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This article is based on an analysis of the life history narrative of Antonia, a Peruvian immigrant in Chile, in the context of ethnographic research on Chilean women's experiences of domestic violence (DV) and the post-dictatorship state's responses to DV. Structural and socio-cultural constraints and forms of violence, including global and local economic inequalities, migration, racism, and intimate, gender-based abuses in both home and receiving countries interact in Antonia's experience to produce suffering and influence a form of gendered agency. This analysis points to the need for research and policies specifically designed to attend to the intersecting vulnerabilities migrant women who suffer DV often face, as well as their agentive acts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses case study approach to internationalizing and intermediate-level interdisciplinary course that explores the sources and consequences of inequality. A significant point of departure from traditional stratification courses is the assumption that inequality is a global phenomenon and that gender, class and race/ethnicity constitute a provocative prism of interactive social relations rather than distinct categories of analysis. The study of global inequalities introduces students to assumptions, propositions and debates about human behavior. Questions related to level of analysis, comparability, universalism/relativism and method are introduced in all elements of discussion and are applied to discussions of gender, class and race/ethnicity. Pedagogically, the case study method facilitates achievement of teaching goals by integrating conceptually difficult ideas and methods within a manageable framework of contemporary issues and perspectives. Moreover, the case method promotes collaborative learning and invites students to develop personal connections with seemingly distant and unrelated cultures. It is believed that an interdisciplinary expansion of the curriculum not only equips students with sharper critical skills but also develops a sensitivity to the global context of their identity.

In view of persistent global inequalities in scientific knowledge production with clear centers and peripheries, this paper examines a lingering concern for many scientists in the Global South: why is it, at times, so hard to have scientific insights from the South recognized? This paper addresses this big question from within a long-term field immersion in a Ugandan–Australian scientific collaboration in molecular biology. I show how disciplinary hierarchies of value affect the distribution of labor between Uganda and Australia and thematize the role of place and its affective atmospheres that texture the quotidian scientific work in this project. Unsurprisingly, they tend to devalue Ugandan sites and contributions, and turn Uganda into a rather unlikely site for new insights to emerge. However, in spite of doing devalued and outsourced "menial" labor such as fieldwork, Ugandan biologists' fieldwork involves affective encounters with their experimental banana plants that thereby become differently thinkable. The paper argues that attending to affective atmospheres that infuse research sites offers clues about scientists' position in global hierarchies and at the same time can help make room for insights that emanate from unexpected places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to reconsider 'pornification' as a universal concept to describe the mediatized process of proliferation of pornographic images in cultural spaces. Based on a textual and discursive analysis of newspaper clippings from the 1990s, autobiographical books and semi-structured interviews with Hungarian porn industry participants, this article explores the local factors that made Hungary an ideal place for the international porn industry to expand production after 1989. This article contributes to the growing body of literature in Porn Studies, which emphasizes the importance of the industrial nature and global inequalities in porn production. We examine the local discourses that justified the 'porn boom' as a sign of westernization and the country's catching-up to the West and present the key factors in the capitalist reintegration process that led to the expansion of the Hungarian porn industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some decades on after the MacBride Many Voices, One World report (1980) and the Maitland Missing Link report (1985), global telecommunications have only gained in importance, yet are still fissured by global inequalities. This situation is evident in one of the major developments underway in recent years: 5G mobile technologies. 5G is highly significant for present and future communication—and well advanced in its deployment and adoption. However, the dominant ways in which 5G has been imagined, planned, and deployed have been significantly shaped by interests and geopolitical forces that exclude many countries, and many of the putative beneficiaries of the emergent technology. To shed light on this impasse, in this paper, we offer a comparative analysis of policy and technology realities in two distinct countries that have been relatively overlooked in 5G: Peru and Indonesia. What we find is that national policies are premised on a shared interest and shared benefits, however, at this crucial point in deployment the outcomes are remote for the majority of citizens, especially in ways that matter for daily lives. In both these countries, 5G provides benefits for the small groups who can access and afford it, with others groups in position to be able to come online in the near future—as it provides opportunities for investments, fees, and penalties. However, for large segments of the populations, 5G, the prospects of connectivity, and the emerging digital economy are a long way off. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Periods of forced migration to and in Europe have been common in the past decade and show no expectation of stalling due to ongoing armed conflicts, global inequalities and the adverse effects of climate change. Nevertheless, the provision of accommodation for asylum seekers and refugees continues to depend on temporary, ad hoc solutions. In the context of housing financialisation and shortage of affordable housing across European cities, this decreases opportunities for integration and securing other needs, such as jobs, language acquisition and childcare, but increases the risk of refugee homelessness and social exclusion. Based on cross-national Urban Living Labs exchanges in Leipzig, Riga, Lund, Helsingborg and Vienna, this commentary argues for a European agenda for long-term housing solutions for forced migrants in the arrival and settling phases that tackle issues from discrimination to access, to belonging. Importantly, creating long-term housing solutions for refugees would benefit whole housing systems as instruments of social inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions on migration and development geography have both suffered from 'ageism': an overwhelming preoccupation with children and the young in the latter and widespread assumptions that migrants are generally young adults, who only leave behind children in the former. It is unsurprising, then, that migration-development debates have also been biased in favour of the young. In this paper we consider the place of older people and of ageing as a process in migration and development debates. We argue that older people, thus far overlooked, are also involved in migration and development, in heterogeneous ways and in different geographical contexts. While doing this, we challenge the conventional view of older migrants as inactive and vulnerable and of older people as merely recipients of development interventions. We argue that experiences of ageing and global inequalities are increasingly entwined and demonstrate this through five dimensions of migration and development debates: remittances, diasporas, return migration, international retirement migration, and intergenerational care. Older people and ageing as a process are central to each one of these dimensions, and it is imperative to pave further research of heterogeneity of ageing within contexts of global inequality. (189 words) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, scholarly interest in "digital disconnection" and related concepts has grown in media and communication studies, and in related disciplines. The idea of digital disconnection explicitly references digitalization as a key societal development, creating conditions of intensified and embedded media involvement across social life. The notion of digital disconnection thereby represents a critical response to mediated conditions that characterize our societies and permeate our everyday lives. In this special issue, we take stock of the contributions, challenges, and promises of digital disconnection research. We showcase how digital disconnection scholarship intersects with other developments in media and communication research, and is part of debates and empirical analysis in related disciplines from tourism studies to psychology. We argue that one of the key strengths of the emergent work is the variety of social domains and conceptual debates that are included and explored in digital disconnection research. On the other hand, we also point to the need for further methodological development, conceptual consolidation, and empirical diversity, particularly in the face of global inequalities and ongoing crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion that Western ways are superior can be used to justify subsidising advocacy to the poor in Africa who might otherwise reject those ways out of ignorance. This ignores differences in culture that can trip up Western logic in Africa. When generosity is the reason to subsidise Western interventions, outside agents can be paid back in honour in ways not appropriate for Christians to accept. Perceived global inequalities used to convince donors to part with their money are impositions when those inequalities are not realised by recipients. When something inherently good, like the gospel, is routinely subsidised, some African people only value it when it comes with money. This disenfranchises poor evangelists. In order to overcome missionary ignorance, promotion of the prosperity gospel, and corruption associated with excessive foreign subsidies, this article advocates that vulnerable mission, namely, foreign intervention using local languages and resources, be permitted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The ability to question global structures and analyze one's own positionality in relation to economic, political, and social forces is essential for college graduates. Although study abroad programs claim to develop students into global citizens, most studies do not critically examine student learning about global inequalities. Purpose: This study analyzed the process of critical consciousness raising about economic inequalities through experiential and emotional learning. Methodology/Approach: It employed ethnographic observations, in-depth interviews, and written journals of 27 U.S. college students who participated in a Ghana study abroad program in years 2016–2018. Data were analyzed using an inductive thematic approach. Findings/Conclusions: Witnessing and being emotionally affected by unjust global realities allowed students to question their actions and assumptions. Even though they seemed to have become more self-aware of their privilege and positionality, few of them questioned the global structures underlying economic injustice. Despite the limited analysis, they demonstrated inspiration to learn and do more. Implications: Moving beyond education's traditional focus on students' cognitive domain is crucial for critical consciousness raising about social injustice and global interconnections of oppression. Higher education should ensure a critical analysis of economic inequalities both