to launch a renewed critical, inter-subjective discussion of dependency and global inequality through three mechanisms: peer-review research; course syllabi and programs; and public intellectualism. Originality/value: Through critical discourse analysis, this paper addresses for the first time how emerging markets as a concept has prospered in academic and managerial circles despite credible empirical evidence of its lack of robustness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into social entrepreneurship experience and fills a void in the extant literature by determining the post-COVID perspective contribution of social entrepreneurship activities. The research presents a nuanced perspective on the potential impact of social entrepreneurship on sustainable development across various geographical areas. We highlight an essential discovery that social entrepreneurship impacts sustainable development across diverse geographical regions. When addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, we must consider economic reasoning, theoretical implications, and geographical and socio-economic factors. Such considerations would significantly contribute to our collective efforts to overcome this global crisis. Adopting a strategic and effective method towards social entrepreneurship can accelerate the achievement of SDGs and promote equitable, sustainable development.

How did the hierarchy of the world-system adapt to the impact of the 2008–09 global economic crisis? How did a country's position in the world-system influence their upward mobility during the crisis? This paper investigates the core/periphery hierarchy of the global trade network before and after the 2008–09 crisis. The central argument posits that the global trade network follows a core/periphery hierarchy in relation to the new international division of labor (NIDL) in the twenty-first century, and a country's placement within that hierarchy had a varying effect on their upward mobility following the 2008–09 crisis. Utilizing social network analysis of 191 countries engaged in global trade, I discover that the core/periphery structure remained unchanged after the 2008–09 global financial crisis, although many countries in intermediate positions experienced upward shifts. However, not all countries were able to achieve upward mobility, indicating that only a few semi-peripheral and peripheral countries were better positioned to improve their status compared to most non-core countries.

Fire emits hazardous air pollutants, the most dominant of which is fine particulate matter of diameter ⩽2.5 μ m (PM _2.5 ). PM _2.5 is a great concern due to its adverse effects on public health. Previous studies have examined the health burden from fire-related PM _2.5 for the historical period; however, future global mortality associated with fire-PM _2.5 , particularly under the coexisting impacts of climate and socioeconomic changes, is yet to be projected. Here, we estimated the mortality associated to fire-PM _2.5 (fire-PM _2.5 mortality) for the present period (2010s) and then projected the mortality for the 2050s and 2090s under 10 scenarios created by combining two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP2.6 or 6.0) with five Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP1–5). We used the Li-Park fire model in combination with a chemical transport model and health risk assessment to calculate fire-PM _2.5 mortality. For the present period, the estimated fire-PM _2.5 mortality was 135 180 (105 403–163 738), which is 1.7 deaths per 100 000 population globally. When countries were grouped by income, the fire-PM _2.5 mortality rate was the highest in the high-income country group and lowest in the lowest-income country group. For the 2050s and 2090s, the fire-PM _2.5 mortality rate was projected to decrease under most scenarios because of decreases in fire emissions and baseline mortality rate. However, a scenario of high population growth and low technical development (SSP3) together with severe global warming (RCP6.0) would lead to an increase in the fire-PM _2.5 mortality rate in the 2090s, particularly in the highest-income countries, due to increased fire under drier and warmer weather conditions. Stratification of countries by gross domestic product indicated the need for adaptation efforts in the highest-income countries to avoid future increases of mortality associated with fire-PM _2.5 .

