globalization

Sovereignty and the sovereign state are often seen as anachronisms; Globalization and Sovereignty challenges this view. Jean L. Cohen analyses the new sovereignty regime emergent since the 1990s evidenced by the discourses and practice of human rights, humanitarian intervention, transformative occupation and the UN targeted sanctions regime that blacklists alleged terrorists. Presenting a systematic theory of sovereignty and its transformation in international law and politics, Cohen argues for the continued importance of sovereign equality.

This article argues that while globalization theory is far from being past its most productive phase, as some of its critics claim, it does exhibit a number of shortcomings, particularly when it comes to identifying a clear point of reference for what is taken to be globalized and applying theoretical concepts developed in the analysis of national societies to a global level.

What determines the flow of labor and capital in this new global information economy? Who has the capacity to coordinate this new system, to create some measure of order? What happens to territoriality and sovereignty, two fundamental principles of the modern state? And who gains rights and who loses rights?

Accounts of U.S. empire building in Latin America typically portray politically and economically powerful North Americans descending on their southerly neighbors to engage in lopsided negotiations. Dennis Merrill's comparative history of U.S. tourism in Latin America in the twentieth century demonstrates that empire is a more textured, variable, and interactive system of inequality and resistance than commonly assumed.

Translated by Assenka Oksiloff.

The article endeavors to address hope to address here ethical obligations that are global in character and that emerge both at a distance and within relations of proximity. The two questions that concern the author are at first quite different from one another. The first is whether any of us have the capacity or inclination to respond ethically to suffering at a distance and what makes that ethical encounter possible, when it does take place.

A recent movement has extended previous emphases on the rights of national citizens by asserting the global human rights of all persons. This article describes the extent to which this change is reflected in the language of national constitutions around the world. Human rights language – formerly absent from almost all constitutions – now appears in most of them. Rather than characterizing developed or democratic states, human rights language is, first, especially common in countries most susceptible to global influences.

While globalization is largely theorized in terms of trans‐border flows, this article suggests an exploratory sociological framework for analyzing globalization as consisting of systemic processes of closure and containment. The suggested framework points at the emergence of a global mobility regime that actively seeks to contain social movement both within and across borders.

When do national movements adopt or reject international agendas? This question regarding the relationship between global and local thinking goes to the heart of the current globalization debates. This study examines the contrasting responses from the Chinese and Indian women's movements to the agenda adopted by the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. The contrast challenges the dominant assumption that global thinking can substitute for local thinking.

This article asks three questions. How does the sociologist understand the common sense of subaltern groups, whether subjugated on the basis of gender, class, race, ethnicity or nationality? What could be the political practice of the sociologist with regard to such groups? Finally, through what form of public discourse can sociology articulate the interests of subaltern groups? These broad questions have general answers, even if their specifics are shaped by national and local contexts.