bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Education Policy
Authors: Rizvi Fazal
Published: March 2012

The notion of educational policy refers to a set of prescriptive statements designed to guide action in the field of education. Such statements embody not only the purposes of education but also the ways in which education should be funded, organized, and governed. Issues relating to the purposes of education have long been a topic of intense philosophical debates, concerned with the question of how education might serve various moral, social, political, and economic values. Winch and Gingell (2004) have reviewed some of these debates, noting that while some educational scholars have suggested, in the Kantian tradition, that education is intrinsically worthwhile, designed to produce knowledgeable, responsible, and serious‐minded people, others, in the functionalist traditions, have articulated educational purposes in more instrumental terms.
Environment: International Political Economy
Authors: Jorgenson Andrew K. , Clark Brett
Published: March 2012

A new era, the Anthropocene, began in the late eighteenth century, marking the turning point when human actions became the primary driver of environmental change, transforming the structure and functioning of the world's ecosystems. Natural scientists warn that humanity is increasingly transgressing “planetary boundaries” – “the safe operating space for humanity with respect to the Earth system and … the planet's biophysical subsystems and processes” – threatening to undermine the relatively stable, interglacial geological epoch that has supported human civilization (Rockström et al. 2009: 472). The political‐economic organization of societies remains at the nexus of the global ecological crisis, whether it is climate change, biodiversity loss, the overloading of the nitrogen cycle, ocean acidification, deforestation, or the decline in fresh water. Macro‐level perspectives within environmental sociology – such as the treadmill of production, treadmill of destruction, metabolic rift, and ecologically unequal exchange – analyze how specific political‐economic structures and relationships influence environmental and ecological change.
Environmental Concern
Authors: Dunlap Riley E.
Published: March 2012

As widespread citizen concern for environmental quality emerged throughout the developed world in the 1970s and 1980s, it was commonly assumed that such concern was limited to residents of wealthy and primarily Northern‐hemisphere nations. The early emergence of environmentalism and green parties in North America and Northern Europe gave credence to this view, as did the wary reaction of poorer nations to the 1972 United Nations Conference of the Human Environment in Stockholm. It thus became conventional wisdom that concern about environmental problems and support for environmental protection was lacking among residents of poor nations (Dunlap & York 2008).
Ethnicity
Authors: Eriksen Thomas Hylland
Published: March 2012

The term ethnicity refers to the enduring relationship between more or less bounded groups or social categories that perceive themselves as being culturally different from each other. Ethnic identities are, furthermore, based on widely held notions of shared origin and shared culture, and must be recognized as such by outsiders as well as by the proclaimed members of an ethnic group or category. Ethnicity, it could be said, is a means of rendering cultural differences comparable. There has evolved a global discourse, or “grammar,” about ethnicity which entails a great number of formal commonalities between ethnic groups struggling for recognition everywhere. The emphasis on cultural heritage, shared customs, and a history of oppression is shared by ethnic minorities everywhere. To a great extent, they have learned from each other, even if their battles are in a substantial way local and unique.
Eurocentrism
Authors: Krossa Sophie
Published: March 2012

It appears to be an anthropological constant that people assume
they
are (at) the center of the world – expressed simply as an inevitably specific point of reference for any statement. The question is
how
such a statement is made: neutrally (“the other is different”) or judgmentally (“the other is inferior”)? It is the latter sentiment that forms the basis for Eurocentrism, in which Europe – perceived as the center of the world – is the normative standard against which all things are measured (Delanty 2006: 267f.).
Feminization of Poverty
Authors: Chant Sylvia
Published: March 2012

The coining of the term “feminization of poverty” is widely attributed to Diana Pearce (1978), who, on the basis of statistical analysis for the United States between the 1950s and 1970s, reported a trend towards increased concentration of income poverty among women, and especially among Afro‐American female‐headed households. Pearce's terminology began to circulate in studies on gender and poverty in other parts of the world, but it was not until the 1990s that it became definitively etched in the lexicon of international development. At the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women in 1995 it was famously (if erroneously) announced that women were 70% of the world's poor. This fueled momentum for designation of one of the Beijing Platform for Action's 12 main priorities as the need to “address the persistent and rising burden of poverty upon women.” Since then, the “feminization of poverty” has been generally regarded as a global phenomenon, and associated with three apparently intuitive (if inadequately substantiated) notions. Reflecting the legacies of Pearce's original time‐ and place‐specific concept, these are, first, that women are poorer than men; second, that the incidence of poverty among women is increasing relative to men over time; and third, that growing poverty among women is linked with the “feminization” of household headship (Chant 2007).
Financescapes
Authors: L. Powell Jason
Published: March 2012