abroad and in their own country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to conceptualize the relational dimension of the border regime and its function in reinforcing and reproducing global inequalities. It does so by analyzing the social connections that shaped my fieldwork on The Gambia's “backway,” the illegalized trip to Europe. In particular, the article focuses on what I define as moments of ethical entrapment that my main Gambian interlocutor and I faced while interacting with people in Serekunda. In interrogating those entrapments as simultaneously provoked by and exposing the border regime, the analysis highlights how borderwork and the potentiality of border violence constantly haunt social connections at/in/across borders. At the same time, the article looks at the emergence of such entrapments as a product of the shifting and ambiguous positionalities subjects hold in the different nodes of borders’ temporally and spatially scattered assemblages. I argue that the analysis of such social connections and ethical entrapments discloses the implications of doing anthropology of the border regime through the border regime itself. On the one hand, borders’ capacity to act on and through subjects—even beyond their conscious will—reinforce the principle of dissimilarity on which they rely and reproduce. On the other hand, the ethical entrapments emerging from the connections that the border regime creates between people illuminate its socially productive, counterintuitive, and fragmented dimensions, potentially opening space for what Povinelli defined as the otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a learning module to engage students in the global inequality debate using Google Public Data World Development Indicators. Goals of this article are to articulate the importance and urgency of teaching global issues to American students; situate the central debate in the globalization literature, paying particular attention to global inequalities and trajectories of convergence or divergence in life chances; and demonstrate the value of engaging students in the analysis of macro-level data. These data enable students to test assumptions concerning gaps in opportunities that separate wealthy societies from poor societies and determine whether these gaps are narrowing or expanding. Depending on the course content and combinations of indicators studied, students reach different conclusions concerning the merits of a “flat world” thesis. We find that teaching about global inequalities and engagement with global data reshapes students’ beliefs and enhances student interest in the concerns of global relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A year ago the World Stroke Organisation (WSO) highlighted the enormous global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on stroke care. In this review, we consider a year later where we are now, what the future holds, and what the long-term effects of the pandemic will be on stroke. Stroke occurs in about 1.4% of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 infection, who show an excess of large vessel occlusion and increased mortality. Despite this association, stroke presentations fell dramatically during the pandemic, although emerging data suggest that total stroke mortality may have risen with increased stroke deaths at home and in care homes. Strategies and guidelines have been developed to adapt stroke services worldwide, and protect healthcare workers. Adaptations include increasing use of telemedicine for all aspects of stroke care. The pandemic is exacerbating already marked global inequalities in stroke incidence and mortality. Lastly, the pandemic has had a major impact on stroke research and funding, although it has also emphasized the importance of large scale collaborative research initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the resurgence of interest in inheritance flows following the publication of Piketty's work, little attention has been paid to the affective practices that ensure the success of inheritance processes as wealth moves down generations of dynastic families. This article explores these practices, drawing on research among wealth managers, philanthropy advisors, family offices and their clients, to show how philanthropy is promoted by advisors to the wealthy as a tool to support inheritance and family business succession planning. In this process, advisors draw on the philanthropic imagination to style wealthy families as custodians of both private capital and the common good, thus mirroring the narratives used by philanthrocapitalists to legitimise their wealth in the public sphere. Here, however, the discourse of philanthrocapitalism is turned inwards to the private realm of the family, to persuade younger generations to rally around the collective project of the custodianship of wealth. By bringing together research on philanthropy and inheritance, this article contributes to the growing sociological literature on elites and the global inequalities driven by their accumulation of wealth. It shows how wealth accumulation is increasingly dependent not only on the mechanics of financial markets and inheritance flows, but also on affective wealth management strategies framed around ethical notions of kinship and social responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research note examines the dimension and characteristics of the outflow of Indian high-skilled and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) professionals to five key destination countries, namely, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Indian migrants constitute a significant and growing share of high-skilled and STEM professionals in the major immigration countries of the world. Statistics highlight the proposition that retaining them is vital for the origin countries to realize the Sustainable Development Goals with particular focus on mitigating global inequalities in the 21st century. This note also addresses objective 1 of the Global Compact for