front cover of Occupy
Occupy
Three Inquiries in Disobedience
W. J. T. Mitchell, Bernard E. Harcourt, and Michael Taussig
University of Chicago Press, 2013
Mic check! Mic check! Lacking amplification in Zuccotti Park, Occupy Wall Street protestors addressed one another by repeating and echoing speeches throughout the crowd. In Occupy, W. J. T. Mitchell, Bernard E. Harcourt, and Michael Taussig take the protestors’ lead and perform their own resonant call-and-response, playing off of each other in three essays that engage the extraordinary Occupy movement that has swept across the world, examining everything from self-immolations in the Middle East to the G8 crackdown in Chicago to the many protest signs still visible worldwide.
 
“You break through the screen like Alice in Wonderland,” Taussig writes in the opening essay, “and now you can’t leave or do without it.” Following Taussig’s artful blend of participatory ethnography and poetic meditation on Zuccotti Park, political and legal scholar Harcourt examines the crucial difference between civil and political disobedience. He shows how by effecting the latter—by rejecting the very discourse and strategy of politics—Occupy Wall Street protestors enacted a radical new form of protest. Finally, media critic and theorist Mitchell surveys the global circulation of Occupy images across mass and social media and looks at contemporary works by artists such as Antony Gormley and how they engage the body politic, ultimately examining the use of empty space itself as a revolutionary monument.
 
Occupy stands not as a primer on or an authoritative account of 2011’s revolutions, but as a snapshot, a second draft of history, beyond journalism and the polemics of the moment—an occupation itself.
[more]
front cover of On Petrocultures
On Petrocultures
Globalization, Culture, and Energy
Imre Szeman
West Virginia University Press, 2019

On Petrocultures brings together key essays by Imre Szeman, a leading scholar in the field of energy humanities and a critical voice in debates about globalization and neoliberalism. Szeman’s most important and influential essays, in dialogue with exciting new pieces written for the book, investigate ever-evolving circuits of power in the contemporary world, as manifested in struggles over space and belonging, redefinitions of work and individual autonomy, and the deep links between energy use and climate change.

These essays explore life lived in the twenty-first century by examining critically the vocabulary through which capitalism makes sense of itself, focusing on concepts like the nation, globalization, neoliberalism, creativity, and entrepreneurship. At the heart of the volume is the concept of “petrocultures,” which demands that we understand a fundamental fact of modern life: we are shaped by and through fossil fuels. Szeman argues that we cannot take steps to address global warming without fundamentally changing the social, cultural, and political norms and expectations developed in conjunction with the energy riches of the past century. On Petrocultures maps the significant challenge of our dependence on fossil fuels and probes ways we might begin to leave petrocultures behind.

[more]
front cover of Open
Open
The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital
Kimberly Clausing
Harvard University Press, 2019

A Financial Times Best Economics Book of the Year
A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year
A Fareed Zakaria GPS Book of the Week

“A highly intelligent, fact-based defense of the virtues of an open, competitive economy and society.”
—Fareed Zakaria

“A vitally important corrective to the current populist moment…Open points the way to a kinder, gentler version of globalization that ensures that the gains are shared by all.”
—Justin Wolfers

“Clausing’s important book lays out the economics of globalization and, more important, shows how globalization can be made to work for the vast majority of Americans. I hope the next President of the United States takes its lessons on board.”
—Lawrence H. Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury

“Makes a strong case in favor of foreign trade in goods and services, the cross-border movement of capital, and immigration. This valuable book amounts to a primer on globalization.”
—Richard N. Cooper, Foreign Affairs

Critics on the Left have long attacked open markets and free trade agreements for exploiting the poor and undermining labor, while those on the Right complain that they unjustly penalize workers back home. Kimberly Clausing takes on old and new skeptics in her compelling case that open economies are actually a force for good. Turning to the data to separate substance from spin, she shows how international trade makes countries richer, raises living standards, benefits consumers, and brings nations together. At a time when borders are closing and the safety of global supply chains is being thrown into question, she outlines a clear agenda to manage globalization more effectively, presenting strategies to equip workers for a modern economy and establish a better partnership between labor and the business community.

[more]
front cover of The Ordinary Virtues
The Ordinary Virtues
Moral Order in a Divided World
Michael Ignatieff
Harvard University Press, 2017

Winner of the Zócalo Book Prize
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice

“Combines powerful moral arguments with superb storytelling.”
—New Statesman

What moral values do we hold in common? As globalization draws us together economically, are the things we value converging or diverging? These twin questions led Michael Ignatieff to embark on a three-year, eight-nation journey in search of an answer. What we share, he found, are what he calls “ordinary virtues”: tolerance, forgiveness, trust, and resilience. When conflicts break out, these virtues are easily exploited by the politics of fear and exclusion, reserved for one’s own group but denied to others. Yet these ordinary virtues are the key to healing and reconciliation on both a local and global scale.

“Makes for illuminating reading.”
—Simon Winchester, New York Review of Books

“Engaging, articulate and richly descriptive… Ignatieff’s deft histories, vivid sketches and fascinating interviews are the soul of this important book.”
—Times Literary Supplement

“Deserves praise for wrestling with the devolution of our moral worlds over recent decades.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books

[more]
front cover of The Organization of Firms in a Global Economy
The Organization of Firms in a Global Economy
Elhanan Helpman
Harvard University Press, 2008

The Organization of Firms in a Global Economy presents a new research program that is transforming the study of international trade. Driven by the availability of new micro data sets and innovative theoretical models, it focuses on the level of firms, products, and stages of production rather than on countries and industries. It addresses such questions as why only a small proportion of firms in a given industry export and why an even smaller proportion invest abroad; why exporters tend to be more productive than nonexporters; why almost one-third of international trade takes place between units of the same firm and why as much as two-thirds involves multinational firms as exporter, importer, or both; and why international trade may have been the most important driver of organizational changes in the corporation that have been taking place in the last decade.