The term “financescape” derives from the global theorist Arjun Appadurai (1996). He sees it as one of the perils of economic globalization, defined as “cross‐border movements” of loans, equities, direct and indirect investments, and currencies that transcend the power of the nation‐state. Appadurai (2006) further describes financescapes as the imperialism of global flows of finance in which uncontrolled and rapid movements of capital can destabilize national economies.
Food Sovereignty
Authors: McMichael Philip
Published: March 2012

Food sovereignty is a concept with a strategic purpose. Coined in the early 1990s by the emerging international coalition of peasant farmers, La Vía Campesina, “food sovereignty” referred initially to national sovereignty over food policy, as a first political step. Ultimately it refers to a democratic vision of community and regional control of the multifunctional features of agriculture (land preservation, ecological stewardship, food provisioning, rural employment, and cultural sustainability), and has inspired an international food sovereignty movement comprising peasants, the landless, small pastoralists, fisherfolk, and indigenous peoples. It is represented by the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (
www.foodsovereignty.org
).
Football
Authors: Giulianotti Richard
Published: March 2012

Association football (also known as soccer, particularly in North America) is widely acknowledged to be the world's most popular single sport. Football's global governing body, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), has 208 national member associations, while its showcase tournament, the World Cup finals, is played every four years before worldwide television audiences. Giulianotti and Robertson (2004, 2007, and 2009) have explored the complex and increasingly significant interrelationships of globalization and football, with specific reference to their historical, cultural, economic, political, and social dimensions.
Free Trade
Authors: Panagariya Arvind
Published: March 2012

Adam Smith (1776) called the system of political economy that dominated Europe between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries the “mercantile system.” According to this system, the wealth of a nation, like that of individuals, was synonymous with its stock of gold. This premise had two immediate implications: a country could get richer by exporting more than it imported since it would then receive the balance in gold; and international trade was a zero‐sum game in which the benefits of the recipient of gold were exactly offset by the losses of the payer.
Games
Authors: Miller Toby
Published: March 2012

The principal contributions of games to globalization are military and commercial. Electronic games have sold internationally since the mid 1980s, from arcade play to handheld consoles to online subscriptions; from imaginary spheres of self‐absorption to recruitment devices for the military. The overall market of US$30 billion grew by 16 percent annually between 2006 and 2010. For its part, the US military, which underpins globalization, needs to recruit 80 000 new people a year in order to maintain world dominance. Difficult occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan during the 2001–2007 period jeopardized the steady supply of recruits, imperiling the army's stature as the nation's premier employer of workers aged 17–24. In response, video games interpellated the country's youth by situating their bodies and minds firing the same weapons and facing the same issues as in the real world, with TV commercials depicting soldiers directly addressing gamers and urging them to show their manliness by volunteering for the real thing and serving abroad to secure US power. Daily downloads in the early twenty‐first century were at a rate of between ten and fifty thousand, and just under half of new recruits report having played prior to enlistment.
Genetically Modified Food
Authors: Ejnavarzala Haribabu
Published: March 2012

Genetically modified (GM) food is food produced from genetically modified seeds, or food that contains ingredients made from genetically modified plants, animals or microorganisms. Genetic modification of a food crop involves transfer of gene(s) from an organism belonging to one species of a taxonomic group to the food crop that belongs to a species of another taxonomic group. The source of the genes may be a plant species, animal species or a bacterium. Bt corn is an example of a genetically modified food crop in which a gene from a bacterium called Bacillus thureingensis (Bt) has been inserted. The logic underlying the gene transfer is that the foreign gene(s) inserted into the crop plant has/have some properties, for example, production of a toxin, that equip the plant to fight diseases and pest attacks (biotic stress). Alternatively the foreign gene(s) may have the property of enhancing yield, or improving tolerance against drought, or salinity (abiotic stress).
Global Risk Society
Authors: Beck Ulrich
Published: March 2012

Why is the concept of “(global) risk society” so important in order to understand the social and political dynamics and transformations at the beginning of the twenty‐first century? It is the accumulation of risks – ecological, financial, military, terrorist, biochemical, and informational – that has an overwhelming presence in our world today. To the extent that risk is experienced as omnipresent, there are only three possible reactions: denial, apathy, and transformation. The first is largely inscribed in modern culture but ignores the political risk of denial; the second gives way to a nihilistic strain in postmodernism; the third marks the issue that the concept “global risk society” raises: how does the anticipation of a multiplicity of manmade futures and its risky consequences affect and transform the perceptions, living conditions and institutions of modern societies?
Global Scapes: the Case of the University
Authors: Powell Jason L.
Published: March 2012

