bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Seattle Demonstrations
Authors: Corcoran Katie E. , Pfaff Steven
Published: March 2012

Over a decade ago Seattle was the site of one of the most important anti‐globalization protest campaigns to that date. Between November 30 and December 3,1999, worldwide attention was drawn to Seattle by raucous protests that targeted the Third Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO). In particular, the events of November 30, the opening day of the ministerial, captured the imagination of activists and scholars around the world. On what organizers dubbed “N30,” tens of thousands of protesters flooded the streets of Seattle, preventing the bulk of the WTO delegates from reaching the opening session of the talks and bringing downtown business to a standstill. Civil authorities declared a protest exclusion zone in the city center and riot police moved against demonstrators with batons, tear gas, and armored vehicles. Many ad hoc events were organized with a distinctly local cast as community activists protested police brutality and staged demonstrations against the “protest‐free” zones in much of the central business district. Seattle thus presented an image of political unrest rarely seen in the United States since the Vietnam War era.
September 11th
Authors: Levine Michael
Published: March 2012

In assessing the significance of the events of September 11, 2001 (9/11) in relation to globalization, it is important to note the contentious and problematic character of both. The events of 9/11 itself, along with the subsequent and continuing US and global responses (allegedly) to those events, have had a wide, lasting, and arguably profound effect on globalization – including daily life for people in virtually all parts of the world. However, any account of the impact of 9/11 on globalization, or alternatively, globalization's role in the events of 9/11, is apt to reflect one's prior understanding of both. Given the widely divergent and emotionally invested views in relation to nearly every aspect of globalization as well as the events of 9/11, any account seeking to relate the two is bound to compound the contestation as well as complicate it. Such accounts will be seen as multiplying errors of interpretation and understanding, or else as offering false accounts or simplistic “just so stories” tailor‐made for the purposes of either the political left or right.
Social Class
Authors: Berberoglu Berch
Published: March 2012

Social class and class inequality constitute a core area of study in sociology, and the social sciences in general, and are the basis of the study of class relations and class conflict on a global scale, especially under conditions of contemporary neoliberal globalization. Societies have been divided along class lines ever since the development of social classes several thousands of years ago. Based mainly on property ownership, but also income, wealth, and a number of other dimensions, social classes have developed and become a familiar feature of societies across the globe – from early despotic empires through slavery, feudalism, and modern capitalism.
Social Imaginaries
Authors: Steger Manfred B.
Published: March 2012

Social imaginaries are macro‐mappings of social and political space through which we perceive, judge, and act in the world. These deep‐seated modes of understanding provide the most general parameters within which people imagine their communal existence. Drawing on Benedict Anderson's account of the imagined community of the nation, Charles Taylor argues that social imaginaries are neither theories nor ideologies, but implicit “background understandings” that make possible communal practices and a widely shared sense of their legitimacy. They offer explanations of how “we” – the members of the social whole – fit together, how things go on between us, the expectations we have of each other, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie those expectations. Social imaginaries are both normative and factual in the sense of providing us both with the standards of how things usually go on and how they ought to go on. In much the same vein, Pierre Bourdieu sees the social imaginary as setting the pre‐reflexive framework for our daily routines and our common‐sense social repertoires.
Social Movements
Authors: Dinerstein Ana Cecilia
Published: March 2012

Although people engaged in diverse forms of collective actions before, the termsocial movementrefers to a specific form of collective action that has historical roots in Western industrial capitalism, after the second half of the eighteenth century. Industrial capitalism presented a new opportunity for collective action in that it instituted the modern idea that society could be changed. This new form of collective action (social movement) emerged in England and America with political and economic changes, the expansion of the power of Parliament and the spreading out of capital in all its forms, which went hand in hand with the formation and expansion of wage labor. The emergence and growth of social movements was entrenched in political and economic factors such as a rising governmental influence and the increase in negotiations over people's welfare; the deepening of the system of political representation, and the politicization of a free working class (Tilly 2004: 27).
Social Policy
Authors: Deacon Bob
Published: March 2012

The subject area of global social policy (GSP) consists of two things: “first, it is the social policy prescriptions for national social policy being articulated by global actors such as international organizations; second, it is the emerging supranational social policies and mechanisms of global redistribution, global social regulation and global social rights” (Deacon 2007: 1). It is also concerned with the global governance of these two elements of GSP.
Society
Authors: Krossa Sophie
Published: March 2012

