Search

Begin New Search Topic Civil Society Publishing Institution Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University

1. Negotiation on the Ground: Realizing Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in South Africa, Nigeria and Peru

Author:
Natasha Sawh
Publication Date:
04-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) came into force in 1948, the horrific memory of the Holocaust was fresh in the minds of the drafters. The rise of Nazism in Germany was made possible in large part by the severe economic depression the country suffered. In 1941, President Roosevelt outlined four essential freedoms he believed to be achievable worldwide within a generation, including freedom from want. In his 1944 State of the Union address, he stated a pragmatic rationale for socio-economic rights: “People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made” (cited in Eide 1995, p.29). In the aftermath of WWII, the importance of international standards that could protect all human beings against state oppression was clear. As a result, a group of influential states agreed upon the UDHR, which expressed a bold and comprehensive vision of human rights that included political, civil, economic, social and cultural rights. Its preamble envisions the “advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want.”
Topic:
Civil Society and Human Rights
Political Geography:
Africa, South Africa, Germany, Latin America, Nigeria, and Peru

2. "The Media": A Crisis of Appearance

Author:
Nick Couldry
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
'Inaugural' – as often, a word's origins remind us of something we forget. The word denotes a beginning of course, but also the taking of 'auguries' at the start of an uncertain journey. The classical Mediterranean had various ways of taking omens or auguries (not all cruel) including the ancient method of reading the movement of birds of prey in the sky: in both Greek and Latin the words for omen and bird of prey are the same. I claim no special knowledge of the future, but the image of auguries remains apt because it registers the great uncertainty that these days attends any talk of media, both in the media industries and in media research. The signs of 'media culture' are increasingly difficult to read. It's those difficulties on which I want to reflect tonight.
Topic:
Civil Society, Politics, Mass Media, and Power Politics

3. Urban Representation of Multiculturalism in a Global City: Toronto's Iranian Community

Author:
Shahrzad Faryadi
Publication Date:
08-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
Globalization is known as a set of interrelated processes that are increasing economic, political, social, and cultural interconnections in the whole world (O'Byrne 1997). There is a direct connection between globalization and the city as “Globalization takes place in cities and cities embody and reflect globalization. Global processes lead to changes in the city and cities rework and situate globalization” (Short and Kim 1999, 9). A global city is conceived as a strategic site not only for global capital, but also for the transnationalization of labour and the formation of translocal communities and identities. In this regard, global cities are a site for new types of political operations and for a whole range of new cultural and subjective operations (Sassen 2005). As a consequence of globalization and the development of global cities and networks, the level of international immigration has been increasing, too, in the last decades. The growing number of world immigrants has raised the plurality of different cultures in global cities (as well as in the global city of Toronto), inspiring in such cities a “multicultural nature” (Hawkins 2006).
Topic:
Civil Society and Globalization
Political Geography:
Canada

4. Gendering Globalization: Imperial Domesticity and Identity in Northern Pakistan

Author:
Nancy Cook
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
In this paper I contribute to the feminist project of developing gendered analyses of globalization by providing a micro-level study of the effects of intersecting gender, racial, and class relations on global processes of cultural imperialism in contemporary northern Pakistan. More specifically, I examine the mutually constitutive link between the structuring of Western women development workers' domestic spaces and identities in Gilgit and imperial processes, what I will call imperial domesticity. Women's gendered rituals of domesticity and strategies of servant management are the key facets of imperial domesticity highlighted in the paper.
Topic:
Civil Society, Gender Issues, and Globalization
Political Geography:
Pakistan and Asia

5. The Politics of Form and Alternative Autonomies: Indigenous Women, Subsistence Economies and the Gift Paradigm

Author:
Rauna Kuokkanen
Publication Date:
11-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
Many indigenous rights advocates around the world have emphasized over and over again the paramount importance of collective autonomy as a precondition for the long-term survival of Indigenous peoples as distinctive collectivities. Despite the fears and concerns of nation-states, for a great majority of Indigenous people this kind of autonomy — autonomy as a people — does not imply secession or independent statehood but "appropriate forms of association with surrounding states that would safeguard their distinctive identities and special relationships to their territories" (Lâm 2000, 135). Indigenous peoples' struggle for self-determination, therefore, is also a struggle to exist as a collective in the future, which implies being able to decide about and have control over that future as a people. In short, there is a difference between struggles for autonomy and separatist movements. Nira Yuval-Davis suggests.
Topic:
Civil Society, Economics, Gender Issues, and Globalization

