Reconfiguration of the Global South
Reconfiguration of the Global South

Author: Eckart Woertz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-10-04

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1315457636

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Since the 1980s there has been a steady shift from West to East in the international system, economically, politically and culturally. Emerging markets in Asia have moved up the value chain of industrial production processes, while the share of Western industrialized countries in global gross domestic product has declined. Countries such as China and India are asserting themselves in security matters and seeking new avenues for investment flows and development co-operation. China’s expected shift from export-led growth to domestic consumption might further change patterns of trade and capital flows, and it is an open debate whether the growth dynamics of India might outstrip those of China. While the rise of China and other Asian powers has been studied extensively, much less work has been done on how Africa and Latin America position themselves in this process. What will the role be of Africa and Latin America in the ‘Asian Century’ and associated reconfigurations of global value chains? Will these regions be able to assert themselves and find a voice of their own? Will they manage to develop industries of their own and diversify trade relations? Will they launch new ways of regional south-south co-operation? What is the role of migrant communities and cultural exchange? Do Western and Asian approaches to these regions differ (Washington vs. Beijing consensus)? This book brings together renowned academics from Africa, Latin America, Europe and the USA, who bring refreshing perspectives on an under-researched topic, ranging from a conceptualization of the issue within new theoretical approaches, to unique case studies based on field work.

Critical Theory After the Rise of the Global South
Critical Theory After the Rise of the Global South

Author: Boike Rehbein

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-03-24

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1317514475

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After the end of Euro-American hegemony and the return of the multi-centric world, Eurocentrism in philosophy and the social sciences has come under attack. However, no real alternative has been proposed. This provides an opportunity to reassess the philosophy of the social sciences that has been developed in the West. This book argues that the re-emergence of a multi-centric world allows the Euro-centric social sciences in general, and critical theory in particular, to finally disengage from countless paradoxes and impasses by which they have heretofore been hindered. The author presents a solution in the form of the "kaleidoscopic dialectic." This dialectic is unique in that it is able to overcome the precarious dichotomy between universalism and relativism by relying on an original approach to the philosophy of science. With this approach, the focus is on the configurations embedded in the ethics of understanding, accommodation and learning and on their connections to broader social scientific critique. This book demands that the European social sciences make philosophical and methodological adaptations to the new realities of the social world by becoming more reflexive and, by extension, less Euro-centric.

Impact Of Covid-19 On Asian Economies And Policy Responses
Impact Of Covid-19 On Asian Economies And Policy Responses

Author: Sumit Agarwal

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2020-12-23

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 9811229392

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On March 12th 2020, World Health Organization (WHO) declared the spreading of the new virus, 2019-nCoV, a pandemic. In Asia, the virus, more commonly referred to as COVID-19, has been spreading since the end of December. To contain the public health threat, almost all countries enforced a variety of measures, including lockdowns, to minimize face-to-face human interactions between the infected and the susceptible.While these vigilant measures save lives, they also generate a substantial negative economic shock that immediately halts demand and significantly disrupts supply, global production value chain and trade. The consequences are dire — considerable decline in output, massive surge in unemployment, countless bankruptcy cases, and unrelentless worries over financial stability. The result, a worldwide economic setback, is more severe than that experienced during the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-2009.Asia's experiences with COVID-19 precede that in the West. This fortuitous timing allows Asia to share its learnings drawn from experiences to benefit the world.The Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research's (ABFER) community has gathered a collection of insights to inform the public. Besides providing access to research on the pandemic conducted in Asia, these commentaries offer comprehensive information on the effects of the pandemic, the effectiveness of measures employed to contain it and the subsequent economic impacts from such implementation. With granular analyses of government policies and their associated economic rescue packages, these commentaries elucidate the hard trade-offs between public health protection and economic security. Finally, the commentaries address the broader impact of the pandemic on international trade, global value chains and society.

Critical Geopolitics and Regional (Re)Configurations
Critical Geopolitics and Regional (Re)Configurations

Author: Heriberto Cairo

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-05-31

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0429871864

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This book seeks to develop our understanding of the contemporary geopolitical reconfigurations of two regions of the world system with high cultural affinity and traditional close relations: Latin America and Europe. Relations between Latin America and Europe have been interpreted generally in the social sciences as synonyms of interstate relations. However, although States remain the most important actor in the geopolitical scene, they have been deeply reconfigured in recent decades, impacted by transnational dynamics, politics and spaces. This book highlights interregional relations and transnational dynamics between Latin America and Europe from a critical geopolitics perspective, promoting a new look for interregional relations which encompasses international cooperation and development, global policies, borders, inequalities and social movements. It brings attention to the relevance of interregionalism in the current geopolitical reconfiguration of the world system, but also argues for systematic inclusion of relevant new social actors and imaginaries in this traditional sphere of states. These social actors, particularly social movements and practices of contestation, are developing not only "international" bonds but a new "transnational" field, where networks defy traditional territorial orders. This volume seeks to generate a new discussion among scholars of geopolitics, international relations, social theory and social movement studies by encouraging a development of an interregional and transnational perspective of the two regions.