The fact that “society” today is viewed as a rather vague concept can be interpreted either as a problem, or it can goad us to unlock its actual explanatory potential. While some critics go so far as to claim that the term should not be used at all anymore (for example Bauman 2000: 8), here, an alternative approach will be proposed that rises to the very challenge of ambiguity and interprets society generically, in such a way that the notion also becomes fully applicable to conditions in the contemporary world.
South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
Authors: Bhandari Medani
Published: March 2012

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has eight members: Afghanistan; Bangladesh; Bhutan; India; Maldives; Nepal; Pakistan; and Sri Lanka. It was long the intention of South Asian politicians to establish a platform for regional cooperation of this kind, beginning with discussions in 1980. In April 1981 seven countries' foreign secretaries met in Colombo, Sri Lanka to formalize the concept of cooperation and identified five broad areas for regional cooperation (Afghanistan joined SAARC only in 2005). In August 1983, foreign ministers of the seven countries, at their first meeting in New Delhi, India, formally launched an Integrated Program of Action (IPA) by adopting a Declaration on South Asian Regional Cooperation (SARC). Following this framework, at the first summit held in Dhaka, Bangladesh on December 7–8, 1985, the charter establishing SAARC was adopted (ILO 2000).
Southern African Development Community
Authors: Söderbaum Fredrik
Published: March 2012

Immediately before the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980, the Frontline States created the Southern African Development Coordinating Conference (SADCC) in order to foster regional economic cooperation and diminish economic dependence on the outside world, especially apartheid South Africa. The organization was based on a rather modest strategy, which mainly emphasized economic coordination in a series of sectors and, in particular, the mobilization of development assistance to the region as part of the anti‐apartheid struggle, especially from the Nordic countries.
Space
Authors: Puleo Thomas J.
Published: March 2012

Space is one of the two fundamental dimensions of reality, the other being time. As a concept in global studies, space informs discourses on the changing scalar contexts and locational conditions of a wide range of economic, political, social, cultural, and environmental phenomena. Although the idea of space is universally applicable, some disciplines have long put space at the center of their field of study, most notably architecture, art, geography, geometry, philosophy, planning, and topology.
Space of Flows/Space of Place
Authors: Sam Jillet Sarah
Published: March 2012

This refers to a dualism in contemporary social geography, which incorporates fluidity in the context of globalization. First proposed in 1996, the tension between these dichotomous spatial forms constituted a key aspect of Manuel Castells'
Network Society
(1996/2000) and the increasing traffic of (global) flows that characterized it. The framework was initially developed in the early period of increasing access to the Internet. In light of the increasing and diverse Internet usage, Castells introduced some key modifications to the concepts in 1999.
Standardization
Authors: Mendel Peter
Published: March 2012

Broadly speaking, standardization refers to attempts to explicitly formulate general rules defining and regulating activity or technology (Brunsson & Jacobsson 2000). The development of standards is normally justified with functional and economic rationales. They enable economies of scale, compatibility of interfaces, and common frameworks for organizing social life and economic production. They convey information to the general public or to specific parties engaged in exchange in a consistent and understandable manner, as well as enhance competition by facilitating comparisons among producers and products. Standards can also be used to aid the diffusion of technological advances and help promote other public goals, such as the protection of health, safety, and the environment (National Research Council 1995). Standards themselves frequently become the object of standardization, justified in terms of lowering the costs of evaluating and complying with redundant or inconsistent sets of standards (Zuckerman 1997). From this perspective, standards‐making is associated with increasing rates of interaction, as methods to enhance or, in the case of some interested actors, dominate exchange.
State Autonomy
Authors: Béland Daniel
Published: March 2012

One of the major debates about the role and significance of globalization in contemporary societies concerns the impact of global economic, political, and social forces on nation‐states. A key component of this debate is centered onstate autonomy, a concept that broadly refers to the capacity of national governments to make a difference in an increasingly global world where national boundaries are called into question or, at the very least, are seen as less adapted to contemporary global challenges like climate change which require transnational coordination at odds with traditional state sovereignty and autonomy.
Structuration
Authors: Stones Rob
Published: March 2012

Structuration theory is a way of looking at social phenomena as the product of social structures and social action, rather than just one or the other of these. Social
structures
are understood as intended and unintended outcomes produced by social
actors
whose actions are in turn carried out in, and profoundly influenced by, their social‐structural context. Social actors, who are knowledgeable and reflexive, will have been shaped in considerable part through their insertion and socialization into social structures and, conversely, those social structures will be shaped in significant part by the actors who populate them. Thus, not only are social actors constituted in significant part by structures, but structures are constituted in significant part by social actors. There is a continual and dynamic
process
in which actors situated within structures interpretatively draw upon that context in producing their meaningful practices, and those practices, in turn, help to constitute the structures – through contributing to their reproduction or through affecting change.
Sustainability
Authors: Vercelli Alessandro
Published: March 2012