Appadurai (2006) examined “globalization,” which he interpreted as “worldwide connectedness,” through the idea of “global scapes.” Following Appadurai (2006), we can postulate five dimensions of such global scapes that influence the work of universities (and academics) in the globalized environment:
ethnoscapes, technoscapes, mediascapes, financescapes,
and
ideoscapes.
Globalists vs. Skeptics
Authors: Ritzer George
Published: March 2012

The “great globalization debate” is between those who are skeptical about the process (the “skeptics”) and those who accept it as a reality (the “globalists”) (Held & McGrew 2000).
Great Recession
Authors: Orr Martin
Published: March 2012

The “Great Recession” refers to the most significant global economic crisis since the Great Depression. The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research dates the downturn from the fourth quarter of 2007 (Business Cycle Dating Committee 2008), but the Great Recession will probably be remembered as beginning with the liquidity crisis on Wall Street that culminated in the crash of October 2008. Although an international crisis resulting from the systemic contradictions of neoliberal globalization, the proximate causes of this recession were centered in the United States.
Group of 77
Authors: Collins Michael
Published: March 2012

The Group of 77 (G77) is a UN‐based bloc of developing countries that was formed in 1964 by India, Ecuador, Nigeria, Iran, and dozens of other nations that believed the international economic system was frustrating their efforts to industrialize. The Group, in its founding document, calls for an era of global economic cooperation to end “the division of the world into areas of affluence and intolerable poverty.” In pursuing this goal, the Group has struggled against often stiff resistance from affluent nations (the “North”) and divergent and even contradictory interests and agendas within its own ranks.
Group of Thirty
Authors: Chiang Chi‐Chen
Published: March 2012

Group of Thirty (G30) is a nongovernmental organization that provides consultation on international and monetary affairs. The Group of Thirty regularly publishes reports from its work‐study program and occasionally commissions papers on specific subjects. The Group of Thirty also hosts international banking seminars and plenary meetings to observe key market trends and exchange opinions with external experts and distinguished guests. All of these Group of Thirty activities contribute towards making recommendations on policy reforms that are relevant to policy‐makers and market practitioners in an era of increasing globalization.
Higher Education
Authors: Bradley Karen
Published: March 2012

The history of the university is marked by struggles to maintain institutional autonomy in the face of attempts by states, church, and professionals to extend their influence. The earliest recorded universities were populated by men who lived almost monastic lives, and were visited by scholars from other enclosed universities. These universities brought prestige to their host cities by virtue of the intellectual exchange in which they engaged, but there was no other explicit, tangible contribution to which they were held accountable.
Homogenization
Authors: Ritzer George
Published: March 2012

One of the most controversial issues in the study of globalization is whether or not that process is bringing with it greater global homogenization, especially within the realm of culture. Tending to favor the idea of greater global homogeneity is work on concepts such as Americanization, capitalism, grobalization (Ritzer 2007), McDonaldization (Ritzer 2011), and world culture (Boli & Thomas 1997). At the opposite end of the spectrum is work on concepts such as civilizations (Huntington 1996), creolization (Hannerz 1987), global scapes (Appadurai 1996), glocalization (Robertson 2001), and hybridization (Nederveen Pieterse 2009) which all tend to emphasize the retention, and even the expansion, of heterogeneity. Since all of these concepts are dealt with in this encyclopedia, there is no need to go into each in great detail here. Rather, the goal in this entry is to discuss, at least briefly, the issue of homogenization (and heterogeneization) in more general terms.
Human Rights
Authors: Blau Judith
Published: March 2012

Human rights and globalization are usually juxtaposed as being antithetical to one another, and they are so in ways that recall other antithetical oppositions: the right to self‐determination vs. colonial domination; racial equality vs. white supremacy; workers' rights vs. capitalist exploitation; women's rights vs. patriarchy; and the integrity of nature vs. environmental exploitation. Such juxtapositions, even when simplified, have had powerful implications, both practical and conceptual, serving as the point of departure for transformative movements and intellectual insights and analysis, only to cite as examples: W.E.B. Du Bois, Franz Fanon, Paulo Freire, Martin Luther King, Jr, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Marx, E.P. Thompson, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Human rights and globalization are described here in similar terms – as being in fundamental opposition to inequalities and human freedoms – and this entry moves on to highlight how human rights can temper economic globalization so that globalization benefits the world's peoples.
Humanity
Authors: Stuurman Siep
Published: March 2012

