Strömbäck, Shehata & Dimitrova follow six months of Swedish-US print coverage around the Danish Mohammad cartoon drama. Framings are specified (free speech, clashing worlds, anti-Muslim prejudice...). The NYT comes off as slightly more hawkish (if more polarised). Skews in story selection may have exacerbated events. Some (fairly predictable) distance-determined differences between the NY and Swedish coverage are suggested.
Pan-European satellite TV had an awkward wait while corporate strategies (ad spending, most directly) caught up. Chalaby covers the 80s-90s shift, focusing on advertising industry restructuring. A solid account. Key point: a lot worked in favour of trans-national broadcasters.
Cottle & Rai take on 24/7 global news. Frames rear up again: in evaluating the claims of both boosters and critics of 24/7 news we should attend to the in-coverage framing of issues as well as issues of ownership or reach. Conclusion: things are complex, and it's in the distribution of frames that a lot of political rubber meets the road.
Finally Desai revisits Anderson's thoroughly abused Imagined Communities. Anderson thought it fed 'vampires of banality' (what famous text hasn't?). Desai is more concerned that it delegitimised third-world independence movements and blunted the analyst's critical grasp of nation based political-economy (possibly, but it's more symptom than cause).
Showing posts with label Globalisation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Globalisation. Show all posts
7/16/08
Sociological Quarterly. July 2008, 49(3)
Morawska introduced the MSS's special issue on international migration research (based on a 2006 ISA conference). There are some great literature overviews here, but it's also pretty in-discipline stuff.
Agadjanian kicks things off with a focus on migration within sub-Saharan Africa. Data is scarce. Immigrants are unloved. Conflict drives much movement. HIV/AIDS complicates things further. More (and more 'mainstreamed') research is needed.
The Asian labour migration research scene is summarised by Asis & Piper. The infrastructure and output are coming along, but more theorisation and international ties would be beneficial.
Caponio covers the Italian research: it has matured since the 80s. There is more wonkish output, and more convergence with international concepts and concerns (natural as Italy's immigration situation became less 'exceptional'). The suggestions: watch out for the EU and speak more English.
Morawska is back to compare research agendas amongst the US and rich Europe. Europe is more overtly interdisiplinary, but the states seem to shift around key disciplinary tropes more effectively. The US is focused on assimilation, transnational ties and the effects of colour. It also tends to put more time into second generation outcomes, and do a better job of gender (there are still deficiencies). The Europeans prefer 'integration' to 'assimilation'. They also put more emphasis on the role of receiving-country factors (institutions, host-nation hostility...) for immigrants. There's a lot more here if you're in the field...
Finally Fong & Chan run through the patterns of recent immigration research in the US and Canada. The topics, frameworks and objects of books and articles are tallied (too much structure, not much culture). The US kept a closer eye on demographics while Canada watched the politics. The key framework has been "assimilation/pluralism". Canada adds a concern with inter-ethnic stratification. The US takes up research around markets and social capital. The whole scene is promisingly 'public'.
Agadjanian kicks things off with a focus on migration within sub-Saharan Africa. Data is scarce. Immigrants are unloved. Conflict drives much movement. HIV/AIDS complicates things further. More (and more 'mainstreamed') research is needed.
The Asian labour migration research scene is summarised by Asis & Piper. The infrastructure and output are coming along, but more theorisation and international ties would be beneficial.
Caponio covers the Italian research: it has matured since the 80s. There is more wonkish output, and more convergence with international concepts and concerns (natural as Italy's immigration situation became less 'exceptional'). The suggestions: watch out for the EU and speak more English.
Morawska is back to compare research agendas amongst the US and rich Europe. Europe is more overtly interdisiplinary, but the states seem to shift around key disciplinary tropes more effectively. The US is focused on assimilation, transnational ties and the effects of colour. It also tends to put more time into second generation outcomes, and do a better job of gender (there are still deficiencies). The Europeans prefer 'integration' to 'assimilation'. They also put more emphasis on the role of receiving-country factors (institutions, host-nation hostility...) for immigrants. There's a lot more here if you're in the field...
Finally Fong & Chan run through the patterns of recent immigration research in the US and Canada. The topics, frameworks and objects of books and articles are tallied (too much structure, not much culture). The US kept a closer eye on demographics while Canada watched the politics. The key framework has been "assimilation/pluralism". Canada adds a concern with inter-ethnic stratification. The US takes up research around markets and social capital. The whole scene is promisingly 'public'.
7/9/08
Economy and Society. August, 37(3)
An E+S special issue devoted to GVC governance (global value chains to you and me). As Gibbon & co. explain, that means we're talking about the organisation of global business (how things get done... decisions made... networks managed...). This is all fairly tough fare.
