Combining case studies with normative theory, this book analyzes the democratic credentials of transnational actors participating in global governance, ranging from corporations and philanthropic foundations to NGOs and social movements. This leads to innovative interpretations of democratic legitimacy in a transnational context.

This book evaluates China's relations with sub-regional Southeast Asia through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation framework. The book looks at domestic drivers and regional receptivity of China's Belt and Road Initiative and also delves into the challenges of China's engagement in the Greater Mekong Sub-region. The book examines how China's BRI will contribute to the development of these countries, to regional economic integration and cooperation processes within a political-economic context. It addresses the BRI process within the GMS on three levels: regional, individual recipient countries and the Chinese perspective. The case studies in the book will help to provide insights on China's growing economic influence in sub-regional Southeast Asia and its Belt and Road Initiative. This book will appeal to researchers interested in the BRI, China's relations with Southeast Asia and China's neighbourhood policy and how domestic considerations are influencing China's policy making.

Entrepreneurship development is a major area of focus today as it has huge potential in creating jobs and self-employability and thus contributing to economic development. India, in the last few years in particular, has seen exponential growth of start-ups and new-age entrepreneurs. Both the Central and State Governments have been taking proactive steps towards the development of entrepreneurship in the country. The Government has launched various schemes and programmes to attract investors and create a healthy ecosystem for entrepreneurship. India is one of the largest homes of start-ups in the world and has been highly successful in bringing significant amounts of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Moreover, the Government is taking active steps in removal of the bureaucratic hurdles and bottlenecks, so that entrepreneurship development is encouraged. In order to promote the culture of entrepreneurship development, the subject has been made part of the curriculum at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels across disciplines. This book is a sincere attempt to build the fundamentals of the subject amongst students alongside motivating them to become future entrepreneurs. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of business administration, management, and entrepreneurship.

This book presents the narratives and voices of young, mostly male practitioners of hip hop culture in Delhi, India. The author suggests that practitioners understand hip hop as both a thing that can be appropriated and authenticated, made real, in the local and global context and as a way that enables them to transform their lives and futures in the rapidly globalising urban environments of Delhi. The dancers, artists, musicians and cultural theorists that feature in this book construct a multitude of voices in their narratives to formulate their 'own' transcultural voices within global hip hop. Through a combination of linguistic ethnography, sociolinguistics and discourse studies, the book addresses issues including gender and sexuality, identity construction and global culture.

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen documents the startling rise of the Arab Gulf States as regional powers with international reach and provides a definitive account of how they have become embedded in the global system of power, politics, and policy-making.

Over the last decade, author and activist Astra Taylor has helped shift the national conversation on topics including technology, inequality, indebtedness, and democracy. The essays collected here reveal the range and depth of her thinking, with Taylor tackling the rising popularity of socialism, the problem of automation, the politics of listening, the possibility of rights for the natural and non-human world, the future of the university, the temporal challenge of climate catastrophe, and more. Addressing some of the most pressing social problems of our day, Taylor invites us to imagine how things could be different while never losing sight of the strategic question of how change actually happens. Curious and searching, these historically informed and hopeful essays are as engaging as they are challenging and as urgent as they are timeless. Taylor 's unique philosophical style has a political edge that speaks directly to the growing conviction that a radical transformation of our economy and society is required.

The past 30 years are often depicted as an era of globalisation, and even more so with the recent rise of global giants such as Google and Amazon. This updated and revised edition of The Handbook of Globalisation offers novel insights into the rapid changes our world is facing, and how best we can handle them. With multi-disciplinary contributions from leading experts, this Handbook covers a broad spectrum of issues and opportunities surrounding modern globalisation. It explores the idea that globalisation is not new, natural or inevitable, but rather that current global arrangements are the result of corporate pressure and the choices of politicians. It highlights the fact that the deregulated, free market form of globalisation is not unavoidable and explores a new era of global co-operation based around a Green New Deal. It also considers the future of globalisation in the face of the Trump presidency, Brexit and the move towards more state-centred policies. This Handbook continues to be a vital resource for scholars, students and researchers of economics, international relations, and business and management who wish to gain a more in-depth understanding of globalisation from a variety of different disciplines. Politicians and policy makers will also benefit from the advice offered to avoid some of the increasingly negative impacts of our globalising world. Contributors include: P. Arestis, E. Braunstein, P. Brosnan, H.-J. Chang, C. Craypo, G. DeMartino, G. Dymski, G. Epstein, A. Glyn, J. Heintz, C. Hines, P. Hirst, G.M. Hodgson, J. Howells, G. Ietto-Gillies, M. Koenig-Archibugi, S. Lee, P. Lysandrou, J. Michie, J.G. Palma, M. Panic, J. Perraton, J. Plasmans, M. Sawyer, S. Sinclair, A. Singh, J. Stanford, B. Sutcliffe, G. Thompson, J. Toye, F. Wilkinson, R. Woodward, A. Zammit

