Globalization Books

Experts from four continents here show how Asian nations and others have suffered from government intervention as the world renews its global economic links. Issues of social improvements and reforms are related to increasing world capitalism in a title which promotes adherence to market principles to allow nations to enjoy real prosperity. A recommended pick for any studying world capitalism markets.

"Eugene Thacker send back out the DNA=channel that turned on the industrial ill-treatment of a chemical=anthropoid era respiration-byte." - Kenji Siratori, author of Blood Electric

Professor Mark Duffield has done the near impossible, he has given a detailed description and explanation of one of the most complex assemblages ever devised: the post-Cold War, free market/free trade-driven international order. In excruciating detail, professor Duffield explains how the WTO-structured global economic system - what we think of as "globalization" - works to: attenuate state power, deregulate and disrupt traditional economies, create ever-more "complex and opaque forms of transaction and ownership," and essentially restructures international governing bodies to fit into this new world system. Professor Duffield manages to do this with no discernible political "spin." His gaze is unremitting and clear-eyed whether it falls on corrupt third-world governments, U.N. and NGO developmental types, western donor nations, politicians of all stripes, or African and Afghani warlords.
If one wants to understand the underlying forces driving the conflicts extant in today's world and the global community's responses to these crises, there is no better place to start than with professor Duffield's "Global Governance and the New Wars."

is this the blueprint for one world government that everyone claims the trilateral commission is working on. Apparently not, it is simply an intent to tackel the main issues facing global world order. Terrorism is not focused on as much as it should be.

With the publication of Hardt and Negri's Empire, many scholars of international studies have found a new interest in Foucault's theories of biopolitics and governmentality. However, this interest has yet to yield substantive debate within the discipline. Global Governmentality, a new edited volume of twelve essays, represents a noteworthy effort to rectify this situation.

The book explores its topic in two sections. Part I (Chapters 1-4) engages with global governmentality from a theoretical perspective, noting how shifting discourses on danger create the possibilities for new expressions of disciplinary power. Part II (Chapters 5-12) focuses on a selection of practical dimensions of global governmentality, providing a degree of the empirical substance found lacking by many in the more prose-driven approach adopted by Hardt and Negri.

The essays in the first part of the book are linked by a common concern with the persistence of disciplinary power in the foreign policies of liberal governments. Of course, the significance of governmentality is traditionally thought to stem from its ability to `govern through freedom'. Yet, as Hindess notes in Chapter 1, the government of subjugated peoples in the age of classical imperialism was often shaped by a perceived need for coercive rule. This perception stemmed not from liberal hypocrisy but from liberalism's fundamental preoccupation with "the question of what can be sensibly governed through the promotion of appropriate forms of freedom and what must be governed in other ways" (32).

Today, the developmental discourses that informed classical imperialism are being displaced by neoliberal understandings of the human species. However, as Dillon (Chapter 4) notes, these new understandings also come with their own anxieties. While liberalism today refuses to target specific races as immutably different or essentially dangerous, it struggles instead to comprehend the potential for danger within the species itself, construed as a fluid and dynamic referent object. This point is developed by Dean in Chapter 2, who notes how the pervasiveness of ontologically nonspecific enemies has ruptured the very logic upon which the European Law of Nations was founded, replacing it with a world order based on a logic of "international civil war" (p. 52). This is a vision of world order then in which human practice plays a central role. Indeed, as Kendal (Chapter 3) argues, global governmentality is constituted by a multiplicity of networks, each an assemblage in the Deleuzian sense, produced through practices of language, ideas, and material. And it is this concern with practice that differentiates governmentality from those more totalizing or `grand theory' approaches concerned with globalization, network or risk society.

This last point provides the common thread of the more empirical works presented in Part II. In Chapter 12, for example, Valverde and Mopas examine the global proliferation of private agencies in law enforcement processes. This shift is significant, they argue, not because it implies a decrease in state sovereignty or evidence of `globalization' but because it suggests the emergence of a new regime of disciplinary power based on the logic of risk management. In Chapter 11, Larner and Le Heron explore some implications of this development, noting the general extension of corporate calculative benchmarking and audit practices into economic and social life. The increasing use of such techniques is significant, they suggest, because of their capacity to render completely disparate spaces ontologically commensurable and thus capable of being differentiated within the `global' in terms of standards of `best practice'.

The turn to risk management also has implications for self-governance. As Barry notes in Chapter 10, the rise of the audit as an instrument of "ethicalization of business" (p. 195) can be interpreted as a strengthening of governmental ability to rule `at a distance'. Similarly, Rojas (Chapter 5) suggests that in the wake of the ostensible failure of structural reform approaches to development in the late 1990s, poverty has come to be viewed as a problem immanent to the will of the poor themselves. Likewise, in Chapter 6, Lui examines the definition of refugees as subjects lacking capacities of self-sufficiency. In both these cases, intervention is justified to the extent that it promotes the subject's sense of `ownership' over their own reform programs.