Sustainability refers to the capacity of a process to endure or to be maintained and improved. This term acquired a specialized meaning in ecology where it came to describe biological systems, such as wetlands or forests, which may survive and evolve in healthy conditions, that is, without irreversible depletion of resources or deterioration of their environmental qualities. By extension, the Bruntland Report, commissioned by the United Nations (WCED 1987), introduced the neologismsustainable developmentthat refers to the long‐term well‐being of social systems in the light of the interaction between their economic, environmental and social conditions. In this entry the focus is on the sustainable development of single countries and the global community is examined in its interaction with the process of globalization (a more detailed analysis on the same lines may be found in Borghesi & Vercelli 2008). Although some background information on this interaction since the first industrial revolution will be provided, the analysis will focus on developed countries after World War II.
Sustainable Consumption
Authors: Eden Sally
Published: March 2012

Sustainable consumption
is an umbrella term used for a variety of consumer behaviors that seek to reduce the environmental damage caused by everyday production and consumption. These behaviors include not only buying sustainable products but also using products, energy, and other resources more sustainably. Examples are: reducing fossil fuel use by buying domestic appliances with high ratings for energy, efficiency; buying food grown sustainably; buying food grown locally; and buying recycled paper. Less commonly, the term refers to reducing overall consumption levels by buying less, perhaps supported by growing one's own food.
Technology
Authors: Aneesh A.
Published: March 2012

Technology is arguably one of the most important elements in globalization processes. Accelerated interactions across the globe over the last two centuries have been made possible by technologies of time‐space compression, a term used by David Harvey (1989) to signify processes by which the world appears a smaller place. Technological innovations focused on the removal of spatial barriers include the railroad, telegraph, automobile, radio, telephone, jet aircraft, television, and the recent telecommunications revolution, connecting disparate markets and cultures together while also speeding up the experience of social life. From 1500 to 1960, for instance, the world became 70 times smaller because the average speed of horse‐drawn carriages in 1500 was 10 miles per hour compared to airplanes in 1960 that could fly 700 miles per hour. Such technological changes have altered our perception of the world from a place of limitless and open frontiers to a materially limited domain. The global age begins when there are no unchartered territories left to discover, when it becomes impossible to undo the awareness that there are others sharing one planet, and when important events tend to implicate the entire globe (Albrow 1997; Beck 2000). The role of transportation, communication, and media technologies in this global shift is noteworthy.
Environmental Activism
Authors: Fisher Dana R.
Published: March 2012

Environmental activism is defined by collective social action that is focused on issues related to the natural environment. Such action can be in support of the protection of environmental goods, such as a coral reef or a virgin forest, or in protest of the distribution of environmental bads, such as toxic waste that is released during industrial processes or the siting of a garbage landfill in a community. Environmental activism can take place at all scales of governance and can target actors at the local, national, or transnational levels. In recent years, environmental activism has increasingly targeted actors at multiple levels simultaneously.
Information war
Authors: Ritzer George
Published: March 2012

The new, advanced technologies have made possible both traditional warfare and the more recent “information war” (Tumber & Webster 2007). This new information technology is deeply implicated in the advanced weaponry employed in contemporary wars. For example, the “smart missiles” employed by the United States in the second Iraq War required advanced information technology so that they could be targeted to hit very small and precise targets with a high degree of accuracy (although these weapons, like virtually all weapons, were not immune from missing their targets and causing collateral damage). Not only do these weapons depend on advanced information technologies, but so do many other aspects of contemporary warfare such as surveillance (by satellites, airplanes, drones, etc.) as well as the “command and control” needed to run a modern military operation.
Mercosur
Authors: Roett Riordan
Published: March 2012

Traditional rivals in the Southern Cone of Latin America, Argentina and Brazil first explored economic collaboration in the early 1980s. For the first time in centuries, the moment was right. Both countries underwent political transitions in the mid 1980s from military rule to civilian regimes, Argentina in 1983 and Brazil in 1985. The reestablishment of democratic governments provided an opportunity to seek policies that would consolidate the democratic process and limit the sphere of influence of the armed forces. In November 1985, newly elected democratic presidents met to inaugurate a new bridge at Iguacu Falls on the border between the two states. They agreed to create a binational commission to study the possibilities of increased economic cooperation and integration. In 1986, the Argentine–Brazilian Program for Integration and Cooperation (PICAB) was announced. In 1986, the two presidents signed the Act of Brazil–Argentine Friendship in Brasilia. It was also announced that the two countries would pursue a policy of peaceful nuclear development.
Privatization
Authors: Spector Alan
Published: March 2012

