Israel and the World Economy

Israel and the World Economy
Author: Assaf Razin
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2024-10-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0262553317

A rigorous analysis of the role played by globalization in key episodes in the development of the Israeli economy, from hyperinflation crisis to high-tech surge. Anti-globalization sentiments are rising, especially in Europe and the United States, with the increasingly integrated global economy blamed for domestic economic distress. In this book, Assaf Razin argues that Israel offers a counterexample to this view, showing decisively positive economic effects of globalized finance, trade, and immigration. He offers a rigorous analysis of the role played by globalization in key episodes in the remarkable development of the Israeli economy. His findings may hold lessons for productivity-challenged advanced economies as well as for other countries such as China currently making the transition to fully developed economies. Razin examines the wave of immigration after the collapse of the Soviet Union, as highly skilled Soviet Jews migrated to Israel and the effect on income inequality; the Great Moderation of inflation and employment in advanced economies, as Israel's inflation converged in parallel with low world inflation rates; Israel's robustness in the face of the deflation shocks of the 2008 financial crisis; and technology transmission through foreign direct investment, reinforcing Israel's high-tech sector surge. He also considers such ongoing challenges as high fertility and low labor market participation and the economic costs of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Globalization of Israel

The Globalization of Israel
Author: Uri Ram
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2013-10-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135926824

This book focuses on how globalization is impacting contemporary Israel. It is a concise and originally argued introduction to Israel, but the author, Uri Ram, is careful to frame his analysis in a broader discussion of Israeli history and broader social currents. Focusing in particular on two defining – and conflicting – contemporary trends; one toward advanced liberal democracy with a cosmopolitan edge, and the other toward ethno-religious traditionalism and rejection of the secularism associated with market driven globalization. The cosmopolitan, high-tech driven city of Tel Aviv represents the former trend, and Jerusalem – a city increasingly dominated by orthodox Jews – represents the latter. Using Benjamin Barber's Jihad versus McWorld thesis to good effect, Ram's book will stand as an ideal introduction to contemporary Israel and its place in the world.

Mass Communication In Israel

Mass Communication In Israel
Author: Oren Soffer
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2014-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1782384529

Mass communication has long been recognized as an important contributor to national identity and nation building. This book examines the relationship between media and nationalism in Israel, arguing that, in comparison to other countries, the Israeli case is unique. It explores the roots and evolution of newspapers, journalism, radio, television, and the debut of the Internet on both the cultural and the institutional levels, and examines milestones in the socio-political development of Hebrew and Israeli mass communication. In evaluating the technological changes in the media, the book shows how such shifts contribute to segmentation and fragmentation in the age of globalization.

The Israeli Economy from the Foundation of the State through the 21st Century

The Israeli Economy from the Foundation of the State through the 21st Century
Author: Paul Rivlin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2010-11-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1139493965

This book analyzes the development of the Israeli economy in its historical context. It shows how the ideology of the dominant group in the Zionist movement led to the development of agriculture, thus meeting the preconditions for successful industrialization. Remarkable, if uneven, growth has taken place, with increasing allocations for defense. Regional isolation led to the emphasis on high-quality exports for developed markets that has stimulated the technological base. Israel has benefited from mass immigration and increased access to foreign capital, factors that have transformed the economy. The book includes chapters on the development of the Jewish community in Palestine during the British Mandate; macroeconomic developments and economic policy; globalization and high technology; defense; the economics of the Arab minority; Israeli settlements and relations with the Palestinians; and the role of religion. It concludes with an examination of the socioeconomic divisions that have widened as the economy has grown.

Globalization in Crisis

Globalization in Crisis
Author: Barry K. Gills
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2013-09-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317985656

This book analyses the present global financial and economic crisis, the most severe in nearly a century, and a wider set of multiple and converging crises with aspects and repercussions that go well beyond the current economic climate. Written by some of the world’s leading international scholars in the field of Globalization studies and related disciplines, this important collection addresses numerous key aspects of the relationship between Globalization and global crises, past, present, and future. It sheds new light and understanding on the concept and theory of Globalization and of ‘crisis’. The authors explore such issues as global finance and financial regulation, neoliberal ideology and policy, the ‘crisis of globalization’, the decline of Western hegemony, world systemic crisis, the moral crisis of ‘Western capitalism’, environmental and climate change crises, world order, hyper-violence and the international system, a crisis of the ‘global modern’ and a global civilisational and hostpric crisis, the rise of the global South, the historical dialectics of capital and social responses to crisis, the future of capitalism and the prospects for transformative alternatives. This book was published as a special issue of Globalizations.

