This interdisciplinary volume analyzes the strong links between the way we form our individual and collective identities and the type of society in which we live. The contributors--who include sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and philosophers--focus on the issue of modern identity both on a conceptual level and in the context of European unification and progressive globalization. Among the issues examined are the tension between our fluid, situation-specific identity and our constant attempt to create a coherent image of the self; the transformation of identities resulting from the collective experiences of East European societies in the aftermath of Communism; and the interplay between the evolution of the modes of constitution of identity and the social changes determined by European integration.

In this open access book, Mikael Hard tells a story of how people around the world challenged the production techniques and products brought by globalization. Retaining their autonomy and freedom, creative individuals selectively adopted or rejected modern gadgets, tools, and machines. In standard historical narratives, globalization is portrayed as an unstoppable force that flattens all obstacles in its path. Modern technology is also seen as inexorable: in the nineteenth century, steamships, telegraph lines, and Gatling guns are said to have paved the way for colonialism and other forms of dominating people and societies. Later, shipping containers and computer networks purportedly pulled the planet deeper into a maelstrom of capitalism. Hard discusses instances that push back against these narratives. For example, in Soviet times, inhabitants of Samarkand, Uzbekistan, preferred to remain in-and expand-their own mud-brick houses rather than move into prefabricated, concrete residential buildings. Similarly, nineteenth-century Sumatran carpenters ignored the saws brought to them by missionaries-and chose to chop down trees with their arch-bladed adzes. And people in colonial India successfully competed with capitalist-run Caribbean sugar plantations, continuing to produce their own muscovado and sell it to local consumers. This book invites readers to view the history of technology and material culture through the lens of diversity. Based on research funded by the European Research Council and conducted in the Global South, Microhistories of Technology: Making the World shows that the spread of modern technologies did not erase artisanal production methods and traditional tools.

This study is the first effort to document the extent of NAFTA's impact on higher education. Through case studies, the authors analyze higher education policy in Canada, Mexico, and the USA using a common theoretical framework that identifies economic globalization, international trade liberalization, and post-industrialization as common structural factors exerting a significant influence on higher education in the three countries.

It may be tempting to view political development and democratization in East Asia from a global view and conclude that the contours of democracy will converge throughout the world. However, a close examination of the cultural and economic development of Asian societies suggests a contrary picture. The story of Asia is one of political and economic survival, in which political elites sought to legitimate their authority through the use of both traditional and modern symbols. Traditional communitarian values and the modern symbols of economic growth and materialism coexist in Asian political systems. The stability and legitimacy of Asian governments depend on the ability of political elites to balance these symbols. As globalization proceeds, the standard traditional and modern symbols have waned in their effectiveness. Therefore, democracy as a symbol and practice can provide new sources of legitimacy to these political systems.

Compton's Asian political development model is tested with quantitative indicators and through a series of case studies. The three case studies--Japan, South Korea, and Thailand--build on each other through a rigorous historical comparison. While the case studies themselves are interesting, he makes connections to the model and tests the congruence of these cases to the model, and concludes that the model's validity is predicated on the internal environment, including culture and economy. Of particular interest to scholars, students, and researchers involved with comparative and Asian politics, political development, and political culture.

"Language and the City "shows how the contemporary form of globalization has certain effects on language in social context and identifies the city as the most important site for the realization of these effects. The book challenges a set of assumptions that hold sustainable linguistic diversity to be inherently non-urban while regarding the city as an unproblematic site for understanding the social function of language. The central purpose of the work is to construct a fresh conceptual framework for understanding language-city relationships.

The key arguments and debates about globalization have raised searching questions about the significance of national and regional borders for the competitive strategies of individuals, firms and industries." Global Competitiveness and Innovation" seeks to address these issues by exploring four key topics: The status of economic agents in the emerging global economy; the limits of path dependence and the scope of agent action; the relationship between agents' decision-making and their environments; and agents' learning capacities in a world of information and knowledge creation.

The globalization of the motor vehicle industry--specifically, cars and light trucks--has engendered new forms of competition and cooperation with less regard for national boundaries than ever before. The DaimlerChrysler merger, the GM-Toyota joint venture, the Renault equity stake in Nissan, the Ford takeover of Mazda, Jaguar, and Volvo cars, and direct foreign investments in Mexico, Mercosur (Mercado Com DEGREESD'un del Sur), China, and India--developments like these are almost impossible to keep up with. Hiraoka, a prize-winning analyst of manufacturing excellence in the automotive industry, surveys them and their causes and presents a clarifying picture with thoroughness and depth.

