From "Us" to "Them": Diasporic Linkages and Identity Politics

Global diasporas-a type of social formation mediating economic, political, and cultural affairs across borders-have been a focus of globalization researchers for some time. However, up to now, little knowledge exists on how social identification affects business participation in diaspora communities and how such participation modifies social identification. This article, based on empirical research on diasporic linkages between Taiwanese transnationals and ethnic Chinese overseas, serves to illustrate a) how globalization has enhanced the practical and economic roles of diasporas, and b) how economic practices and ethnic identification interact within diasporic communities. The author argues that ethnic membership still remains contested, despite diasporas serving as flexible forms of social organization in the mediation of capital flow.     

Negotiating race and place in the Garifuna Diaspora: Identity formation and transnational grassroots politics in New York City and Honduras

This paper is an exploration of the relations between the politics of identity and the socio‐economic and political processes of the current era of globalization. Using ethnographic material from the transnational grassroots organizations of the Garinagu—an Afro‐Indigenous population living in transnational communities between Central America and the US—I show the multiple ways that they articulate their identity between and among the tropes of “autocthony,” “blackness,” “Hispanic,” “diaspora,” and “nation.” This construction and negotiation of identity is intimately connected to the negotiation of rights vis‐à‐vis nation‐states and international political bodies, where ideologies of race, ethnicity, nation, and citizenship carry with them different implications for rights and belonging. I argue that the complexities of this case point to the uneven processes of globalization, within which the power to define the ideological terrain of economic and political struggles is still profoundly unequal.     

New Directions in Globalization Indices

Abstract

This paper discusses the measurement of globalization with a view to advancing the construction of globalization indices. It critically analyzes the types of indices that can contribute to knowledge and policy on globalization. Three issues are particularly highlighted: (a) the focus of measurement (i.e. on activities or policies); (b) the dimensions of measurement (i.e. cultural, ecological, economic, political, and/or social); and (c) the units of measurement (i.e. local, national, regional, and/or global). This paper argues that a workable forward strategy should not seek to identify the single best composite globalization index, but rather should work in an interdisciplinary mode towards a set of complementary globalization indices. These quantitative analyses can then be productively blended with qualitative approaches in a fuller assessment of globalization's extent and impact.     

Towards creating the right kind of globalization: an analysis with proposals

Abstract

Outlining four key issues in our globalizing economy (unprecedented wealth, unprecedented poverty, ecological challenges and political and economic volatility), Professor Guptara goes on to provide a historical survey from prehistoric times (demonstrating that the roots of the current crisis lie in the Darwinians and Nietscheans defeating the moral and ethical values of the Protestants), and concludes by presenting seven essential steps to creating the right kind of globalization.     

Differentiating,Collaborating, Outdoing: Nordic Identity and Marginality in the Contemporary World

This article compares the interplay between Europe and Scandinavian countries with interactions at other margins, and speculates on the prospects for Nordic identity. It uses an idea of the possibilities inherent in the "marginality" of a society, applying that conception to situations past and present. A summary exposition indicates how Scandinavian countries have negotiated their marginality in a "Nordic posture" of political independence and economic and cultural ties to "more advanced" societies. These interactions with Europe are then compared with other contemporary margins (i.e., ex-colonized societies, ex-soviet bloc countries, EU states, countries experiencing globalization). While similar, Nordic societies are distinctly more successful in exploiting marginality: practiced in cooperating or emulating "Europe" while sometimes finding space to outdo it. This article thus suggests continuing vigor in some version of Nordic distinctiveness. The late 20th century decline of confidence in a separate Nordic identity need not therefore end Scandinavia's advantageous position on the margins.     

Human Rights in the 20th Century

Summary

This article seeks to answer the question raised in its title. To that end, the evolution of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is discussed in the context of lesbian and gay rights, internationally and in the United States. The political and psychosocial dynamics of homophobic hatred are addressed, including the correlation of human rights abuses to heterosexism and the denigration of the feminine. The article discusses institutionalized gay oppression that serves to deny human rights, demonizing gay and lesbian people to such a degree that hate crimes become feasible. Finally, the importance of the globalization of non-governmental organizations on behalf of LGBT human rights advocacy is stressed.     