Privatization is the governmental policy of selling publicly owned assets to private interests or turning over publicly managed services to private organizations. Contemporary examples of the former include the selling of publicly owned factories in Russia to private corporations and the selling of publicly owned water rights in many countries to private companies for them to re‐sell to the public. Contemporary examples of the latter include turning over the management of ambulance services, medical services, trash collection services, education, and incarceration.
Second Modernity
Authors: Beck Ulrich , Grande Edgar
Published: March 2012

When a world order collapses, that's the moment when reflection should begin. Surprisingly, this has not been the case with the type of social theory dominant today. The mainstream of social theory still floats loftily above the lowlands of epochal transformations (climate change, financial crisis, nation‐states) in a condition of universalistic superiority and instinctive uncertainty. This universalistic social theory, whether structuralist, interactionist, Marxist or systems theoretical, is now both out of date and provincial. Out of date because it excludes
a priori
what can be observed empirically: a fundamental transformation of society and politics within modernity (from First to Second Modernity); provincial because it mistakenly absolutizes the trajectory, the historical experience and future expectation of Western, that is, predominantly European or North American, modernization and thereby also fails to see its particularity.
Transnational Capitalist Class
Authors: Sklair Leslie
Published: March 2012

The transnational capitalist class (TCC) as a theoretical concept and an empirical reality has its origins in theories of capitalist globalization developed since the 1960s. Traditional Marxist theories of the international bourgeoisie tend to be conceptualized in state‐centrist terms and to focus mainly on business leaders, usually big capitalists, and their corporations in rich and powerful countries exploiting capitalists, workers and peasants in poor countries. The transnational corporation (TNC), in contrast, transcends national class structures and, for some researchers, includes groups whose members do not directly own the means of production but, nevertheless, directly serve the interests of global capitalism.
War on Terror
Authors: Newman Saul
Published: March 2012

The War on Terror is commonly understood as a global campaign – comprising military, political, security, diplomatic, economic, and legislative strategies – waged by certain nation‐states, usually led and instigated by the United States, against a terrorist enemy (or enemies), usually identified as either al‐Qaeda or, more broadly, “Islamic extremism.” However, a clearer and more precise definition of the War on Terror is problematic, and we encounter a major difficulty in separating its true meaning from its ideological connotations and political manipulations. Indeed, it may be more accurate to define the War on Terrorasan ideology, or at least a hegemonic political discourse – one that, nevertheless, has had a major impact on world politics in the first decade of the twenty‐first century.
War on Terror, International Law On
Authors: Nagan Winston P. , Haddad Aitza M.
Published: March 2012

This entry begins with a short background to the problem of terrorism in the postwar era. Probably the most sustained use of terrorism emerged from the independence struggle against French colonialism in Algeria, in which the anti‐colonial forces were sufficiently weak not to risk direct confrontation. Their strategy was, therefore, to use terrorist methods against the vastly superior colonial enemy. Terrorism was promoted as a necessary form of struggle for national liberation. It was the weapon of the weak. It is unclear whether the price paid to secure Algerian independence was so high and institutionalization of violence within the culture so deep that, even during independence, the Algerians have experienced the violence of sporadic terrorism and excessive responses from the authorities to these challenges. Nevertheless, the ostensible message of the Algerian war of national liberation served as a model for other struggles against colonial rule or foreign occupation. Essentially, the struggle was strategically directed by terrorism and, since the Algerians succeeded in discarding colonial rule, terrorism, the weapon of the weak, seemed to be legitimated.
Welfare State
Authors: Peoples Clayton D.
Published: March 2012

The welfare state is an integral part of a number of Western capitalist societies. As its name implies, it refers to situations in which the
state
(government and its associated apparatus) is actively involved in providing for the
welfare
of its people, particularly in a financial sense. Put differently, a welfare state can be defined as a situation in which “state responsibilities extend beyond the mere maintenance of internal order and external security to a public responsibility for the well‐being of citizens” (Alber 1988: 231).
Westernization
Authors: Bozkurt Umut
Published: March 2012