Bair opens by disentangling various network theories (not epistemologies) employed in global economic analyses. They all start with G. Our star - GVC - seems to be the outlier. This can serve as something of an introduction.
Gibbon & Ponte focus in on expert knowledge's (trade journals and such) role in manufacturing supply-chains. The (US) purchasers' discipline is observed via governmentality. The finding: expert theories and tools were rarely implemented - and then with little success - raising questions about the importance and efficacy of Foucault-friendly administrative techniques.
Suppliers and workers at the bottom (women in poor countries for instance) are being let down by current commodity chain governance (and its analysis). Palpacuer traces the real-world shift (financialization), and suggests bringing more broad institutional and political elements back into the analytic mix.
Milberg talks financialization again, linking it to offshoring (US-China). The sustainability of upping shareholder pay-outs by squeezing ever more distributed supply networks is addressed (thank the loop of China-held US shares). As for the future...
Hess closes things up by going meta: Have networks become a clumsy catch-all metaphor? (Perhaps, but not for us). And how to deal with power? (There's three ways. We'll work something out.)
Bair opens by disentangling various network theories (not epistemologies) employed in global economic analyses. They all start with G. Our star - GVC - seems to be the outlier. This can serve as something of an introduction.
Gibbon & Ponte focus in on expert knowledge's (trade journals and such) role in manufacturing supply-chains. The (US) purchasers' discipline is observed via governmentality. The finding: expert theories and tools were rarely implemented - and then with little success - raising questions about the importance and efficacy of Foucault-friendly administrative techniques.
Suppliers and workers at the bottom (women in poor countries for instance) are being let down by current commodity chain governance (and its analysis). Palpacuer traces the real-world shift (financialization), and suggests bringing more broad institutional and political elements back into the analytic mix.
Milberg talks financialization again, linking it to offshoring (US-China). The sustainability of upping shareholder pay-outs by squeezing ever more distributed supply networks is addressed (thank the loop of China-held US shares). As for the future...
Hess closes things up by going meta: Have networks become a clumsy catch-all metaphor? (Perhaps, but not for us). And how to deal with power? (There's three ways. We'll work something out.)
6/29/08
International Sociology. July 2008, 23(4)
Transnationalization and globalization are the themes in the new International Sociology. What's the distinction? Hofmeister & Breitenstein guide you through it (it's a matter of precision - "the processes are transnational; the effects are global"). Warning: "the research in this special issue into understanding transnational processes should have long-lasting impact"!
Arsenault & Castells look into NewsCorp's control of information (Murdoch here is a 'switcher'). A good overview of the media leviathan linked up to Castells's switching-programming version of power (pdf).
We're tracking labour and capital across borders in Sanderson & Kentor. Migration from poor countries (1985-2000) is compared to rates of foreign investment via panel regression analysis. The finding: foreign direct investment increases emigration, and does so long-term.
Boli & Elliott cast a critical eye over transnational 'champions of diversity and difference'. These differences are covers for a creeping sameness ('individualization' is the engine here, and diversity cheerleaders are the symptom). Rationality and autonomy here are obstacles to an unreflective and automatic difference - the sort that cuts so deep that it doesn't need championing. Why does this feel like a complaint...
Mills et al focus on work, welfare and industrial relations patterns and policies with an interest in convergence. The finding: "converging divergences". There's an interesting model here; pity the data used can't keep up (the authors' admission).
A strong sociological metric for globalisation is the goal for Schmelzer and a large University of Bamberg team. Meet GlobalIndex. The measure is explained and demoed with German and British labour market data.
Arsenault & Castells look into NewsCorp's control of information (Murdoch here is a 'switcher'). A good overview of the media leviathan linked up to Castells's switching-programming version of power (pdf).
We're tracking labour and capital across borders in Sanderson & Kentor. Migration from poor countries (1985-2000) is compared to rates of foreign investment via panel regression analysis. The finding: foreign direct investment increases emigration, and does so long-term.
Boli & Elliott cast a critical eye over transnational 'champions of diversity and difference'. These differences are covers for a creeping sameness ('individualization' is the engine here, and diversity cheerleaders are the symptom). Rationality and autonomy here are obstacles to an unreflective and automatic difference - the sort that cuts so deep that it doesn't need championing. Why does this feel like a complaint...
Mills et al focus on work, welfare and industrial relations patterns and policies with an interest in convergence. The finding: "converging divergences". There's an interesting model here; pity the data used can't keep up (the authors' admission).
A strong sociological metric for globalisation is the goal for Schmelzer and a large University of Bamberg team. Meet GlobalIndex. The measure is explained and demoed with German and British labour market data.
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