Power, Powerlessness, and Globalization

Power, Powerlessness, and Globalization
Author: Opoku Agyeman
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2014-08-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0739195220

This book is about imperialism-driven globalization, its historic impact on Africa, Latin America, and Asia, and, over time, the varied responses of the national political units and regional entities in these continents to the challenges of building countervailing power and laying foundations for independent development. Where genuine recovery and empowerment have emerged, this has been the result not only of the pursuit of “dignitalist” political and economic values that emphasize robust and sustained productivity geared toward uplifting the living standards and dignity of all the members of the national society, but also of the creation of indigenous institutions whose relations with the external world are defined by equality rather than dependence and subordination. Opoku Agyeman argues that “dignification” is the fundamentally necessary response to imperialism’s inevitable afflictions of national/racial humiliation. It is the most crucial ingredient in the complex of motivations that propel formerly weak nation-states and regional communities to rise up and defend the honor of their people. As Mao Zedong told the world in 1949: “Ours will no longer be a nation subject to insult and humiliation. We have stood up.” This study argues emphatically that it is a country’s or region’s developed or developing capabilities, not its historic and continuing victimization or habitual dependence on “charitable aid” and other “altruistic” interventions from the “international community,” that determines its success in escaping the scourge of powerlessness and underdevelopment. It further maintains that a people who have been brought low through brutal, dehumanizing imperialism cannot bypass the need for redemptive empowerment if they wish to regain honor and a proper place in the world. Finally, it takes issue with Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, and others like them whose moralistic critiques of the rapacity of imperialistic globalization carry the unfortunate implication that it is possible for a fair and just world social order to come out of incremental reforms of philanthropically-motivated developed, powerful countries, in the structure and operations of global capitalism.

The Myth of the Powerless State

The Myth of the Powerless State
Author: Linda Weiss
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2018-05-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1501711733

Conventional wisdom argues that the integration of the world economy is making national governments less powerful, but Linda Weiss disagrees. In an era when global society and the transnational market are trendy concepts, she suggests that state capacities for domestic transformative strategies provide a competitive advantage. Some of the most successful economies rely on state-informed and state-embedded institutions for governing the economy. In fact, she contends, the strength of external economic pressures is largely determined domestically, and the effect of such pressures varies with the strength of domestic institutions. Weiss analyzes the sources and varieties of state capacity for governing industrial transformation in contemporary cases: the unraveling of Sweden's distributive model of adjustment, the evolution of developmental states in Northeast Asia, and the parallel strengths of the German and Japanese systems of industrial coordination. Her comparative perspective allows her to show how different types of state capacity affect industrial vitality and domestic adjustment to global forces. As economic integration proceeds, she concludes, state capabilities will matter more rather than less in fostering social well-being and the creation of wealth.

Poverty Narratives and Power Paradoxes in International Trade Negotiations and Beyond

Poverty Narratives and Power Paradoxes in International Trade Negotiations and Beyond
Author: Amrita Narlikar
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2020-05-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108244238

In this work, Amrita Narlikar argues that, contrary to common assumption, modern-day politics displays a surprising paradox: poverty - and the powerlessness with which it is associated - has emerged as a political tool and a formidable weapon in international negotiation. The success of poverty narratives, however, means that their use has not been limited to the neediest. Focusing on behaviours and outcomes in a particularly polarising area of bargaining - international trade - and illustrating wider applications of the argument, Narlikar shows how these narratives have been effectively used. Yet, she also sheds light on how indiscriminate overuse and misuse increasingly run the risk of adverse consequences for the system at large, and devastating repercussions for the weakest members of society. Narlikar advances a theory of agency and empowerment by focusing on the life-cycles of narratives, and concludes by offering policy-relevant insights on how to construct winning and sustainable narratives.

Science and Citizens

Science and Citizens
Author: Melissa Leach
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2013-04-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1848137761

Rapid advances and new technologies in the life sciences - such as biotechnologies in health, agricultural and environmental arenas - pose a range of pressing challenges to questions of citizenship. This volume brings together for the first time authors from diverse experiences and analytical traditions, encouraging a conversation between science and technology and development studies around issues of science, citizenship and globalisation. It reflects on the nature of expertise; the framing of knowledge; processes of public engagement; and issues of rights, justice and democracy. A wide variety of pressing issues is explored, such as medical genetics, agricultural biotechnology, occupational health and HIV/AIDS. Drawing upon rich case studies from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe, Science and Citizens asks: · Do new perspectives on science, expertise and citizenship emerge from comparing cases across different issues and settings? · What difference does globalisation make? · What does this tell us about approaches to risk, regulation and public participation? · How might the notion of ‘cognitive justice‘ help to further debate and practice?

