The Lexus and the olive tree by Thomas Friedman (a good primer for understanding globalization)
"His argument can be summarized quite simply. Globalization is not just a phenomenon and not just a passing trend. It is the international system that replaced the Cold War system. Globalization is the integration of capital, technology, and information across national borders, in a way that is creating a single global market and, to some degree, a global village."
[ Continued... ] [ Table of Contents ]
Rethinking globalization : critical issues and policy choices by Martin Khor
"Martin Khor's practical proposals offer action agendas to Third World governments as they are faced with globalization. Khor explains the economic globalization process, showing how it is failing to either increase economic growth or decrease poverty. A critique of Western governments for their domination of the international policy process ensues, where Khor exposes the flaws in the "one size fits all" policy prescriptions of the World Bank, IMF, and WTO. Arguing that Third World countries need room to maneuver, this book proposes innovative and realistic policies."
The Debt Boomerang. How Third World Debt Harms Us All by Susan George
"A decade after the onset of the debt crisis, the Third World is in its worst shape - and deeper in debt - than ever before. In the South, debt and the 'structural adjustment' measures of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank use to treat it have devastated countless livelihoods and lives. But this is no longer simply a problem for the debtor countries. 'The Debt Boomerang', based on research by a Transnational Institute team, shows how we in the North are also unwitting victims of this crisis. The South is closer than we think. Its debt accelerates deforestation and global warning, fuels the expanding drug market, destroys jobs and farms, encourages mass immigration and heightens global insanity and conflict. Our taxes ensure that the banks need never take the consequences of their foolish loans. 'The Debt Boomerang' explains why solidarity with the South is not just ethically desirable but in our interest as well."
[ Continued... ]
A Fate Worse than Debt by Susan George, Chapter 10, 'Debt and the Environments: Financing Ecocide'.
This has numerous examples of environmental resources that have been cashed in to pay for the debt crisis which exploded in the 1980s (as a result of heavy borrowing in 1970s which "financed huge, ecologically harmful projects such as mega-dams, nuclear power plants, smelters designed to be fuelled with forest-derived charcoal, huge industrial and agricultural estates and so on"
[ More Info ]
On Globalization by George Soros
"Having profited so greatly by globalization, George Soros rightly attracts great attention when he criticizes the source of his prosperity. Although he is often labeled an antiglobalist, in fact he does not support the coalition of market fundamentalists and antiglobalization activists who would celebrate the death of the WTO. Soros describes the WTO as the goose that lays the golden eggs—ugly on the outside, but with plenty of potential value. Soros’ goals, as laid out in On Globalization, are to improve and strengthen the organizations that impact globalization, not to destroy them...."
[Summary]
One world : the ethics of globalization by Peter Singer
Globalization and its discontents by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz
The crisis of global capitalism : open society endangered by George Soros
From the Duke University Press American Encounters/Global Interactions series:
Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, and Neoliberalism in Ecuador by Suzana Sawyer [ Available soon ]
"Ecuador is the third largest foreign supplier of crude oil to the western United States. As the source of this oil, the Ecuadorian Amazon has borne the far-reaching social and environmental consequences of a growing U.S. demand for petroleum and the dynamics of economic globalization it necessitates. Crude Chronicles traces the emergence during the 1990s of a highly organized indigenous movement and its struggles against a U.S. oil company and Ecuadorian neoliberal policies. Against the backdrop of mounting government attempts to privatize and liberalize the national economy, Suzana Sawyer shows how neoliberal reforms in Ecuador led to a crisis of governance, accountability, and representation that spurred one of twentieth-century Latin America's strongest indigenous movements."
Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900-1930 by Emily S. Rosenberg [ Available soon ]
"Financial Missionaries to the World establishes the broad scope and significance of "dollar diplomacy"-the use of international lending and advising-to early-twentieth-century U.S. foreign policy. Combining diplomatic, economic, and cultural history, distinguished historian Emily S. Rosenberg shows how private bank loans were extended to leverage acceptance of American financial advisers by foreign governments. In an analysis striking in its relevance to contemporary debates over international loans, she reveals how a practice initially justified as a progressive means to extend "civilization" by promoting economic stability and progress became embroiled in controversy. Vocal critics at home and abroad charged that American loans and financial oversight constituted a new imperialism that fostered exploitation of less powerful nations. By the mid-1920s, she explains, even early supporters of dollar diplomacy worried that, by facilitating excessive borrowing, the practice might induce the very instability and default that it supposedly worked against."
From the Duke University Press Duke Press Global Issues series:
Environment and the global arena : actors, values, policies, and futures by Kenneth Dahlberg
International development policies : perspectives for industrial countries by Sydney Dell
"In this survey of the field of international development policies, Sidney Dell challenges conventional wisdom and provides a rationale for a more cooperative and constructive approach to world development. Assessing the management of the global economy by the major economic powers and the policies that caused the world economy to lose momentum in the 1970s and 1980s, Dell directs his study to industrial countries which must, he claims, take responsibility for creating an environment favorable to Third World development."
Natural Resource Policymaking in Developing Countries: Environment, Economic Growth, and Income Distribution by William Ascher
"Drawing on case studies developed over a two-year period, 1987-1989, by Fellows in the Program in International Development Policy at Duke University, including experienced representatives from developing countries, the World Bank, and scholars, the authors integrate the growing interest in environmental protection and resource conservation into the existing body of knowledge about the political economy of developing countries."
"This book is about the links that tie resource use, environmental quality, and economic development, and the way in which those links are affected by the distribution of income and resource ownership. The links may be relatively simple, as in the case of peasant farmers too poor to conserve resources for the future and with nothing to gain from sound environmental practices. Or they may be very complex—as the authors find when they demonstrate how achievement of higher incomes by the rich can increase environmentally destructive behavior by the poor. Many of the links in some way involve rural land use, whether for agriculture or forestry. Natural Resource Policymaking in Developing Countries argues that the policies that matter are not merely those dealing with resources and the environment, but a much broader set that includes income distribution and asset ownership."
Guide to Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy by Natalia Mirovitskaya
"The guide combines formal, objective entries with critical commentaries that emphasize different opinions and controversies. With succinct explanations of more than a thousand terms, thoughtful interpretations by international experts, and helpful cross-referencing, this resource is designed to serve as a roadmap for understanding the issues and debates in the overlapping fields of environment and development. Intended for use by activists, journalists, policymakers, students, scholars, and interested citizens, the Guide to Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy will be a helpful tool for anyone trying to negotiate the many environmental organizations, schools of thought, development programs, international environmental treaties, conventions, and strategies that have proliferated in the past few decades."
International Environmental Policy: From the Twentieth to the Twenty-First Century by Lynton Keith Caldwell
"Serving as a history of international cooperation on environmental issues, this book focuses primarily on the development of international agreements and institutional arrangements—both governmental and nongovernmental—along with the impact of science, technology, trade, and communication on environmental policy. With implications for multinational commerce, population policy, agriculture, energy issues, biological and cultural diversity, transnational equity, ideology, and education, this book takes a broad view of the policy outcomes of what may be the most important social movement of the 20th century, and addresses the events and politics that have significantly affected the movement over the last twenty years and will continue to affect it into the next century."
Below are some books which have not yet been reviewed but which may nonetheless present interesting information and/or ethnography.
Globalization and the South: Some Critical Issues by Martin Khor
Inhuman rights : the western system and global human rights abuse by Winin Pereira
Climate change, deforestation, and the Orissa super cyclone : ecological costs of globalisation by Vandana Shiva
Biopolitics: A Feminist and Ecological Reader on Biotechnology by Vandana Shiva
Alternatives to economic globalization : a better world is possible by John Cavanagh
Global justice and transnational politics : essays on the moral and political challenges of globalization by Pablo De Greiff and Ciaran Cronin
Boundaries and allegiances : problems of justice and responsibility in liberal thought by Samuel Scheffler
World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms by Thomas Winfried Menko Pogge
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