bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Médecins Sans Frontières
Authors: Fox Renée C. , Shevchenko Olga
Published: March 2012

Since its inception, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), an international, nongovernmental organization with a transnational vision, has played a groundbreaking role in combining medical humanitarian action and bearing public witness to the predicament of the people whom it assists (including human rights advocacy on their behalf), for which it was accorded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.
Media Convergence
Authors: Rhomberg Markus
Published: March 2012

Media systems across the world are becoming increasingly alike with regard to their products, professional practices and cultures, and their relationship with other political and social institutions. These trends of convergence can be found on different levels, especially from a media systems perspective, but also on economic, technical, and content levels as well as in news and journalistic routines. Some scholars identify a trend toward global homogenization of media systems.
Medium is the Message
Authors: Kuipers Giselinde
Published: March 2012

“The medium is the message” is a phrase coined by Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980), in his book
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
(1964). In this book, McLuhan examines the impact of media on societies and human relations, arguing for the primacy of the medium – understood broadly as any “extension of man” – over overt content. According to McLuhan, each medium has a specific logic and nature, which embeds itself in the content. The medium itself has more fundamental and long‐lasting effects than the more overt content to which people direct their attention. Consequently, the dominant medium of a particular age and place, like print, radio or television, profoundly affects human relations.
Mercenaries
Authors: Avant Deborah
Published: March 2012

A “mercenary” is generally taken to be someone who fights for money and/or for a foreign cause, not related to the national interest. Often referred to as the world's second oldest profession, mercenaries are commonly seen as an enduring phenomenon but also one that is suspicious; less legitimate than soldiers or other fighters, with a dubious relationship to state authority, and often less effective. In practice, though, “mercenary” has been used to describe so many fighters and violent forces through history that finding a consistent thread linking all together is difficult. The emergence and boom of the global industry in military and security services in the past 20 years has prompted the most recent debate about mercenaries.
Migrant Sex Workers
Authors: Hidalgo Danielle Antoinette , Royce Tracy
Published: March 2012

Simply put, migrant sex workers are migrant women, children, and men who perform waged sexual services. Migrant sex workers may travel from rural areas and relocate in more densely populated areas or near military bases where sexual industries blossom, or they may leave their countries of origin and cross national boundaries in order to obtain work. Such workers may migrate with the intention of engaging in sex work, while others migrate with the initial intention of performing other types of waged labor such as manufacturing or domestic work, but become involved in sexual labor by choice, chance, or coercion once they arrive at their destination.
Migrants
Authors: Faist Thomas
Published: March 2012

Migrants are specific types of movers engaged in spatial mobility. They differ from other types, notably travelers and tourists, in that migrants often engage in search of employment, business, or family reunification. In contrast to migrants, the social ties of membership for travelers and tourists do not change as a result of movement. Migrants also differ from nonphysical movers who are mobile through imagination, aided in many cases by particular communications media and technology.
Migration Control
Authors: Schuster Liza
Published: March 2012

Migration control usually refers to the attempt by governments to control the entry and settlement of non‐citizens into their territories; that is to select who and how many may enter, under what conditions and for what period of time. Less commonly, at least at the beginning of the twenty‐first century, the term may also be used to refer to attempts to control the exit of citizens from a state's territory. Control is usually exercised at the frontiers of a state, at border crossings, and at sea‐ and air‐ports, and relies on the examination of documentation such as passports, which confirm the traveler's identity, and visas, which confirm that he or she has the receiving state's permission to enter (or a state's permission to leave).
Militarism
Authors: Raffin Anne
Published: March 2012

As Volker R. Berghahn has argued, it is difficult to find a consensus regarding the definition of “militarism” due to the term's widespread use in polemical and propagandistic literature (1981: 2). Since first appearing in the mid nineteenth century, various scholars from different disciplines have had to come to grips with how to interpret the idea of militarism. It has sometimes been used as a synonym of militarization. However, according to Marek Thee, the scope of what is meant by militarism is more restricted than what is implied by militarization; whereas the former highlights martial values within society, the political arena, and social change, the latter stresses concurrent material and discursive aspects of military ascendancy (Eide & Thee 1980: 15; see also Lutz 2002: 725). Overall, the term has rarely been thought of in relation to globalization.
Mobility
Authors: Shamir Ronen
Published: March 2012