In ordinary speech, the word
humanity
has three meanings: (i) The collectivity of all the human beings on the planet (the human family, the human species), as in “the story of humanity;” (ii) The quality of being human, as in “the humanity of all the peoples of the earth is beyond doubt;” (iii) kindness, benevolence, empathy, or other admirable qualities that are seen to belong to men and women who are “truly human,” as in “the exemplary humanity of Mother Theresa.” The three meanings are metonymically related, but the first two can also be used in a neutrally descriptive manner, as in “the human species is a division of the mammalian vertebrates,” or “the faculty of speech is essential to the humanity of homo sapiens.” The antonym of the second and third meaning is
inhumanity
. The third meaning carries powerful normative overtones, but all three meanings appeal to inclusive feelings of empathy and reciprocity and the awareness that, as human beings, we partake in a common planetary destiny.
Hypercapitalism
Authors: Vujnovic Marina
Published: March 2012

Hypercapitalism is a term used by Marxist scholars, in their continuing critique of political economy, to depict a relatively new form of capitalistic social organization marked by the speed and intensity of global flows that include exchange of both material and immaterial goods, people, and information. Hypercapitalism, sometimes referred to as corporate capitalism, is blamed by critical scholars for causing misbalance and fragmentation of social life by allowing commercial or business interests to penetrate every aspect of human experience. In other words, critical scholars believe that once‐separate spheres of culture and commerce now overlap and, in return, culture and the way of life in a hypercapitalist society becomes subsumed by the commercial sphere. In addition, critical scholars believe that this new type of capitalist system has moved toward an extreme laissez‐faire capitalism that is marked by greed, selfishness, destruction, wars, and exploitation. Harman (2009) explains that, since the 1980s, a push for deregulation has allowed for a free flow of capital with little or no regulation and opportunity for intervention from governments. He believes that this very process of deregulation and expansion of neoliberal economic visions, which is masked as globalization, has led to a deviant form of capitalism that he calls “zombie capitalism.” Hypercapitalism can also be linked to the term “late capitalism,” which was originated by Jameson (1990) who linked particular economic processes to postmodernism. In his work, he linked the cultural shift from modernism to postmodernism to the shift to a capitalist system that is marked by fragmentation and alienation.
Hyperconsumption
Authors: Esposti Piergiorgio Degli
Published: March 2012

The term “hyperconsumption” analytically refers to a “new modernity,” which can also be labelled with the term “civilization of desire” (Lipovetsky 2007). It emerged and corresponded to the society that took shape during the second half of the twentieth century. Its main characteristics are intrinsically linked to the capitalist matrix, which actually is its backbone. It involves a continuous stimulation of demand, marketing and an endless multiplication of needs that support and fuel it, thus ultimately leading to the advent of consumer capitalism that has replaced the previous production‐based economic systems. This new era is part of a new scenario characterized by a few specific features, such as the globalization dynamics, including an economic, political and cultural context, in which the universe of hyperconsumption is shaped as is currently known. While on the one hand, the hyperconsumption society enhances well‐being and happiness, on the other hand, it appears to be a hypertrophic and uncontrolled system, a bulimic order that leads to extremes and to chaos, and ultimately to a civilization of paradoxical happiness (Lipovetsky 2005). Although most people who live in the Western world can enjoy extremely high levels of economic well‐being, are able to access many consumer goods, and can enjoy and benefit from the unprecedented progress achieved in the medical and scientific domains, it can also be argued that their psychological satisfaction rate keeps falling.
Hyperreality
Authors: Taylor Paul A.
Published: March 2012

Hyperreality refers to the paradoxical concept of a reality that is experienced as excessively real – it describes phenomena that are deemed to be more real than the real itself. Linked to other notions frequently associated with postmodernity such as
simulation
, hyperreality is a phrase designed to help make sense of the heavily mediated nature of life within a global village in which representations and direct experience are increasingly difficult to disentangle from each other. Umberto Eco was one of the earliest users and popularizers of the precise term, which appeared in his
Travels in Hyperreality
, (1986) originally published in Italian as
Il costume di casa
(1973).
Ideology
Authors: Steger Manfred B.
Published: March 2012

“Ideology” was coined during the Enlightenment to signify a rationalist method of breaking complex systems of ideas into their basic components. Since the nineteenth century, however, the term has acquired derogatory meanings. Marxists used it to allege the deliberate distortion of material reality that served the ruling classes as a convenient cloak for economic exploitation. Twentieth‐century liberals conflated “ideology” with the new concept of “totalitarianism” linked to Nazism and communism. After the al‐Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, this equation of ideology with evil political schemes received a new lease on life in President George W. Bush's characterization of jihadist terrorists as the “heirs of all murderous ideologies of the twentieth century.”
Immigrants, Adaptation
Authors: Lucken Kristen
Published: March 2012

