Volume 6, Issue 2

The article outlines the analytics and criteria that inform periodizing globalization. It criticizes presentist and Eurocentric views on globalization, the contemporary view, the modernity view (1800 plus) or the capitalism view (1500 plus). It discusses approaches to world history and how globalization fits in. Understandings of globalization, such as multicentric and centrist perspectives, and units of analysis affect how timelines of globalization are established. Taking into account global history going back to the Bronze Age and oriental globalization, these require inserting the Greco-Roman world as part of globalization history. It concludes by outlining phases of globalization in the (very) longue durée.

For decades, policy prescriptions encouraging the privatization of nationalized industries and the de-regulation of business activities alongside the guaranteeing of foreign investor rights and capital mobility have been presented as the logical adaptations of the state to the supposedly irresistible economic force of corporate globalization. In the face of such pervasive conditioning discussion of alternative economic models has been pushed to the margins of public debate. In the wake of ‘the great recession,’ however, skepticism about modern capitalism is growing along with resentment at the mounting social and personal costs of maintaining the current structures of a demonstrably failing and iniquitous system. Beginning with a consideration of the political and institutional origins of modern international capitalism in the aftermath of the Second World War and the radical ‘globalizing’ of that project in the last thirty years – with especial emphasis on the expansion of neo-liberalism in the Americas – this article considers the possibility that a greater openness to other experiments and approaches is now apparent. Increased interest in non-competitive models disavowing the routine exploitation of resources and people is evident in many places, for example, Europeans increasingly resistant to the hypocritical dogma of ‘fiscal discipline’; North Americans counting the cost of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in lost jobs, environmental deterioration and increased inequality; and Africans tired of corrupt politicians in the pockets of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB). This article considers in detail the origins, merits, progress and contradictions of one such project: the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA). This project, although imperfect, offers an excellent example of a cooperative model of economic development that strives (in the words of the participating states) for a “system of peace based on social justice… a system that recovers the human condition … and does not reduce [people] to mere consumers or merchandise.”

A rapidly evolving media ecology is posing significant challenges to actors in the halls of power, on the streets of popular dissent, and in the global newsrooms that connect these sites to the imaginations of media users throughout the world. It is a complicated tangle of relations, and difficult questions arise about which theoretical instruments are most useful when trying to unpick it. Global news coverage of the "Arab Awakening" of 2011 is fertile terrain for an exploration of some of these questions. The article compares how popular resistance is narrated by newsrooms with different reporting traditions, and reflects on how global audiences are positioned in relation to such events. The theoretical discussion is organized around the notions of media witnessing and cosmopolitanism. The empirical analysis is based on reports from over 1000 news stories broadcast on Al Jazeera English, which claims to give a voice to the voiceless, and BBC World, which has a tradition of reporting the world from the vantage point of elites. The results indicate that the reporting gaze is gendered differently, and that there are also intriguing differences in the way audiences are situated by the two broadcasters.

Feminist scholars have a long, contentious history with practices of “transcultural mappings.” One of the most thoughtful contributions to this scholarship is Uma Narayan’s work. Narayan seeks to dismantle frameworks for understanding gender as a construct across cultures, to undo what she calls “cultural essentialism.” In so doing, Narayan retheorizes the meaning of culture, how we approach it, and its use as a foundational category in feminist theory. Taking my lead from Narayan’s retheorization of comparative transnational gendered practices, I examine how this history of conflicts over gender and culture in feminist theory can be put to transformative use in transcultural studies and more specifically in studies of gender and cultures of globalization.My approach builds on my own experience teaching “Gender and the Cultures of Globalization” and students’ resistance to the deconstruction of such binaries as West/rest, civilized/savage and liberated/oppressed. I argue that feminist theories of globalization and gender offer transformative possibilities for reconfiguring dominant media that have, to use Narayan’s phrase, made many in the U.S. see women across the globe as “victims of culture”—with the exception of white women in the North/West. While transcultural studies challenge this cultural framing, Western media do not and continue to use cultural essentialism as a lens through which to understand gender oppression in countries of the South/East.In response, this comment addresses several questions: How can intersecting feminist theories of globalization and culture help us overcome the cultural essentialism that often pervades Western popular media? How can this multidirectional approach transform our understanding of gender, globalization, and culture, avoid the impasses of cultural relativism, and address the elision of gender in studies of globalization? I offer examples of approaches that show how transnational feminist theories of globalization can help us undo cultural essentialism.

This report examines Brazil’s participation in international talks on Iranian nuclear activities. In the mediation of the fuel swap, Brazil tried to facilitate dialogue in order to allow the knowledge of each side’s experiences, build trust and minimize the level of tension and hostility between the parties through flexibility. Maybe now there is another opportunity to give intermediate countries such as Brazil a chance to participate in the discussions, because they could try to start a process of cooperation that would simultaneously meet Iranian legitimate needs and increase transparency on the controversial Iranian nuclear program.

The report explores the extractive sector in Ghana. It looks at corporate engagement with stakeholders, particularly with the communities and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). Using evidence from the literature as well as publications from the mining companies and government statements, it asserts that corporate actors need to adopt sustainable CSR strategies that go beyond philanthropy and entail sustainable practices appropriate to a developing country context. Such an approach, it proposes, needs to be carried out in partnership with other stakeholders in order to be more beneficial. It notes that although, there are encouraging signs now of a more responsive private sector with some companies undertaking socially acceptable initiatives, the turn-around has come through a period of major differences and conflict with local communities, whose agitations for a more responsive form of mining had earlier been ignored.