Social mobility refers to differential capacities to move along stratified social formations. Spatial mobility refers to differential capacities to move across the borders of gated communities, fortified cities, restricted areas, sovereign territories, private properties, or other forbidden zones. Greater spatial mobility might be sought for purposes of education, employment or trade, physical, political or cultural survival, tourism and exploration, or for maintaining various types of deterritorialized social networks. It may be coerced (e.g., refugees), semi‐coerced due to economic imperatives, or voluntarily sought for profit and status. It may aim at a permanent relocation, temporary sojourn, or a brief visit.
Modernization
Authors: Schmidt Volker H.
Published: March 2012

The term “modernization” must be understood in relation to the concept and reality of modernity, whose dynamic side it reflects. It refers to (1) evolutionary processes of change that drive and accompany the transition from the premodern to the modern age, (2) conscious efforts on the part of influential actors to set in motion, by means of rational planning, large‐scale processes of social change aimed at achieving what is regarded as modern at a particular point in time, and (3) ongoing (self‐) transformations of social systems once modernity has firmly taken root and become irreversible.
Multiculturalism
Authors: Gunew Sneja
Published: March 2012

Multiculturalism is a term that refers to the differing ways in which nation‐states consolidate their putative homogeneity by simultaneously acknowledging and managing various kinds of differences that include ethnicity, race, religion, languages, cultures, and so on. In other words, the very act of citing the differences implies that there is a homogenous core to the nation against which these differences are measured. Multiculturalism is also a term invoked by particular groups in order to argue for retaining their distinctive differences, however they are articulated. Some have argued that one should distinguish between the descriptive term ”multi‐cultures” that denotes the heterogeneity and hybridity of many nations and reserving the term ”multiculturalism” for naming the strategies of governance employed by states to manage such heterogeneity (Hall 2000). As debates on globalization have gathered momentum, multiculturalism has been used as a way of indicating both the local discrepant meanings of the term at the same time that it has been linked to notions of global diasporas. Diasporas appear to threaten the sovereignty of nation‐states and are much discussed in globalization debates. It is also noticeable that in the face of persistent economic inequalities, resistance movements within nation‐states are often symbolically expressed in terms of ethnic or multicultural differences, thus giving rise to the charge that such differences contribute to fragmentation rather than merely describing or acknowledging it (Vertovec & Wessendorf 2010).
Multilateral Development Banks
Authors: Polillo Simone
Published: March 2012

The central bank is normally invested with some degree of power over monetary policy. By influencing short‐term interest rates, undertaking open market operations, and enforcing reserve requirements, the central bank affects the money supply (whether the central bank
controls
the money supply is a matter of controversy). Its monetary policy can contribute to inflation, unemployment, and economic growth. Furthermore, the actions of the central bank have potentially systemic effects on financial stability and the currency exchange rate (Maxfield 1997; Eichengreen 2008).
Multitude
Authors: Passavant Paul
Published: March 2012

Critics of globalization in the 1990s argued that globalization undermined democracy. Whether globalization was understood as something fundamentally new, or as the latest example of imperialist assertions of national interests by strong states in the global system, globalization threatened the sovereignty of the nation‐state. Since democracy in the modern era has been premised on the idea of national self‐determination – the idea that a national people should be self‐governing – the threat that globalization posed to the sovereignty of the nation‐state meant, in turn, a threat to democratic self‐determination; a threat, that is, to democracy.
Nation
Authors: Chernilo Daniel
Published: March 2012

“Nation” is one of those terms in which everyday and social scientific languages intersect with and feed into one another. It is then not at all surprising that complications and ambivalences ensue when trying to define it. Indeed, during the past two centuries, and increasingly over the whole globe, the nation has been treated as a god and a demon; been declared born and dead many times; been regarded as a modern as well as a primordial form of social and political community; been conceived of as both a rational structure and an imagined/imaginary community; created as much welfare as misery; been equally a source for political democracy, cosmopolitan dreams, and ethnic cleansing; coexisted with empires, colonies, blocs, protectorates, city‐states, and other forms of sociopolitical organization; gone through experiences of unification, totalitarian terror, occupation, division, and then re‐unification; and been legitimized around ethnic, racial, republican, monarchic, liberal, multicultural, federal, and even class principles. Yet, despite – or more possibly owing to – all this variation, the nation has somehow managed to present itself as a solid, stable, and ultimately the necessary form of social and political organization in modernity. Again in this case, the sources of this alleged solidity have proved difficult to identify: increase in the state's control over “its” population through nationalization policies such as literacy campaigns, schooling, taxation, and military recruitment; the use and abuse of sentiments of belonging, to emphasize cultural and/or ethnic differences; the rise of an “international” system of nation‐states composed of a growing number of at least formally equally sovereign members; the development of a capitalist class structure at the national level and the expansion of capitalism at the global level; the universalistic appeal of popular sovereignty and democracy. Nations and nation‐states are, in all certainty, one of modernity's most complicated themes.
National Identity
Authors: Chua Vincent , Tan Ern Ser
Published: March 2012

