The duality of world cities and firms: comparing networks,hierarchies, and inequalities in the global economy

Much of the research on globalization conceives of the global economy as structured by networks among places, while separately organizational research has examined the role of networks among firms in structuring competition, collaboration, and cooperation. In both cases, position and centrality within the network confers certain advantages and disadvantages, the distribution of which defines a hierarchy. In this article, I explore the idea of dual networks of world cities and firms, then use Breiger's approach to define two such networks: one among 313 world cities, another among 100 advanced producer service firms. Comparison of the degree of inequality in the hierarchies implied by these networks suggest that world city hierarchies are steeper than firm hierarchies (that is there is greater inequality among cities). Thus, even under conditions of footloose global capitalism, place still matters: where a producer is located has more impact than who provides support services.     

Between inequality and difference: the creole world in the twenty‐first century

A major theme in contemporary social theory is the questioning and destabilization of boundaries – self/other, culture/nature and gender being the most obvious areas. Not least for this reason, creole identities, ostensibly premised on openness and mixing, deserve renewed attention. Although the term creolization, as borrowed from linguistics, is sometimes used in a broad comparative sense, the creole world refers to the outcome of a particular historical experience, namely that of displacement, slavery, emancipation and its aftermath reverberating into the present. Key terms are uprootedness, cultural mixing and creole languages existing in diglossic situations with metropolitan ones. Creole intellectuals in the Caribbean have celebrated the cultural creativity characteristic of these societies but have been criticized for ignoring class, racism and gender issues. By embracing the egalitarianism and openness of creoledom, they have become vulnerable to criticism of being handmaidens of neoliberalism or neocolonialism. Controversies over creole identity are related to fundamental questions in anthropology. Drawing on material mainly from the Indian Ocean region, in this article I attempt to create a dialogue between debates over creole identity and theoretical questions raised in social and cultural theory concerning the relationship between cultural difference and social inequality.     

Migration,development and inequality: Eastern Punjabi transnationalism

Abstract Drawing on original, ethnographic research in India and the UK, in this article we discuss the impact of transnational activity on the Doaba region of East Punjab, India. We argue that some recent studies have underplayed some of the less progressive consequences of Indian transnationalism. In particular, we contend that they have underestimated the extent of division between transnational migrants and Indian non‐migrants and downplayed the relationship between transnationalism and caste inequality. This empirical study of transnationalism, when placed in the context of the dynamic caste relations of East Punjab, supports those who contend that access to international migration is becoming an increasingly significant component of contemporary global social stratification, with the ‘broad’ transnational processes of capitalist globalization driving the ‘narrow’ transnationalism studied here. In this article, we question any straightforwardly progressive relationship between transnationalism and ‘development’ within East Punjab, and suggest that the arguments presented have a resonance beyond northwest India.     

Transnational lives,transnational marriages: a review of the evidence from migrant communities in Europe

Abstract Whom do migrants marry? This question has become a popular topic of research, and existing studies identify a common trend: most of the non‐European, non‐Christian migrants in Europe marry someone from their country of origin. The motivations for such practices are to be found in the characteristics of transnational spaces and in the social structures that emerge in such spaces. Based on a review of research from several European countries, three such constellations are discussed: first, the obligations to kin, especially when migration regulations become more restrictive, and marriage becomes the last route by which to migrate to Europe. Second, new forms of global inequality, between the metropolitan centre and countries of the global periphery, give migrants in Europe improved status and standing in their society of origin and therefore excellent opportunities on the marriage market there. Third, gender relations have started to shift in both host society and migrant families. Men and women alike are trying to rebalance power relations within marriage and to shift them in their favour. In this process marriage to a partner from the country of family origin may promise strategic benefits. The article ends with suggestions for future research.     

What is so bad about being rich? The representation of wealth in American culture

Abstract

Today, the USA is the Western nation with the greatest percentage of the world's rich and with the greatest gap between rich and poor. However, there is hardly any national debate or outcry about this growth of wealth polarization. From a Cultural Studies perspective, this puzzling absence of protest raises the question whether and in what way culture plays a role in shaping US attitudes toward economic and social inequality. This article traces these changing attitudes by focusing on cultural representations of wealth in four different stages of US cultural history: the 'Protestant ethic', 'robber barons', 'conspicuous consumption' and the recent 'greed' periods. The article concludes by discussing the conflicting attitudes currently at work in the perception and representation of wealth in US culture.     

Mobility hub or hollow? Cross‐border travelling in the Mediterranean, 1995–2016

The Mediterranean is often portrayed as a hub of human mobility. In this article, we test this widespread view by exploring the structure of travel flows in the region over the last two decades (1995–2016). We find that mobility is much higher and increasing more strongly along the northern than along the southern shore, thus creating a growing mobility divide. South–north and north–south movements are even scarcer and stagnate or even decline over time. With a Gini coefficient of .87, mobility flows are distributed extremely unequally across country pairs in the Mediterranean. Community detection algorithms reconfirm that mobility predominantly takes place in disparate clusters around the Mediterranean, not across it. These findings imply that a ‘neo‐Braudelian’ view of the Mediterranean as a mobility hub is less justified than a ‘Rio Grande’ perspective that conceives of the Mediterranean as a mobility hollow. Multivariate regression models for network data suggest that geographical distance and, to a lesser extent, political visa regulations, explain the unequal mobility structure better than differences in economic well‐being.     

Remapping social inequalities in an age of climate change: for a cosmopolitan renewal of sociology*

Climate change globalizes and radicalizes social inequality; it exacerbates inequalities of rich and poor, core and periphery, and at the same time dissolves them in the face of a common threat to humanity. Climate change combines with the inequalities arising from globalization, decoupling the producers and subjects of risk. Remapping inequality in the age of climate change and globalization therefore requires taking account of the unbounding of both equality and inequality, and an awareness of the end of the opposition between society and nature, one of the founding principles of sociology. The article outlines four theses of inequality, climate change and globalization, and concludes with the question: what does a cosmopolitan renewal of the social sciences mean and how will it be possible?     

Abolition democracy and global justice

Abstract

As new social relations produce new kinds of social subjects, scholars in American Studies and Area Studies experience anxieties about disciplinary as well as geographic borders. The Civil Rights tradition of the 14th Amendment plays an important role within progressive American Studies scholarship, but in the course of seeking equality and exclusion within the USA, this tradition runs the risk of occluding the role of the nation in the world and its central role in creating and preserving inequality and injustice in other nations. An emerging emphasis on struggles for social justice without seeking state power encapsulates many of the most progressive impulses within Area Studies and transnational studies, yet this perspective runs the risk of occluding the enduring importance of the nation-state in inflecting global developments with local histories and concerns. The present moment challenges us to draw on both traditions, and to use each to critique the shortcomings of the other, while at the same time promoting an inclusionary, nonsectarian, and mutually supportive dialogue about our differences.