Immigrant adaptation refers to the processes by which newcomers adjust and integrate socially, economically, and politically within a new host society. Factors such as ethnicity, race, gender, education level, marketable skills, religious affiliation, and language competency may impact the ease with which immigrants adjust to a new cultural and social system. Host society responses to newcomers, including a nation's willingness and ability to offer citizenship, jobs, education, housing, and political agency, are important aspects of the immigrant integration dynamic. Additionally, the push and pull factors propelling immigration play a role in immigrant adjustment to a new locale. Terms such as assimilation, acculturation, incorporation, and integration have been used to describe differing ways newcomers adjust to and are absorbed within a nation's economy, political system, and social sphere.
Indigenous people, resistance
Authors: Hall Thomas D. , Fenelon James V.
Published: March 2012

“Indigenous Peoples” refers to groups who have lived in an area since it was first populated, or at least for a very long time, and who generally do not have state‐level forms of organization, for example Native Nations in the Americas. This brief definition is sometimes controversial. The most cited and most detailed definition was written in 1986 by José Martinez Cobo for the United Nations. Even that definition has been contested. There are about 5000 different indigenous groups, so general statements are difficult to support. Furthermore, any definition carries political ramifications about which peoples are indigenous. Even so, there are 350 million or so indigenous peoples in the world, about the population of the United States in 2010. This definition suffices for our purposes, but it is only a gloss on a complicated subject.
Information and communication technologies
Authors: Mann Catherine L.
Published: March 2012

Globalization of information and communications technologies (ICT) has a profound impact on economic activity. Use of ICTs encourages innovation and transformation which support growth. ICTs encourage international trade in all types of goods and services, but most important is cross‐border trade in digital products, which represents the cutting edge of globalization. Growing international trade in digital products highlights new trade policy concerns and challenges policy‐maker jurisdiction. There may be tensions between the free flow of information and data across borders, the objectives of domestic policy, and commitments made in international trade negotiations.
Information capitalism
Authors: Ignatow Gabe
Published: March 2012

Information capitalism refers to the increasing importance of information within capitalism under conditions of globalization and rapid technological development. The idea of “information capitalism” is closely related to similar concepts such as
knowledge economy
(Drucker [1969] 1992),
postindustrial society
(Touraine 1971; Bell [1973] 1976),
information society
(Webster 2002), and
network society
(Castells 2000).
Innovation
Authors: Drori Gili S.
Published: March 2012

Innovation, defined as the commercialization of a novel idea, product, or process, emerged as the desirable path towards the development of firms and societies alike. Building on the policies of the 1960s that emphasized human capital investment and consequently the upgrade of skills and knowledge (for firms and societies), in the 1980s the emphasis of development policies shifted towards a focus on innovation. This emphasis on innovation, while still recognizing knowledge and skills as important foundations for development, highlights innovation's added advantages of pioneering new sectors, ownership of novel capacity, and seizing of market opportunities. The underlying assumption is that innovation is a tool for social development. Moreover, this assumption is immersed in the logics of market and competition, thus defining innovation is a marketized activity. With the globalization of markets and competition, innovation is now conceived as a global institution and innovation took a central place among the components of the rapidly expanding global knowledge economy. Indeed, much like the evolution of globalization discussions in general – from international to transnational to global frames – current discussions of innovation can be categorized into a focus on interconnected national systems of innovation, transnational innovative firms, and the global innovation divide.
Intercultural education
Authors: Hay Trevor
Published: March 2012

Since the 1970s, the need to develop and implement social and educational policies of a “multicultural” nature has been recognized by educational policy‐makers in many societies with substantial migrant and ethnic minority populations. While the term multicultural – and its relationship with the idea of culture itself – has been vigorously debated, it has become clear that multiculturalism connotes a range of policies intended to manage harmonious coexistence of ethnic minorities within a “core‐value” socio‐political framework. This is intended as a normative basis for greater measures of social justice and educational attainment for minority populations who have been underrepresented in measures of educational attainment and access to socioeconomic services and benefits. In ethnically diverse societies as different as Australia, Canada, South Africa, India, and China, the term also refers to the existence of widely divergent distributions of ethnic and cultural groups, from heterogeneous urban populations, as in Australia and the United States, to largely homogeneous minority populations contained within provincial borders in a larger nation‐state, such as China.
International Atomic Energy Agency
Authors: Habib Benjamin
Published: March 2012

