Volume 2, Issue 1

The twentieth century saw remarkable transformations in the scope and impact of securities markets across the globe. The trajectory of these transformations, however, is more complex than meets the eye, particularly when one takes into account the relationships between markets and the State. This article traces this trajectory and suggests a good deal of 'reversal' in particular cases but a linear change taking place at the global level.

This article traces the recent history of anti-globalization protest and suggests deeper, structural sources for political and economic resistance. Namely, the globalization of economic relations has carried with it a promotion of "negative pluralism" on the political, cultural and social levels. A new, pragmatic form of ethics is needed to recast the structural relationship between political and economic globalization in a positive direction.

Thomas L. Friedman's ``The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century" maps the socio-cultural and geo-political aspects of the Information Technology global economy and suggests how American culture can be transformed to make the US globally competitive. This paper seeks a different perspective —rather than viewing culture as an important aspect of IT globalization, it reconceptualizes culture as a site of tremendous social, political, and economic struggle in which the legitimation of the very logic of globalization is at stake. ``The World Is Flat" deploys a New World mythology to develop an account of the contemporary world, but this mythology, I argue, embeds its ideas of IT globalization in a larger hegemonic narrative of European modernity that firmly positions Euro-America as the most privileged site from which to conceptualize the current phenomenon. I examine how this use of New World mythology harnesses the discourse of American exceptionalism to Americanize IT globalization, and obscures the role of new transnational classes and cultures linking India and the US. By paying attention to world geography, I argue that the growth of Bangalore, India, as a global IT hub should not be narrowly understood as creating a new platform for innovation and progress but as a transnational interlinking of world cities in a new IT-driven global economy with significant consequences for democratic governance.

William H. McNeill considers the continuities of present-day globalization with the recent and more distant past.

This paper provides summary information on global energy production, consumption and reserves for all significant fuels. It identifies what countries are the largest suppliers and consumers of each fuel. Data on the most energy dependent nations is also presented. To facilitate comparisons, all fuel information has been converted into a million tons of oil equivalent (MTOE).

This article uses photographs and first-hand reporting to illustrate the complications and challenges for a battalion of Army engineers in imagining and preparing for deployment. It follows the battalion during their preparation in a mock-Afghanistan in Washington State, while also detailing their previous deployment in southern Afghanistan. From the metropole, the outer reaches of Empire can be distant lands of the imagination--places once known through spices and poems, now through second-hand stories and news. Such stories and imagination, it seems, can only go so far when one is ultimately to serve in said far-flung frontier.

Martine J. van Ittersum reviews Felipe Fernández-Armesto's Pathfinders.

Pierre-Yves Saunier reviews A.G. Hopkins, ed., Global History: Interactions Between the Universal and the Local.