World Society Studies

Overview

• Volume 2007/I: Civil Society–Local and Regional Responses to Global Challenges, ed. by Mark Herkenrath
• Volume 2007/II: The Regional Shaping of World Society, ed. by Mark Herkenrath
• Volume 3: Conflicts And New Departures In World Society, ed. by Volker Bornschier and Peter Lengyel
• Volume 2: Waves, Formation And Values In The World System, ed. by Volker Bornschier and Peter Lengyel
• Volume 1: World Society Studies, ed. by Volker Bornschier and Peter Lengyel
  

Volume 2007/I: Civil Society–Local and Regional Responses to Global Challenges

Mark Herkenrath (editor)

Published by Lit Verlag, Münster, 2007 (distributed in the U.S. by Transaction Publishers)
ISBN 978-3-03735-165-9 (Switzerland), and 978-3-8258-0533-3 (Germany)

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Summary

While contributing to social inequality and environmental degradation, recent global transformations have also strengthened civil society groups opposing these trends. Yet, as they need to transform the existing social order from within, groups struggling for social justice face various strategic dilemmas. The articles in this volume examine these dilemmas and discuss possible solutions. Issues addressed include North-South disparities in what has been called "global civil society", and the precarious division of labor between local grassroots organizers and transnational coalition-builders.

Contents

Civil Society: Local and Regional Responses to Global Challenges: An Introduction
Mark Herkenrath

1 Connecting the Global and Local: The Impact of Globalization on Civil Society From 1990 to the Present
Jeffrey Kentor and Eric Mielants

2 Civil Society Participation, the New Mantra in Foreign Development Assistance: Evidence from Bolivia
Bettina Woll

3 The “Lost Generation”: African Hip Hop Movements and the Protest of the Young (Male) Urban
Daniel Künzler

4 The Role of the Internet in Transnational Mobilization: A Case Study of the Zapatista Movement, 1994-2005
Markus S. Schulz

5 Associative Self-Governance, Open Access and Global Civil Society
Michael Schiltz, Gert Verschraegen, and Stefano Magnolo

6 Global Civil Society Networks and Counter-Hegemony
Hagai Katz

7 Protesters, Participants and Politicians: Civil Society and Democratization in Latin America
R. Patricio Korzeniewicz and María Esperanza Casullo

Volume 2007/II: The Regional and Local Shaping of World Society

Mark Herkenrath (editor)

Published by Lit Verlag, Münster, 2007 (distributed in the U.S. by Transaction Publishers)
ISBN 978-3-03735-166-6 (Switzerland), and 978-3-8258-0534-0 (Germany)

Order here.

Summary

Globalization is usually seen as a uniform force producing similar social consequences across all societies affected. The contributions in this volume challenge this notion by demonstrating that reactions to the same global changes vary across different parts of the world. In particular, this volume examines the crucial role of economically and politically integrated regions as mediators between glo1bal challenges and local responses. To the extent that different regional reactions to global change retroact on their global context, global social transformation becomes a highly complex phenomenon.

Contents

The Regional and Local Shaping of World Society: An Introduction
Mark Herkenrath

1 How ‘Global’ is Economic Globalization?
Rafael Reuveny and William R. Thompson

2 Globalization, Regionalism, and the Organization of Transnational Collective Action within World Regions, 1980-2000
Dawn Wiest and Jackie Smith

3 Economic Glocalizing, Regional Embedding, and State Scaling: A Comparative Analysis of the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta in China
Xiangming Chen

4 East Asia: Structure and Formation of a World Region
Patrick Ziltener

5 Islam in the World System
Amir Sheikhzadegan

6 Northeast Asian Competition for Russian Far East Natural Resources Possibilities of Russo-Chinese Geo-economic Integration
John Gulick

7 The Chad-Cameroon Pipeline Project and the Making of World Society in Central Africa
Yves Alexandre Chouala

8 The Resilience of Cultural Diversity: Reinventing Local Identity in Ireland as the “Gesamt” Creation of Enterprise, State and Civil Society
Martha C.E. Van Der Bly