National identity denotes a collective self‐recognition and sentiment among a people who possess a shared sense of belonging and feeling of attachment to a nation, best understood as an “imagined political community.” This last concept is “imagined” in that “members of even the smallest nations will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson 1991: 6–7). Where do such imaginings come from? Sharing a common culture – language, customs, institutions – and history can provide the basis for individuals to identify themselves as a people or nation. However, many, if not most, polities which aspire or even claim to be nations on the world map are characterized by cultural or ethnic diversity. This poses an interesting puzzle: how is a nation possible, and by extension, how does national identity emerge?
Nationalism
Authors: Greenfeld Liah
Published: March 2012

Nationalism and globalization are often considered processes leading to opposite poles in cultural, economic, and political history, but in fact the relationship between them has been far more complex, and in the past century and a half they may be said to have worked in tandem. Nationalism emerged in a sixteenth‐century country in Western Europe – England – its emergence coinciding with the dawning of “the European Age in History”: the rise of Western Europe, in particular, and societies of Western European descent, to the position of economic, political, and to a certain extent cultural leadership of the entire world. It emerged in a region, culturally unified by Western Christianity, which, independently of nationalism, and for the first time on such a broad scale in history, already began to bring other continents under its sway, thereby initiating the process of cultural, economic, and political globalization. At the center of this globalizing world was Spain, which subordinated the European “Holy Roman” Empire and vast areas in South and Central America under the political authority of the Habsburg Crown, united Europe, Africa, and the Americas economically in the “triangular trade,” and dedicated itself to the mission of spreading Roman Catholicism. The world would never again be integrated into one system on so many levels, that is, so meaningfully, but, however profound, the success of this first attempt at globalization was short lived. The emergence of nationalism, reinforced by and reinforcing the disintegration of the Western European Church order which produced the Protestant Reformation, put an end to it:
res publica christiana
split into warring camps, religious differences adding on to and often masking secular political conflicts, and by the eighteenth century the competitive spirit which pitted nation against nation in every sphere of human endeavor replaced the universalistic, catholic indeed, religious consciousness which for so long united Western Christians.
Nationalization
Authors: Berberoglu Berch
Published: March 2012

Nationalization occurs when a government acquires the ownership of privately held assets of a corporation, bank, or other industries. By transferring ownership of a private enterprise to the public sector, the state assumes the operation of such enterprise and keeps the profits for public use. Thus, nationalization in this sense is the opposite of privatization.
Nearshoring
Authors: Sandhu Amandeep
Published: March 2012

Nearshoring refers to the transfer of service work from an originating country to another lower‐wage destination country or group of countries that are in geographical and temporal proximity to the originating country. The term first appeared in a 1998 article on software development in Barbados, in which India was depicted as a farshore option in comparison with the Caribbean. Although it is arguable that offshoring began with offshoring of service work from the US mainland to the Caribbean in the 1970s, the critical uptake of offshoring only took place following the rise of global fiber optics infrastructure in the 1990s. Since India – with its large labor force of English‐speaking workers – became a premier destination for offshoring of service work, other competing destinations had to come up with their own justifications as offshoring destinations, especially if they were not able to compete with India in terms of labor cost. As a point of differentiation, an emphasis on physical proximity of certain geographies took on an increasing importance. Although, in most usage of nearshoring, the emphasis is on the geographical proximity of the two countries or regions connected by offshoring, there are other aspects such as cultural, temporal, or political connections that facilitate smoother operation of geographically distributed work. Certain work processes require in‐person coordination rather than coordination through long‐distance telecommunications. These processes are more prone to be nearshored than farshored. Shared critical language and cultural skills needed in certain service activities make them more prone to nearshoring. India's big outsourcing multinationals – Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and Wipro – have reacted against the efforts to portray them as farshore by creating presences in nearshore countries so that they are able to offer both end‐to‐end nearshore and farshore options. As opposed to the oft‐cited death of distance under globalization, nearshoring emphasizes that distance still matters in the global economy, and it also signifies the critical role of clustering in economic geography under globalization.
Neighborhoods
Authors: Zhang Wenquan , Logan John R.
Published: March 2012

The concept of global neighborhood refers to a new set of residential processes in the United States under the influence of large‐scale immigration. It is the population counterpart of the economic transformations creating the “global city” (Sassen 1991). But in contrast to Sassen's hypothesis that global cities are characterized by accentuated class inequalities and segregation, the global neighborhood refers to the creation of new possibilities for stable integration of neighborhoods by race and ethnicity.
Neoliberalism
Authors: Jessop Bob
Published: March 2012