Globalization and the Post-Creole Imagination

Globalization and the Post-Creole Imagination
Author: Patricia Marie Northover
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2009-07-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0822392453

Globalization and the Post-Creole Imagination is a major intervention into discussions of Caribbean practices gathered under the rubric of “creolization.” Examining sociocultural, political, and economic transformations in the Caribbean, Michaeline A. Crichlow argues that creolization—culture-creating processes usually associated with plantation societies and with subordinate populations remaking the cultural forms of dominant groups—must be liberated from and expanded beyond plantations, and even beyond the black Atlantic, to include productions of “culture” wherever vulnerable populations live in situations of modern power inequalities, from regimes of colonialism to those of neoliberalism. Crichlow theorizes a concept of creolization that speaks to how individuals from historically marginalized groups refashion self, time, and place in multiple ways, from creating art to traveling in search of homes. Grounding her theory in the material realities of Caribbean peoples in the plantation era and the present, Crichlow contends that creolization and Creole subjectivity are constantly in flux, morphing in response to the changing conditions of modernity and creatively expressing a politics of place. Engaging with the thought of Michel Foucault, Michel Rolph-Trouillot, Achille Mbembe, Henri Lefebvre, Margaret Archer, Saskia Sassen, Pierre Bourdieu, and others, Crichlow argues for understanding creolization as a continual creative remaking of past and present moments to shape the future. She draws on sociology, philosophy, postcolonial studies, and cultural studies to illustrate how national histories are lived personally and how transnational experiences reshape individual lives and collective spaces. Critically extending Bourdieu’s idea of habitus, she describes how contemporary Caribbean subjects remake themselves in and beyond the Caribbean region, challenging, appropriating, and subverting older, localized forms of creolization. In this book, Crichlow offers a nuanced understanding of how Creole citizens of the Caribbean have negotiated modern economies of power.

The Politics of Small Things

The Politics of Small Things
Author: Jeffrey C. Goldfarb
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2008-11-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226301117

Political change doesn’t always begin with a bang; it often starts with just a whisper. From the discussions around kitchen tables that led to the dismantling of the Soviet bloc to the more recent emergence of Internet initiatives like MoveOn.org and Redeem the Vote that are revolutionizing the American political landscape, consequential political life develops in small spaces where dialogue generates political power. In The Politics of Small Things, Jeffrey Goldfarb provides an innovative way for understanding politics, a way of appreciating the significance of politics at the micro level by comparatively analyzing key turning points and institutions in recent history. He presents a sociology of human interactions that lead from small to large: dissent around the old Soviet bloc; life on the streets in Warsaw, Prague, and Bucharest in 1989; the network of terror that spawned 9/11; and the religious and Internet mobilizations that transformed the 2004 presidential election, to name a few. In such pivotal moments, he masterfully shows, political autonomy can be generated, presenting alternatives to the big politics of the global stage and the dominant narratives of terrorism, antiterrorism, and globalization.

Globalizing Citizens

Globalizing Citizens
Author: John Gaventa
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2013-07-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1848139055

Globalization has given rise to new meanings of citizenship. Just as they are tied together by global production, trade and finance, citizens in every nation are linked by the institutions of global governance, bringing new dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. For some, globalization provides a sense of solidarity that inspires them to join transnational movements to claim rights from global authorities; for others, globalization has meant greater exposure to the power of global corporations, bureaucracies and scientific experts, thus adding new layers of exclusion to already fragile meanings of citizenship. Globalizing Citizens presents expert analysis from cities and villages in India, South Africa, Nigeria, the Philippines, Kenya, the Gambia and Brazil to explore how forms of global authority shape and build new meanings and practices of citizenship, across local, national and global arenas.

Globalization Contested

Globalization Contested
Author: Louise Amoore
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 636
Release: 2002
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780719060960

This exciting book, available in paperback for the first time, provides an illuminating account of contemporary globalisation that is grounded in actual transformations in the areas of production and the workplace. It reveals the social and political contests that give 'global' its meaning, by examining the contested nature of globalisation as it is expressed in the restructuring of work.Rejecting conventional explanations of globalisation as a process that automatically leads to transformations in working lives, or as a project that is strategically designed to bring about lean and flexible forms of production, this book advances an understanding of the social practices that constitute global change. Through case studies that span from the labour flexibility debates in Britain and Germany, to the strategies and tactics of corporations and workers, the author examines how globalisation is interpreted and experienced in everyday life. Contestation, she argues, is about more than just direct protests and resistances. It has become a central feature of the practices that enable or confound global restructuring.This book offers students and scholars of international political economy, sociology and industrial relations an innovative framework for the analysis of globalisation and the restructuring of work.

Power and Powerlessness

Power and Powerlessness
Author: John Gaventa
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 1982
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780252009853

Explains to outsiders the conflicts between the financial interests of the coal and land companies and the moral rights of the vulnerable mountaineers.

Power, Powerlessness, and Globalization

Power, Powerlessness, and Globalization
Author: Opoku Agyeman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780739195215

This book examines the historical forces that have shaped contemporary politics in the Global South, drawing from events in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. It provides insights on internal political processes and the international system and contributes an elemental theory of political development.