A Cinema of Things: Globalization and the Posthuman Object, by Elizabeth Ezra

Since the 1970s, feminist and LGBT scholarship has extensively focused on the impact that advertising, television and film have on the standardization and objectification of the female and lesbian body. However, little attention has been given to the images produced in global(izing) communication industries such as branding and stock photography. Brands and stock photographs alike may seem to be more invisible, although and perhaps because they are in fact much more pervasive than “traditional” media images. These images originate from major centers of post-industrial capitalist power and are used and consumed by multiple actors, ranging from communication professionals to ordinary consumers. In this article, I offer an in-depth critical reading of some key communication resources of two global corporations: the global coffeehouse chain Starbucks and the world-leading provider of stock photography Getty Images. First, I examine some of the key branding strategies used by Starbucks, with a specific focus on the deployment of the female body in the mermaid logo. Second, I examine Getty photographs aimed at representing lesbian subjectivities for a variety of uses. The differences that set us apart, or the eccentricities of our bodies, are increasingly exploited in globalizing contexts that require differentiation and distinction, though within the rigid structures that underlie the economic, political and cultural marketplaces of contemporaneity. For this reason, in my analysis I also and foremost focus on the visual treatment of key “abject” or “queer” features that characterize images produced both by Starbucks and Getty. In this way, I ultimately highlight some of the dynamics that underlie the coding of differences, rather than the homogenization of discursive practices in contemporary communication. Keywords: lesbian, female body, queer, abjection, stylization, Starbucks, Getty, branding, stock photography, visual communication, globalization.

Global and local attention are two forms of selective visual attention which activate different areas of the cortex. The purpose of this experiment was to test subjects' motion coherence thresholds under conditions of global or local attention. It was hypothesized that thresholds in global attention would be lower than in local attention. Eleven adult subjects participated in this study. Subjects were required to identify direction of motion at variable coherence levels, while simultaneously identifying either the global or local letter. Three velocities were used for coherent motion (3, 6 and 18 degrees/s). The results showed that letter identification (global or local) did not significantly affect motion coherence thresholds; however, thresholds were significantly higher at 18 degrees/s than in the lower velocities. These results highlight the attentional limitations of visual information shown by increased motion coherence thresholds when two objects must be identified simultaneously in a brief display.

Modern highly specialized studies of globalization, from the point of view of social philosophy, show that in the process of heated debate, neither supporters, nor representatives of globalization have a constructive vision of globalization, leading a debate around certain aspects of the problem. At the same time, researchers also consistently in their numerous developments reveal the essence of the phenomenon of globalization and the features of its processes observed in the modern world, taking into account the level of social development of the countries of the world. The phenomenon of glocalization is also of great interest to researchers of globalization processes, which reflects the complex process of interweaving global development trends and local local characteristics of the cultural development of various peoples. Glocalization as a locality of cultures has now spread to almost all spheres of human life and, above all, to the sphere of economics. In this regard, local and global are merging into new forms of social development, production methods that open and cross national borders constantly and more and more daily destroy local flows of goods, services, and knowledge. The anti-globalist movement is no less organic product of globalization than the global economic, financial, political or communication community. Moreover, this movement is a «built-in stabilizer» of technological and social development not only of developed countries, but of all mankind. At the same time, globalization often stimulates the openness of communications, information technology, leads to economic growth, and thanks to the emergence of the middle class, it leads to the democratization of political life. Keywords: globalization, social philosophy, locality, glocalization, antiglobalism, knowledge, communities, communication, crises, internationalization, democracy, social development.

Kuresellesmedeki artis, ulkelerin vergi politikalarini yeniden tanimlamalarina yol acmaktadir. Ayrica kuresellesme ortaya cikabilecek olasi riskleri telafi etme amaciyla hukumetler uzerinde vergi politikalarini gozden gecirme baskisi da yaratmistir. Bu kapsamda dunyada bircok ulkenin son yillarda kurumlar vergisi oranlarini dusurmus olmasi dikkat cekicidir. Bu nedenle, calisma, kuresellesme artisinin bu dusus surecindeki rolunu arastirmaktadir. Calismada, 1998-2016 donemi icin 33 ulkeden olusan panel veri seti kullanilarak, kuresellesmenin kurumlar vergisi uzerinde onemli bir etkisinin olup olmadigi test edilmistir. Calismada kuresellesmenin ekonomi, ticaret ve politika olmak uzere uc ana boyutu ele alinmistir. Bunun yaninda de facto ve de jure olmak uzere iki farkli olcum yontemi kullanilmistir. Ampirik sonuclar, kuresellesme ile kurumlar vergisi arasinda negatif bir iliski oldugunu gostermektedir. Sonuclar, kuresellesmenin farkli boyutlari ve olcumleri acisindan da tutarlidir. Kuresel entegrasyonun politika yapicilar icin onemli oldugu ve entegrasyonun artmasinin ulkelerin bagimsiz ulusal mali ve ekonomik politikalarini da etkiledigi sonucuna varilabilir.