Of course, neo-liberal governmentality does not always have things its way. Places are messy and not always amenable to being ordered. Ò Tuathail and Dahlman explore just this point in Chapter 7, using the case of the war in Bosnia to see how different mentalities of government can compete with each other at different scales for power. Two other chapters in the book usefully demonstrate the diverse scalar possibilities of governmentality as they relate to European integration. Walters (Chapter 8) draws a contrast between the discourse inherent in the writings of such mavens of European integration as Ernst Haas and discourses of contemporary globalization in order to suggest a diminishing faith in the twin notions of modernity and progress. Dale develops this point in Chapter 9, noting at how this passage has informed the creation of the EU's Open Method of Coordination.

While a reader seeking either an introduction to Foucault's theory of governmentality or even a broad guide to the impact of poststructural thinking on IR theory would be advised to give Global Governmentality a wide berth, it must be said that the book is an invaluable resource for those interested in exploring the diverse ways in which governmentality can be applied beyond the domestic sphere. As debate over the applicability of Foucauldian theories of governance to world politics gathers, this book will no doubt come to achieve significant bibliographic recognition.

The book was in a excellent condition when it was shipped to me. I had no great expectation from used books but since I got this book I started setting high standards for used books too...

I received the book in excellent condition. I also received it in a very timely manner packaged well.

I used this book as text for high school "Global Studies" courses, and thought it was terrific in its understandable but not watered down treatment of the big issues -- war, hunger, women's rights, population, environment, etc. Shows how these issues relate to each other. It was a stretch for 9th graders, but would be perfect for high school seniors or college intro.

I found this book surprizingly refreshing, a book of kindness and wonder, a promise of perceived threat, yet counterbalanced by the thoughtful, the insightful, the moving and dramatic. Charles Jones seems to know his stuff and in Global Justice he gets a chance to shine. Those who are interested in the issues of cosmoplitanism, keep your eye on this guy. Well done Mr Jones!

Iraq 2003 was a long time acomin' and will be a long time agoin'. Last night, before writing these lines, I watched BBC World. It showed one of its extended conference call interviews with media people in the US, the Arab world and Europe. Subject: the effects of Iraq 2003 on the media. Participants from the large media groups were worried about safety of their staff - some are still being killed. Those from Washington were worried about how they can extend embedding. The obvious response "embed on both sides," say Fridays and Saturdays with the US forces, Monday to Thursday with their opponents, was never mentioned. Why? Because the issue of reporting from all sides has never really been tackled. Arab speakers in the program focused on the politics of what's happening now in the region and its connections with the war, an understandable choice coming straight after the death of Arafat and the re-election of Bush.
GMGW, with its six main sections, 30 chapters, and successful attempt to scan the globe for contributions, seeks to tackle the core questions. Technologies are new, in war and in the media; the hazy border between objectivity and propaganda is as hard to define as ever; journalism as another way of conducting war is as alive as ever; and, above all, the difference between conflicts which can be presented as part of show biz', and those which cannot, is always important. For the brutal truth is that, for all the razza mattaz, Iraq 03 is not such a big deal seen from the angle of death (is there another angle to see it from?). Anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 Iraqis, depending on whose figures you believe, the vast majority civilians have been killed or severely injured over an 18-month period. We are still counting, and will be for a long while to come. The devastatingly sad fact, however, is that this is a relatively small number compared with most wars , not to mention the "silent tragedies" of natural disasters, genocides, and long running conflicts. It is scarcely necessary to say that casualties on the US side, which have averaged about two per day since the conflict began, are trivial.
The contributors to this book, being involved journalists and others deeply interested in media matters, offer a wide range of clearly presented thoughts on all the eternal subjects. Their reflections are testimony to their personal commitment to serious examination of the problems, and to the unfortunate likelihood that profound cleavages of view will persist and quite possibly deepen. In what are usually called the democratic countries, this is taken as testimony of a thriving polity. Elsewhere, it is taken as a sign that hegemony hurts. A title of one of the chapters is telling. It reads "Al-Jazeera: A Broadcaster creating Ripples in a Stagnant Pool." If the U.S. Presidency is to be believed, the whole point of Iraq 03 was to make the pool turbulent. The whole debate on the politics has been about whether this is the way to do it. If this book serves to help that debate encompass both the best of the Arab world's journalists and those of elsewhere, it will have achieved a superb result. If it helps to go one step further, and persuade the US administration that belief (especially selective) is not always synonymous either with the truth, or with telling the truth, it will be a miracle.