Volume 3: Conflicts and New Departures in World Society

Volker Bornschier & Peter Lengyel (Editors)

Published by Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A., 1994
ISBN: 1-56000-129-1 (cloth)

Summary

This third volume in the World Society Studies series focuses on a central theme: how market mechanisms can correct the world welfare deficit and also resolve the environmental crisis through processes of sustainable development. The two editors trace how such objectives have been addressed since the 1960s, and describe the parameters of the debate. Conflicts and New Departures in Word Society contains original research on confluences and fissures in emerging world society, in both international and domestic arenas.

The sixteen contributors offer an unusually wide range of perspectives. Topics include peace and war, core-periphery situations, and social and labor conflicts. Marek Thee traces the quest for a demilitarized and nuclear-free world. Johan Kaufmann analyze s the role of the United Nations in the post-cold war era. Jill Crystal concentrates on the human rights environment in the Arab world. H. C. F. Mansilla comments on the destruction of the tropical forests in Bolivia. Other contributors include Bruce Russett, Christian Suter, John Foran, Beverly Silver, and Georg Kohler.

Conflicts and New Departures in World Society gives intellectual substance to the still nebulous notion of a world society. It does so not by advocacy, but by indicating parallel social, economic, and political conditions that compel new interactio ns between advanced and developing lands. This book will be of interest to sociologists, environmentalists, and political theorists and scientists.

Volker Bornschier is professor of sociology at the University of Zurich and president of the World Society Foundation. He has written widely on social development.

Perer Lengyel is an economist whose book International Social Science: The UNESCO Experience was published by Transaction. For thirty years he served as editor of International Social Science Journal.

Contents

Introduction

Emergences and Conflict Dynamics in World Society
Volker Bornschier and Peter Lengyel

I Peace and War

1 The Democratic Peace
Bruce Russett

2 War, Politics and the Market: Reflections after the Great Potlatch
Georg Kohler

3 Armaments and Disarmament in the Post-Cold War Period: The Quest for a Demilitarized and Nuclear-Free World
Marek Thee

4 The Role of the United Nations in the Post-Cold War Era
Johan Kaufmann, Dick Leurdijk, Nico Schrijver

II Core-Periphery Situations

5 The Emerging Human Rights Environment in the Arab World
Jill Crystal

6 The World Bank and Expropriation Disputes in Africa
Adeoye Akinsanya

7 World Economic Integration and Political Conflict in Latin America
Michael Nollert

8 Genesis and Dynamics of Populist Regimes at the Periphery
Christian Suter

9 The Causes of Latin American Social Revolutions: Searching for Patterns in Mexico, Cuba and Nicaragua
John Foran

10 Mexico's Unresolved Crisis
Hanspeter Stamm

11 Social Perception of Environmental Problems: Destruction of Tropical Forests and Ethnic Protest Movements in Bolivia
H.C.F. Mansilla

12 Between Reform and Disaster: Options for Sub-Saharian Africa in the Emerging Global Order
Julius O. Ihonvbere

III Social and Labor Conflicts

13 The Globalization of Social Conflict
James Mittelman

14 Cycles of Hegemony and Labor Unrest in the Contemporary World System
Beverly J. Silver

15 Governmental Budgeting: A Computer Model of Conflict and Bargaining
Georg P. Müller

16 Political Conflict and Labor Disputes at the Core: An Encompassing Review for the Post-War Era
Volker Bornschier and Michael Nollert

Volume 2: Waves, Formation and Values in the World System

Volker Bornschier & Peter Lengyel (editors)

Published by Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A., 1992
ISBN 1-56000-056-2 (cloth)

Summary

During the 1990s an enormous acceleration of history is occurring; world society has become radically altered in many respects. In Eastern Europe what seemed stable and predictable regimes over decades came close to collapse or even broke down spectacular ly toward the end of the decade. In part of the Third World, debt and vast misery brought economic development and modernization to a virtual halt. Finally, after years of stagnation, the integrational momentum of the European Economic Community picked up considerably an unexpectedly. These dramatic examples of discontinuous, wave-like social transformation are weighted with lessons for social scientists. This volume explores the dynamics and implications of these changes in the postwar order through theo retical and practical approaches.

