Lukewarm Nationalism: The 2020 Tokyo Olympics,Social Media and Affective Communities

This article considers the way in which a new nationalism is being created in the age of the Internet and social media by looking at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and other Games in the past. The development of media technology from film, radio, and television to the Internet and social media has changed the character of the Olympic Games as media event. It has been argued that these developments have created a shared consciousness, a sense of belonging and enthusiastic nationalism in the age of modern nation‐state. While the spread of the Internet and social media was originally expected to contribute to globalization or to the emergence of global citizens in a global village, as McLuhan once predicted, it seems that the world is more divided, fragmented, and fluid than ever. At the same time, the digital media organize various layers of community not only by ideology but also by affect: affective communities. This often leads to the rise of chauvinistic nationalism in developed countries. With reference to McLuhan's famous argument on hot and cool media, the article tries to examine the character of contemporary lukewarm nationalism in the age of digital media.     

Global and Local Intersection of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics

The Olympics is not a space where the global and local are shown in two separate layers. It is where various sociopolitical conflicts of the hosting country bubble and surface from both levels. When the Olympic events were launched in East Asia they developed further in interaction with different cultural, political, and social backgrounds. This study pays attention to the diverse ways in which Olympic values are accepted and practiced. At the same time, it analyzes the perversion and limitations of Olympism ideals as displayed in the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. This article focuses on specific changes that occurred in and around Korea along and after the PyeongChang Olympics and how the values of the global and local met without clashing with each other.     

Global sport mega‐events and the politics of mobility: the case of the London 2012 Olympics

This paper examines the politics of mobility which surrounded the London 2012 Olympics. We provide a critical discussion of the mobility conflicts, problems and criticisms which emerged from our research with local people in the Stratford and wider Newham areas of London, where most Olympic events were located. The paper is divided into four broad parts. First, we identify and discuss the relevant components of the ‘mobilities paradigm’ in social science which underpin our analysis. Second, we briefly outline our research methods, centring particularly on fieldwork and interviews with different social groups. Third, we examine in detail the six main themes of mobility politics which were evident at London 2012, relating to social context, event construction, event mobility systems, commercial mobilities, the mobile politics of exclusion, and contested modes of mobility. In doing so, we seek to extend the mobilities paradigm by introducing various concepts and keywords – notably on the three‐speed city, entryability, mobility panics, instrumental mobility, and corporate kettling – which may be utilized by social scientists to examine mobility systems in other social contexts. We conclude by reaffirming the significance of mobility‐focused research at sport and other mega‐events, and by indicating future lines of inquiry for social scientists.     

Spatial Barriers and the Formation of Global Art Cities: The Case of Tokyo

This paper addresses a neglected dimension of global cities research: how the idea of economic concentration, its surplus and consequent global influence can be applied to the art world. The research presented here relates to Tokyo as a well‐known example of a global city, advancing existing understandings of Tokyo from the neglected perspective of the arts. Based on qualitative and quantitative research by the author, including cultural and spatial mapping, interviews, ethnographic observations and visual documents, the findings confirm that the role of space and materiality is overlooked in global cities research. The results demonstrate the active contribution and intervention of spatial patterns in the formation of artistic activities. A number of Tokyo's spatial features have an inhibiting effect that shifts artistic activities underground, creating asymmetries in the constitution of symbolic meanings in the city and a failure to openly stimulate artistic practices. As a consequence, Tokyo's vivid art world remains invisible not only to outsiders but to Tokyo itself.     

探索城市转型发展之路——以广州为例

转型发展,是指转变经济社会发展模式,实现又好又快的科学发展。近年来,广州从实际出发,以科学发展观为指导,率先探索转型发展之路,并且取得了积极成就,走在了全省和全国的前列。但是,广州的转型发展仍然是初步的。在建设国家中心城市的进程中,广州仍然面临着许多不容忽视的问题,需要继续探索符合本市实际的转型发展之路。     

Mapping Global Consciousness: Portuguese Imperialism and the Forging of Modern Global Sensibilities