Neoliberalism has had an interesting trajectory. It was initially formulated as an intellectual‐cum‐political project in 1938; enjoyed growing acceptance as an economic and political strategy in the 1970s; witnessed panic‐stricken meetings in New York and Washington a generation later at the height of the global financial crisis; and, most recently, seems to be undergoing a return to business as usual. There have been many efforts over these long decades to promote (or defend) “neoliberal” institutions and practices as the best basis for economic, legal, political, social, and moral order in complex social formations. There is an even wider range of commentaries and criticisms concerned with neoliberalism, its core features, social bases of support, and its impact on various sites and scales from the local to the global. This contribution addresses some of these issues. It has five main aims: to offer a baseline definition of neoliberalism; to discuss different social scientific approaches to neoliberalism; to distinguish four main types of neoliberalism from a critical political economy viewpoint and relate them to the world market, geopolitics, and global governance; to review the contradictory aspects of neoliberalism in actually existing capitalism; and to assess its prospects after the first global financial crisis and first great recession of the twenty‐first century.
Neoliberalism, Class Foundations
Authors: Duménil Gérard , Lévy Dominique
Published: March 2012

Neoliberalism can be approximately dated to the beginning of the 1980s. Although significant manifestations of the forthcoming transformation could already be detected during the 1970s, the end of 1979, when the Federal Reserve dramatically increased its interest rate, can be considered emblematic of the new directions. Neoliberalism is a new stage of capitalism, manifest in practices such as new corporate management and policies. It meant the definition of new institutional frameworks, notably the enhancement of globalization in a specific configuration. Globalization is, certainly, the outcome of a lasting historical process, but it reached new degrees during neoliberal decades as a result of the generalization of free trade and the opening of borders to the free movements of capital.
Nomads
Authors: Fiddian‐Qasmiyeh Elena
Published: March 2012

Nomads rely on movement and mobility as an intrinsic part of their livelihood strategies. These livelihood strategies vary both between and within nomadic groups. For example,peripatetic nomadsmove among settled populations to offer a particular craft or trade, whilepastoral nomads(orpastoralists) move with their livestock on a seasonal basis in order to find pasture for their animals. Individuals within a given nomadic group may undertake different activities according to a range of factors including their gender, age, marital status, and tribe. In Salzman's view (1980), a nomadic society is one in which entire families, and not just certain individuals, engage in regular movement to complete essential livelihood activities.
Nonviolence
Authors: Gallo‐Cruz Selina
Published: March 2012

The global nonviolence network encompasses a broad coalition of social movement organizations that share a belief in the superiority of nonviolent protest and nonviolence as a way of life. Nonviolent protest is centered on tactics of legal and political noncooperation, peaceful intervention on behalf of victims of violence, and strategically nonviolent public acts of resistance against a policy or group. Nonviolence as a way of life embraces a philosophical disposition toward building peaceful relationships at both the interpersonal and political levels. The objective of global nonviolence as a global tactical movement is increasingly to diffuse nonviolent protest tactics into conflict areas and populations working towards social change.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Authors: Whitfield Kristi
Published: March 2012

Only months before the Soviet blockade sparking the Berlin Airlift was lifted, on April 4, 1949 in Washington, DC, 12 democratic nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty, creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). According to the Treaty, an attack on one NATO country would be an attack on all – members hoped that this would act as a deterrent to aggressive military action. Western powers needed to create a united front against what they considered a decidedly “expansionist” Soviet Union, in hopes that, in the face of another engagement, they would be able to quickly divert Soviet aggression. This multilateral organization was designed to give power equally to all members; though from its early days the United States held the most power over NATO's actions. NATO's headquarters was set up in Brussels, Belgium. The following nations all signed the original alliance: Great Britain, the United States, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Iceland, Luxembourg, Canada, Italy, Norway, and Denmark. Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland were the only Western European nations that did not join. By 1955, Greece, Turkey, and West Germany joined. The following year the governing council of NATO organized a military force in Europe as a further deterrent.
Olympic Games
Authors: Andrews David L. , Clift Bryan C.
Published: March 2012

