Feminist Studies of Globalisation: Beyond Gender,Beyond Economism?

This article offers a distinctive mapping of the feminist literature on globalisation. Part I sets the “new wave” of debate in the context of long-standing feminist theorising and organisation around global power and politics, drawing attention to a growing focus on economic processes. Part II explores the marginalisation of feminist arguments within globalisation studies, pointing to the dominance of an economistic model of globalisation as a key factor. It also identifies a parallel feminist tendency to neglect non-feminist efforts to develop non-economistic analyses of globalisation. Part III seeks to pinpoint the originality of the contribution of feminism. Although the most obvious starting point for such an evaluation is an emphasis upon gender, the feminist contribution is not reducible to this. Feminists have integrated gender analyses into accounts of multiple, intersecting relations of global power. They also offer distinctive analyses of the relation between the local and the global and the character of agency and resistance. The article indicates that the feminist response to economism still remains incomplete. Nonetheless, it demonstrates that feminist insights pose a significant challenge to non-feminist accounts of globalisation and to those organising within and against global power relations.     

Business and Public–Private Partnerships for Sustainability: Beyond Corporate Social Responsibility?

This article analyses public–private partnerships (PPPs) in the field of sustainable development from an international relations perspective with insights from the business and ethics literature. We argue that the role of business in these types of arrangements has not been sufficiently explored. After presenting three ways of approaching PPPs to stress the many facets of partnerships across the public–private divide, we discuss the emergence of these novel forms of governance from a demand side and contrast such a functionalist reading with the supply side. Then we look at the micro-economic incentives for corporations to engage in such endeavours. We develop arguments derived from the dominant literature to provide an analytical framework for explaining business participation. Finally, we discuss the role of PPPs in light of input and output legitimacy. We conclude by alluding to the emergence of an expectation-capacity gap and normative issues related to the global PPP architecture.     

Globalisation and women in India

Globalization arrived in India through an external and internal alignment of political and economic forces that led to the opening of the country to the outside world. The five processes under globalization are: 1) commercialism wherein more services become monetized and incomes are received in money rather than in kind; 2) more capitalization; 3) foreign trade becomes important for the production and distribution process; 4) greater financialization develops; and 5) international capital moves freely. These changes affect women more than men in different ways. Capitalization results in more self-employed marginal farmers becoming wage workers, making it less possible for women to manage domestic duties alongside their productive work. In general, macro-economic policies affect women through the household, market, and gender relations. In countries like India where women suffer from serious discrimination, whatever affects the household will worsen women's position. Thus, the process of liberalization, privatization, and globalization will put the clock back for women and for the poor in general.     

Globalisation,Universities and Professors

Globalisation has an increasingly profound impact on a broad range of human activities in political, economic and cultural areas. From the perspective of higher education, globalisation raises a number of challenges and concerns, particularly in preparing students--our future leaders of commerce and politics--to adequately address the demands of an ever-increasing global interdependence. Colleges and universities worldwide are responding to this challenge with an array of exchange programmes and curricular initiatives, and a recent international survey of the academic profession indicates that professors worldwide support these efforts. However, this support is considerably weaker among teachers than researchers. This has implications for policies and programmes that focus on developing more globally minded university teachers, in order to prepare our youth to adequately meet the challenges of globalisation.     

Java furniture makers: Globalisation winners or losers?

This article is concerned with the question of whether participation in the global economy leads to sustainable income growth. It examines the furniture industry of Central Java, which has grown rapidly since the financial crisis in 1997. The article shows that the exporting small and medium-sized enterprises generated substantial employment and income growth. However, this growth is not sustainable because the viability of exports has become dependent on wood which is logged illegally and risks depletion. Government and donor projects aimed at small enterprises risk driving these enterprises deeper into the race to the bottom. The article then discusses ways to avoid this, stressing the need for a coalition of public and private actors along the local–global axis.     

Security and Power through Interdependence: On the Morality of Globalisation

Rising wealth—the progress from a “state of nature”—is contingent upon an ever wider division of labour. The web of mutual dependence and co-operation thus created has since long transgressed state borders. But as of late this global net of interdependence has become tightly woven. Being thus dependent on others seems at odds with the prime aim of national security, which is to preserve identity and full freedom of action. However, this definition of national security is no longer functional in this era of globalisation. Broad and useful interaction with others enhances national security; while isolation undermines it. There is a moral aspect to this: “identity” demands the “significant other”; and a diversified and wider identity thus calls for a wide interface with many such “others”. Wide interaction is also contingent on the participants being seen as trustworthy. It thus depends on—and creates—a culture of mutual responsibility.     

Globalisation and making sense of the world

Abstract

This article grapples with the problem of understanding present human life and circumstances, and the challenges humans face in their effort to make sense of it. The importance of theory in this quest is emphasised. Two notions are considered in terms of their value towards this endeavour: globalisation and worlding. Globalisation is the current buzz word and some of the issues related to this term have been named. The term world is, however, preferred to globalisation, since world does not refer to the impersonal globe, cosmos or universe. The term world, or worlding, wants to emphasise humanisation and further signifies sense-making. Sense-making, however, is no easy matter. On the one hand, it involves the threatening reality of evil, not in the religious sense but in a profound ethical sense. On the other hand, it involves the process of the expansion of consciousness carried and supported by the ascent into the noosphere which offers an awareness of a kind of thinking other than and different from logical reasoning. While the one warns against the mechanisation of the mind, the other maintains that technique is a point of support for the spiritualisation of humanity. This world compels us to find or make sense of it; world is precisely where there is a place, a true place, for everybody. If this were not the case there would only be a globe: a place of exile where we would exist as strangers.     

Looking Beyond the National Level: Foreign Direct Investment Attraction in U.S. States

International relations scholars need to look beyond the national level because U.S. states and governors are increasingly important actors in world politics. One way to look at their international activities is by examining the ways in which U.S. states seek to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), just one research puzzle at the nexus of international relations and U.S. state politics, two fields that rarely talk to one another. After pointing out the gaps within theories from international relations and international political economy, this paper describes the evolving global roles of both U.S. states and governors and shows how U.S. states attract FDI through the use of their international offices and governor-led overseas missions. Empirical findings indicate that U.S. states' international offices and a higher level of economic interdependence help states attract FDI, and the paper argues that extension of institutional approaches from IPE may be valuable for future research about the international capabilities of subnational governments and their leaders.