Zombies speak to our perennial anxieties about war, pandemics, and globalization.
The Undead and Us
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globalization
Postcard from Mumbai
Even if you have not been to steamy Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat, Mumbai’s well-known outdoor laundry facility, there is a chance that your clothing has. Densely packed against Mumbai’s central rail system, this iconic complex is the largest of many sites that collect, hand wash, dry, and deliver much of the city’s laundry. It’s also one of many reminders that the modern economy has not transcended the realities of undercompensated manual toil.
President Obama Takes Globalization to New Heights
The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement is shaping up to be as bad as NAFTA or worse.
A World Bank President Who’s Not a Crony or a War Criminal?
For the first time, there’s been a concerted — and effective — effort to intervene in the nominating process and prevent a crony coronation.
From Davos to Dystopia
The World Economic Forum has released a new report calling for a “shift in mentality” to address a looming crisis typified by rebellion, protest, and political violence sparked by inequality and marginalisation across the world. The seventh edition of the organization’s Global Risks report highlights the increasing importance of marginalization as a security issue over the coming decades. It describes the “seeds of dystopia” threatening both social and political stability across the world.
Elbowed Out of Spotlight by 9/11, Anti-Globalization Movement Endures
Did 9/11 end the movement against corporate globalization?
Will Obama Sabotage His Jobs Plan With Job-Killing Free-Trade Agreements?
In his speech Thursday, President Obama is expected to express support for previously stalled trade pacts, even though government studies predict that they would increase the U.S. trade deficit and cost the United States more jobs.
The Ideology that Drives the Republican Party
The press, politicians, and pundits have apparently uncovered the driving force behind the current conflict over the debt ceiling: ideology. The New York Times suggests that Republican ideology has doomed any possibility of compromise, that ideology has trumped economics, and Reuters similarly asserts that ideology overshadows the debt talks. Yet no one has asked, let alone described, what precisely is the Republican Party’s anti-tax, small government ideology, an ideology that tumbles over into foreign policy and domestic alike.
The Luddites Revisited
Since it is the 200th anniversary of the British Luddite protests this month, that movement has been getting some attention. Some of it has raised the valid and interesting question of whether those demonstrators of old should really be described as anti-technology.
Sushi Reverses Course: Consuming American Sushi in Tokyo
The nascent American sushi trend brings into relief aspects of Japan-US relations that are seldom articulated in the context of discourse about food – in particular the continued symbolic dominance of the US in Japanese eyes; and it also is emblematic of how Japan engages aspects of globalisation, in this case fetishising a mundane product that has become something new in its reimported form.