Liberalization and Culture in Contemporary Israel

Liberalization and Culture in Contemporary Israel
Author: Ari Ofengenden
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2018-09-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1498570364

In this book Ari Ofengenden examines the ways that Israel’s integration into global economy has affected its main stream culture. Ofengenden uses works of Israeli film, literature, and television, from the past 30 years to conceptualize the changes in Israel’s culture. He analyzes the central phenomena associated with Israel’s integration into the global economy including: the demise of realism and the rise of commercial culture, the production of film, television, and novels for western audiences, and the critiques of capitalism in media. Ofengenden also explores the refiguring national identity through critique of masculinity. The book also discusses the affect globalization and marketization has had on modern narratives of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Israel/Palestine and the Queer International

Israel/Palestine and the Queer International
Author: Sarah Schulman
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2012-10-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822353733

At once a memoir, a call to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and an argument for queer solidarity across borders, this book tells the story of how novelist and activist Sarah Schulman's became aware of how issues of the Israeli occupation of Palestine were tied to her own gay and lesbian politics.

Globalizing Organic

Globalizing Organic
Author: Rafi Grosglik
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2021-02-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1438481578

Globalizing Organic focuses on the globalization of a culture of "eating for change" and the ways in which local meanings attached to the production of foods embed ecological and social values. Rafi Grosglik examines how organic agriculture was integrated in Israel—a state in which agriculture was a key mechanism in promoting Jewish nationalism and in time has become highly mechanized and technologically sophisticated. He explores how organic food, which signifies environmental protection and social equity, has been realized in a country where environmental issues are perceived as less pressing compared to inner political conflicts, the Israeli-Arab conflict, and recurrent wars. Based on more than a decade of ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and analysis of historical documents and media, Grosglik traces how alternative food movements are affected by global and local trends. He covers a wide range of topics, including the ethos of halutzim ("pioneers," Zionist ideological farmers and workers), the utopian visions of the Israeli kibbutz, indigeneity that is claimed both by Palestinians and Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank, biblical meanings that have been ascribed to environmental and countercultural ideas, the Americanization of Israeli society, and its neoliberalized economy.

Making Sweatshops

Making Sweatshops
Author: Ellen Israel Rosen
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2002-12-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0520233379

"Making Sweatshops reveals the inexorable movement towards an open trading system, the shifting alignments of actors pushing for or opposing openness, and, most centrally, how trade policy promotes the globalization of apparel production, filling a gap in our understanding of these dynamics."—Richard P. Appelbaum, coauthor of Behind the Label: Inequality in the Los Angeles Apparel Industry "A detailed examination of the role that trade policy plays in the process of globalization. Rosen provides a meticulous historical analysis of the textile/apparel industry, one of the world's most globalized industries and one of its most hot-button issues."—Stephen Cullenberg, coauthor of Transition and Development in India "Rosen shows how politics have always shaped the trade agenda from beginning to end, and she presents a most compelling case that if trade and the global economy are to foster justice and equality for the people of our world, we will need to rewrite the existing rules of global trade."—Charles Kernaghan, director of the National Labor Committee "This book delves deep into the industry's trade journals, congressional testimony, newspaper accounts, and economic and political scholarship of the last fifty-five years to tell the story of U.S. trade policy and the decline of labor standards in the apparel industry. This patient and voluminous examination systematically reveals, for the first time, how the U.S. sacrificed its apparel workers on the altar, first of the anti-Communist crusade, and then of free trade ideology."—Robert J.S. Ross, PhD, Professor of Sociology and Director, International Studies Stream, Clark University "Making Sweatshops is, in part, a history of the apparel and textile industries in the U.S. and the world. But it is much more than that. It is also about power and globalization. Rosen explains how the former shapes the latter, and how workers around the world suffer because of it. Activists, policy makers, consumers--anyone interested in understanding why sweatshops exist--should read this book."—Bruce Raynor, President, Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (Unite) "Rosen convincingly demonstrates that it is the transnational corporations rather than the consumers, and certainly rather than the workers, who benefit from trade liberalization, whose rules the lobbyists for these very coporations more or less write for supine politicians. This is a book in the great tradition of solid scholarship allied with deep commitment to the cause of global economic justice."—Leslie Sklair, author of Globalization: Capitalism and its Alternatives