Westernization can be defined as a process of social change where societies convert to the customs and practices of Western civilization. As a concept it has a long pedigree and it is closely linked with colonialism, modernization, and lately globalization.
Women's Rights
Authors: Faupel Alison
Published: March 2012

“Women's rights” refers to the basic rights and liberties to which all women and girls are entitled. Broadly speaking, women's rights may be divided into three general categories: civil, political, and social (Marshall 1964). Civil rights ensure one's personal liberty, freedom of speech and expression, freedom from physical harm, and the right to own property and enter contracts. Political rights entail the right to participate in political decision making, including the right to vote, the right to assemble, and the right to petition one's government. Social rights include the rights to an adequate standard of living, education, health care, and welfare.
Worker Rights Consortium
Authors: Ross Robert J.S.
Published: March 2012

Founded in April 2000, the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) describes itself as “an independent labor rights monitoring organization, conducting investigations of working conditions in factories around the globe” whose “purpose is to combat sweatshops and protect the rights of workers who sew apparel and make other products sold in the United States” (Worker Rights Consortium 2009a). Created by the “sweatfree campus” movement organized by United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) in the mid 1990s, the WRC had, as of December 2009, 186 university and college and four high school affiliates. While some affiliations were voluntary and enthusiastic, others joined only after student sit‐ins and/or hunger strikes (Featherstone & USAS 2002).
World Cities
Authors: Lin Jan
Published: March 2012

World cities are the main hubs of the global economy and international cultural life. They are nexus points in the accumulation and circulation of capital, labor, and culture in the capitalist world system. They comprise discrete social and spatial structures that can be investigated and help us comprehend the nature of macro‐level social phenomena typically described as globalization and neoliberal capitalism. World cities are also ideal contexts for investigating the interaction of global structures with local dynamics from the regional, neighborhood, and street‐level perspectives. Community‐based and ethnographic perspectives on the world city contribute to our intellectual comprehension of the interplay between structure and agency that is a perennial academic objective of the field of sociology. The study of urban culture in the everyday life of world cities helps us understand the nature of emerging forms of transnational community and citizenship.
World Council of Churches
Authors: Pratt Douglas
Published: March 2012

The World Council of Churches (WCC) is an organization whose membership comprises some 350 churches worldwide. Member churches, including Anglican, Protestant, Orthodox, African Independent, and Pentecostal, among others, represent well over half a billion Christians spread across much of the globe. By its own definition the WCC is “a fellowship of churches” held together by a common Christian confession of faith and the intention of member churches “to fulfil their common calling” through cooperative action and enhanced mutual interaction. The lead goals of “visible unity,” “common witness,” and shared engagement in Christian service on many fronts comprise the chief drivers of programmatic agendas. The WCC is thus an institutional expression of the ecumenical movement that, since the mid twentieth century, has become a defining feature of Christianity.
World Culture
Authors: Lechner Frank J.
Published: March 2012

At the end of the nineteenth century, British traders and educators, sports enthusiasts all, promoted the newly codified game of association football (“soccer” in the remainder of this entry) in distant places. Eagerly adopted in several countries, especially in Latin America, the game fostered new ties, for example, in the form of international competitions, and over time gave rise to an elaborate framework of rules, the “laws of the game,” supervised by an international nongovernmental organization, FIFA. Both professional clubs and national teams jockeyed for position in border‐crossing contests, measuring themselves against foreign opponents in terms of global standards and strategies. With the aid of new satellite technology and the support of multinational corporations, FIFA staged increasingly elaborate versions of its World Cup tournament, drawing an audience of billions by the end of the twentieth century. The quintessential global game thus illustrates the evolution of world culture, comprised of specific rules that constitute globalized practices, more general ideas that guide the participants in such practices, and, in broadest terms, a shared awareness of the world as a single place.
World Food Programme
Authors: Jachertz Ruth
Published: March 2012

The World Food Programme (WFP) is the food aid arm of the United Nations system. In 2009 it provided 4.6 million metric tons of food to 102 million people spending 4.2 billion dollars in the process. Eighty‐one percent of worldwide emergency food aid was provided through the WFP. The organization employs roughly 10 200 staff, of whom 90 percent work in the field delivering food and monitoring its use (
http://www.wfp.org/content/wfp‐annual‐report‐2010‐english
; information on food aid flows [from 1988 to 2009] is gathered in the food aid information system:
www.wfp.org/fais
).
World Government
Authors: Kahraman Filiz
Published: March 2012