The book, bringing together advanced scholars from Europe, the United States, and the Third World, opens with an introductory statement that traces the links between political change and technological evolution. The chapters in the first part compare theo retical models and historical instances of political and economic cycles applicable to those of our own time. In this context the authors examine changes in the structures of ideological legitimation, social protest, multistate system stability, the role of cities and the international civil service in world systems, and state-society conflicts.

The chapters in the second part explore how sudden eruptions of political change-revolutions-reshape basic values and the central role of legitimacy. The autho rs demonstrate that a resurgence of religious values is often connected with the legitimation of private property, and that the centrality of human rights is the legitimizing element of pluralistic, democratic orders. Other chapters consider the impact of global change on conceptions of neutrality in nations such as Sweden and Switzerland and on problems of development in Third World countries. Waves, Formations and values in the World System offers original creative thinking and conceptualisation for confronting the intellectual challenges of rapid social change in the 1990s. It will be of interest to sociologists, economists, political scientists, and historians.

Contents

Introduction

The End of the Post-War Era
Volker Bornschier and Peter Lengyel

I Waves and Formations

1 Long Waves in the World System
Volker Bornschier and Christian Suter

2 The Changing Role of Cities in World-Systems
Christopher Chase-Dunn

3 Realpolitik and Multistate System Stability
Thomas R. Cusack

4 The Structuring of Social Protest in Modern Societies: the Limits and Direction of Convergence
S.N. Eisenstadt

5 The Socialist Societies: Rise and Fall of a Societal Formation
Jakob Juchler

6 The International Civil Service in Perspective
Peter Lengyel

7 The Power and Limits of States: Struggles for Domination between States and Societies
Joel S. Migdal

II Values and Conflicts

8 The Emerging European-Wide Human Rights Regime: too much of a Good Thing?
Philip Alston

9 Nuclear Confrontation: Ambivalence, Rationality and the Doomsday Machine
J. David Singer

10 The Problem of Religious Politics and its Impact on World Society
William H. Swatos, Jr.

11 Structural Situation and World View: the Case of Switzerland
Walter Schöni and Heinrich Zwicky

Volume 1: World Society Studies

Volker Bornschier & Peter Lengyel (editors)

Published by Campus Verlag, Frankfurt and New York, 1990
ISBN 3-593-34309-6

Summary

The World Society Foundation, Zurich, sponsors an occasional series entitled "World Society Studies" to bring significant findings of the research funded by it to the attention of a broad public. The first volume, hardcover, 275 pages, edited by Volker Bornschier and Peter Lengyel, appeared in 1990. It contains eleven contributions.

These authoritative essays are not only samples of the kind of work supported by the Foundation but also provide analyses and historical background to the dynamics of current events, transnational processes and their possible long-term outcomes.

Contents

I General Approaches

1 Introduction: Notions of World Society
Volker Bornschier and Peter Lengyel

2 Social Inequality in the World System: An Assessment
Michael Nollert

3 Crisis and Transformation in the World Order
Heraldo Muñoz

4 Crisis Management and the North-South Scenario
Walter Sánchez

II Latin American Perspectives and Comparisons

5 The Nature and Meaning of the Wars of Hispanic American Liberation
Perry Anderson

6 Society, State and Person in Latin America
Walter Sánchez

7 World Economy and Geopolitics: The Case of Brazil
Raimo Väyrynen

8 Australia and South America: Patterns of Semi-Peripherality
Peter Lengyel

9 Detoriating Nutritional Situations in Latin America and Africa
Carl Oliva

III Special Subjects

10 Peace Research and Peace Science: A Partial Stocktaking
Bruce Russett

11 External Debt of the Periphery: A Recurrent Problem of World Society
Christian Suter, Hanspeter Stamm and Ulrich Pfister