The Organic Globalizer is a collection of critical essays which takes the position that hip-hop holds political significance through an understanding of its ability to at once raise cultural awareness, expand civil society's focus on social and economic justice through institution building, and engage in political activism and participation. Collectively, the essays assert hip hop's importance as an "organic globalizer:" no matter its pervasiveness or reach around the world, hip-hop ultimately remains a grassroots phenomenon that is born of the community from which it permeates. Hip hop, then, holds promise through three separate but related avenues: (1) through cultural awareness and identification/recognition of voices of marginalized communities through music and art; (2) through social creation and the institutionalization of independent alternative institutions and non-profit organizations in civil society geared toward social and economic justice; and (3) through political activism and participation in which demands are articulated and made on the state. With editorial bridges between chapters and an emphasis on interdisciplinary and diverse perspectives, The Organic Globalizer is the natural scholarly evolution in the conversation about hip-hop and politics.

This book explores the paradox of the hospitality industry: customers demand not only personal and innovative tourism products and services, but also cost-effective ones. Enterprises have the option to meet the former demand by offering authentic products and services while the latter could be achieved through standardization. Although it seems ideal to combine both concepts, they seemingly contradict each other leading to suppliers facing an authenticity-standardization paradox. The authors identify, analyze, and provide solutions for this authenticity-standardization paradox based on a series of case studies of restaurants in China. This book will be of interest to scholars, business owners, and consultants.

There has been rapid proliferation of public-private partnerships in areas of human rights, environmental protection and development in global governance. This book demonstrates how different forms of partnership legitimacy and accountability interact, and pinpoints trade-offs between democratic values in partnership operations.

What accounts for the large reduction in trade barriers among new democracies in Asia after World War II? Using new data from Japan and Thailand, this book provides a surprising answer: politicians, especially party leaders, liberalized trade by buying off legislative support with side-payments such as pork barrel projects. Trade liberalization was a legislative triumph, not an executive achievement. This finding challenges the conventional 'insulation' argument, which posits that insulating executives from special interest groups and voters is the key to successful trade liberalization. By contrast, this book demonstrates that party leaders built open economy coalitions with legislators by feeding legislators' rent-seeking desires with side-payments rather than depriving their appetites. This book unravels the political foundations of open economy.

This book provides an understanding of Russia's geopolitical strategic interests as well as a larger picture of its political realities. It shares insights on how to understand and solve the problems affecting US-Russian relations and the world.The book addresses three primary questions relevant to the current global context: Will current geopolitical shifts greatly benefit Russia's long-term global objectives? What foreign policy will Russia pursue in the Middle East and the Baltic regions to guarantee the security of its strategic interests? And will major powers confront one another over resources that could trigger military conflict, or will they choose appeasement to maintain peace and stability in this new era? Thus, the book offers insights into the future geopolitical landscape. It therefore is a must-read for scholars, researchers of international relations and political science, as well as professionals, practitioners and analysts, interested in a better understanding of the changing global order and Russia's geopolitical strategic interests.

One of the major characteristics of our contemporary culture is a positive, almost banal, view of the transgression and disruption of cultural boundaries. Strangers, migrants and nomads are celebrated in our postmodern world of hybrids and cyborgs. But we pay a price for this celebration of hybridity: the non-hybrid figures in our societies are ignored, rejected, silenced or exterminated. This book tells the story of these non-hybrid figures D the anti-heroes of our pop culture. The main example of non-hybrids in an otherwise hybridized world is that of deep old age. Hazan shows how we fervently distance ourselves from old age by grading and sequencing it into stages such as the third age , the fourth age and so on. Aging bodies are manipulated through anti-aging techniques until it is no longer possible to do it anymore, at which point they become un-transformable and non-marketable objects and hence commercially and socially invisible or masked. Other examples are used to elucidate the same cultural logic of the non-hybrid: pain, the Holocaust, autism, fundamentalism and corporeal death. On the face of it, these examples may seem to have nothing in common, but they all exemplify the same cultural logic of the non-hybrid and provoke similar reactions of criticism, terror, abhorrence and moral indignation. This highly original and iconoclastic book offers a fresh critique of contemporary Western culture by focusing on that which is perceived as its other D the non-hybrid in our midst, often rejected, ignored or silenced and deemed to be in need of globally manageable correction.

This two-volume handbook provides readers with a comprehensive interpretation of globality through the multifaceted prism of the humanities and social sciences. Key concepts and symbolizations rooted in and shaped by European academic traditions are discussed and reinterpreted under the conditions of the global turn. Highlighting consistent anthropological features and socio-cultural realities, the handbook gathers coherently structured articles written by 110 professors in the humanities and social sciences at Bonn University, Germany, who initiate a global dialogue on meaningful and sustainable notions of human life in the age of globality. Volume 1 introduces readers to various interpretations of globality, and discusses notions of human development, communication and aesthetics. Volume 2 covers notions of technical meaning, of political and moral order, and reflections on the shaping of globality.

Despite China's clear and growing importance on the world stage, it remains often and easily misunderstood. Indeed, there are many Chinas, as this comprehensive survey, the most current and authoritative introduction available, vividly illustrates. Now in a thoroughly revised and updated edition, this text traces the changes occurring in this powerful and ancient nation across both time and space. Beginning with China's diverse landscapes and environments, and continuing through its formative history and tumultuous recent past, the authors show contemporary China as a product of both internal and external forces. They consider historical and current successes and difficulties, including economic, political, cultural, and environmental challenges, while placing China in its international context as a massive, developing, diverse nation that is meeting the needs of its 1.4 billion citizens while becoming an aggressive major regional and global player. Through clear prose and 160 insightful maps, tables, and photos, China's Geography illustrates and explains the great economic, political, and social differences found throughout China's many regions. Accompanying the book is a companion website that provides a wealth of additional materials, including sample lectures, color versions of all the graphics, time series and provincial data files for student projects in Excel, lists of favorite films and websites, and public domain maps for student use.

The world needs a UN 3.0. The extent and severity of global crises are such that business as usual provides no solution. Roland Rich's Leviathan describes the necessary next version of the United Nations. It is a confident, competent, and independent organization that incorporates the world of business and global civil society as well as governments. It will certainly not have a monopoly on the use of force, but it will lead the international community through a mix of the principle of subsidiarity placing it at the apex, the application of the process of certification whereby thousands of entities are engaged in problem-solving, and the benefit of legitimacy earned through performance. The result will allow the UN to tackle the climate crisis, broaden the protection of democracy and human rights, govern globalization, and be better prepared for the next pandemic. Leviathan contains a vision but not a blueprint. Yet it does spell out how to achieve the first essential step - to clip the wings of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

This book explores how traditional Sunni Muslim conceptions have informed or shaped Islamization strategies in contemporary Turkey. In particular, the author proposes to examine the teaching curriculum of the Ministry of Education, which oversees Turkish public religious education; the activities and teachings of Diyanet, the constitutional organ responsible for managing all religious affairs; and the ideas and activities of three Muslim religious groups currently operating in Turkey. The monograph explains how the interpretation and practice of Islam affects various situations in the Muslim world and analyzes the concept of nature in Islam, which has been an indivisible component of Islamic tradition since the beginning.

Few issues in development raise as much heat as the impact of transnational corporations (TNCs) on the South. However, the exact nature of the relationship between foreign direct investment and development remains unclear both conceptually and empirically. The contributors to this edited volume offer a wide-reaching exploration of these links through a series of case studies from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Central Europe. The book also focuses on the role of 'new players' such as Chinese, Indian and South African TNCs.

Civilizations, or rather narratives about civilizations, matter, not only as research subjects in textbooks, literary and scientific essays, but also in politics. This seems to be the case in "civilizational states" such as China, Russia, Turkey and Syria. Also in Western countries, in recent decades, the notion of civilization has often been used in public discourse: political parties and leaders have referred in particular to the need to protect Western civilization, calling in this regard for policies to restrict immigration from Muslim countries. In 2022 the narrative on civilization was used to legitimize the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The studies in this collected volume reconstruct how civilizational paradigms and narratives have been used to explain political relations, to define the global order, to justify attempts to gain hegemony over particular geopolitical areas, and to make predictions on global developments in specific times of crisis. In particular, this book analyzes the concepts of civilization as they have been used in the intellectual and political discourse in periods particularly critical for global relations and for the consolidation or contestation of the West's dominant role in international, national politics and academic discourse.

The world's systems of higher education (HE) are caught up in the fourth industrial revolution of the twenty-first century. Driven by increased globalization, demographic expansion in demand for education, new information and communications technology, and changing cost structures influencing societal expectations and control, higher education systems across the globe are adapting to the pressures of this new industrial environment. To make sense of the complex changes in the practices and structures of higher education, this Handbook sets out a theoretical framework to explain what higher education systems are, how they may be compared over time, and why comparisons are important in terms of societal progress in an increasingly interconnected world. Drawing on insights from over 40 leading international scholars and practitioners, the chapters examine the main challenges facing institutions of higher education, how they should be managed in changing conditions, and the societal implications of different approaches to change. Structured around the premise that higher education plays a significant role in ensuring that a society achieves the capacity to adjust itself to change, while at the same time remaining cohesive as a social system, this Handbook explores how current internal and external forces disturb this balance, and how institutions of higher education could, and might, respond.

This book examines the evolving economic relationship between China and the West, in particular investment regimes and climates. How do their economic models differ, how do they interact, and what does it mean for growth and economic freedom? In recent years, the amount of Chinese FDI in Europe and the US has soared. Although European and American FDI in China is still significantly higher, the discussion about fair regulations for investors in both countries is subject of expanding debate. All this takes place in the middle of the negotiation of a new investment treaty with the European Union and prospects of a trade war between the US and China. This book gives Academics, Practitioners and Politicians "simple rules" for navigating these challenges with an eye to maximizing value and minimizing risk.

Using Taiwan as a case study, this book constructs an innovative theory of a political sociology of language. Through documentary and ethnographic data and a comparative-historical method the book illustrates how language mediates interactions between society and the state and becomes politicized as a result; how language, politics and power are intertwined processes; and how these processes are not isolated in institutions but socially embedded.

This book offers a materialist critique of mainstream human rights discourse in the period following 9/11, examining literary works, critical histories, international declarations, government statutes, NGO manifestos, and a documentary film. The author points out some of the contradictions that emerge in contemporary rights language when material relations are not sufficiently perceived or acknowledged, and he directs attention to the role of some rights talk in maintaining and managing the accelerated global project of capital accumulation. Even as rights discourse points to injustices-for example, injustices related to labor, gender, the citizen's relationship to the state, or the movement of refugees-it can simultaneously maintain systems of oppression. By constructing subjects who are aligned to the interests of capital, by emphasizing individual "empowerment," and/or by containing social disenchantment, it reinforces the process of wealth accumulation, supports neoliberal ideologies, and diminishes the possibility of real transformation through collective struggle.

"It is my expectation that respect for the critical importance of seed sovereignty will in due course be recognised by member states of the United Nations to be as critical to global peace and security as the UN Charter demands in respect of State sovereign equality, justice, human rights and economic and social wellbeing for all peoples."-Denis J. Halliday, UN Assistant Secretary-General 1994-98 "A constructive contribution to our understanding of what is going wrong and what can go right in the complex area of seed sovereignty."-Dervla Murphy, renowned travel writer and adventurer "Keeping seed diversity alive is the secret ingredient, not just for the good, nutrient-dense food that every cook, gardener and farmer/producer needs, but for strengthening our resilience in the face of multiple environmental threats. This compelling and timely book helps us to understand what we are up against and how we can overcome it."- Darina Allen, internationally renowned cook, founder of Ballymaloe Cookery school and President of the East Cork Convivium of Slow Food This book studies the relationship between globalisation and seed sovereignty in Sub-Saharan Africa. It provides comparative case studies of the most recent Kenyan and Ethiopian seed laws, as well as a study of seed sovereignty 'on the ground' in a locality within Ethiopia. Based on extensive fieldwork, it identifies the interests and motivations of transnational seed corporations, global philanthropic organisations, state actors, and local farmers. It finds significant differences in the wording of seed laws and the exercise of seed sovereignty, applying theories of globalisation to help us better understand these varied outcomes. It shows that seed sovereignty has the potential to be shared between local, national, regional, and global authorities, but in different ways in different countries and localities. In the face of what might sometimes appear to be unstoppable global forces, these findings suggest that the exercise of seed sovereignty can be transformed even in a highly globalised world.