Teaching and incorporating practice models in a human behavior in the social environment (HBSE) course

ABSTRACT

Human behavior and the social environment (HBSE) instructors do not systematically or routinely teach and incorporate practice models in their course. In this article, social work educators describe an approach to teaching and incorporating practice models in a HBSE course using a five-step adapted, modified version of Mosey’s extrapolation method for teaching master level social work students to evaluate and apply practice models. The authors use the Balanced and Restorative Justice (BARJ) model as an illustration to help social work students develop critically reflective approaches to evaluating and applying practice models. The techniques and guidelines outlined in this article could be applied to other practice models and used by social work educators and students interested in other fields of practice.     

Human Behavior,Social Environment,Social Reconstruction,and Social Policy: A System of Linkages,Goals, and Priorities

The idea of a wholesome relationship between human behavior and the forces of social environment is the focal point of this article. The author seeks to reconceptualize the goals and foci of the HBSE¹ component in the light of knowledge that underscores the need for social reconstruction. A conceptual model is offered to show appropriate linkages between different focal units. It is recommended that the HBSE and social policy components be taught in harmony with the mission of social work and in the context of humankind's prevailing condition rather than at mere systems levels.     

The globalization of care work: Neoliberal economic restructuring and migration policy

Abstract

Significant scholarly research has focused on the ‘globalization of care work’, or how care has been distributed and redistributed in an international system where immigrant workers provide care in wealthier countries. We argue that nation-states, through a range of contradictory policies and bilateral agreements, explicitly create and reinforce the redistribution and internationalization of care work. We show how economic restructuring has helped create both demand for and a supply of immigrant care workers, while migration policies have played a key role in shaping migration flows. We examine two dyads of sending and receiving flows: Morocco/France and Poland/Germany. These cases share both similarities and differences, which allows us to consider how the global political and economic processes shaping the international division of care work play out in different contexts.     

The power of Section 301: the Reagan tariffs in an age of economic globalization

ABSTRACT

Economic globalization is an important aspect of the ideology of the United States. The US has long been championing notions of a global free-market system, free of trade barriers. One of the ways in which the US has tried to challenge these trade barriers is through economic sanctions under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. Section 301 gives broad powers to the President to combat unfair foreign trade practices. However, these broad powers have also been used for protectionist measures themselves. This paper examines the power of Section 301 and whether it undermines economic globalization, using the Reagan tariffs on semiconductors as a case study. This paper argues that Section 301, instead of promoting economic globalization, undermines it by its own protectionist nature.     

Is this the end of globalization (as we know it)?

ABSTRACT

According to different media and analysts, globalization could be in a phase of ‘slowbalization’, de-globalization or even secular stagnation. After surveying academic proposals for defining, classifying and measuring globalization, by means of the Elcano Global Presence Index, this paper explores to what extent globalization has stagnated and/or whether it has changed its nature. Our results show that globalization has slowed down, but not retrenched. However, economic globalization has lost traction (something that probably explains the general perception on de-globalization) while soft projection has become the main driver of globalization.     

Blaming the messenger: The media,social workers and child abuse

Abstract

This paper explores the agenda-setting role of the media in child abuse, citing local and international examples. The author argues that much media coverage of child abuse promotes a conservative, pro-family political agenda, offering a narrow individualistic/legalistic view of child abuse as opposed to a broader structural definition. This conservative agenda is particularly reflected in media hostility to social workers involved in child abuse cases. Attention is drawn to the major manifestations of this criticism, and to some of the reasons why social workers experience disproportionate media censure. Suggestions are then made regarding the potential for a more effective and pro-active social work response.     

Survivors of Woman Abuse

Abstract

The feminist social work and related literature on abused women has focused on women's processes of empowerment but has overlooked the question of women's movement from individual survival to collective resistance. In this feminist qualitative study, I explore the processes through which survivors of abuse by male partners become involved in collective action for social change. Using story telling as a research method, I interviewed 11 women about the processes, factors, insights, and events that prompted them to act collectively to address violence against women. I found that women's movement from individual survival to collective action entails significant changes in consciousness and subjectivity. Women's processes of conscientization are complex, contradictory and often painful because they involve political and psychic dimensions of subjectivity, protracted struggles with contradictions and conflict, and resistance to knowledge that threatens to unsettle relatively stable notions of identity. I suggest that feminist social work theory and practice must take into account three interrelated elements of women's transformative journeys: the discursive and material conditions that facilitate women's movement to collective action; the social, material and psychic costs of women's growth; and the multifaceted and difficult nature of women's journey in recognizing and naming abuse, making sense of their experiences, and acting on this knowledge to work for change. I recommend that feminist social work practice with survivors recognize that survivors can and do contribute to social change, and develop new, more inclusive liberatory models of working with survivors of abuse.     