Hiraoka's explanation of the various factors contributing to globalization of the motor vehicle industry provides the background information necessary to gain perspective on recent events. These developments include e-commerce networks, alliances with local and far-flung parts suppliers, low-cost mass production and distribution systems, the launching of hybrid products in mature economies, and the buildup of capacity in emerging markets. His analysis ranges widely, delving into managerial reactions to regional free-trade blocks, currency crises, government shifts away from central planning and trade protectionism, the vicissitudes of business cycles in emerging markets, and the juxtaposition of Japan's prolonged recession and the booming American motor vehicle market. Corporate decision-makers, labor leaders, policy analysts, researchers, students, and industry observers will benefit from understanding the global characteristics of today's motor vehicle industry.

The 'democratic deficit' of the European Union is a much discussed-concern of politicians and commentators, and this insightful collection argues that this is a result of the multi-level nature of EU governance. Popular loyalties become divided between levels of government, lines of accountability become ambiguous and supranational institutions seem distant from citizens.These challenges are part of broader globalizing processes that have destabilized the traditional notion of the nation state and replaced it with multilevel forms of governance across the globe.
Focusing on the EU, this volume examines the problems multilevel governance causes for democratic legitimacy by placing it in a comparative and theoretical context, and explore how challenges faced by the EU compare with those faced by traditional federal systems worldwide. Through a combination of theoretical perspectives and empirical research, this book offers the means to evaluate the various explanations for the problems facing democracy within the EU and shows how legitimacy and accountability can be improved.

The world's financial markets experienced a strong globalization trend in the 20th century. With the removal of barriers to cross-border flow of capital, financial markets have become truly global during the last two decades of the century. The research papers included in this book study a number of important issues in the world's financial markets. The recent emerging markets crisis, which started in South-Eeast Asia and affected all the world's developed and emerging financial markets, is studied in detail. Another important issue, which receives considerable coverage in the book, is the European financial integration. The financial markets in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America are studied extensively and the linkages between them are analyzed. The objective of the book is to provide the reader with a comprehensive and balanced overview of the world's financial markets at the end of the 20th century.

This book engages the question, hotly debated among theorists and policymakers alike, of how a developing country's pursuit of foreign direct investment (FDI) affects its development prospects in a globalized world. Can small latecomers to economic development use high-tech FDI to rapidly expand indigenous capabilities, thus shortcutting stages of the industrialization process? What conditions, economic and non-economic, must be met for this strategy to succeed? Using the cases of Ireland and Costa Rica, the author shows how the dynamics of the FDI-development nexus have changed over time, rendering problematic Costa Rica's attempt, and those of other latecomers, to replicate the Celtic Tiger's success story.

This study explores a range of dynamics in state-society relations which are crucial to an understanding of the contemporary world: processes of state formation, collapse and restructuring, all strongly influenced by globalization in its various respects. The themes addressed include strategies of state construction, and trajectories of state decline, collapse and re-start, the politics of statelessness and the dynamics of identity and power. Particular attention is given to externally orchestrated state restructuring and to the varying capacities of state systems in the South to cope with the impact of global forces.

In an era of intensifying globalization and transnational connectivity, the dynamics of cultural production and the very notion of creativity are in transition. Exploring creative practices in various settings, the book does not only call attention to the spread of modernist discourses of creativity, from the colonial era to the current obsession with 'innovation' in neo-liberal capitalist cultural politics, but also to the less visible practices of copying, recycling and reproduction that occur as part and parcel of creative improvization.

In an era of intensifying globalization and transnational connectivity, the dynamics of cultural production and the very notion of creativity are in transition. Exploring creative practices in various settings, the book does not only call attention to the spread of modernist discourses of creativity, from the colonial era to the current obsession with 'innovation' in neo-liberal capitalist cultural politics, but also to the less visible practices of copying, recycling and reproduction that occur as part and parcel of creative improvization.

The contributors to this volume provide a critical examination of the notion of bilingualism as it has developed in linguistics and of its use in discourses of social regulation in state and civil society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They attempt to move the field away from a common sense, but in fact highly ideologized, view of bilingualism as the co-existence of two linguistic systems, and to develop a critical perspective which approaches bilingualism as a wide variety of sets of sociolinguistics practices connected to the construction of social difference and of social inequality under specific historical conditions.

As the international behaviour of firms changes, so too must the theories used to describe, explain and predict that behaviour change. This volume is conceived as an exploration of the evolving nature of internationalization in the context of shifting environmental forces in an effort to: highlight the nature of firms' changing behaviours; explore the potential reasons for those changes; and propose new perspectives from which a more contemporary theory of internationalization can be developed. The papers in this volume examine the internationalization behaviour of a wide range of firms, from MNCs to SMEs, including firms from both developed and emerging economies. Consideration is given to the rapid internationalization of "born global" firms, to inward as well as outward internationalization and to the dynamic nature of internationalization at the beginning of the 21st century.