The term world government refers to the unification of all human beings under a single political entity. Since antiquity the concept has fallen in and out of favor, over history and through different regimes of social thought and political organization. Philosophers and scholars from a variety of disciplines have appealed to this idea at times as a solution to end wars or in hopes of realizing unity under one God. Discussions regarding world government have gained renewed impetus in the globalizing post–Cold War era, with social scientists and political philosophers alike reviving the notion as a solution to global injustices and rising security threats. Within the field of international relations, scholars mostly discuss the possibility of a world government as a guarantor of world peace and an alternative to the realist conception of “anarchy” in the international arena. Additionally, the idea has been taken up by some normative political theorists and economists, who stress the need for international or supranational regulation due to the perceived inability of nation‐states to address global problems of poverty, environmental degradation, migration, and financial regulation.
World Health Organization
Authors: Hall Jason K.
Published: March 2012

The WHO has been central in the development of the concept of “global health,” bringing awareness of the implications of public health beyond local communities or national borders. This emphasis has resulted in more focused efforts to address ongoing health concerns and the development of global strategies for intervening in health‐related emergencies as they arise.
World Polity Theory
Authors: McNeely Connie L.
Published: March 2012

World polity theory was developed as an analytical frame for interpreting global relations, structures, and practices. Invoking an image of the world as a system of interrelated interdependent units, it is a theory of transnational interaction and global social change. It provides a sociological institutionalist account of global relations within a cultural model positing norms and identities for actors and prescribing related actions and goals. Social actors and associated structures and behaviors are viewed as shaped by the broader environment; individuals, organizations, governments, and other actors are embedded in a cultural context that frames and determines their identity, structure, and behavior. Thus, the world polity gives meaning and value to particular actors and activities, integrating them into larger schemes within a broader analytical framework. The world itself is conceived as an increasingly integrated social system within a cultural framework that affects various actors as system subunits and puts into place models of social action in a world society. (Indeed, world polity theory is sometimes referenced as world society theory.)
World Society Theory
Authors: McNeely Connie L.
Published: March 2012

World society theory is a theory of transnational interaction and global social change that emphasizes the importance of global institutions and culture in shaping the structure and behavior of individuals, organizations, and nation‐states around the world. Developed by sociologist John W. Meyer, world society theory provides a sociological institutionalist account of global relations in which social actors and units are embedded in a world‐level cultural context that frames and shapes their identities, structures, and behaviors.
World‐Systems Analysis
Authors: Reifer Tom
Published: March 2012

World‐systems analysis emerged out of the movements of the 1960s and brought together a fruitful synthesis of Third World radicalism, Marxism, and critical elements of historical social science, from the German historical school to the geohistorians of theAnnalesschool. This materialist conflict analysis, which early on pioneered the study of what today is called globalization, was inaugurated by Immanuel Wallerstein in the mid 1970s and offered a bold critique of the then dominant liberal consensus paradigm in the structural functionalist modernization theory of US and world social science.
Trade‐Related Investment Measures
Authors: Chiang Chi‐Chen
Published: March 2012

Trade‐related investment measures (TRIMs) are generally viewed as a host‐country government's instruments to maximize the net benefit of inward foreign direct investment (FDI). These measures are usually used by developing countries to promote industrialization, trade balance and local sourcing. Developed countries also use these measures to attract FDI, promote exports and protect local industries from transnational corporations. However, any measures to regulate FDI and cause trade‐restrictive and distorting effects concern the WTO. Therefore, most countries have mostly eliminated TRIMs in recent decades. Countries that wish to maintain certain TRIMs, or impose new TRIMs on foreign investors, must explain to the WTO Council for Trade in Goods the economic conditions that make the TRIMs necessary, and have plans to phase them out in order to extend them.
Transnational Corporations
Authors: Sklair Leslie
Published: March 2012

The term transnational corporation (TNC) basically refers to a business enterprise that operates in more than one country though most definitions will stipulate a minimum number of countries and a minimum set of functions (usually production, marketing and sales). The TNC is widely considered to be the driving force of capitalist globalization. Research on TNCs is dominated by no single methodology or substantive focus, but borrows from more or less all of the varying traditions in the social sciences. By volume, most of the research on the TNCs has actually been done by economists, business historians and organization theorists and some of this work has been influential on the ways other disciplines have approached them. In 1992 the United Nations Library on Transnational Corporations was launched, collecting together more than 8,000 pages in 20 volumes (Dunning 1992–1994). For all their excellent qualities it must be said that the 20 volumes of the UN Library on TNCs are dominated by the paradigm of conventional economics, are somewhat conservative in outlook (they focus largely on economic efficiency and structural issues) and generally present a picture that predates the debates around the role of TNCs in capitalist globalization. For the roots of this debate we must consider more radical approaches to the TNCs that investigate social, political and cultural as well as economic effects. For example, Stopford and Strange (1991) present a firm‐firm, firm‐state and state‐state framework that opens up research on the TNCs in the field of International Relations; Dicken (2007) explores TNC relationships between the local and the global in geographical terms, and Sklair (2001) focuses on the major corporations, namely the
Fortune
Global 500, from a sociological perspective.
Transnationalism
Authors: Khagram Sanjeev
Published: March 2012

