'Globalization' has become one of the defining buzzwords of our time - a term that describes a variety of accelerating economic, political, cultural, ideological, and environmental processes that are rapidly altering our experience of the world. It is by its nature a dynamic topic - and this Very Short Introduction has been fully updated for 2009, to include developments in global politics, the impact of terrorism, and environmental issues.Presenting globalization in accessible language as...

How do political ideologies and urban landscapes intersect in the context of globalization? This volume illuminates the production of ideologies as both discursive and spatial phenomena in distinct contributions that ground their analysis in cities of the Global North and South. From Sydney to Singapore, Hong Kong to Hanoi, Las Vegas to Macau, conventional public spaces are in decline as sites of ideological dissent. Instead, we are witnessing the colonisation of urban space by market glob...

What is Global Studies, and how does it relate to globalization? Responding to this frequently asked question, Manfred B. Steger and Amentahru Wahlrab provide the first comprehensive overview of this emerging field.Authoritative and accessible, this primer speaks to students and instructors interested not only in key theories but also in applied teaching and learning programs designed to educate "global citizens" to meet the concrete challenges of the twenty-first century. Linking ...

One of the keywords of our time, ‘globalization’ frames how we understand our interconnected world. An ambiguous signifier carrying multiple meanings, the term is usually used to refer to the extension and intensification of social relations across the world. Many works have been authored that deal with various aspects of globalization. However, it is surprising that no critical history of the concept has yet provided a historical mapping of its conceptual origins, evolution, and ...

Grassroots Zen envisions a socially engaged Buddhism where zazen is integrated each day with work, family, and social obligations.Though both authors have practiced traditional Zen for decades here they eschew the militaristic, patriarchal tendencies of Zen in favor of "an egalitarian community of socially mobile members who place less emphasis upon transmission and hierarchy than on individual responsibility."

The idea of the imagination is as evocative as it is elusive. Not only does the imagination allow us to project ourselves beyond our own immediate space and time, it also allows us to envision the future, as individuals and as collectives. The radical imagination, then, is that spark of difference, desire and discontent that can be fanned into the flames of social change. Yet what precisely is the imagination and what might make it 'radical'? How can it be fostered and cultivated? How can ...

John Rawls's A Theory of Justice is one of the most influential works of legal and political theory published since the Second World War. It provides a memorably well-constructed and sustained argument in favour of a new (social contract) version of the meaning of social justice. In setting out this argument, Rawls aims to construct a viable, systematic doctrine designed to ensure that the process of maximizing good is both conscious and coherent – and the result is a work that fo...

How has capitalism created or enhanced racism? In what ways do the violent histories of slavery and empire continue to influence the allocation of global resources?Rethinking Racial Capitalism: Questions of Reproduction and Survival proposes a return to analyses of racial capitalism – the capitalism that is inextricably linked with histories of racist expropriation – and argues that it is only by tracking the interconnections between changing modes of capitalism and racism that we ...

This exciting book is a tour de force, spanning a broad range of approaches to development. It does not stop at critique, as so many previous books on these issues have done, but offers a unique perspective on future possibilities and the shape of things to come. It should be essential reading on all development studies courses.- Andrea Cornwall, Institute of Development Studies, University of SussexPraise for the previous edition:"...

Globalization and Everyday Life provides an accessible account of globalization by developing two themes in particular. First, globalization is an outcome of structural and cultural processes that manifest in different ways in economy, politics, culture and organizations. So the globalized world is increasingly heterogeneous, unequal and conflictual rather than integrated and ordered. Secondly, globalization is sustained and created by the everyday actions of people and institutio...

In the provocative opening essay Kenway and Fahey explore ways in which the notion of the imagination itself might be mobilized by researchers. They are encouraged to develop 'defiant' global imaginations and communities with the capacities to think, 'be' and 'become' differently in a world of research increasingly governed by rampant reductionist rationality.To support this view there follows a series of detailed interviews with some of the world's leading intellectuals where the ...

Amartya Sen uses his 1999 work Development as Freedom to evaluate the processes and outcomes of economic development.Having come to the conclusion that development is best summed up as the expansion of freedom, Sen examines traditional definitions and understandings of the term. He says people tend to think of freedoms as economic (the freedom to enter into market exchanges) or political (the freedom to vote and be an active citizen), and tries to understand why the defini...