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was established as an organ of the United Nations on July 29, 1957. It is headquartered in Vienna, Austria, and reports to the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Security Council. The agency is structured into three constituent bodies. The
Board of Governors
formulates most of the policies of the IAEA, meeting five times a year to make recommendations to the
General Conference
, which includes representatives from all member states of the IAEA. The General Conference meets annually to approve policy and budget recommendations passed on by the Board of Governors and to debate current issues within the agency's jurisdiction. The
Secretariat
is the bureaucratic arm of the IAEA, divided into six departments – nuclear energy, nuclear safety and security, nuclear sciences and applications, safeguards, technical cooperation, and management – which oversee and execute the policies approved by the General Conference.
International exhibitions
Authors: Wulf Andrew
Published: March 2012

An international exhibition is a public event staged by participants to showcase the industrial, technological, and artistic achievements of nations, private business interests, and selected nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The most common of these events is known variously as a world's fair, an
exposition universelle
, or expo. An important by‐product of such events is their globalizing effect by fostering intercultural relations. They are organized to increase tourist activity, promote trade, and propagate symbolically the ideas and values of their participants. Since the Great Exhibition of 1851, similar events have been hosted by a rotation of metropolises around the world. It is in this realm that world's fairs have drawn much scholarly attention in recent decades, particularly around the cultural diplomacy and international gamesmanship that serve as a backdrop to the genteel display of material culture that becomes the central purpose of these events.
International Human Rights Law
Authors: Kiyoteru Tsutsui
Published: March 2012

International human rights law refers to a collectivity of international legal agreements that are designed to promote and protect human rights. In a narrower definition, international human rights law includes only legally binding international treaties. A broader conceptualization would include declarations, resolutions, and other international instruments that do not have binding authority but serve as customary international law in some contexts. In international human rights law, the concept of human rights typically includes civil and political rights, and economic, social, and cultural rights. While collective rights, such as indigenous peoples' rights, are emerging as a new frontier of international human rights law, especially with the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, the primary focus of international human rights law is protection of individual rights.
International Olympic Committee
Authors: Grainger Andrew F. , Andrews David L.
Published: March 2012

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is the governing body of a global and multifaceted complex of individuals, events, institutions, and organizations, oftentimes, if somewhat ambiguously, referred to as the “Olympic Movement,” whose most globally visible manifestations are the Olympic Summer and Winter Games. Based in Lausanne, Switzerland, the global reach of the Olympic Movement is such that more nations are presently members of the IOC (205) than the United Nations (UN) (192). The IOC's primary function is to establish and advance the principles of the Olympic Charter, and its attendant ideology of Olympism, which provide the values and rules for the governance of the Olympic Movement and the organization of the Olympic Games. Clearly, the IOC's global influence is as much material as ideological, since its sphere of influence includes: 205 National Olympic Committees (NOCs); International Federations (IFs) for the 26 Summer and 7 Winter Olympic sports; Organising Committees of the Olympic Games (OCOGs); as well as national associations, clubs, and individuals belonging to the IFs and NOCs including athletes, administrators, judges, referees, coaches, and officials. Clearly, the IOC is inextricably conjoined with sport at all levels, and across all reaches of the globe. Furthermore, in legal terms, the Swiss government has recognized the IOC as having “the specific character of an international institution,” while granting the Committee an exemption from direct taxation of its revenues and imposing no limitations on the nationality of its administrative staff.
International Telecommunication Union
Authors: Drori Gili S.
Published: March 2012

The International Telegraph Union, the predecessor of today's International Telecommunication Union (ITU), was founded in 1865 in Paris, some 30 years after the electric telegraph was invented. Its founding was formalized through the ratification by 20 European countries of the first ITU convention, whose goal was the cross‐national harmonization of telegraph technical standards. This theme of cross‐national harmonization of technical standards remains the framework of numerous ITU‐initiated regulatory conventions since then: from the July 1875 St Petersburg International Telegraph Convention to the 1999 protocol of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), ITU conventions have maintained the focus on the mission of setting international technical standards for telecommunications. This technical mission dominated ITU operations until the 1980s, when it was supplemented with a broader social mission aiming at the expansion of access to and use of telecommunication technologies. This change in the tone of ITU's mission – adding a social justice component to the goal of advancing technical standards – was formally encoded in several ITU conventions since then. Most explicitly, the 1994 Declaration on Global Communications Development for the 21st Century went as far as to define telecommunications as a right by specifying the “right of connection.” This extra mission inspired the initiatives to create a global information society, with the two World Summits on Information Society (WSIS), orchestrated by ITU, as the mission's pinnacle events.
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
Authors: Zehle Soenke
Published: March 2012

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) coordinates the global Internet's systems of unique identifiers, including the administration of domain names (which form the Domain Name System, DNS) and numerical Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.
Interpol
Authors: Deflem Mathieu
Published: March 2012