Transnational phenomena and dynamics are the focus of a blossoming yet fragmented body of scholarship across virtually all social science disciplines. There are five intellectual foundations for a field of Transnational Studies (TS) that offer a heuristically rich and compelling set of empirical, methodological, theoretical, philosophical, and practical ideas and options. An interdisciplinary Social Scientific Transnationalism (ST) research program that organizes these intellectual foundations in a unique and generative way sheds new light on a range of core social scientific concerns including power, inequality, culture, identity, movements, citizenship, institutions and organizations among others.
US Social Forum
Authors: Katz‐Fishman Walda , Scott Jerome
Published: March 2012

The United States Social Forum (USSF), a part of the World Social Forum (WSF) space and process, is a convergence of social struggles and social movements in the United States in the early twenty‐first century to oppose capitalist globalization and all aspects of exploitation and oppression, and to envision another world beyond neoliberal global capitalism. Because the economic, political, and ecological crises confronting working class and low‐income people across race, nation, and gender are global, those in the struggle require a global movement building process from the bottom up. The social forum offers this opportunity.
Undernutrition
Authors: Serra‐Majem Luis , Ngo Joy
Published: March 2012

Undernutrition is a term that comprises stunting, underweight, wasting, and being deficient in essential vitamins and minerals (also called micronutrients), and, as such, it is the category of malnutrition that represents nutrient deficits. The other form of malnutrition is associated with excessive energy and nutrient intakes, leading to obesity and other diet‐related non‐communicable diseases (i.e., diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, etc.). Maternal and child undernutrition continue to be persistent issues in low‐income and middle‐income countries, resulting in important increases in mortality and overall disease burden such as poor fetal growth, low birth weight, xerophthalmia, anemia, goiter, impaired cognitive development, and increased risk of diarrhea, pneumonia, and malaria, among others. Undernutrition exacerbates the detrimental effects of other pathologies and thus is directly or indirectly associated with nearly 60 percent of all child deaths worldwide. Even mildly underweight children have nearly double the risk of death when compared to their well‐nourished counterparts.
United Nations
Authors: Charron Andrea , Boulden Jane
Published: March 2012

The United Nations (UN) is an international organization that was created in 1945 at the end of World War II. At the time of its creation there were 51 member states; today there are 192. Only states may be members of the UN although nongovernmental organizations, civil society organizations and other bodies (such as the Vatican or the Palestinian Liberation Organization, for example) may be granted observer status and participate in various meetings.
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
Authors: McNeely Connie L.
Published: March 2012

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is a specialized agency within the United Nations (UN) system. Established on November 4, 1946, UNESCO is responsible for promoting peace, international security, human rights, and social justice through educational, scientific, and cultural cooperation and understanding.
Urban
Authors: Coward Martin
Published: March 2012

The concept of “the urban” predominantly refers to city‐dwelling. Urbanization is thus taken to refer to migration into, or the expansion of, cities. In 2005 the United Nations declared that a historic milestone had been passed: namely that the majority of the planet's population lived in cities (UN‐HABITAT 2006). UN‐HABITAT went on to declare that humanity was entering into an “urban millennium” (2006: viii). Such a contention of epochal significance resonates with a wider perception that both the nature of what is considered to be an urban mode of life as well as the dynamics of urbanization are distinctive in the contemporary period.
Urbanism
Authors: Elliott David L.
Published: March 2012

Urbanism encompasses a pattern of social relations typifying human settlements that are relatively large, densely populated, and diverse. Urban
ism
is distinct from urban
ization
in that urbanization is the process by which cities emerge and grow, a demographic and economic process; urbanism shapes the resultant social relations. Social relations commonly associated with urbanism traditionally include social problems rooted in diverse cultures living in close proximity or in competition for scarce spatial resources, immediacy of strangers as opposed to intimates, and modes of social attachment not rooted in common culture such as interest groups and social classes. These social problem themes, and others, appear in the literature of urbanism from its earlier works (Wirth 1938) to the period of globalization (Castells 1977; Sassen 2007; Harvey 2010; Wilson 1987).
Value Chains
Authors: Gereffi Gary
Published: March 2012