In today’s world, it is most likely to hear a responsible politician, development worker, intellectual or economist speaking without mentioning globalisation. Hence, the concept of globalisation has over the past three decades grown to become one of the most recognized, widely defined and disputed phenomena in recent history. In this context, this paper examines the role of the state in socio-economic development endeavours in Tanzania in the contemporary globalisation milieu. Foucault’s notion of ‘Governmentality’ is applied in this paper to elucidate the changing nature and rationalities of the state in coping with the intensification of globalisation. The fundamental argument of this paper is that, while it is important to understand how changes in global arena have contributed significantly in changing roles of the state especially in developing nations, scholars and practitioners should as well see how globalization plays double roles in changing roles of the state. That is, while strong states may gain from it, the weak ones lose from the same. In conclusion, it is argued in this paper that by emulating this approach towards analysing the roles of the state in a globalized world, comparative scholars will become more inclusive and encompassing by representing the real world and give equal value of globalization to both developed (strong) and developing (weak) nations.

The world can be characterized by dynamics of acceleration. The African population will double during the next three decades; global urban infrastructures will double by 2050; to stay below the 2 °C guardrail and to avoid dangerous climate change, emissions need to peak by 2020 and be reduced to zero by 2050; The decisions of states, firms and political actors during the next one or two decades will create very long-term path dependencies in the emerging global society. Acceleration, path dependencies and very long-term impacts of current decisions need to be taken into account in Global Cooperation Research. The Kate Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research therefore brought together scenario experts, integrated assessment scholars and science fiction authors with global cooperation researchers. All of them agreed that shaping the future, organizing transformation processes towards sustainability and investing in global cooperation to make globalization work for all means building on new narratives about possible futures. Narratives are about imagination, creativity, innovation, diversity. Without transformative narratives, we cannot go beyond incremental changes. This Global Dialogues publication builds important bridges between scholars from very different disciplines which can help us to merge the knowledge of future scenario thinkers and pioneers of global cooperation research. (from the Preface)

This paper contends that globalization as framed and understood within the theoretical context of mainstream International Relations (IR) and International Political Economy (IPE) is largely incapacitated to reflect on contemporary changes in world politics and that the advent of ‘globalization debate’ in IR theory and IPE has been unrewarding. Nevertheless, rather than refuting globalization, this study redeems the concept by defining it in such a way that it is able to capture such changes in world politics which often evade traditional categories of analysis in IR. For this purpose, this study, drawing largely on critical sociological theorizing of globalization, attempts to develop a conception and framework of what it calls ‘reflexive’ globalization. Reflexive globalization puts special emphasis on the socio-cultural changes in the world and identifies three aspects of globalization: ‘reflexivity’, ‘relativization’ and ‘deterritorialization’. Thus, the concept of globalization suggested in this study is more complex and holistic than either transnationalism, or interdependence or internationalization, and it rests on a different image of the world. It thereby resists being bounded by the analytical and theoretical limitations of the mainstream IR theory. Reflexive globalization recasts the globalization debate in IR and offers a way of advancing distinct explanations of contemporary changes in the state and the international system.

The spread of pop cultural productions out from one country across the world is the very expression of globalism. The significance of Japanese anime and manga in America is becoming increasingly apparent; that it is no longer simply a product for the Japanese market, for the exclusive consumption of its particular culture, means that it has placed itself within and recognized itself as part of that globalized world. On the one hand, the positioning of anime within the larger world has its advantages for its writers and the culture at large, by providing Japan a voice in that world. On the other hand, despite anime's spread across the world and the potential benefits of globalization, within the narratives of anime itself there persists a strain of anxiety and suspicion regarding the prospect of increased economic and cultural globalism. In anime's villainous multi-national corporations and its frequent depiction of a de-humanizing internet (Ghost in the Shell, Serial Experiments Lain), we see a fear that the integration of economy and the melding of culture threatens identity at the level of the individual and the nation. This essay analyzes the ambivalent representations (narratives and images) of globalism in literature (the novels of Haruki Murakami) and also more popular forms of culture such as anime; and it considers both in light of sociologist Niklas Luhmann's systems theory, in order to explore how these narratives articulate their anxiety about the impact of the global system on the individual and about the formation of identity in a global age.

The shipping container is one of the primary agents of globalization. An object that gains importance through its role in infrastructure, the container’s success is due to its ability to work in preexisting national transportation systems, within the identity and space of the nation-state. But in the process those systems are globalized, as the infrastructure that once functioned at the national scale, serving the priorities of the nation-state, is now reoriented to serve international routes of trade and global agendas. The impact of the container on the American trucking and railroad systems is an example. Yet globalization is not merely a top-down phenomenon, and nations and local places have the power to affect global space and to reshape this new worldwide container infrastructure. The study of infrastructure, and more particularly the container, is especially valuable for what it reveals about these ongoing processes. This in turn helps shed light on the dynamics of our global era, and reveals the strengths and weaknesses of some contemporary theories of globalization. The global, national and local are interrelated in a nuanced engagement, in which no one factor is dominant.

