This manuscript tells the stories of the Latin/o and general music industries in the United States from 1898 to 2000. It argues that performers transformed the local identities of aural industries based in place and melody into global industries of visual identities designed for space and celebrity. Both the Latin/o and general music industries shifted back and forth along a local-sound-to-global-sight spectrum more than once, from sounds of music rooted in specific places to sights of musicians uprooted across universal spaces between 1898 and 2000. This claim is supported by a textual analysis of archival materials, such as trade press articles, audio recordings, still photographs and motion pictures. While the general music industry's identity changed, the Latin/o industry's identity stayed the same, and vice-versa. Specifically, when the general industry identified with transnational performers and images between 1926 and 1963, the Latin/o industry retained its identification with the sounds of music rooted in specific places. From 1964 to 1979, as the Latin/o industry moved from one end of the spectrum to the other, only to return to its initial position, it was the general industry that maintained its identification with the midpoint of the spectrum. During the 1980s, the general industry zigzagged from the midpoint to the global-visual end and back again, while the Latin/o industry remained at the local-sonic end of the spectrum. In the 1990s, the Latin/o industry's local and sonic identity continued, and the general industry moved from the midpoint to the global-visual end of the spectrum with the Latin boom. The general industry's identity changed during each interval except 1964-1979, the only period in which the Latin/o industry's identity fluctuated. From Aural Places to Visual Spaces: the Latin/o and General Music Industries should be of interest to anyone invested in the relations between creativity and commerce, substance and style, or geography and genre.

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Foreign direct investments are easier today then in the past owing to lower communication costs, improved and new information technology systems. In 1990, Brazil opened up for the global econ-omy and is today one of the tenth largest economies in the world, furthermore one of the largest recipients of foreign direct investments. Many different aspects need to be taken into consideration when investing in a foreign country such as motives, risks, entry modes and financing alternatives. The purpose with this thesis is to describe Swedish corporations’ es-tablishment in Brazil, during 1990-2005. The authors aim to illus-trate the motives behind the establishment, choice of entry mode, the perceived risks of operating in Brazil and if these risks affect the financing decisions. To answer the purpose of this thesis both quantitative- and qualitative methods have been applied. A quantitative method has been employed when performing the preliminary study, by sending a standardized questionnaire by email to the entire population to as-semble those corporations who established in Brazil during 1990-2005. When designing the interview questionnaire and accomplishing the telephone interviews a combination of qualitative- and quantitative methods have been utilized. The most common motives to invest in Brazil are expanding markets and following already existing customers. When deciding upon how to enter the market, the majority of the respondents choose to start up from the ground, a Greenfield investment. The risks which had the largest impact of the corporation during the establishment were the political risk and protectionism. Intercompany financing has been the main financing alternative, though it is very expensive to borrow in Brazil. The risks affecting the financing decisions are the exchange rate, inflation and the interest rate.

<p>Globalization scholars have disagreed about the effects of globalization on the production and reproduction of difference: Do fundamental differences endure, do cultures converge, or is there hybridization? This dissertation analyzes the durability of distinct medical cultures in two technologically advanced healthcare systems that rely on an evidence-based, biomedical approach. Durability refers to the tendency to maintain or develop diverse, even idiosyncratic, practices and beliefs--even as the forces of globalization are perceived to be pressing health practices everywhere toward a single global standard. To do so, this dissertation offers a comparative, empirically based argument using the case of type 2 diabetes in the U.S. and Japan. As an inductive, theory-constructing project, the argument has at its foundation 11 months of ethnographic field work in Japanese hospitals and clinic exam rooms, 115 semi-structured interviews with patients and biomedical health practitioners in Japan, and 25 interviews with American health care providers and patients. I argue that physicians in both research sites, Okayama, Japan and North Carolina, USA, practice empirical biomedicine, but that empirical biomedicine is not all there is to biomedical practice. Practicing physicians in both contexts act not only on increasingly globalized professional standards, but also on local knowledge, on their own explanatory models for type 2 diabetes, and in reaction to local patient populations' explanatory models. Further, local knowledge and patient interactions shape the ways in which practicing physicians interpret global standards and best practices. Occasionally, they may even be reshaped beyond recognition without interfering with physicians' self-evaluation as participants in a universal, standardized scientific project. The interaction of globalizing standards of practice, local knowledge, and local explanatory models of illness can result in dramatically divergent medical practice across different social contexts--in this case, the U.S. and Japan.</p> / Dissertation

This Masters thesis conducts an ideological critique of the way 'the global' is constructed conceptually, particularly by transformative politics and the anti/alter global left. In addition it attempts to foreground the importance of ontological inquiry as an essential component of effective ideological critique. It has four chapters(plus an intro and conclusion); The first chapter looks at the ways that globality is currently constructed conceptually, both as an object of study by academia, and as an object of intervention by the global left. The analysis and critique in this chapter will establish the need for an ontologically informed approach to globality. The second chapter explores the precise meaning of the term 'ontology' as well as some of its common misuses by social science. It will focus on examining the ways that ontology is inherently political, and can be infiltrated by ideology. The third chapter draws heavily from the work of Zizek to develop a theoretical model for understanding the ontological production of globality, and how ideology is implicated. The fourth chapter attempts to take the conclusions from the theoretical model and use them to suggest alternative approaches to globality which might better the prospects for an effective transformative `global` politics. In particular this chapter draws heavily upon the Deleuzean notion of Immanence.