This article concerns the Portuguese forging of globalization, globality, and forms of global consciousness in the early modern period. In the now voluminous Anglophone literature on globalization, depiction of the Portuguese contribution to such matters is generally muted, if not ignored altogether, in favour of accounts of Columbus's famous voyage and the Spanish conquest of the Americas as the constitutive moments of early modern globalization. The article seeks to rectify the serious neglect of the Portuguese case. It does so by examining how the creation of trans-oceanic networks by the Portuguese made possible new forms of global consciousness. The central arguments forwarded by the article are: that the Portuguese experience is quite as important as the Spanish one in understanding early modern globalization; that early modern globalization was neither unidirectional or inevitable, but rather was shaped in important ways by local and contingent factors operative inside Portugal and within the often tentative expansive endeavours carried out by rival sectors within Portuguese society; that the Portuguese expansion was both made possible by, and further fostered, particular navigational, cartographical, and shipping techniques, which themselves embodied and allowed novel forms of global consciousness; that such forms of consciousness were not only the preserve of elites, but were disseminated throughout all social classes; and that it was through the twin endeavours of the Portuguese and Spanish that a radically new and distinctively ‘modern’ sense of the globe and global space was forged. The article thus seeks to contribute to the emerging literature on the history of globalization, connecting material factors with a cultural-sociological account of the development of new modes of perception and global consciousness.

Este artículo concierne a la creación portuguesa de la globalización, globalidad y formas de conciencia global a comienzos del período moderno. En la actual voluminosa literatura anglófona sobre la globalización, la descripción de la contribución portuguesa a tales asuntos, generalmente es silenciada, si no ignorada por completo, en favor de las cuentas del famoso viaje de Colón y la conquista española de las Américas, como momentos constitutivos de un comienzo de la globalización moderna. El artículo busca rectificar el serio olvido del caso portugués. Lo hace mediante el análisis de cómo la creación de las redes transoceánicas por los portugueses hicieron posibles nuevas formas de consciencia global. Los argumentos centrales propiciados por este artículo son: que la experiencia portuguesa es tan importante como la española para entender el principio de la globalización moderna; que el comienzo de la globalización moderna no era unidireccional o inevitable, pero estaba formada en formas importantes por factores locales y contingentes, que operaban dentro de Portugal y dentro de las frecuentes tentativas de iniciativas expansivas, llevadas a cabo por los sectores rivales dentro de la sociedad portuguesa; que la expansión portuguesa se hacía posible y luego fomentada por técnicas de navegación particular, cartográfica y de transporte marítimo, que por sí mismas incorporaron y permitieron nuevas formas de consciencia global; que tales formas de consciencia eran no sólo para preservar a las élites, pero que fueron diseminadas a todas las clases sociales; y que fue a través de los esfuerzos gemelos de los portugueses y españoles que se forjó un sentido radicalmente nuevo y característicamente ‘moderno’ del globo y del espacio global. Por lo tanto, el artículo busca contribuir a la literatura emergente sobre la historia de la globalización, conectando factores materiales con la cuenta sociológica cultural del desarrollo de nuevos modos de percepción y consciencia global.

本文关注全球化、全球性以及近代早期全球意识形式在葡萄牙的打造。在当代关于全球化的繁多英文著述中,关于葡萄牙人对此贡献的描述默默无闻（如果不是全数忽略的话）,一般偏向于哥伦布的著名航行,以及近代早期全球化形成时期西班牙对美洲的征服。本文力图校正对葡萄牙的严重忽视。它将通过考察由葡萄牙人建立的跨洋网络如何让全球意识的形成变得可能来达到以上目的。文中提出的核心观点主要有：葡萄牙人的经历在理解近代早期全球化上同西班牙人一样相当重要;近代早期的全球化并非单向的或必然的,而是由葡萄牙内部的当地、偶然因素,以及由葡萄牙社会中的对立部门发动的经常是试探性的扩张努力,以重要方式塑造而成的;特定的精确导航、地图绘制、造船等技术既使葡萄牙人的扩张成为可能,也对其加以促进,它们自身就体现并催生了新形式的全球意识;此种新形式的全球意识并非只是精英们所独有,而是扩散到了所有社会阶层;正是通过葡萄牙人和西班牙人的共同努力,才打造成了一种全新而与众不同的关于地球和全球空间的“近代”意识。本文试图对全球化历史方面的新近文献有所贡献,将新认知方式和新全球意识发展的物质因素和文化社会因素结合了起来。     