Global South Modernities
Global South Modernities

Author: Gorica Majstorovic

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-09-10

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 1498576184

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Global South Modernities: Modernist Literature and the Avant-Garde in Latin America examines the seminal influence that Latin American writers had on the style, subject matter, and ideology of literature in the Global South from 1900 to the late 1930s. Gorica Majstorovic challenges the historical and racial logic of interwar Latin American literary studies by introducing the solidarity relations between the global decolonial movements and placing anti-imperialism, Blackness, and indigeneity at the center of decolonial analysis. Following Mignolo, de Sousa Santos, and Cheah, the texts under analysis subvert the processes of European colonial worlding and show modernity itself as pluralized. Drawing on these works, Majstorovic bridges the gap between aesthetics and politics while shifting the focus onto the Latin American transnational modernist networks and situating the analysis within the theoretical frameworks of the Global South. While examining the idea of globality through its different conceptualizations (cosmopolitanism, immigration, and travel), Majstorovic analyzes avant-garde magazines of the 1920s, Mexican petrofiction, urban proletarian, and decolonial travel narratives of the 1930s, calling into question modernism’s usual framing as an Anglo-American interwar phenomenon. Majstorovic constructs a new genealogy of Latin American literature by examining the asymmetrical relations within its multiple modernities and offers a new understanding of Latin American interwar literature through the lens of the Global South.

Strategic Coupling
Strategic Coupling

Author: Henry Wai-chung Yeung

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2016-05-24

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1501704265

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In Strategic Coupling, Henry Wai-chung Yeung examines economic development and state-firm relations in East Asia, focusing in particular on South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. As a result of the massive changes of the last twenty-five years, new explanations must be found for the economic success and industrial transformation in the region. State-assisted startups and incubator firms in East Asia have become major players in the manufacture of products with a global reach: Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision has assembled more than 500 million iPhones, for instance, and South Korea’s Samsung provides the iPhone’s semiconductor chips and retina displays.Drawing on extensive interviews with top executives and senior government officials, Yeung argues that since the late 1980s, many East Asian firms have outgrown their home states, and are no longer dependent on state support; as a result the developmental state has lost much of its capacity to steer and direct industrialization. We cannot read the performance of national firms as a direct outcome of state action. Yeung calls for a thorough renovation of the still-dominant view that states are the primary engine of industrial transformation. He stresses action by national firms and traces various global production networks to incorporate both firm-specific activities and the international political economy. He identifies two sets of dynamics in these national-global articulations known as strategic coupling: coevolution in the confluence of state, firm, and global production networks, and the various strategies pursued by East Asian firms to attain competitive positions in the global marketplace.

Calculating the Social
Calculating the Social

Author: V. Higgins

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2010-09-29

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 0230289673

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Examining the increasingly powerful role of standards in the governing of economic, political and social life, this book draws upon governmentality and actor network theory to explore how standards and standardizing projects are articulated and rendered workable in practice, and the objects, subjects and forms of identity to which this gives rise.

Regionalism in Latin America
Regionalism in Latin America

Author: JOSÉ BRICEÑO-RUIZ

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-11-18

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 1000220591

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This interdisciplinary edited volume explores the political economy of regionalism in Latin America. It identifies convergent forces which have existed in the region since its very conception and analyses these dynamics in their different historical, geographic and structural contexts. Particular attention is paid to key countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, as well as subregions like the Southern Cone and Central America. To understand the resilience of regionalism in Latin America, this book proposes to highlight four main issues. Firstly, that resilience is linked to mechanisms of self-enforcement that are part of the accumulation of experiences, institution building and common cultural features described in this book as regionalist acquis. Secondly, the elements and driving forces behind the promotion and expression of the regionalist acquis are influenced and shaped by nested systems in which social processes are inserted. Thirdly, when looking at systems, there is a particular influence by national and global ones, which condition the form and endurance of regional projects. Finally, beyond systems, the book highlights the relevance of agents as crucial players in the shaping of the resilience of regionalism in Latin America. This insightful collection will appeal to advanced students and researchers in international economics, international relations, international political economy, economic history and Latin American studies.

An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World
An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World

Author: Mariana Candido

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-03-29

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 1107328381

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This book traces the history and development of the port of Benguela, the third largest port of slave embarkation on the coast of Africa, from the early seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Benguela, located on the central coast of present-day Angola, was founded by the Portuguese in the early seventeenth century. In discussing the impact of the transatlantic slave trade on African societies, Mariana P. Candido explores the formation of new elites, the collapse of old states and the emergence of new states. Placing Benguela in an Atlantic perspective, this study shows how events in the Caribbean and Brazil affected social and political changes on the African coast. This book emphasizes the importance of the South Atlantic as a space for the circulation of people, ideas and crops.