Interpol was founded at an international police congress in Vienna in 1923 as the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC). Its formation signaled the growing awareness among police professionals that crime was of an increasingly international character, especially under the influence of advanced technological means of transport and communication, and that political and legal agreements did not suffice to tackle this problem. The 1923 gathering was organized independently by police professionals. A permanent structure for international police cooperation with a central headquarters (at the Viennese criminal police) was set up through which information could be passed on among the member agencies. Since its founding, Interpol has not been organized as a supranational police force with powers of arrest, but as a collaborative network of criminal police agencies from different countries around the world. At present, Interpol has member agencies from 188 nations.
Isomorphism
Authors: Robinson Karen Jeong
Published: March 2012

The term isomorphism was introduced in the organization literature to explain the striking similarities in the formal structures of organizations. Early work differentiated two types of isomorphism: one that underscored a process motivated by efficiency and competition and the second that highlighted the embeddedness of organizations in highly institutionalized environments. The latter conceptualization was elaborated and expanded to a wider global context to account for the similarities between nation‐states, specifically, in terms of structures and policies.
Kimberley Process
Authors: Bieri Franziska
Published: March 2012

The Kimberley Process (KP) is a global negotiation forum between states, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the diamond industry, which seeks to regulate the trade in rough diamonds. The KP emerged in 2000, in response to growing concerns about the role of diamonds in funding brutal civil wars in parts of Africa. An estimated 4 million people have died in wars involving conflict diamonds. Specifically, wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, and Sierra Leone were funded through the sale of so‐called “blood” or “conflict diamonds” in the 1990s. In response, an international campaign developed, which sought to raise global awareness about, and to end the connections between, diamonds and war. NGOs accused the industry and the states of supporting rebel groups by trading these conflict diamonds. The United Nations also conducted investigations, which zeroed in on De Beers, the dominant market player, and Belgium, which hosts a key diamond‐trading center in Antwerp. Jointly, these global political activities shook some industry players and states into action.
Knowledge
Authors: Stehr Nico
Published: March 2012

The concept of knowledge is one of the most widely used concepts in everyday life, in scientific discourse, and in reflections about science and technology. The idea that we are living in a knowledge society is gaining acceptance, as is the notion that the modern economy is knowledge‐based and that the world of work, politics, and everyday life are both transformed by and based on knowledge and information.
Jihad
Authors: J. Bergesen Albert
Published: March 2012

For believing Muslims the Quran is the word of God as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. But over the history of Islam the meaning of Quranic passages have been endlessly debated resulting in various schools of law, theology, philosophy, and religious justifications for political/military activity.
Labor Unions
Authors: Fairbrother Peter
Published: March 2012

Globalization creates both problems and opportunities for workers and their unions. On the one hand, globalization is accompanied by deindustrialization, privatization, and state restructuring. The ending of the Cold War and the embrace of neoliberalism meant that former colonies, ex‐state socialist societies, and the developing societies in the Asia Pacific and South America became attractive destinations as markets and for investment. With the emergence of China and India as major producers and markets, the configuration of the global economy was transformed. On the other hand, workers are no longer insulated from each other, and, whether acknowledged or not, are part of an international division of labor. Additionally, information and communication technologies, often heralded as iconic features of the modern form of globalization, facilitate both capital mobility and global competition as well as enabling connections and political exchanges between workers. This creates possibilities and challenges for labor unions.
Law of the Sea
Authors: Stokke Olav Schram
Published: March 2012

The Law of the Sea is that part of public international law dealing with regulation and division of competence regarding ocean activities. Major changes have been driven by key aspects of globalization – competition, diffusion, institutions. In the 1600s, competition among European states over foreign markets and natural resources spurred legal doctrines justifying a simple spatial differentiation. Save for narrow coastal strips controllable from land (territorial waters), the oceans were considered high seas where only the flag‐state of a vessel could limit its freedom of action. Diffusion of new technologies and capital investments in the 1900s undermined the conduciveness of some of these high‐seas freedoms. Recently, international and transnational institutions have offered venues for negotiating more nuanced divisions of competence and more restrictive norms of ocean use.
Leapfrogging
Authors: Ritzer George
Published: March 2012

Leapfrogging mainly involves earlier technologies bypassing developing nations, enabling those nations to adopt more advanced technologies. For example, some developing countries have gone straight to solar energy or energy from biomass rather than building huge, centralized systems (e.g., enormous and very expensive power plants operating on the basis of coal, oil, or nuclear energy) for the transmission of power (Ritzer 2010).
Liberalism
Authors: Rudrappa SharmiLla
Published: March 2012

