Today is a new metropolitan age and for the first time ever more people live in cities than they do anywhere else. As cities strengthen their international and cultural influence, the global world is acted out most articulately in the world's urban hubs - through its diverse cultures, broad networks and innovative styles of governance. Looking at the city through its internal dynamics, the book examines how governance and cultural policy play out in a national and international framework.

Making a truly global contribution to the literature, editors Isar and Anheier bring together a truly international and highly-respected collection of scholars. In doing so, they skilfully steer debates beyond the city as an economic powerhouse, to cover issues that fully comprehend a city's cultural dynamics and its impact on policy including alternative economies, creativity, migration, diversity, sustainability, education and urban planning.

Innovative in its approach and content, this book is ideal for students, scholars and researchers interested in sociology, urban studies, cultural studies, and public policy.

'This volume of one of the most comprehensive in the field. Its three themes are critical for the study of culture and globalization with its condensation of space, time and memory. Exploring the intersection between these three processes, the essays are learned, deeply researched and insightful, and the comparative range is impressive. The volume is certain to become a standard reference text for scholars and the general reader alike' - Professor Stuart Hall, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, The Open University Heritage, memory and identity are closely connected keywords of our time, each endowed with considerable rhetorical power. Different human groups define certain objects and practices as 'heritage'; they envision heritage to reflect some form of collective memory, either lived or imagined; and they combine both to construct cultural identities. Today, the three terms raise conjoined issues of practice, policy and politics in an increasingly globalized world. Bringing together a truly global range of scholars, this volume explores heritage, memory and identity through a diverse set of subjects, including heritage sites, practices of memorialization, museums, sites of contestation, and human rights.

'In the globalization 'game' there are no absolute winners and losers. Neither homogenisation nor diversity can capture its contradictory movement and character. The essays and papers collected here offer, from a variety of perspectives, a rich exploration of creativity and innovation, cultural expressions and globalization. This volume of essays, in all their diversity of contents and theoretical perspectives, demonstrates the rich value of this paradoxical, oxymoronic approach' - Stuart Hall, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the Open University Volume 3 of the Cultures & Globalization series, Creativity and Innovations, explores the interactions between globalization and the forms of cultural expression that are their basic resource. Bringing together over 25 high-profile authors from around the world, this volume addresses such questions as: What impacts does globalization have on cultural creativity and innovation? How is the evolving world 'map' of creativity related to the drivers and patterns of globalization? What are the relationships between creative acts, clusters, genres or institutions and cultural diversity? The volume is an indispensable reference tool for all scholars and students of contemporary arts and culture.

"In the age of globalization we are no longer home alone. Migration brings other worlds into our own just as the global reach of the media transmits our world into the hearts and minds of others. Often incommensurate values are crammed together in the same public square. Increasingly we all today live in the kind of 'edge cultures' we used to see only on the frontiers of civilizations in places like Hong Kong or Istanbul. The resulting frictions and fusions are shaping the soul of the coming world order. I can think of no other project with the ambitious scope of defining this emergent reality than The Cultures and Globalization project. I can think of no more capable minds than Raj Isar and Helmut Anheier who can pull it off." - Nathan Gardels, Editor-in-Chief, NPQ, Global Services, Los Angeles Times Syndicate/Tribune Media "This series represents an innovative approach to the central issues of globalization, that phenomenon of such undefined contours." - Lupwishi Mbuyumba, Director of the Observatory of Cultural Policies in Africa The world's cultures and their forms of creation, presentation, and preservation are deeply affected by globalization in ways that are inadequately documented and understood. The Cultures and Globalization Series is designed to fill this void in our knowledge. Analyzing the relationship between globalization and cultures is the aim of the Series. In each volume, leading experts as well as young scholars will track cultural trends connected to globalization throughout the world, covering issues ranging from the role of cultural difference in politics and governance to the evolution of the cultural economy and the changing patterns of creativity and artistic expression. Each volume will also include an innovative presentation of newly developed 'indicator suites' on cultures and globalization that will be presented in a user-friendly form with a high graphics content to facilitate accessibility and understanding Like so many phenomena linked to globalization, conflicts over and within the cultural realms crystallize great anxieties and illusions, through misplaced assumptions, inadequate concepts, unwarranted simplifications and instrumental readings. The aim here is to marshal evidence from different disciplines and perspectives about the culture, conflict and globalization relationships in conceptually sensitive ways.