Making Heterogeneous Space: Land Development and the Proletarianization of Urban Underclass in Post War Japan

This paper aims to focus on a correlation between urban land development and a “proletarianization” of day‐laborers by examining Mitsui Fudosan Group [Mitsui Real Estate Group] as an agent of urban developments and construction industry in Japan, with examining daylaborers’ riots and moral economy as a counter‐culture against gentrified urban spaces.It is necessary to acknowledge the fact that the national projects – maintained by the closed market and the subcontracting labor system in the construction industry – also induce a radical opposition against the urban development. Although national projects are inevitably accompanied by gentrification, eviction of the homeless, and social exclusion of the underclass, unavoidable transgression or deviation conflicts with urban development, such as periodic and spontaneous riots by day‐laborers, demonstrates a vulnerability of the national unity. In fact, the day‐laborers changed the street labor market into their own field in order to overturn the hierarchy determined by the subcontracting structure in the construction industry. Their bodily expression in the form of riots had radically transgressed the ideas promoted in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics as “One World,” or the 1970 Osaka Expo as “Progress and Harmony for Mankind.” The Olympic legacy was disrupted boldly and transformed into a radical egalitarian thought in this sense. The underclass is immediately defined and commodified by national projects, however, it does not mean that its body is completely involved in its time and space.     

Brexit,Global Cities,and the Future of World Order

The emergence and role of global cities provide a rubric by which we can understand Brexit and illuminate the present tensions between those who favor open economic policies and those who favor closed economic policies. Economic inequality, political disenfranchisement, and social exclusion at the regional level are now driving a fresh interrogation of the relatively open world order that requires global cities—sites densely populated with institutions necessary for orchestrating global economic activity. While questions about the legitimacy of economic openness may undermine the economic output, political power, and cultural influence of global cities, those same cities may, if they harness economic output for broader regional benefits, demonstrate the potential of an alternative and newly legitimate open world order.     

Place Brands,Nonbrands, Tags and Queries: The Networks of Urban Activism in the Creative City Istanbul

This article aims for a deeper understanding of an emerging urban-political culture that interweaves digital platforms and urban spaces, institutions and the extra-institutional. It explores political possibilities and limitations of urban activism in the context of ‘creative city’ oriented policy-making in Istanbul, Turkey. My approach highlights the production of agency/disempowerment and solidarity/isolation through socio-technical networks that assemble multifarious issues of concern and care. Activist strategies in Istanbul engaged the productive tension between (1) biopolitical apparatuses introduced with ‘creative city’ governance that extract value from the creative production and cultural participation of citizens and (2) the disregard or devaluation of citizen bodies in socially exclusive processes of urban transformation. The struggle over the impoverished Romani neighbourhood Sulukule, which faced demolition, introduced a mode of urban activism consisting in the appropriation of organizational techniques and regimes of value and visibility of Istanbul's ‘creative city’ governance apparatuses. Repurposing place branding for a technique of networked self-organization and claiming brand value for the deprived neighbourhood, activist practices transfigured the place brand into the anti-brand and nonbrand as well as into tags, queries and addresses operating in digital space. This article analyses Sulukule's struggle – and its connections and disconnections to other struggles – to explore activism's potential to challenge stratifications and inequalities between people and places engendered by ‘creative city’ projects, which themselves are often implicated in exclusive urban transformation processes.     

Chinese Newcomers in the Global City Tokyo: Social Networks and Settlement Tendencies

Abstract: What I will present here is mainly about the research I engaged in from 1988 until now, on the Chinese newcomers problem in the global city of Tokyo. From the community‐study point of view, I explored the migration process of Chinese newcomers from sojourning to settling. Migration processes of Chinese newcomers are different from those of old overseas Chinese in Japan. This paper presents the new immigration tendencies of Chinese newcomers. A transnational social space is forming between Japan and the places where immigrants come from. In the age of globalization, there will be new circumstances and formations of ethnic networks of Chinese newcomers at the global level. At present, both of these tendencies can be found in Japan's society. The process for Chinese newcomers to new overseas Chinese differs from that of the old overseas Chinese. In the near future, Japan may bring in some high‐level specialized personnel by adopting a method of welcoming immigrants. At the same time, new immigrants can also form a new transnational social space. The field research I have carried out on the Chinese newcomers during these ten years fully illustrates these points.     