In its twenty‐first century iteration, the Olympic Games are an unequivocally global sporting mega‐event (Roche 2000). It may be a hackneyed cliché, but it is equally a truism, to say that the International Olympic Committee is comprised of more member state nations (202) than the United Nations (191). Furthermore, hewn by the overlapping processes of commercialization, and media spectacularization, the games have been rendered a globally omnipresent, yet locally resonant, cultural, political, and economic phenomenon. As such, the games represent an illuminating window into the nature of contemporary society more generally. However, the contextuality of the Olympic Games, particularly with regard to issues and manifestations of globalization, is certainly not restricted to the present moment. As Tomlinson (1996: 599) noted, “the allegedly pure Olympic ideal has always been moulded into the image of the time and place of the particular Olympiad or Games.” To be sure, the Olympic Games – recreated in modern form in the late nineteenth century under the leadership of the French nobleman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin – have had a complex and ongoing relationship with globalization.
Oppression
Authors: Langman Lauren
Published: March 2012

Contemporary globalization has created vast wealth that has liberated hundreds of millions of poor peasants from lives of misery, drudgery, and destitution. But at the same time, it has also reconfigured traditional forms of oppression as well as led to new forms of oppression. Contemporary globalization, like any other hierarchical social system, is a system of domination in which some groups have wealth and power and others, the great majority, have little or none. When domination becomes cruel and unjust, when people are mistreated and exploited, indeed forced into servitude, tortured, raped, or murdered, it becomes oppression. In so far as the fundamental goal of a capitalist enterprise is maximizing profit, the quest for profits often fosters oppression. This is not to suggest that the agents of globalization are cruel people that intentionally inflict pain and suffering; rather, oppression is often an inadvertent consequence of the logic of capitalism. Oppression and often intentional cruelty have been present in traditional forms of colonialism – especially as settlers displace indigenous populations and slavery becomes widespread. Imperialism and recent capitalism have each been oppressive. But there are certain distinct and unique features to contemporary oppression (Falk 1999). The embrace of “neoliberalism” by transnational capital, and the guiding premises of the global regulatory agencies, has greatly contributed to the “freedom” accorded capitalist enterprises with minimal interference from the government (Harvey 2007). To be sure this has been profitable for some, but at the same time, this “freedom,” as seen in “structural adjustment programs,” development projects and/or privatization has fostered a great deal of oppression and human misery.
Organization of American States
Authors: Mace Gordon
Published: March 2012

The Organization of American States (OAS) is considered by many to be the oldest regional institution in the world. A successor to the International Union of American Republic, established in 1890, it was formally created in 1948 on the occasion of the Ninth International Conference of American States, held in Bogota, Colombia. The constituent document of the inter‐American system, the Charter of the Organization of American States, identified the main organs of the OAS as being the Inter‐American Conference, later replaced by the General Assembly, the Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, the OAS Council (now Permanent Council), the General Secretariat, and the Inter‐American Economic and Social Council (now Inter‐American Council on Integral Development) (Connell‐Smith 1974: 202). Membership includes all countries of the Hemisphere, but the government of Cuba was excluded from participation in OAS activities in 1962 by a majority vote.
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
Authors: Mason Charles F.
Published: March 2012

Over the course of the last 65 years, since the end of World War II, petroleum has become a critically important element in the economy of every developed country, as well as in the economies of many countries that aspire to join the developed world. During this time frame, the nature of the global market has changed radically, from one that was largely dominated by the “seven sisters,” a group of large, international vertically integrated firms that transformed crude oil deposits into gasoline and related products, into a market that is dominated by a handful of oil‐producing countries.
Ozone Depletion
Authors: Ungar Sheldon
Published: March 2012

Ozone is an irritating and corrosive gas made up of three oxygen atoms (O3). A small amount of what is often termed “bad ozone” is found near the Earth's surface, where it functions as a dangerous pollutant and is a key component of photochemical smog. Fortunately, most ozone is found in the atmosphere, specifically in a region called the stratosphere that extends between 15 and 35 km above the Earth's surface. This column of “good ozone,” which constitutes the ozone layer, acts as a barrier or shield that absorbs 97–99 percent of the sun's high‐frequency ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Ozone is constantly being made and destroyed in the stratosphere. In an unpolluted atmosphere, this cycle of production and destruction tends toward equilibrium. But chemical analyses undertaken in the late 1960s suggested that various substances emitted by human activities can disrupt the balance and eat away at the ozone column. Clearly, ozone depletion is a worldwide problem which does not respect national boundaries. Scientists believe that a significant decrease in the concentration of ozone in the ozone layer could lead to a number of harmful global effects that include:
Pan‐Africanism
Authors: Ouédraogo Jean‐Bernard
Published: March 2012

Although the term Pan‐Africanism came into vogue around 1900 at the “Pan‐African Conference” in London, the social, cultural and political movement predates it considerably. The manifestation of solidarity between the African peoples of the continent and the diaspora, expressing the desire to promote freedom, equality and development of Africans and the continent on equal footing with other parts of the world, Pan‐Africanism is based on a long struggle against the negation of black identity and against slavery – as the ultimate expression of black inferiority. The long history of Pan‐Africanism illustrates the complexity of this movement characterized by often contradictory trends and various historical and political phases.
Peasant Movements
Authors: Johnson Jennifer L.
Published: March 2012