How did the hierarchy of the world-system adapt to the impact of the 2008-09 global economic crisis? How did a country's position in the world-system influence their upward mobility during the crisis? This paper investigates the core/periphery hierarchy of the global trade network before and after the 2008-09 crisis. The central argument posits that the global trade network follows a core/periphery hierarchy in relation to the new international division of labor (NIDL) in the twenty-first century, and a country's placement within that hierarchy had a varying effect on their upward mobility following the 2008-09 crisis. Utilizing social network analysis of 191 countries engaged in global trade, I discover that the core/periphery structure remained unchanged after the 2008-09 global financial crisis, although many countries in intermediate positions experienced upward shifts. However, not all countries were able to achieve upward mobility, indicating that only a few semi-peripheral and peripheral countries were better positioned to improve their status compared to most non-core countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into social entrepreneurship experience and fills a void in the extant literature by determining the post-COVID perspective contribution of social entrepreneurship activities. The research presents a nuanced perspective on the potential impact of social entrepreneurship on sustainable development across various geographical areas. We highlight an essential discovery that social entrepreneurship impacts sustainable development across diverse geographical regions. When addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, we must consider economic reasoning, theoretical implications, and geographical and socio-economic factors. Such considerations would significantly contribute to our collective efforts to overcome this global crisis. Adopting a strategic and effective method towards social entrepreneurship can accelerate the achievement of SDGs and promote equitable, sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Increasing share in Global Value Chains worsens the internal distribution of income. • Participation is key for achieving economic upgrading, but it presents negative effects on inter-country inequality. • We find "smile curve" relationships between position in global value chains and intra-country inequality in developed countries, Latin America, and East & Southeast Asia. • Regarding inter-country inequality, the results suggest opportunities for catching-up in Latin America and Africa associated to their specialization in the tails of these chains. Recent economic growth cannot be understood without considering the emergence of Global Value Chains (GVCs). However, recent literature has highlighted that economic upgrading cannot be taken as a granted result of the involvement in GVCs, and it does not necessarily lead to positive social outcomes. We explore whether the recent performance of countries in the GVCs has significantly conditioned the intra- and inter-country inequalities. Using a combined multisectoral-multiregional (MRIO) and econometric approach, we analyze 67 countries during 1995–2018. Regarding involvement in GVCs, we look into "smile curves", in reference to the quadratic relation between position and inequality. The results show different geographical patterns. For intra-country inequality, we find significant "smile curves" in Developed, African, Latin American, and Asian countries, so these can reduce internal inequalities by moving to intermediate positions in GVCs. For inter-country inequality, results suggest opportunities for catching-up in Latin America and Africa by specializing in the tails. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines two Ghanaian-born intellectuals – economist George Ayittey and anthropologist and sociologist Kwesi Kwaa Prah – and their positions on both local and global inequalities by studying their writings from the mid-1980s–1990s. It answers the questions of how and through which debates both intellectuals addressed and engaged with notions of global inequality. Methodologically anchored in global intellectual history, this article offers a historical, qualitative, and actor-oriented study. As emphasised by Jonathon Earle, the question of how African intellectuals have shaped the intellectual history of the modern world represents an understudied field within global intellectual history.1 In an attempt to address this void, I show how Ayittey and Prah invoked global inequalities through different notions of neo-colonialism as well as criticisms of African elites, such as their indigenous rootlessness. The article argues that their conceptions of global inequalities were hinged on broader debates revolving around issues of African (under)development while their proposed solutions were founded on notions of African indigeneity, drawing on earlier African thought. I show how they actively reused ideas of indigenous development as formulated by Gold Coast intellectual Joseph E. Casely Hayford (1866–1930) in the beginning of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic has increased the inequality of rights around the world. The intellectual property system contributes to this asymmetry by limiting access to vaccines and other health technologies to only a few producers. This article addresses the impacts of this system, presents and analyses alternatives for broadening the supply of these health goods – such as compulsory licensing – and demonstrates the importance of defending the TRIPS Waiver mechanism in the fight against the coronavirus.