New Maps,New Questions: Global Cities Beyond the Advanced Producer and Financial Services Sector

This article broadens the discussion of cities as strategic sites in which global activities are organized. It deploys methodology commonly used to study the distribution and disproportionate concentration of advanced producer and financial services firms in order to study the office distribution of global nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and global energy corporations. It then compares the distribution of those offices to that of advanced producer and financial services firms, using data from the global and World Cities Research Network, further discovering what cities are strategic sites in all three networks, in any combination of two networks, and in only one network. Attending to the convergence and divergence of such networks opens a door to the study of network logic—the underlying dynamics of network functioning—instead of limiting the study to network structure or composition while also permitting a multi-sectoral measurement of globality.

Este artículo amplía la discusión de ciudades como lugares estratégicos en las que se organizan actividades globales. Despliega una metodología comúnmente usada para estudiar la distribución y la concentración desproporcionada de productores avanzados y firmas de servicios financieros, con el objeto de estudiar la distribución de oficinas de las organizaciones no gubernamentales (ONGs) y las corporaciones de energía globales. Luego compara la distribución de aquellas oficinas para los productores avanzados y para las firmas de servicios financieros, usando los datos de la Red de Investigación de las Ciudades Mundiales y Globales, para luego descubrir qué ciudades son lugares estratégicos en todas las tres redes, en cualquier combinación de dos redes y en solo una red. Prestando atención a la convergencia y divergencia de tales redes, se abre una puerta al estudio de la lógica de las redes—la dinámica subyacente de la función de las redes—en vez de limitar el estudio de la estructura de la red o la composición, permitiendo también una medida multisectorial de globalidad.

本文扩展了对城市的讨论,它们是组织全球行动的战略要地。本文运用了通常研究高级生产者和金融服务公司的分布及其不成比例集中问题的方法学,以期对全球非政府组织和全球能源公司的办公分布进行研究。然后,它运用来自“全球与世界城市研究网络”的数据,通过进一步讨论何种城市属于全部三种网络的、任何两种网络结合的、以及仅一种网络中的战略要地,对其机构分布和高级生产者及金融服务公司的分布进行对比。对这些网络的聚集和离散的注意为网络逻辑——网络运作的潜在动力——的研究提供了机会,而不是在允许对全球性进行多领域量度的同时又局限于研究网络的结构或组成。

? ??? ??? ?? ??? ??? ??? ???? ??? ??? ?????. ? ????? NGO? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ???? ??? ?? ????? ????? ??? ??? ??? ????? ????? ???? ??? ????. ? ?? ??? ? ?? ?? ?? ????(Global and World Cities Research Network) ??? ????, ??? NGO? ??? ??? ?? ???? ??? ?? ????? ????? ??? ??? ????. ??? ??? ? ?? ??????, ? ?? ????? ???? ??? ?? ? ?? ?????? ?? ??? ??????? ?? ??? ??. ??? ????? ??? ??? ?? ?? ???? ??? ???? ??? ??? ????? ?? ??? ?? ???? ????(globality) ??? ??? ?? ???? ??? ???? ???? ???? ??? ?? ??? ?? ?? ??.     

Global Civil Society: The Dialectics of Concept and Reality

This paper maps out the potential of a Gramscian conceptualisation of global civil society for understanding global resistance to neoliberal globalisation and contemporary global governance. First, the principal features of contention between contemporary representations of global civil society in studies of global resistance are examined. A predominant focus on perpetuating the division between normative and empirical conceptualisations is reoriented towards a Gramscian conceptualisation which, it is argued, affirms the emancipative potential of global civil society in global resistance. Initiating a dialogue between concept and reality (Cox, 1999 Cox, R. W. 1999. Civil society at the turn of the millennium: Prospects for an alternative world order. Review of International Studies, 25(1): 3–28. (doi:10.1017/S0260210599000042)[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar])—also referred to as the ‘dialectical nexus’ (Gramsci, 1971 Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci translated by Q. Hoare & G. Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers; London: Lawrence and Wishart) [Google Scholar])—offers alternative possibilities for the substantive analysis of global civil society in relation to global resistance. This moves Gramscian civil society towards a conceptual grounding which deals with the formation, negotiation and re-negotiation of transversal hegemony and recovers, and emphasises, the role of human agency within the global political economy.