6. Strangers as Enemies: Further Reflections on the Aporias of Transnational Citizenship

Author:
Étienne Balibar
Publication Date:
05-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
These new reflections on the issue of "transnational citizenship" and its aporias, which I have the possibility to submit for discussion owing to the generous invitation of the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition at McMaster University, will be presented from a European point of view, as I have done in previous essays on the same subject. But I will try to do so also in the perspective of a comparison, or better said, a confrontation, with North America, of which you are part, and where I have been working now regularly for years, albeit across the border. I do not believe in the possibility of speaking about "the global" from a point of view itself "global" -- that is, from nowhere or everywhere. But I believe in the (relative) possibility of dis-locating one's point of view, one's place of enunciation, and above all of exposing oneself to the dis-location that comes from others.
Topic:
Civil Society, Globalization, Government, International Political Economy, and Nationalism
Political Geography:
America and North America

7. The Origins of Global Civil Society and Non-Territorial Governance: Some Empirical Reflections

Author:
William D. Coleman and Sarah Wayland
Publication Date:
02-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
In contemporary discussions of global governance, many scholars have posited the possibility that networks of new social movements, publicly-oriented non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and other non-state actors have the potential to create pressures for increased transparency and accountability. A more legitimate democratic global politics would follow. Such networks are often seen to be the base of “global civil society”. Understanding the origins of global civil society is important if we are to assess well its possible contribution to addressing the challenge of global democratic governance in an era of globalization. In this paper, we evaluate two different views about the origins of global civil society. The first suggests that global civil society has been developing rationally over a long period of time, continuous with the development of domestic civil society in democracies. The second postulates global civil society to be a relatively new phenomenon, one that has emerged to respond to unprecedented challenges to democracy as a result of globalization.
Topic:
International Relations, Agriculture, Civil Society, Globalization, International Political Economy, Non-Governmental Organization, and Science and Technology

8. Globalization and Islamisation

Author:
Yassine Essid
Publication Date:
12-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
In the eyes of many, 'Islam' has become a problem for the whole world, at times verging on a kind of obsession. But the Islam that I discuss in this paper is at the other extreme of a concept based on received ideas, ideas of an Islam that has been reduced to a conceptual totality, a system of thoughts, and a set of practices, forever identical to themselves, that reflect public and private behaviors of the Muslim world. In short, I am referring to a kind of Islam that has been narrowed down to the notions of practices and ideas common to all so-called Muslim societies from Morocco to Pakistan. It is indeed more convenient, when we are unable to understand a civilization, to reduce a whole nation and its people, despite their diversity and particularities, to a faith, a doctrine, and a set of rituals. In this field, the Islamists show a kind of perfect solidarity with the intellectuals of the West.
Topic:
Civil Society, Gender Issues, Globalization, Islam, and Religion
Political Geography:
Pakistan and Morocco

9. Acknowledgement: The Road to Forgiveness

Author:
Joanna Quinn
Publication Date:
01-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
One of the most daunting tasks faced by a society left in ruin after a period of mass atrocity is the rebuilding of that society. In transitional societies, the outward signs of poverty and destitution often mask the importance of rebuilding those structural social institutions that form the basis of any stable society. Often, scarce resources are allocated to the repair of the physical infrastructure in its many forms, rather than to the repair of the social infrastructure of that same community. Roads and schools, for example, are given priority over issues of justice and security. Reckoning with past injustices, however, is an important step in the process of acknowledgement and forgiveness, leading to the rebuilding of a viable democracy, a restructured judicial system, and strengthened networks of civic engagement, all of which may lead, ultimately, to increased levels of social trust. And these are particularly important in overcoming the causes of conflict within divided transitional societies.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Civil Society, Globalization, Human Rights, International Organization, and Sovereignty

10. Content Providers of the World Unite! The Cultural Politics of Globalization

Author:
Susie O'Brien and Imre Szeman
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
What about that feeling that it's all been done? Not in the techie department, of course; there, the possibility of novelty seems to be unlimited. But in those areas occupied by what platform proprietors call “content providers.” What a phrase! Could anything register the devastation of the spirit more completely than that little generic? Could meaning suffer more complete evacuation? Not since we landed on the moon and found nothing has our cultural unconscious encountered so traumatic a void. (de Zengottia 2002: 37).
Topic:
Civil Society and Globalization