While the world is far away from a perfect integration of markets, services, and factors of production; many are unsure as to what globalization means and what it would lead to many years from now. In the sense that 'globalization' transcends the evolution of a liberal economic orthodoxy as well as variants of international connectedness, how can such a fluid process replace the more stable and institutionalized nation-state? While this operational ambiguity may be due to the conventional analyses of globalization as an end state-a supposition that seeks to refer it as a state of affairs, -the assumption fails because the relationship between globalization as a process and the nation-state as a sovereign is antithetical. To be able to govern under globalization, we must first understand what it means, its many problems (including transnational immigration, potentially dramatic changes in citizenship and identity), as well as the political efficacy of integrating disparate national goals with the collective goal of the international community. And there is also the crucial problem of decision-making: who decides how we govern and under what conditions?

Why We Don’t Need a MERS Vaccine

Abstract. The present study proposes an alternative method to construct an index of globalization which is based on the principle of almost equi-marginal contributions (AEMC) or Shapley values of the constituent variables to the overall index rather than the correlation coefficients among the constituent variables and the overall index (the KOF index based on the principal component scores). This has been done by minimization of the Euclidean norm of the Shapley values of the constituent variables. As an exercise, secondary time series data (1970-2013) on the measures of globalization in three different dimensions (economic, social and political) of three economies (China, India and Pakistan) have been used. A comparison of the AEMC index with the KOF index reveals that while the former is more inclusive, the latter is more elitist in matters of inclusion of the weakly correlated constituent variables in the overall (composite) index. As a consequence, the AEMC index is more sensitive than the KOF index of globalization. Both indices capture the trends in globalization in the countries under study and are highly correlated between themselves. Thus, AEMC is an alternative or perhaps a better method to construct composite indices. Keywords. Globalization, KOF index, Equi-marginal, Shapley value, Global optimization, China, India, Pakistan. JEL. C43, C61, C71, F60, P52.

Never before has the world been globalized to such an extent, which results in a rapid exploitation of global commons and natural resources and has cross-border effects on biological diversity and climate change. As a consequence, there is a new urgency in making global cooperation in environmental politics work. Although there is a broad consensus that systemic change is needed, progress towards the latter—first, through corresponding global agreements and, second, through effective implementation of those policies at home—seems to lag behind expectations. How can these gaps be explained? And how can new scientific insights help to make environmental politics more effective? Notwithstanding the importance of non-behavioural factors as explanations from the 'outside', the author argues that explanations also have to focus on the 'inside', i.e. individual motivation. The key interest is to better understand the motivational process of individuals who are willing to undergo sustainable change behaviour and to conceptualize the results for further research. This turns human behaviour into an important risk factor in global cooperation and cognition into its relevant feature. This work is on conceptualization with a qualitative methodology and is structured as follows: In order to better grasp the meaning of 'poor' systemic change through environmental politics, the introductory part describes global cooperation as a system and identifies three cognitive blindspots, which need further analysis. As a corresponding literature review proves rich in insights but is too implicit for the further analysis, the author provides her own scheme through which the motivational process is sequenced and linked to the system around the individual. This allows new perspectives on how to discuss change behaviour in globally initiated knowledge production, learning and trial and error adaptations. The conclusions consider what the results obtained so far imply for further research on environmental politics.

In a widely-read Harvard Business Review article, John Kao (1993) concluded that Chinese business and its ‘worldwide web’ will become a major force in the global economy in the next millennium. Similarly, Joel Kotkin argued in Tribes: How Race, Religion and Identity Determine Success in the New Global Economy that by the early twenty-first century, ‘the Chinese global tribe likely will rank with the British-Americans and the Japanese as a driving force in transnational commerce’ (Kotkin, 1992, p. 9). Despite the 1997/8 Asian economic crisis, it appears that current thinking in global business reveals a serious reappraisal of the economic potential of Chinese business and its associated organizations and institutions. The Weberian thesis on the inherent limits to the growth of Chinese business and societies has been subject to fundamental challenges by recent studies (for example, Hamilton, 1996a; Whyte, 1996; Olds and Yeung, 1999). Scholars of contemporary Chinese business affairs have been forced to recognize the economic success of the ‘overseas Chinese’1 and their business firms in the host countries throughout East and Southeast Asia. Once established in host countries, Chinese business firms have extended their business operations and ‘bamboo networks’ across national boundaries, forming an increasingly global web of economic relations. These developments underscore the significance of a recent phenomenon in Chinese business — the globalization of Chinese business firms.

本文討論有關全球化論述中的三個關鍵問題：全球化是否真的出現？在地(local)或區域空間本身是否在全球化中失去意義？以及後進國，例如東亞，的發展是否在全球化過程中失去競爭條件？本文將指出質疑全球化是否發生的論點並沒有看到資本主義在質上的轉變，而且某些區域在全球化階段也不會失去重要性。我將指出這些區域受到區域特殊資源因素和交易成本的影響，而且具有學習型區域的特質。從此角度，本文將討論第三個問題，指出後進國或東亞在全球化階段的發展，受到這二因素的影響。生產要素決定性低的產業，由於全球化而外移；而前期在世界分工中累積和學習的知識，則在區域內形成社會機制，成為區域性但又全球連結的產業。我將說明後進國經濟發展的學習和追趕特質，並以此反省既有的發展理論及其缺憾。