Este artículo expone el potencial de una conceptualización gramsciana de la sociedad civil global, para entender la resistencia global a la globalización neoliberal y la gobernanza global contemporánea. Primero, se han examinado las principales características de controversia entre las representaciones contemporáneas de la sociedad civil global, en los estudios de la resistencia global. Un enfoque predominante en perpetuar la división entre las conceptualizaciones normativas y empíricas, está reorientado hacia una conceptualización gramsciana, de la cual se sostiene, que afirma el potencial tendiente a ser libre de la sociedad civil global, en la resistencia global. Con el inicio de un diálogo entre concepto y realidad (Cox 1999)—también referido como el ‘nexo dialéctico’ (Gramsci, 1971)—ofrece posibilidades alternativas para el análisis sustantivo de la sociedad civil global en relación a la resistencia global. Esto hace avanzar a la sociedad civil gramsciana hacia un fundamento conceptual que se ocupa de la formación, negociación y la renegociación de la hegemonía transversal y recupera y enfatiza el rol de la agencia humana dentro de la economía política global.

为了理解对新自由主义全球化和当代全球治理的全球抵制,本文勾勒全球公民社会的葛兰西主义概念化的潜在意义。第一,在关于全球抵制的研究中,本文探讨了公民社会的当代代表性之间争论的主要特征。主流的聚焦规范和实证的概念化之间分野的固化被重新定位,以趋于葛兰西主义的概念化,此种概念化被认为是肯定了在全球抵制中全球公民社会解放的潜在意义。倡议概念与现实之间的对话（考克斯,1999）——也指向诸如“辩证的相互联系”（Gramsci, 1971）——为与全球抵制有关的、对全球公民社会的实质分析提供了替代的可能性。这使得葛兰西主义的公民社会趋于一种概念性的基础,而这种基础论及横切的霸权的构成、谈判和再谈判,以及复原、强化全球政治经济中的人类行动的作用。

???? ??? ??????? ??? ??????? ?? ????? ???? ????? ?????? ???? ??????? ?????? ??????? ?? ??????? ????? ??? ??? ???????? ???????? ??????? ??? ?????? ???????????? ?????? ??????? ???????. ????? ??????? ????? ??????? ???????? ??????? ??? ????????? ???????? ?? ??????? ?????? ??????? ?? ???????? ???????? ??????? ???????. ????? ??????? ????? ?? ??????? ?????? ??? ????? ????? ??? ???????? ????????? ???????????? ???? ?? ??? ?????? ??? ????? ?? ????? ?????? ????? ????? ??? ???????? ??? ????????? ???????? ??????? ?????? ??????? ?? ???? ???????? ????????. ??? ??? ????? ???? ??? ??????? ??????? (Cox, 1999)? ????? ????? ???? ????? ?????? "??????? ???????" (Gramsci, 1971)? ?? ???? ??????? ????? ??????? ??????? ??????? ?????? ??????? ?? ?????? ????????? ????????. ????? ??? ?????? ??? ????? ????? ?????? ?? ??????? ?????? ??? ???? ?????? ?????? ?? ????? ????? ??????? ????????? ??????? ?????? ??????? ??? ??????? ????? ???? ?????? ???????? ?? ???????? ??????? ???????.

? ?? ?????? ???? ??? ????? ?? ??? ??? ???? ??? ????? ??? ???? ??? ???? ????. ??, ??? ??? ?? ???? ??? ????? ????? ???? ???? ?? ??? ????. ??? ???? ??? ??? ?? ??? ?????? ??? ???? ??? ??? ???? ??? ????? ??? ???? ????? ????? ???? ?? ???. ??? ???? ??(Cox, 1999)? ???? ?? – ?? ‘???? ??’(Gramsci, 1971)? ????-??? ???? ?? ??? ??? ????? ??? ??? ?? ???? ???? ????. ??? ????? ???? ??? ??? ???? ??? ???? ????? ??, ??? ???? ??? ??? ?? ???? ??? ????? ???? ??? ??? ???? ??.