Post-industrial society and liberal democracies are plagued by their own contradictions and conflicts. Cultural decadence is not confined to developing nations. Rise of global inequality, authoritarianism, violence, and terror mark the evil profligacy of the new bourgeois class. A brief requiem for liberalism and democracy seems in order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growth in international trade between countries at different levels of development is one of the main drivers of economic globalization. This phenomenon relates to the new international division of labour in which an Emerging Periphery, hosting the offshoring and outsourcing of world manufacturing, stands between a developed Center and a still backward, Poor Periphery. Following the analysis of the relative and absolute indices of global locational inequality, the effect of the unequal exchange on world income distribution in the last 25 years is investigated. A new methodology based on real currency misalignments and value-added trade is presented, which accounts also for international value transfers within global value chains. The counterfactual test shows that trade value transfers represent a significant source of revenue for the Center diverted from the Peripheries. Unequal exchange widens the opportunity gap between citizens of rich and poor countries through an increase in global locational inequality. Redefining post-pandemic international economic rules should therefore recognize the effect of unequal exchange on global inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies a critical policy analysis to the United Nations Security Council (unsc) reform policy from the Group of Four (G4), to suggest ways for the G4 to clarify its policy's impact and opportunities for Global South countries. The coalition comprises Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan. Based on an analysis of a dataset that includes official reform proposals, press statements, meetings statements, meetings notes, and interviews with key actors, the article concludes with five policy directions that can make the G4's reform policy clear, transparent, and subsequently successful in terms of the necessary appeal and ensuing support from Global South countries. The article relies on a conceptual and methodological differentiation between how the absent unsc reform problem is presented and represented, respectively. A focus on the representation, which mainly refers to the policy's subtle and implicit strategies and consequences, allows for the following overall contributions to unsc reform studies. First, I point out how the policy promotes and opposes democracy, equality, and increased Global South influence. Second, the analysis guides the G4 strategy and unsc reform strategies, at large, towards emphases on the African Union's reform position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the study is to determine the main indicators of social instability and forms of its manifestation in the modern world. The elements of scientific novelty of this work are that the article comprehensively analyzes the main signs of social instability in global and regional contexts, shows their essential relationship. The research methodology is based on a complex combination of philosophical (dialectical, axiological) and general scientific methods of studying the problem of social instability in the modern world, including synergetic, comparative and concretization methods. Social turbulence has resulted from intensifying geopolitical confrontations and "economic wars" between the world's leading countries, including the United States and China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central aim of Peter Hägel's Billionaires in World Politics (BWP) is to challenge the assumption that private individuals lack agency and power in world politics – an assumption that is widely shared in the field of International Relations (IR). Hägel's methodological strategy to achieve this aim is twofold. First, he concentrates on minutest biographical aspects of billionaires to lay bare the idiosyncrasy of their choices, and to falsify, thus, structuralist assumptions of how individual agency is undermined by factors such as class, roles, or fields. Second, Hägel engages in counter-factual reasoning to support the claim that these individual decisions end up having a real impact on public affairs abroad. This impact is difficult to overestimate given that, as Hägel reveals, billionaires have affected a whole array of political issues, including Brexit, climate change policy, democratic development in Eastern Europe, global health policy, the Israeli-Palestine conflict, and the war in Iraq. This introduction starts off by elaborating on the central scholarly contribution of BWP. Following that, this introduction explains why the insights that BWP provides suggest that we do not live in a neo-feudal order, despite the immense global economic inequality which billionaires' wealth manifests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing a theoretical framework that draws on the concept of global regimes of mobility and Bourdieu's theory of practice, this article seeks to analyse how African student migrants in China navigate global structural inequalities in planning for post-graduation mobility, while strategising to overcome barriers to mobility and capital accumulation. It argues that China's position within the contemporary global political economy is reflected in the ways these student migrants navigate intersecting global mobility regimes. Moving beyond the 'stay/return' binary common in student mobility research, the article delineates three post-study trajectories: returnees, deterred by structural barriers from staying in the host country; those who stay in China, overcoming these barriers by opening businesses, with plans to return home later; and those who plan to accumulate capital in China to meet the requirements of more stringent mobility regimes in the Global North. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of 'transnational family' coalesced in the context of neo-liberal globalisation during the late 1990s and 2000s. This article traces the social, economic and political forces that have influenced the spread of transnational families throughout the world during the 21st century. Meanwhile, the digital revolution in social media communication and cheapening international travel costs has facilitated transnational family members communication with one another. Examining material exchanges between transnational family members in sending and receiving countries, childcare support for migrants' left-behind children provided by home-based family members has been a critical enabler of women's out-migration. In turn, migrants' remittance payments have been a basic lifeline or a source of improved standards of living for family members in sending countries. Overtime, global neo-liberal policies have generated the context for the expansion of transnational family migration through promotion of international travel and internet communication. However, neo-liberalism has inadvertently paved the way for the growth of national precariats and one-state populism resting on segments of Western national populations' resentment of international migration. Collapsing neo-liberalism as well as the intensification of global warming and the onset of the COVID pandemic are likely to influence the future of global migration and transnational familyhood in, as yet, indeterminant ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of ‘transnational family’ coalesced in the context of neo-liberal globalisation during the late 1990s and 2000s. This article traces the social, economic and political forces that have influenced the spread of transnational families throughout the world during the 21st century. Meanwhile, the digital revolution in social media communication and cheapening international travel costs has facilitated transnational family members communication with one another. Examining material exchanges between transnational family members in sending and receiving countries, childcare support for migrants’ left-behind children provided by home-based family members has been a critical enabler of women’s out-migration. In turn, migrants’ remittance payments have been a basic lifeline or a source of improved standards of living for family members in sending countries. Overtime, global neo-liberal policies have generated the context for the expansion of transnational family migration through promotion of international travel and internet communication. However, neo-liberalism has inadvertently paved the way for the growth of national precariats and one-state populism resting on segments of Western national populations’ resentment of international migration. Collapsing neo-liberalism as well as the intensification of global warming and the onset of the COVID pandemic are likely to influence the future of global migration and transnational familyhood in, as yet, indeterminant ways.

A critical review of Immanuel Wallerstein’s Modern World-System is far more than just an obligation sociologists and historians owe to one of the most influential social scientists of the last fifty years. Rather a reconsideration is both timely and urgent for two reasons: On the one hand, the theme he dealt with most intensively—early modern capitalism—is more topical than ever in the early twenty-first century because with the demise of industrial capitalism structural similarities between early modern forms of mercantile capitalism like the putting-out system and today’s attempts of platform or digital capitalism to monopolize market access become more and more obvious. And on the other hand, Wallerstein’s dominant concern with the asymmetrical power relations between center, semiperipheries and peripheries can still serve as a powerful reminder to seriously engage the global dimension of capitalist development today.This article although written from the perspective of a historian will try to do justice to Wallerstein’s theoretical ambitions as well will be extremely simple. It will be shown that although some critical points were well taken Wallerstein’s general approach to early modern capitalism is by no means completely outdated and superseded. Even if some of the answers he gave may seem indefensible today, there can be no doubt that he asked crucially important questions which still are in need of answers today.