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42. Obligations of a Global Neighbor
- Author:
- Joyce E. Bellous
- Publication Date:
- 11-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
- Abstract:
- Globalizing processes increase the importance of developing civility both within societies and between societies. More broadly, they point to the need for global civility. Building global civility requires the development of a sense of neighborliness. Civility will result from a strong sense of neighborliness.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Gender Issues, Globalization, Human Welfare, and International Political Economy
43. Moral Integrity and Reparations to Africa
- Author:
- Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann
- Publication Date:
- 01-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
- Abstract:
- This paper presents some very preliminary thoughts on reparations due to Sub-Saharan Africa, including acknowledgment, apology, and financial compensation. I am a political sociologist, a specialist in international human rights with a background in African studies. Focusing on the Afactual@ history of Africa, I consider the possibility of arguing a case for Western compensation for racial discrimination. I also consider the case for acknowledgment, apology and compensation drawn from the need to recognize the moral integrity of Africans.
- Topic:
- Globalization and Imperialism
- Political Geography:
- Africa
44. Globalized and Localized Digital Divides Along the Information Highway: A Fragile Synthesis Across Bridges, Ramps, Cloverleaves, and Ladders.
- Author:
- Carl Cuneo
- Publication Date:
- 01-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
- Abstract:
- There has been a tendency, especially in North America and Europe, and among technology enthusiasts and some educators, to assume that the whole world is connected to the Internet, and surfs the World Wide Web. Why would we use the term, 'World Wide Web', if we were not talking about a global phenomenon? However, Internet statistics show that only about six to eight percent of the world's six billion population is connected to the Internet. Approximately ninety-two percent of the world is NOT connected to, nor uses, the Internet. 1 The erroneous assumption of universal connectivity is not simply a statistical mistake. Governments, corporations, community organizations, and individuals make many incorrect decisions, with sometimes dramatic and far-reaching consequences, on the basis of the assumption that most of the world is connected to the Internet. Not only is the vast majority of the world not connected to the Internet, most people do not even have the computers, skills, experience, interest, or awareness to become connected. The disconnected are not randomly distributed, but have specific demographic, social, economic, racial, ethnic, gender, gerontological, and political characteristics that amount to a systematic bias of exclusion, often referred to as the “digital have-nots”. Similarly, the connected are not randomly distributed, but possess particular demographic, social, economic and political characteristics making up what has become known as the ““Digital Haves””. The separation, chasm, abyss, canyon, gulf, or distance between the ““Digital Haves”” and “digital have-nots” has become known as the “Digital Divide.”
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Development, Globalization, Poverty, and Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- Europe and North America
45. Well-Rooted? Land Tenure and the Challenges of Globalization
- Author:
- Michelle Vosburgh
- Publication Date:
- 05-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
- Abstract:
- There is increasing pressure in the developing world to implement reforms that will facilitate more efficient land use and capital investment through the use of Western-style surveys, ownership and title registration. Proponents of traditional land systems have opposed these Western reforms by arguing for land's cultural and social importance. This article is a historical exploration of this issue within the context of contemporary globalization. The changing attitudes towards land tenure practices are traced through an examination of the published materials of the United Nations, its agencies and member nations. Historic and contemporary examples illustrate the difficulties of preserving traditional land systems in the face of economic and political integration.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Economics, Globalization, and Political Economy
46. Cultural Diversity and Economic Convergence: The Dialectics of Canadian Cultural Policy
- Author:
- Sabine Milz
- Publication Date:
- 07-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
- Abstract:
- Through an examination of the Canadian book and magazine sectors and the major international trade agreements to which Canada is a signatory, the paper interrogates the shortcomings of Canadian cultural policy's attempt at reconciling the realities of global capitalism with the Romantic ideal of non-commodified, non-economic national culture. The discussion highlights the contradictions involved in current policy attempts to protect a uniquely “Canadian culture” in an era of globalisation in which national cultures seem to increasingly disintegrate and give way to mass cultural expression. Moreover, it probes the policy terms for an economised reformulation of Canadian culture, which means a discursive and material, localised and globalised way of conceptualising the dynamics of Canadian cultural expression.