Эта статья картографирует потенциал концептуализации Грамши мирового гражданского общества для того, чтобы понять глобальное сопротивление неолиберальной глобализации и современное глобальное управление. В первую очередь, рассматриваются главные особенности раздора между современными представлениями глобального гражданского общества в исследованиях глобального сопротивления. Особое внимание, уделяемое сохранению разделения между нормативной и эмпирической концептуализациями будет переориентировано на концептуализацию Грамши, которая, как утверждается, подтверждает освободительный потенциал глобального гражданского общества в глобальном сопротивлении. Инициирование диалога между концепцией и реальностью (Cox, 1999) также называют «диалектической связью» (Грамши, 1971) - предлагаются альтернативные возможности для независимого анализа глобального гражданского общества в связи с глобальными сопротивлением. Это перемещает гражданское общество Грамши к концептуальным основам, которые касаются формирования, переговоров и повторных обсуждений трансверсальной гегемонии и восстановления, и подчеркивает роль человеческой деятельности в рамках глобальной политической экономики.     

Branding national images: The 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, 2010 Shanghai World Expo,and 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games

International mega or hallmark events such as the Olympics and World Expo, are believed to help brand national and government images of the host country. Existing studies explain that mega-event images are transferrable to a host country and/or government. Yet, such an assumption has not been widely tested, or studied with country cases. Furthermore, while international mega events are assumed to target chiefly the international community for country branding purposes, there is reason to assert that they may just as much aim at domestic audiences for regime's political legitimization. By focusing on China's recently hosted three mega events – the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, and 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games, this study addresses these issues.     

Ghostly Images,Phantom Discourses,and the Virtuality of the Global

The central premise of this article is that the conceptual terrain of the global is fundamentally unstable, that its content is far from determined. This opens the door to many different interpretations and uses of the term, where the referent is not so much to a pre-given reality, or even a tangible geographical space. Rather, the global constitutes its own content in the various fields in which it gets deployed, selectively affirming particular images and representations, while denying, repressing, or otherwise excluding others. I draw on the early history of film to argue that the global is a virtual distribution of value and intelligibility, where its images and signs no longer ‘represent’ an independent reality, but actually shape and transform the inter-subjective experiences of its virtual subjects. I use a recent documentary film on call centers in India to demonstrate how distinct regimes of cinematic images enable different kinds of interventions into these virtual distributions, revealing the global as a richly imagined terrain of discourses and representations, which are always already subject to re-distribution.

El argumento principal de este artículo es que en el ámbito conceptual, lo global es fundamentalmente inestable, aún falta mucho para determinar su contenido. El término global tiene muchas interpretaciones y usos variados, dado que el referente no aplica a una realidad preestablecida ni corresponde a un espacio geográfico tangible. El término global constituye su propio contenido en los diferentes campos en los cuales es utilizado, aseverando imágenes y representaciones particulares selectivas, mientras que a la vez niega, reprime, o excluye otras. Me inspiro en los comienzos de la historia del cine para argumentar que lo global es la distribución virtual del valor y de la ininteligibilidad, donde las imágenes y los letreros ya no “representan” una realidad independiente, sino que forman y transforman las experiencias inter-subjetivas de sus sujetos virtuales. Utilizo un documental fílmico reciente sobre los “call centers” de la India para demostrar cómo diferentes regímenes de imágenes fílmicas permiten diferentes tipos de intervenciones a estos distribuidores virtuales, que revelan lo global como un rico imaginario de discursos y representaciones que siempre han sido y son sujetas a una re-distribución.

     

Between the Global Environmental Regime and Local Sustainability: A Local Review on the Inclusion, Failure and Reinventing Process of the Environmental Governance