In common American parlance liberals are individuals who want greater state involvement in various realms of economic and social life such as market regulation, environmental protection, public schooling, and public health care. Simultaneously, they ask the state to step out of other arenas; that is, they are ostensibly anti‐war, pro‐immigration, and possibly, for the legalization of drugs. However sociologically speaking, liberalism is the espousal of unfettered individual freedom that arises from the widening and deepening of free markets. This entry maps out the origins of the term, its historical abeyance in the mid twentieth century, and its rise by the end of the twentieth century. The main focus is on the neoliberal developments that have structured the global economy since the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Livestock and Meat Industries
Authors: MacLachlan Ian
Published: March 2012

Domestic livestock (defined broadly to include bovines such as cattle and buffalo, swine, horses, sheep, goats, camelids, and poultry) are found in every world region where they may function as draft animals providing a source of primary motive power or as a source of animal products including meat, blood, egg, and dairy foods for human consumption; pharmaceuticals; leather, wool, and feathers; and meat, bone, and blood meal for use as fertilizer and animal feed. The global spread of domestic livestock, mainly from the old world to the new, began as a component of colonial policies to establish self‐sustaining settlements in the Americas, Australasia, and South Africa. Facilitated by technological changes in transportation and food preservation, livestock production and meat marketing attained global scope by the late nineteenth century. Rapid growth in meat and dairy product consumption in the late twentieth century and into the first decade of the twenty‐first century have so transformed the global production and trade of livestock products that some have described it as a “livestock revolution” (Delgado et al. 1999).
Localization
Authors: Brienza Casey
Published: March 2012

In the social sciences broadly, localization is a process by which a form or practice, either globalized or originating from within a particular cultural locality, is adjusted to suit the specific contexts of a new locality. The original and target localities need not be geographically distinct or in separate nation‐states, although this is arguably its most pedestrian and widely recognized use. Localization is to be distinguished from other related terms such as creolization, deterritorialization, hybridity, and regionalism in that it must be understood as neither an ontological state nor a social force. The sense of the word, rather, is that of a deliberate act or series of acts carried out
by
an individual or organization
upon
specific cultural forms or practices. In other words, any example of localized culture is produced by a particular process of localization as its end goal – not merely as one of its manifestations or as its by‐product.
Management, Global Models
Authors: Clegg Stewart R.
Published: March 2012

Global models of management are of most relevance for multinational organizations, which have to manage operations in several different countries. Stopford and Wells (1972) studied 187 of the largest US‐based multinational corporations (MNCs) in the late 1960s and found that MNCs typically adopt different models at different stages of global expansion. In the early stages firms tended to establish an international division to handle the early limited volume of foreign sales and range of products being sold internationally. As sales of the limited range of products expand, and the product range does not grow accordingly, the firms tend to move to managing by an area structure while firms that develop many more product lines tend to adopt a worldwide product division structure. When both foreign sales and product diversity are high, firms tend to adopt a matrix structure. However, all these design choices are deeply constrained by the previous histories and contexts of the firms in question.
Marketization
Authors: Vujnovic Marina
Published: March 2012

Marketization, which is sometimes referred to as commercialization and/or commodification, is a process through which the market sphere continually penetrates and slowly displaces non‐market activities. Marketization's thesis is that, in today's advanced economies, all products, goods, and services are produced to be monetized or exchanged for profit in the market. Marxist scholars such as Harvey (2005) argue that production, exchange, allocation of goods, labor, and consumption in today's advanced economies are by‐and‐large marketized. Capital seems to be the dominant feature of our everyday lives. Capitalism, in particular its neoliberal form, has an enormous impact on the way we understand our everyday actions, practices, and motives. Neoliberalism is characterized by the dominance of capital, liberalization, the shrinking of regulation, and by the social and economic policies that prioritize interests of the capitalist and economic elites. This shift toward the loosening of regulation and the expansion of markets has changed, not only social and economic relations, but cultural consciousness as well. According to Harvey (2005), capitalism has penetrated every aspect of our lives, and the market logic that currently spearheads the process of globalization is producing gross inequalities across the globe.
McDonaldization
Authors: Ram Uri
Published: March 2012

The sociological concept of McDonaldization denotes, in the most direct sense, the diffusion of the mode of operation of the McDonald's restaurants chain to other service and retail organizations. More broadly, however, it denotes that this practice is becoming a pattern of social operation and a major social phenomenon, far beyond the specificity of its original setting and, on the broadest scope, the concept denotes the paradigmatic essence of the modernization process as such. The meaning of the concept thus unfolds along a continuum from a case (the firm), to a pattern (the social phenomenon), and to an icon of a whole culture (modernity): meanings that are interrelated, but also distinct.