The term ‘peasant' came into fashion in the social sciences in the post–World War II period. Anthropologist Eric Wolf coined the classic definition, denoting peasants as agricultural producers who control land and work this land for subsistence, not profit (Wolf 1955: 453–454). Today, the term is still widely used in scholarship, popular discourse, and by individuals and organizations that self‐identify as such despite objections in some academic circles that it essentializes and romanticizes a way of life that no longer exists. To reflect the reality that very few (if any) agricultural producers today subsist apart from market relations or depend exclusively on farming, current usage typically refers to small‐scale farmers who produce for themselves and for the market, and combine farming with an array of other survival strategies including seasonal migration and temporary wage labor.
Periphery
Authors: Reifer Tom
Published: March 2012

The concept of periphery, though originating in the work of dependency theorists, is a critical concept of world‐systems analysis. The concept refers to those regions – often involved in monoculture agro‐exports or mineral extraction – that are continuously the most exploited and impoverished by the ongoing processes of the capitalist world economy, including due to intervention from core states and militaries. These processes of colonization through informal neo‐colonialism or formal colonial empires were part of the peripheralization of production processes in what was an increasingly a global division of labor, within which the core and semiperiphery monopolized the lion's share of benefits. In the initial emergence of the modern world system, the peripheries of East Central Europe and the Americas were central to the development of the capitalist world economy with its global division of labor, as were peripheralized labor forces from Africa in the era of black Atlantic slavery, or Latinos in the United States, as analyzed by David Montejano (1987) and others (Chicano Political Economy Collective, 1981). Ivan Berend (1996) looks at the way in which East Central Europe had higher social welfare per capita relative to other peripheral states, as part of the coercive Soviet empire, but now is arguably being relegated to its previous peripheral role in the aftermath of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc.
Pilgrimage
Authors: Bajc Vida
Published: March 2012

Pilgrimageis a performative social activity through which individuals in all world religions and a wide variety of indigenous traditions practice their faith, a type of a journey that generates a potential for self and collective transformation. Particularities of this practice make sense within a given cultural context and religious tradition and, therefore, vary widely throughout different historical settings, across cultures, as well as within religious systems. The decision on the part of the pilgrim to temporarily break with the mundane of daily living for the purposes of the journey opens up possibilities for new experiences, which can potentially be transformative. This process is meaningful in relation to a destination. In some traditions, this is an inner journey toward enlightenment and understanding. In others, it entails corporeal movement away from home to a physical landscape, marked through the aesthetics and symbolism of its topography, architecture, art, myths, collective memories, ritual practices, objects of veneration, sacred persons, or cultural heroes. The kinds of transformations this practice may generate are shaped by multiple factors, including pilgrims' openness to new circumstances afforded by the journey, their cultural backgrounds, their ability to relate to the setting, and the forms of sociality of which they become a part.
Piracy
Authors: Kraska James
Published: March 2012

Piracy is a maritime act of armed robbery, criminal violence or other depredation at sea that is not associated with official governmental action. In this respect, piracy is a private act that does not enjoy a privileged status, either in peacetime or as a lawful belligerent act during time of war. The renowned English jurist Sir William Blackstone wrote that the crime of piracy or robbery and depredation upon the high seas was an offense against the universal laws of civilized society – what we refer to today as “international law” (Blackstone & Wendell 1850). Having renounced all the norms and mores of human progress and enlightened government, pirates were considered by the common law to have reverted to a “savage state of nature” – and their criminal enterprise was held to be tantamount to declaring war against mankind. Anglo‐American law has held pirates to behostis humani generis, or “enemy of all mankind” (The Lotus (Fr. v. Turk.) 1927 PCIJ (ser. A) No. 10, September 7)). As such, piracy is the original crime of universal jurisdiction. Pirates “attack the rights of mankind, and menace the lives and property of all who resist their unlawful acts” (The Ambrose Light, 24 F. 408, 413 (SDNY 1885)). In response, all nations were deemed to be free to declare war against piracy; indeed, not only did every community enjoy the right of self‐defense against piracy, but all civilized states had an affirmative obligation to do so.
Political Capitalism, Markets, and the Global Financial Crisis
Authors: Prechel Harland
Published: March 2012