The GVC approach offers the possibility of understanding how firms are linked in the global economy, but also acknowledges the broader institutional context of these linkages, including trade policy, regulation, and standards. More generally, the global production networks paradigm has been used to link scholarly research on globalization with the concerns of both policy makers and social activists, who are trying to harness the potential gains of globalization to the pragmatic concerns of specific countries and social constituencies that feel increasingly marginalized in the international economic arena. A growing number of international organizations are featuring the global value chains perspective in their publications, including the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (2004), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (2010), the International Labor Organization (Gereffi 2006), and the World Bank (Cattaneo et al. 2010).
Material Resourcefulness: Activating Material Information in Computational Design
Authors: Menges Achim
Published: March 2012

Recent years have seen the unprecedented innovation of new technologies for the advancement of architectural design. Despite the propensity of complex geometries, elaborate forms and articulated surfaces, information technology has left some profound aspects of design largely unchallenged. A persistently hierarchical approach has often led to the generation of geometric information being prioritised over its subsequent materialisation. Through the example of wood, one of the oldest and most common construction materials, Achim Menges here demonstrates how material information should become a generative driver rather than an afterthought in design computation. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Material Behaviour: Embedding Physical Properties in Computational Design Processes
Authors: Fleischmann Moritz , Knippers Jan , Lienhard Julian , Menges Achim , Schleicher Simon
Published: March 2012

Material behaviour computes form. In the physical world, material form is always inseparably connected to internal constraints and external forces; in the virtual space of digital design, though, form and force are usually treated as separate entities – divided into processes of geometric form generation and subsequent engineering simulation. Using the example of the interdisciplinary ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion, constructed at the University of Stuttgart in 2010, Moritz Fleischmann, Jan Knippers, Julian Lienhard, Achim Menges and Simon Schleicher explain how feedback between computational design, advanced simulation and robotic fabrication expands the design space towards previously unexplored architectural possibilities. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Material Capacity: Embedded Responsiveness
Authors: Menges Achim , Reichert Steffen
Published: March 2012

Most attempts towards climate‐responsive architecture rely heavily on elaborate technical equipment superimposed on otherwise inert material constructs. In contrast, natural systems embed all the responsive capacity in the structure of the material itself. In this article, Achim Menges and Steffen Reichert present the development of biomimetic responsive material systems that require neither the supply of external energy nor any kind of mechanical or electronic control. They introduce their research on physically programming the humidity‐reactive behaviour of these systems, and explain the possibilities this opens up for a strikingly simple yet truly ecologically embedded architecture in constant feedback and interaction with its surrounding environment. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Physical Drivers: Synthesis of Evolutionary Developments and Force‐Driven Design
Authors: Ahlquist Sean , Menges Achim
Published: March 2012

Primarily admired as feats of engineering, tension‐driven material systems are notoriously difficult for architects to employ. Though the shape and structural capacity of these systems are defined by the imposition of force, they do not follow predictable geometric or mathematical patterns. In this article, Sean Ahlquist and Achim Menges present their research into force‐driven material systems, and explain the development of an architectural design framework that allows for these complex material interdependencies to be not only resolved, but also explored as multiple possible equilibrium states. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Material, Form and Force
Authors: Kotnik Toni , Weinstock Michael
Published: March 2012

Conventionally, material in architecture has been treated as the ‘servant’ of form. An iterative design process, though, that continuously integrates material, form and force has the potential to unfold a new generative logic of form‐finding. This offers ways of processing the flow of forces through a material object and balancing variations of form with the organisation and behaviour of material. Toni Kotnik and Michael Weinstock present a series of experimental construction projects, developed within the Emergent Technologies and Design (EmTech) programme at the Architectural Association (AA) in London, that explore the intricate relationship between material, form and force. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Manufacturing Reciprocities
Authors: Menges Achim , Schwinn Tobias
Published: March 2012

Following in the footsteps of more progressive industries, digital fabrication in architecture is on the brink of shifting from task‐specific computer numerically controlled (CNC) machines to more generic industrial robots. The change from machine hardware and control software developed to facilitate a specific fabrication process towards more open‐ended and generic fabrication devices enables architects to design custom fabrication processes and machine‐control protocols. Achim Menges and Tobias Schwinn present how these advanced machine capabilities expand the interface between design computation and physical materialisation. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.