- Topic:
- Civil War, Globalization, International Trade and Finance, Nationalism, and Arts
- Political Geography:
- Canada
47. "What Is Globalization? The Definitional Issue – Again"
- Author:
- Jan Aart Scholte
- Publication Date:
- 12-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
- Abstract:
- Knowledge of globalization is substantially a function of how the concept is defined. After tracing the history of 'global' vocabulary, this paper suggests several principles that should inform the way globality (the condition) and globalization (the trend) are defined. On this basis four common conceptions of the term are rejected in favour of a fifth that identifies globalization as the spread of transplanetary – and in recent times more particularly supraterritorial – connections between people. Half a dozen qualifications are incorporated into this definition to distinguish it from globalist exaggerations.
- Topic:
- Globalization and International Political Economy
48. Globalization and Democracy
- Author:
- Michael Hardt
- Publication Date:
- 10-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
- Abstract:
- The discourse of globalization has become dominant in recent years in an extraordinarily wide variety of contexts, equally on the left and on the right – from journalism to public policy discussions, from business strategy to labor organizing, and within the university across the social sciences and humanities. It is something like the discourse on postmodernism that blossomed about a decade earlier but seems to me even more extensive. This paper is an attempt to sort out some of the political positions taken within the discourse on globalization to help clarify the stakes in the globalization debates and the political consequences of the various theoretical and empirical claims. My assumption, in fact, is that political positions or desires dictate to a large extent the various analytical characterizations of globalization. What I will attempt, then, is to construct a typology of positions on globalization using the question of democracy as the first line of division. In other words, I will first divide theories in two groups: those who claim that globalization fosters democracy and those who maintain that globalization hinders or obstructs democracy. I will further divide these positions into arguments on the right and those on the left because this is a context in which I believe there remain very clear divisions between right and left, and it would be incoherent to group them together.
- Topic:
- Globalization, International Political Economy, and Political Economy
49. Governing Global Finance: Financial derivatives, liberal states and transformative capacity
- Author:
- William D. Coleman
- Publication Date:
- 10-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
- Abstract:
- Global finance is simultaneously one of the most globalized and one of the most esoteric sectors in the world economy. Within global finance, perhaps no activity is more esoteric and more difficult to understand than the buying and selling of derivatives. Their names are familiar perhaps – futures, options, forwards, swaps – but their nature is obscure. Simply put, derivatives are financial instruments that are used to hedge risk. If a Canadian corporation knows that it will want to buy 50 million US dollars on foreign exchange markets in three months time, it can arrange a fixed price for that purchase using a financial contract called a derivative. In doing so, it lowers the risk of the price of the currency changing drastically before it purchases the amounts it needs.
- Topic:
- Globalization, Government, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
- Political Geography:
- United States and Canada
50. The Globalization of Property Rights: An Anglo and American Frontier Land Paradigm, 1700-1900
- Author:
- John Weaver
- Publication Date:
- 02-2000
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
- Abstract:
- Old-world ideas accompanied European migrants, and a few changed the globe. An English obsession with landed property was implanted in settlement colonies, so that, between the late 1600s and late 1800s, private initiatives and official planning on British colonial and American frontiers interacted to frame property rights to extensive regions. This paper dwells on that interaction and the tensions between private goals and state sovereignty. The state was essential for framing property rights when these were associated with land and in situ resources. In very recent times, property rights have fostered entirely new industries, for example in software and genetically modified biota. Property rights have changed traditional activities such as art and entertainment. Do new forms of property - "less constrained by physical location" - leave the state with a reduced role in the realm of property rights? Does the paradigm of evolving property rights seen in previous centuries suggest any parallels with struggles over more recent property rights? These are questions for members of the institute to consider. We will offer several concluding thoughts.
- Topic:
- Globalization, Government, and Political Theory
- Political Geography:
- America and Europe