Global Futures

This book provides critical assessment of the "globalization thesis" through sustained analysis of the nexus of processes underlying social and cultural relations. It examines the many contradictions embedded within different discourses of globalization. The collection offers a wide-ranging critique of those accounts which represent globalization primarily, if not exclusively, as the classic story of European modernity with its attendant narratives of ostensibly unfettered movement of people, unmitigated economic growth and social progress.

This book provides critical assessment of the "globalization thesis" through sustained analysis of the nexus of processes underlying social and cultural relations, and examination and exploration of the many contradictions embedded within different discourses of globalization.

Booknews

Derived from papers presented during the 1996 British Sociological Association conference at the University of Reading, this collection of essays (one of three collections from the conference) provides a critique of the current "globalization thesis" by exploring its internal contradictions. The contributions offer analysis of such issues as the social inequities governing the internationalized market in labor migration; the global politics of environmental and ecological governance; the ways in which ethnic and linguistic ties form an integral part of trade and migration in Central Europe; and the new orientalism apparent in trade relations, particularly between the USA, Japan and the East Asian newly industrialized countries. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Avtar Brah teaches at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Mary J. Hickman is Reader in European Studies at the University of North London, and Director of the Center for Irish Studies at UNL.

Máirtín Mac an Ghaill is Professor of Education at the University of Sheffield.