Two centuries after the printing press was invented, the first scholarly journal appeared in 1665. Less than two decades after the journal went online, the digital format is reshaping scholarly communication rapidly. We are moving quickly towards an open system of scholarship, and from a Western heritage of print scholarship to a future of global knowledge, a shift driven by the communications revolution. This thesis provides data describing the size and growth of the universe of scholarship, its global reach, how much of it is accessible free of charge on the internet and the rate at which that share is growing. Open Access together with development programs aimed at reducing price barriers to subscription journals have vastly increased the possibilities for accessing research in the South. The relevance to globalization and development is explored conceptually and revealed in the results.

Recently, many authors from various theoretical backgrounds have written books or articles trying to clarify what the role of the sovereign state is within the wider political context of “global politics.” This thesis seeks to critically engage with the way in which this debate has been framed by the vast majority of these authors. Indeed, while most authors frame this debate as an essentially empirical disagreement concerning the objective composition of global politics, we will be arguing that it is really a debate that concerns the problem of political foundation and the possibly changing nature of the dominant ways of answering this problem in contemporary “global politics.” From this perspective, the vast majority of those involved in this debate simply pass over - as somehow analytically uninteresting - most of the questions that would really need to be explained and understood. This thesis seeks to address this crucial oversight

This dissertation examines the ways in which socio-cultural, economic and religious ideologies shape discourses on women’s rights, higher education and empowerment in Ghana. The study starts from the premise that female identity in Ghana is constructed through discourses of reproduction that produce and reproduce unequal gender relations that negatively impact women’s higher socio-economic and educational attainments. Consequently, discourses of women’s rights and empowerment are inextricably linked to normative reproductive labour expectations. Using a postcolonial feminist theoretical framework, I argue that women’s rights and empowerment issues must be located within particular historical, local and global socio-cultural and political discourses in postcolonial societies. Subsequently, this study situates women’s rights concerns within the larger framework of global systemic inequalities that reinforce the local socio-cultural, political and economic disadvantages of women in Ghana. I interviewed women’s rights activists, conducted focus group discussions with male and mostly female participants during an intensive six-month field study. In line with postcolonial feminist epistemologies, I consider participants as knowledgeable subjects in the production of knowledge about their lived realities, by centering their voices and experiences in my analyses. The experiences of research participants (heterogeneous as they are) provide excellent insights into transnational feminisms, gendered postcolonial landscapes, and global cultural patriarchal hegemonies. These experiences also illustrate how global discourses of rights provide leverage to simultaneously challenge and politicize colonial discourses of race and gender in the global south. / Thesis (Ph.D, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2013-01-31 11:45:32.468

The fair trade movement attempts to use the market to bring about social change. Fair trade supports small-scale commodity producers in the global South by paying them a negotiated, fairer price. It also provides consumers with products that meet certain environmental, economic, and social criteria. While the primary goal of some fair trade enterprises is to provide market access for producers, others seek to reform the market, and still others would replace it. Like the fair trade movement, the co-operative movement strives to ensure that the benefits of production and exchange are more fairly distributed. Producer co-operatives in the South and consumer co-operatives in the North use aspects of globalization to create mutually beneficial links between producers and consumers. In some instances, these linkages are brokered by fair trade enterprises that are themselves organized as co-operatives, or are members of second-tier trading and distribution co-operatives.<p>Most intermediaries are involved in fair trade for diverse reasons and act in ways that may have a range of consequences with respect to market reform and market access. This research investigates the activities of large and small co-operatives involved in fair trade to examine whether, and to what degree they contribute to market reform. Based on secondary sources and on interviews with member-owners of first and second-tier fair trade co-operatives, as well as several co-operative specialists, I conclude that although co-operatives rarely transform markets, they can and do help to reform the market while helping producers to gain access to it on more equitable terms. Some leading retail co-operatives actively support the fair trade movement, promoting the interests of producers and consumers through the exchange of good quality products, promoting a critical view of the conventional market, and advocating for change. Although none of the enterprises in this study has been able to substantially change the market through its own activities, they are part of the international movement to achieve a fairer globalization. Fair trades commercial success, however, has attracted transnational enterprises not committed to the philosophy of fair trade, and this may ultimately threaten its ability to achieve lasting market reform.

This thesis examines the relationships between various groups of human rights, and the effect of globalization and the state on human rights protection. Two hypotheses are examined in path analysis of fifty-two African counties. The first hypothesis considers the proposition that economic, social, and cultural rights implemented prior to civil and political rights in Africa meet the needs of the population better than primary implementation of civil and political rights. The second hypothesis is that globalization has a negative effect on protection of all human rights and that its impact on rights is generally larger than the impact of the state. Within the context of a multivariate model, my analysis does not support the hypotheses. These findings are discussed with regard to the existing literature and several suggestions are proposed for future research.