This book presents Korea's economic strategy to meet the emerging challenges, as it recovers from the 1997 financial crisis and moves on into the globalization and information era. For important policy areas, the authors evaluate existing policies, and offer proposals for new strategic direction that can achieve sustainable and equitable economic growth for Korea. A considerable majority of the contributing authors are involved in formulating economic strategy as policy advisors to the Korean government, and they bring to their chapters extensive experience and insights regarding Korean government policies that are rarely available to readers in such a comprehensive form. The book therefore offers a timely, practical, and unique analysis of all aspects of the Korean economy. Academics, policy practitioners, and others with interests in the Korean economy, Asian economies, development studies, and a broad sweep of other issues concerning structural reform will find in this volume a gold mine of detail and opinion.

Continued growth of the global market necessitates research that establishes norms and practices and ensures the appropriate level of ethical concern for those who contribute to the process of globalization and are being affected by globalization. Ethical Models and Applications of Globalization: Cultural, Socio-Political and Economic Perspectives presents the work of researchers who seek to advance the understanding of both the ethical impact of globalization and the influence of globalization on ethical practices from various cultural, socio-political, economic, and religious perspectives. The aim of this reference work is to put forward empirically grounded methods for understanding both the effect that the process of globalization has on ethical practices in organizations and how this research can shape the course of economic globalization.

The figure of the stranger is in serious need of revision, as is our understanding of the society against which the stranger is projected. Under conditions of globalization, inside/outside markers have been eroded and conventional indicators of "we-ness" are no longer reliable. We now live in a generalized state of strangeness, one consequence of globalization: we no longer know where our community ends and another one begins. In such circumstances it is often the case that neighbors are the nearest strangers. Strangeness occurs when global consciousness outstrips global connectivity and this means that we need to rethink some core elements of globalization theory.
Under conditions of strangeness the stranger is a "here today, gone tomorrow" figure. This book identifies the cosmopolitan stranger as the most significant contemporary figure of the stranger, one adept at negotiating the 'confined spaces' of globalization in order to promote new forms of social solidarity and connect with distant others.

The global spread of transnational mining investment, which has been taking place since the 1990s, has led to often volatile conflicts with local communities. This book examines the regulation of these conflicts through national, transnational and local legal processes. In doing so, it examines how legal authority is being redistributed among public and private actors, as well as national and transnational actors, as a result of globalizing forces. The book presents a case study concerning the negotiation of land transfer and resettlement between a transnational mining enterprise and indigenous peasants in the Andes of Peru. The case study is used to explore the intensely local dynamics involved in negotiations between corporate and community representatives and the role played by legal ordering in these relations. In particular, the book examines the operation of a transnational legal regime managed by the World Bank to remedy the social and environmental impacts of projects which receive Bank assistance. The book explores the nature and character of the World Bank regime and the multiple consequences of this projection of transnational law into a local dispute.

Beyond Citizenship? Feminism and the Transformation of Belonging pushes debates about citizenship and feminist politics in new directions, challenging us to think 'beyond citizenship', and to engage in feminist re-theorizations of the experience and politics of belonging. Citizenship is a troubling proposition for feminism - promising inclusion yet always enacting exclusions. This book asks whether citizenship is a worthwhile object for feminist politics and scholarship, or whether we should find a different language to express our desires to belong, and alternative means to enact our yearnings for equality, justice and reciprocity. Grounded in feminist perspectives that emphasize the importance of affect, subjectivity, embodiment and the collective, it offers important new analyses of the state of citizenship and meanings of belonging in the contemporary globalizing world. This book is key reading for scholars and students of citizenship, social movements, and feminist and gender theory from a wide range of disciplines, including art practice, comparative literature, gender studies, philosophy, political theory, psychosocial studies, social policy, socio-legal studies, and sociology.

Focussing on China's stem cell research, this book investigates how, over the last decade, Chinese scientists, ethicists and policy-makers have developed a cosmopolitan sensibility in comprehending and responding to ethical and regulatory concerns.

Addressing issues related to the physical, cultural, ideological and psychological relocation of English, this volume provides a critical examination of current sociolinguistic study of English in the world and suggests a new approach which focuses more on ideological and psychological aspects of the phenomenon.

This volume explores Chinese religions on a global stage so as to challenge the traditional dichotomy of the western global and the Chinese local, and to add a new perspective for understanding religious modernity globally. Contributors from four different continents aim at applying a social scientific approach to systematically researching the globalization of Chinese religions.

This collection examines how the EU is seen in the two regions that are at the centre of its geopolitical interest. Focusing on Eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, it provides a critical assessment of how their external perceptions relate to EU policy towards them.

Globalization is calling for new conceptualizations of belonging within culturally diverse communities. This book takes Quebec as a case study and examines how it fosters a sense of belonging through a common citizenship with French as the key element. As a nation without a state, Quebec is driven by two distinct imperatives: the need to affirm a robust Francophone identity within Anglophone North America, and the civic obligation to accommodate an increasingly diverse range of migrant groups, as well as demands for recognition by Aboriginal and Anglophone minorities.