Holocaust Child Survivors and Child Sexual Abuse

ABSTRACT

This study utilized a qualitative analysis of child survivors of the Holocaust who were sexually abused during World War II. The research study aimed to give this specific group of survivors a voice and to explore the impact of multiple extreme traumas, the Holocaust and childhood sexual abuse, on the survivors. Twenty-two child survivors of the Holocaust who were sexually abused during the war completed open-ended interviews. The data was qualitatively analyzed according to Tutty, Rothery, and Grinnell's (1996) guidelines. Three major themes were found: issues relating to the sexual abuse trauma, survivors' perceptions of the abuse, and survivors' general perspectives towards life. The identity of the offenders, Jewish or non-Jewish, determined the survivors' feelings towards themselves, the perpetrators, and about the worth of life.     

Navigating Globalization: Immigration Policy in Canada and Australia, 1945–20071

Scholarship on immigration and globalization has failed to adequately analyze the nation‐state’s regulatory capacities, insisting instead that contemporary patterns of migration jeopardize national sovereignty and territoriality. While recognized that states possess the legitimate authority to control their territorial and membership boundaries, recent transformations of these capacities remain largely unanalyzed. This article’s historical analysis of Australia and Canada’s postwar immigration policies demonstrates that the contours of state regulation are intimately connected to the exigencies of state administration and nation building and—in contrast to the expectations of dominant theories—have intensified and expanded within the globalization context. The literature’s inattention to the fundamentally political nature of immigration has obscured the critical effects of national policies within both the migratory and globalization process. Australia’s and Canada’s contemporary policies constitute a unique model of migration control and reflect attempts by both countries to strategically position their societies within the global system and resolve a number of economic, political, cultural, and demographic transitions associated with globalization.     

The rational kernel within Samir Amin’s mythological shell: the idea of a democratic and pluralist world political party

ABSTRACT

Amin’s Leninist-Maoist vision is unlikely to be persuasive to twenty-first century citizens. Nonetheless, there is a rational kernel in Amin’s call for a new worldwide political organization. Some structures, mechanisms and tendencies of the capitalist world economy are relatively enduring and some patterns recurrent, although the world economy is also fluid, constantly changing and evolving. Although waves of globalization have radically transformed human societies and their economic activities during the past 500 years also in many positive ways, the expansion of the international society and world economy has often been characterized by violence, imperial subjection and colonial expropriation and exclusion. There is a rational kernel also within Amin’s analysis of the current world-political situation. Command over space and time by investors and megacorporations is power. Emancipation aims at freedom from domination. The decline of the World Social Forum indicates that progressive politics must move ‘beyond the concept of a discussion forum’. My argument is that emancipation from unnecessary, unneeded and unwanted sources of determination requires global transformative agency and planetary visions about alternatives.     

Freedom ossified: Political culture and the public use of history in Jamaica 1

The basic thesis of this paper addresses three distinct, yet related, historical developments. Firstly, the democratic promise of freedom for Caribbean people was not fulfilled, as the planter class was not prepared to renounce its power. Secondly, when it was no longer able to hold on to its power, political responsibilities were given to the middle classes, which celebrated this transition as a major achievement. However, the actual arrangements that were made still kept the majority of the people from meaningful participation in the political process and from access to economic resources. Nevertheless, the middle classes introduced the celebratory notion of freedom, although freedom continued to be denied to the majority. Thirdly, in the current period of globalization and neoliberal economics, this ethos has now attained a quasi‐mythical status in many Anglophone Caribbean countries and, at the very same time, the notion of freedom has been emptied of its practical meaning and has in many instances become counter‐productive. In short, Caribbean freedom has become ossified.     

International Opportunities and Domestic Protest: Zapatistas,Mexico and the New World Economy

The EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation) uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, in 1994 took advantage of many political opportunities in an economic and politically liberalizing state. Most significantly, the negotiation and passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) generated issues over which to mobilize and created political openings in the system to support mobilization. While NAFTA highlighted the dark side of globalization with its negative effects on living conditions in southern Mexico, it also ushered in political reforms that protected human rights and brought great international attention to Mexico. Many nations were watching to see whether Mexico had reached economic and political maturity. Taken together, these political opportunities provided the context for the EZLN to mobilize as a political movement.