"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.

Jews and Muslims make up less than 3% of the total population of the United States. Yet, despite their relatively small numbers, the members of these two minority groups often find themselves the focus of a disproportionate amount of media attention, particularly when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Beyond such international issues, American Jews and American Muslims find themselves struggling with similar inter-communal concerns when it comes to matters like education (for example tensions between student populations of Jews and Muslims on university campuses), politics (such as the swearing in of the first Muslim Congressman in the House of Representatives, Keith Ellison, or the omnipresent emails and robo-calls linking President Obama to the Muslim community that emerged during the 2008 Presidential election), or even pop culture (think of such recent Hollywood productions as "Kingdom in Heaven," "Munich," "Paradise Now," and "Traitor," to name but a few). In all of these matters, American Jews and American Muslims have consistently engaged each other in conversation - whether directly or indirectly; constructive or not - in ways that have usually eluded their co-religionists throughout the rest of the world. This has partly to do with America's ethos as a "melting pot" of different religions, ethnicities, and cultures. But it also has to do with the innovative ways in which Judaism and Islam have absorbed, and been radically altered, by the so-called "American experience."

This book is an exploration of contemporary Jewish-Muslim relations in the United States and the distinct and often creative ways in which these two communities interact with one another in the American context. Each essay discusses a different episode from the recent twentieth and current twenty-first century American milieu that links these two groups together. Some deal with case examples of local inter-communal interaction, such as "dialogue groups," which can help us better understand national trends of similar activities in other parts of the country. Others focus on national trends themselves, thus giving us greater insights into individual incidents.

Millions of people around the Asia-Pacific region are suffering from the twin effects of globalization and exclusionary nationality laws. Some are migrant workers without rights in host countries; some are indigenous peoples who are not accorded their full rights in their own countries. Yet others are refugees escaping from regimes that have no respect for human rights. This collection of essays discusses the ways in which citizenship laws in the region might be made consistent with human dignity. It considers the connectedness of national belonging and citizenship in East and Southeast Asian and Pacific states including Australia; the impact of mass migration, cultural homogenization and other effects of globalization on notions of citizenship; and possibilities of commitment to a transnational democratic citizenship that respects cultural difference.

The dream of a cosmopolitical utopia has been around for thousands of years. Yet the promise of being locally situated while globally connected and mobile has never seemed more possible than today. Through a classical sociological approach, this book analyzes the political, technological and cultural systems underlying cosmopolitanism.

Higher and tertiary education are crucial to modern nations. Vietnam has great potential, but its universities and colleges are poor-performing, under-funded and slow to change compared to those in neighbouring East Asian nations. This book analyses the problem and provides constructive solutions for the reform of higher education.