Abstract: Japan has undergone drastic changes in ecological policy and practice over the past 40 years. Although this short history began with significant levels of pollution, notoriously termed “kogai”, the country seems to have achieved great ecological improvements, both technologically and institutionally, and now is one of the most highly ecologically modernized countries. But can this process really be posited as a simple, linear one of ecological modernization, a sort of natural, historical progress toward ideal environmental governance? This paper proposes some questions that cast doubt over this view. It focuses on local struggles for environmental governance, particularly in the city of Kamakura, which proclaimed itself an “environmental municipality” in 1993, a designation that seemingly fell by the wayside in 2001. Investigating this 8‐year case we can extract some lessons concerning the contradictions between global and local, and consequently about the inherent difficulties of top‐down environmental ordinances and insufficiently decentralized environmental governance. At the same time, through this case readers may also discover a new type of civic activity: cities with agriculture. After a short sketch of agri‐environmental movements, I will suggest that such movements are converging with more conventional ones and prevailing throughout the country. Therefore, the ecological modernization process can be seen to include a sort of restoration process: an updated return to perma‐cultural sustainability. Consequently, this essay contributes to international environmental discussion, not only by uncovering the cleavages between global and local, but also by suggesting the possibility of environmental governance alternative to technologically and institutionally driven ones.     

Global decisions versus local realities: Sustainability standards,priorities and upgrading dynamics in agricultural global production networks

Voluntary sustainability standards (VSSs) in global production networks (GPNs) have grown significantly in prominence. Existing research largely assumed that VSSs create linear upgrading outcomes for all GPN actors and has studied VSSs from the point of adoption in the GPNs, rather than a broader range of stages in their lifecycle. To address these limitations, and building on literature around power and agency in GPNs, we develop the constellation of priorities (CoP) model to unpack the diverse and often diverging boardroom (Northern lead firm) and local (Southern supplier) priorities involved in such standards. Through in-depth fieldwork on horticulture in Kenya and cocoa in Nicaragua across the VSS lifecycle, we find significant divergences in priorities between farmer groups in both countries and lead firms in the UK and Germany. We demonstrate analytically and empirically that diverging priorities coupled with power asymmetries produced contestations, leading to simultaneous economic and environmental downgrading, and social upgrading.     

Democratising Migration from the Bottom Up: The Rise of the Global Migrant Rights Movement

Abstract

This paper discusses the link between international migration and democratisation from an actor-oriented perspective on the basis of the mobilising efforts by key civil society actors engaged in the promotion of the rights of migrant workers through developing strategies towards movement building and by capitalising on political opportunities that have appeared on the global level. Being pitched at the global level and at organising patterns via the network form, the analytical framework developed takes as its starting point global justice perspectives and then builds upon insights from social movement and constructivist International Relations scholarship. It is argued that what is emerging are (1) movement practices in migrant rights networks which are putting forward increasingly coherent claims that transcend the conventional thinking about global governance and human rights (rights-assuming advocacy); and (2) that such practices are effectively transgressing interstate political arenas (participatory, rights-producing politics). It is on the basis of the cooperation between the 2 main protagonists, trade unions and migrant rights associations, that strategic positioning of migrant rights issues within the global policy debate is taking place, with the aim of promoting a rights-based approach (RBA) to migration and its governance. The combination of rights-producing politics and rights-assuming advocacy is expressed in the RBA to migration which involves the reframing of migrants rights as well as attempts to democratise migration governance in participatory terms.     

Risk,Resiliency, and Urban Governance: The Case of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games

This article uses preparations surrounding the 2010 Winter Olympic Games as an opportunity to examine the idea and practice of resiliency in the field of security, public safety, and urban governance. The enthusiasm for resiliency today is said to connect with broader shifts in the logics of security in response to the proliferation of disruptive events that are difficult to anticipate and potentially catastrophic in impact. How, though, is it possible to plan for an unknown and unknowable future? This article outlines three sets of practices for building urban resiliency that, while seemingly routine and mundane, and associated primarily with the domain of emergency management, exemplify a field of governmental activity that has flourished after 9/11 but received little scholarly attention to date.     

Global Climate Emergency: after COP24, climate science,urgency, and the threat to humanity

ABSTRACT

This Special Editorial on the Climate Emergency makes the case that although we are living in the time of Global Climate Emergency we are not yet acting as if we are in an imminent crisis. The authors review key aspects of the institutional response and climate science over the past several decades and the role of the economic system in perpetuating inertia on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Humanity is now the primary influence on the planet, and events in and around COP24 are the latest reminder that we live in a pathological system. A political economy has rendered the UNFCCC process as yet a successful failure. Fundamental change is urgently required. The conclusions contain recommendations and a call to action now.