Globalization: Millennial Quartet II

This second installment of Public Culture’s Millennial Quartet seeks to intervene in the increasingly heated debates surrounding the cultural dimensions of globalization, which includes debates about what globalization is and whether it is a meaningful term. The volume focuses in particular on the way that changing sites-local, regional, diasporic-are the scenes of emergent forms of sovereignty in which matters of style, sensibility, and ethos articulate new legalities and new kinds of violence. Seeking an alternative to the dead-end debate between those who see globalization as a phenomenon wholly without precedent and those who see it simply as modernization, imperialism, or global capitalism with a new face, the contributors seek to illuminate how space and time are transforming each other in special ways in the present era. They examine how this complex transformation involves changes in the situation of the nation, the state, and the city. While exploring distinct regions-China, Africa, South America, Europe-and representing different disciplines and genres-anthropology, literature, political science, sociology, music, cinema, photography-the contributors are concerned with both the political economy of location and the locations in which political economies are produced and transformed. A special strength of the collection is its concern with emergent styles of subjectivity, citizenship, and mobilization and with the transformations of state power through which market rationalities are distributed and embodied locally.Contributors. Arjun Appadurai, JÉrome BindÉ, NÉstor GarcÍa Canclini, Leo Ching, Steven Feld, Ralf D. Hotchkiss, Wu Hung, Andreas Huyssen, Boubacar TourÉ MandÉmory, Achille Mbembe, Saskia Sassen, Fatu Kande Senghor, Seteney Shami, Anna Tsing, Zhang Zhen

Review :
"If you want to catch up on some of the best articles written about gloablisation since the topic became fashionable several years ago, this reader is the place to start. Meant for students it pulls together pieces from such different sources as Atlantic Monthly and the Harvard Business Review. It ranges from Samuel Huntingdon's influential essay in Foreign Affairs, "The Clash of Civilizations" (1993) to an article on "The Promise of Genetics" from the Futurist in 1997. Organised by topic the book is pleasingly eclectic. For a radical perspective, you can read, for instance, the manifesto of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement of Peru. The book also has a brief guide to globalisation resources on the web."--The Economist, October 14, 2000