Until a few years ago, models of international trade did not recognize the heterogeneity of firms and exporters, and could not provide good explanations of international production networks. Now such models exist and are explored in this volume.

[more]
front cover of Oriental Networks
Oriental Networks
Culture, Commerce, and Communication in the Long Eighteenth Century
Bärbel Czennia
Bucknell University Press, 2021
Oriental Networks explores forms of interconnectedness between Western and Eastern hemispheres during the long eighteenth century, a period of improving transportation technology, expansion of intercultural contacts, and the emergence of a global economy. In eight case studies and a substantial introduction, the volume examines relationships between individuals and institutions, precursors to modern networks that engaged in forms of intercultural exchange. Addressing the exchange of cultural commodities (plants, animals, and artifacts), cultural practices and ideas, the roles of ambassadors and interlopers, and the literary and artistic representation of networks, networkers, and networking, contributors discuss the effects on people previously separated by vast geographical and cultural distance. Rather than idealizing networks as inherently superior to other forms of organization, Oriental Networks also considers Enlightenment expressions of resistance to networking that inform modern skepticism toward the concept of the global network and its politics. In doing so the volume contributes to the increasingly global understanding of culture and communication.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
[more]
front cover of Òrìsà Devotion as World Religion
Òrìsà Devotion as World Religion
The Globalization of Yorùbá Religious Culture
Edited by Jacob K. Olupona and Terry Rey
University of Wisconsin Press, 2008
As the twenty-first century begins, tens of millions of people participate in devotions to the spirits called Òrìsà. This book explores the emergence of Òrìsà devotion as a world religion, one of the most remarkable and compelling developments in the history of the human religious quest. Originating among the Yorùbá people of West Africa, the varied traditions that comprise Òrìsà devotion are today found in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Australia.
    The African spirit proved remarkably resilient in the face of the transatlantic slave trade, inspiring the perseverance of African religion wherever its adherents settled in the New World. Among the most significant manifestations of this spirit, Yorùbá religious culture persisted, adapted, and even flourished in the Americas, especially in Brazil and Cuba, where it thrives as Candomblé and Lukumi/Santería, respectively. After the end of slavery in the Americas, the free migrations of Latin American and African practitioners has further spread the religion to places like New York City and Miami. Thousands of African Americans have turned to the religion of their ancestors, as have many other spiritual seekers who are not themselves of African descent. 
    Ifá divination in Nigeria, Candomblé funerary chants in Brazil, the role of music in Yorùbá revivalism in the United States, gender and representational authority in Yorùbá religious culture—these are among the many subjects discussed here by experts from around the world. Approaching Òrìsà devotion from diverse vantage points, their collective effort makes this one of the most authoritative texts on Yorùbá religion and a groundbreaking book that heralds this rich, complex, and variegated tradition as one of the world’s great religions.   
[more]
front cover of Other Cities, Other Worlds
Other Cities, Other Worlds
Urban Imaginaries in a Globalizing Age
Andreas Huyssen, ed.
Duke University Press, 2008
Other Cities, Other Worlds brings together leading scholars of cultural theory, urban studies, art, anthropology, literature, film, architecture, and history to look at non-Western global cities. The contributors focus on urban imaginaries, the ways that city dwellers perceive or imagine their own cities. Paying particular attention to the historical and cultural dimensions of urban life, they bring to their essays deep knowledge of the cities they are bound to in their lives and their work. Taken together, these essays allow us to compare metropolises from the so-called periphery and gauge processes of cultural globalization, illuminating the complexities at stake as we try to imagine other cities and other worlds under the spell of globalization.

The effects of global processes such as the growth of transnational corporations and investment, the weakening of state sovereignty, increasing poverty, and the privatization of previously public services are described and analyzed in essays by Teresa P. R. Caldeira (São Paulo), Beatriz Sarlo (Buenos Aires), Néstor García Canclini (Mexico City), Farha Ghannam (Cairo), Gyan Prakash (Mumbai), and Yingjin Zhang (Beijing). Considering Johannesburg, the architect Hilton Judin takes on themes addressed by other contributors as well: the relation between the country and the city, and between racial imaginaries and the fear of urban violence. Rahul Mehrotra writes of the transitory, improvisational nature of the Indian bazaar city, while AbdouMaliq Simone sees a new urbanism of fragmentation and risk emerging in Douala, Cameroon. In a broader comparative frame, Okwui Enwezor reflects on the proliferation of biennales of contemporary art in African, Asian, and Latin American cities, and Ackbar Abbas considers the rise of fake commodity production in China. The volume closes with the novelist Orhan Pamuk’s meditation on his native city of Istanbul.

Contributors: Ackbar Abbas, Teresa P. R. Caldeira, Néstor García Canclini, Okwui Enwezor, Farha Ghannam, Andreas Huyssen, Hilton Judin, Rahul Mehrotra, Orhan Pamuk, Gyan Prakash, Beatriz Sarlo, AbdouMaliq Simone, Yingjin Zhang

[more]

Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter