The Europe Center is jointly housed in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Global Studies Division.
The four-volume Encyclopedia of Global Studies covers the field of global studies and subjects related to it, such as globalization, transnational activity and themes of global society. This encyclopedia is written for the educated general reader as well as students and professionals working in the field of global studies. It is the first encyclopedia of its kind, and aims to become the internationally-recognized reference work for academics, policymakers, and practitioners interested in the various dimensions of globalization. It provides succinct summaries of concepts and theories, definitions of terms, biographical entries, and organizational profiles; offers a guide to sources of information; and establishes an overview of Global Studies in different parts of the world and across cultures and historical periods. The wide range of subjects covered include the following:
- intellectual approaches, such as global sociology, political economy, world systems theory, peace and conflict studies, and communications;
- global and transnational topics, such as cross-border conflicts and terrorism, worldwide health crises and climate disruption, the planetary immigration patterns and new cultural diasporas, and the seemingly boundless global market, rapid communications, and transnational cyberspaces devised by technology and new media.
The four-volume Encyclopedia of Global Studies covers the field of global studies and subjects related to it, such as globalization, transnational activity and themes of global society. This encyclopedia is written for the educated general reader as well as students and professionals working in the field of global studies. It is the first encyclopedia of its kind, and aims to become the internationally-recognized reference work for academics, policymakers, and practitioners interested in the various dimensions of globalization. It provides succinct summaries of concepts and theories, definitions of terms, biographical entries, and organizational profiles; offers a guide to sources of information; and establishes an overview of Global Studies in different parts of the world and across cultures and historical periods. The wide range of subjects covered include the following:
- intellectual approaches, such as global sociology, political economy, world systems theory, peace and conflict studies, and communications;
- global and transnational topics, such as cross-border conflicts and terrorism, worldwide health crises and climate disruption, the planetary immigration patterns and new cultural diasporas, and the seemingly boundless global market, rapid communications, and transnational cyberspaces devised by technology and new media.
The four-volume Encyclopedia of Global Studies covers the field of global studies and subjects related to it, such as globalization, transnational activity and themes of global society. This encyclopedia is written for the educated general reader as well as students and professionals working in the field of global studies. It is the first encyclopedia of its kind, and aims to become the internationally-recognized reference work for academics, policymakers, and practitioners interested in the various dimensions of globalization. It provides succinct summaries of concepts and theories, definitions of terms, biographical entries, and organizational profiles; offers a guide to sources of information; and establishes an overview of Global Studies in different parts of the world and across cultures and historical periods. The wide range of subjects covered include the following:
- intellectual approaches, such as global sociology, political economy, world systems theory, peace and conflict studies, and communications;
- global and transnational topics, such as cross-border conflicts and terrorism, worldwide health crises and climate disruption, the planetary immigration patterns and new cultural diasporas, and the seemingly boundless global market, rapid communications, and transnational cyberspaces devised by technology and new media.
The four-volume Encyclopedia of Global Studies covers the field of global studies and subjects related to it, such as globalization, transnational activity and themes of global society. This encyclopedia is written for the educated general reader as well as students and professionals working in the field of global studies. It is the first encyclopedia of its kind, and aims to become the internationally-recognized reference work for academics, policymakers, and practitioners interested in the various dimensions of globalization. It provides succinct summaries of concepts and theories, definitions of terms, biographical entries, and organizational profiles; offers a guide to sources of information; and establishes an overview of Global Studies in different parts of the world and across cultures and historical periods. The wide range of subjects covered include the following:
- intellectual approaches, such as global sociology, political economy, world systems theory, peace and conflict studies, and communications;
- global and transnational topics, such as cross-border conflicts and terrorism, worldwide health crises and climate disruption, the planetary immigration patterns and new cultural diasporas, and the seemingly boundless global market, rapid communications, and transnational cyberspaces devised by technology and new media.
This article sketches the outlines of a contemporary inter- and transdisciplinary methodology to understand the current global change. It gives a short overview over the seven-fold approach of the author called “System Action Theory”, which tries to integrate the typological discourses and systemic order patterns of politics, economics, culture, religion, technology and demography. According to the author, the “global systemic shift” is nevertheless not reducable to the sum of these six dimensions, but is “more than the sum of its parts” and thus a seventh dimension which has to be understood through its inbuilt dialectics, conflicts and (productive) contradictions. Because most relevant problems in the globalized world get multidimensional, plurifaceted and ambiguous, no single discipline will be able to achieve a sound, complex-adequate analysis anymore. Instead, an inter- and transdisciplinary stance will always be more necessary.
Transitions in technology are shaping, defining and establishing the future of the globalized social sphere with increasing pace and impact. As seen from a systemic viewpoint, the overall process seems to consist of a two-fold movement, in which an outer process of transition is joined by an inner transformational drive. While new social media like Facebook, Twitter, webcams, smartphones and iPads change the outer dimension of how we perceive, interpret and handle our social lives, thus transforming our habits of cultural consumption, contemporary brain and consciousness research are changing the inner dimension of the contemporary social by dramatically re-shaping the self-perception and interpretation of the individual through the findings, cultural distribution and practical applications of neuroscience and neurotechnology, thus questioning the conceptual cornerstones of sociality as conceived by Western modernity. This two-fold argument examines both processes from the inside out and the outside in. As such, the primary task as at now may not be trying to “explain” the meaning(s) of the new developments, but rather to identify an array of crucial questions at the inter- and trans-disciplinary crossroads between the different societal fields, culturo-political trends and scientific disciplines.
Following the Second Industrial Revolution, Western medicine has become an interwoven enterprise of humanitarian and technologic values. In this essay, we posited that rather than being seen as a means toward achieving the ends of providing technically right and morally sound pain care, the resources and goods of pain medicine have been subordinated to a market-based values system that regards these tools as ends unto themselves. We argued that this approach is 1) pragmatically inapt, in that it fails to acknowledge and provide those tools as rightly necessary for the “good” of pain medicine to be enacted; and is therefore 2) morally unsound, in that the good, while recognized, is not afforded, thereby disserving the fiduciary of science/technology, medicine, and economics. We framed these issues within 1) the context(s) and effects of postmodernism and 2) the increasing call for a globally relevant and applicable system of pain care. Toward this latter end, we addressed how policies can be created that accommodate differing social values, and still enable the execution of care in ways that are morally sound, yet economically viable. We posited that such policies need to be finely grained so as to 1) sustain research in pain diagnosis, assessment, treatment, and management; 2) translate research efforts into clinically relevant resources; 3) enable availability and just distribution of both low- and high-tech resources; and 4) prompt fiscal programs that support, allow, and reinforce responsible choice (of such resources) as socioculturally required, valued, and valid.
In the last two decades there has been a sharp growth in the numbers of people that have been “expelled,” numbers far larger than the newly “incorporated” middle classes of countries such as India and China. I use the term “expulsion” to describe a diversity of conditions: the growing numbers of the abjectly poor, of the displaced in poor countries who are warehoused in formal and informal refugee camps, of the minoritized and persecuted in rich countries who are warehoused in prisons, of workers whose bodies are destroyed on the job and rendered useless at far too young an age, able-bodied surplus populations warehoused in ghettoes and slums. One major trend is the repositioning of what had been framed as sovereign territory, a complex conditions, into land for sale on the global market – land in Sub-Saharan Africa, in Central Asia and in Latin America to be bought by rich investors and rich governments to grow food, to access underground water tables, and to access minerals and metals. My argument is that these diverse and many other kindred developments amount to a logic of expulsion, signaling a deeper systemic transformation in advanced capitalism, one documented in bits and pieces but not quite narrated as an overarching dynamic that is taking us into a new phase of global capitalism. The paper is based on the author’s forthcoming book Expulsions.
Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Co-Chair, The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University (www.saskiasassen.com). Her recent books are Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton University Press 2008), A Sociology of Globalization (W.W.Norton 2007), both translated into Spanish by Editorial Katz (Madrid y Buenos Aires), and the 4th fully updated edition of Cities in a World Economy (Sage 2012). Among older books is The Global City (Princeton University Press 1991/2001). Her books are translated into over 20 languages. She is the recipient of diverse awards and mentions, ranging from multiple doctor honoris causa to named lectures and being selected as one of the 100 Top Global Thinkers of 2011 by Foreign Policy Magazine.
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