In response to the acceleration of globalization in the late twentieth century, sociologists reformulated and further specified concepts and theories to explain this process. One such concept is political capitalism, which identifies linkages between politics and economic globalization. There are two parts to this essay. First, it summarizes the development of theory and research on political capitalism. Second, it illustrates how political capitalism in nation‐states created organizational and political structures that permitted financial managers to engage in the high‐risk behaviors that resulted in the global financial crisis in the early twenty‐first century.
Pollution, Water
Authors: Jorgenson Andrew K. , Givens Jennifer
Published: March 2012

Much of the human‐caused water pollution in the modern era results from various manufacturing processes, agricultural production, and from the inadequate treatment and handling of fecal matter. While the latter has been reduced in most developed countries, perhaps billions of citizens of less developed countries still lack access to adequate sanitation systems. Furthermore, in both more and less developed countries, runoff from agricultural production, storm water, and forms of mining all continue to contribute to the pollution of water (World Resources Institute 2005). While all forms of water pollution pose environmental and health problems, the most rigorous comparative international studies of globalization and water pollution in the social sciences focus on industrial‐based organic water pollutants, particularly in less developed countries. This is largely due to the availability of data from the World Bank (e.g., 2010) and other sources for such pollutants for a large proportion of the world's nations. Further, these pollutants are known to increase the mortality rates of infants and young children in poorer nations (Jorgenson 2009b).
Postmodernity
Authors: Rossi Ino
Published: March 2012

Perhaps the only agreement regarding postmodernism is a total disagreement on what the term means. During the 1970s and 1980s, some authors argued that we were still living in the modern period (Habermas 1983), others argued that we were in a period of radicalized modernity (Giddens 1990, Beck 1992) or re‐modernization (Latour 2003), but postmodernists were proclaiming the end of the “modern era.” However, postmodernists were not in agreement on the beginning of the postmodern era, which was located anywhere in the period from the 1920s to the 1980s. Moreover, some writers identified as “postmodernists” were refusing the label. The term “postmodern” obviously refers to something posterior to and different from or in opposition to “modernity,” but the problem is that the latter term has been used in the arts, humanities and social sciences with different meanings and, at times, interchangeably with the term “modernism.” A terminological confusion can be avoided by reserving the term “modernism” for the nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century movement that spread throughout the visual arts, literature, and music as well as through philosophical and theological disciplines. “Modernism” originated in opposition to the version of “modernity” that was officially emphasized during the nineteenth‐century era of industrialization, urbanization and scientific innovations. However, the term “modernity” has also been used with different shades of meaning so that a clarification of this term is necessary to minimize the confusion surrounding the term “postmodernism.”
Post‐secularism
Authors: McLennan Gregor
Published: March 2012

From around the 1960s, the prevailing tenor of Western critical thinking about democratic culture was broadly but firmly secularist, and “methodological atheism” was felt to be prerequisite for social scientific endeavor. Such academic inclinations corresponded to general expectations of increasing secularization in the wider postindustrial society. But through the 1990s these assumptions came under challenge, both empirically and philosophically, in a shift towards “post‐secular” understanding. The development of a fully global perspective reminded Western academics of the panoply of religious traditions that were still active across the world. And in the Western nations, most obviously in the United States but in Europe too, a “revival of religion” appeared to be gathering momentum. Accordingly, arguments were made that religious beliefs and sensibilities, contrary to the political and social science
myth
of inexorable secularization, had never disappeared, and might even be expected to intensify as consumerist hedonism and intellectual materialism alike were perceived to be spiritually impoverishing.
Qaedaism
Authors: McDonald Kevin
Published: March 2012

During the 1980s camps were set up in Afghanistan to welcome fighters, mainly from Arab countries, who came to participate in the war against the Soviet‐backed Najibullah government (1979–1988) and who remained active during the chronic war until the eventual consolidation of Taliban power in 1996. The largely Arab group of fighters formed around the Saudi Arabian, Osama Bin Laden, and became known as al‐Qaeda, an Arabic term for “the base,” which is believed to refer to one of three camps in Afghanistan linked to Bin Laden during this period.
Reflexive modernization
Authors: Rossi Ino
Published: March 2012

In the 1970s thinkers like Habermas, Offe, and O'Connor raised questions about the legitimacy of social order, especially about the ability of the capitalist state to reconcile the promotion of economic growth and social welfare. Habermas argued that cultural themes lose their genuine cultural character, and hence their reproducibility, once they are used by the state to legitimize social welfare policies. With the increasing number of administrative functions the state eventually depletes the cultural capital and, therefore, cannot any longer legitimize conflicting class claims.
Religion
Authors: McDonald Kevin
Published: March 2012

Globalization and religion have emerged as an intensely contested domain at the beginnings of the twenty‐first century, the issues at stake among the most central reshaping global social life, but also among the most difficult to grapple with. In part this is because debates and controversies around globalization and religion are not the preserve of social scientists, but involve actors ranging from religious institutions and movements, political movements, secularists and terrorists, to states, governments and courts. These all have views about what religion is and what constitutes the appropriate social and political spaces for religious expression and action. This contestation takes very different forms in different countries, reflections of different religious histories and vocabularies as well as political traditions. Scientology, for example, is recognized as a religion in the United States but not in many European countries, while school students may wear religious symbols in schools in the United States but not in France. The term
religion
itself is the product of a particular historical configuration, involving a separation of private belief and public expression that emerged during the formation of the European systems of states. Many languages do not possess a term for religion, while practices and traditions that have become constituted as religions – as for example Hinduism or Buddhism – did so only recently, and in the context of responses to colonial power. All of these complexities are at stake in the reconfiguration of the religious sphere in the context of globalization.
Religions, Global
Authors: Abrutyn Seth
Published: March 2012

Around 800bce, a set of cultural revolutions began to foment in India, China, ancient Israel, Greece, and Persia. A period labeled theAxial Ageby numerous scholars (Eisenstadt 1986) witnessed the birth of world or global religions as well as the germ of the two late‐comers – Christianity and Islam. Previously, religion was either rooted deeply in particularisms founded on kinship and tribal logic (Wallace 1966) or, in the case of the earliest states in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Peru, and Mesoamerica, in needs and self‐aggrandizing efforts of the polity – especially kings (see Oppenheim 1964). Yet, under enormous sociocultural and sociopolitical pressures following the beginning of the Iron Age (c. 1200–1000bce) movements of resistance to the old traditional political cores emerged on the physical margins of the largest‐to‐date empires – the Assyrian in the Middle East and the Zhou Dynasty in China – or, in the case of India, on the cognitive and somewhat physical margins of the old Vedic sociopolitical configuration.
Resistance Movements
Authors: Tormey Simon
Published: March 2012

Resistance movements are forms of organization that seek to confront, undermine and overthrow authoritarian or tyrannical forms of power. Unlike political parties, they do not contest power through the electoral or “official” political process, often because elections have been abolished or rendered meaningless. Resistance movements usually operate underground or in other “hidden” or subterranean spaces – including most recently in “virtual” space. They differ from social movements in that they seek actively to prevent the operation of power in a given territory, space or domain. Social movements by contrast seek to influence, reform or contest particular policies and processes.
Revolution
Authors: Berberoglu Berch
Published: March 2012

Social change and social transformation often occur when a society undergoes a social revolution. It is through social revolution that societies become transformed from one system to another (Sanderson 2010). There are many types of revolution besides a
social
revolution (e.g., the scientific and technological revolution, the information revolution, and varieties of other revolutions in fields as diverse as engineering and medicine). Here, however, we will focus on
social
revolution that impacts society at the macro‐sociological level and has immense political implications concerning societal change, especially in the age of globalization.
Rule of Law in Global Politics
Authors: May Christopher
Published: March 2012

The Rule of Law is both a description of a process for providing order in global politics and an aspiration about the conduct of global political relations. The Rule of Law can be contrasted with the rule of power and/or force, and as such can be said to be the underlying logic of contemporary developments in global governance. Equally, the Rule of Law is a standard that many commentators argue should be met (often as part of an evaluation that it has not). Therefore, in global politics the Rule of Law both acts as part of a political taxonomy, and is an important (increasingly globalized) norm to which states are increasingly held by international organizations, other states and non‐state actors. This operates at two levels: specified societies are judged against the taxonomy and accorded an evaluation of the extent to that they abide by the Rule of Law. However, global politics itself, and (perhaps more often) specific political actions or developments, can also be evaluated utilizing the yardstick of the Rule of Law.
Science
Authors: Drori Gili S.
Published: March 2012

Modern science is defined as the quest for and analysis of the natural and social worlds that is conducted in accordance with professionalized criteria of method and process and by credentialed professionals. Following its emergence in the sixteenth century as an investigative activity conducted by learned individuals under the sponsorship of court patrons throughout Europe, science came to be institutionalized in the nineteenth century as a professional activity that is the domain of credentialed experts whose work is guided by authoritative criteria of evaluation and review. Since the middle of the twentieth century, science has been redefined in terms of its social import: science is no longer aimed solely at the expansion of human knowledgeper se, but rather science aims to contribute to public or social good, most commonly defined as development. With that, science is a core and global social institution, as well as the conceptual axis of modernity.