Migration by exploring specific statistics on emigration from India representing the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed and exacerbated the global inequalities regarding the availability and access to vaccines. Many terms have appeared in the academic literature (“vaccine colonialism,” “vaccine nationalism,” “vaccine apartheid”) trying to capture and interpret these inequalities, failing in most cases to realistically explain the upstream causes of the observed injustices. A Marxist perspective on the contrary emphasizes the structural causes of inequalities in capitalism and attributes them to the existence of economic exploitation. “Vaccine imperialism,” which refers to the control that advanced industrialized countries exert on the development, production, and distribution of vaccines at the expense of less-developed economies, can describe and explain in a more realistic way the observed inequalities during the pandemic. Our study proposes a circuit of vaccine imperialism that explains how economic imperialist exploitation takes place via transfers of value from less-developed economies (vaccine recipient countries) to imperialist economies (vaccine producing and patent holder countries) using four different channels: (a) protection of intellectual property (IP) rights (patents), (b) earnings from royalty payments for the use of vaccines (monopolistic prices and profits), (c) exercise of monopoly power on the production and distribution of vaccines (control over the quantity of vaccines supplied, exclusion of competitors through vaccine licensing), and (d) public debt servicing.JEL Classification: I14, I18, D43, F54, F55, H51 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interrogates the European biometric ID system and securitisation measures in West African borders which have become detrimental to, first, African migrants and, second, both African and European security objectives. Using the Niger’s experience, we demonstrate how migrants’ identity problems as well as their atomisation and loosening of their social integration are directly linked to the criminalising and dehumanising border security practices they now face. This article reveals the multiple forms and effects of the unimpeded European biometric/digital control over African territorial borderlands and (im)mobilities. First is the subversion of African states’ administrative, decisional, sovereign and territorial prerogatives by way of enacting digital territorial borderscapes that enforce migrants’ identity de(re)construction. Second, the use of ‘biometric power’ to facilitate a specific modality of neoliberal biometric power relations which perpetuates global inequalities in biometric identification and (im)mobility governance. Lastly, migrants’ recourse to agentic mechanisms to contest the European biometric ID system, via discoveries and implantation of parallel border routes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last four decades, feminist sports media research has developed into an established transdisciplinary branch of research that contributes to highlighting the contradictions and unevenness of social change at the level of women's sports and its positioning in society. In this context, the increasing media visibility of athlete mothers as an expression of an emerging social phenomenon provides an opportunity to examine and reflect on the patterns of media portrayal of sportswomen. This article focuses on the media representations of Gloria Kotnik, the Slovenian snowboarder and bronze medalist at the 2022 Winter Olympics. Through textual analysis, it attempts to identify how Kotnik was portrayed in selected Slovenian media and what role her motherhood, in particular, played in this. While ambivalence was identified as a predominant pattern in the media representations of Kotnik, the role of motherhood was presented both as something seemingly incompatible with the role of an elite athlete and in a way that perceived these two roles as compatible. Due to the reproduction of traditional gender ideologies and hierarchies, the article problematizes both patterns and concludes by linking the desire for social change with the need to redefine the ethics of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why, and to what extent, must taxpayers share the costs of raising children with parents? The most influential argument over this question has been the public goods argument : Taxpayers must share costs with parents because and to the extent that child-rearing contributes toward public goods by helping to develop valuable human capital. However, political theorists have not examined the public goods argument in a context in which replacement migration is available: If replacement migration can provide valuable human capital more efficiently than child-rearing, can the public goods argument still justify a taxpayer obligation to share the costs of child-rearing? This article argues that there are importantly different versions of the public goods argument, and that on a plausible version of that argument, it can withstand the replacement migration challenge under most circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines coloniality of research and discusses the theoretical foundations, ethical imperatives, and practical ways for conducting decolonial research for justice. It emphasises the need to shift away from research paradigms and approaches that perpetuate coloniality to a commitment to embracing the complexities and challenges of conducting decolonial research. The article contributes to the broader discourse on decolonising knowledge production. Drawing on the works of scholars addressing disobedient and defiant research, the article advocates for transformative decolonial praxis, suggesting the need to reimagine research and displace the hegemony and dominance of Western knowledge systems, which marginalise and delegitimise other epistemological traditions. Beyond critiquing coloniality embedded within research, the article proposes practical ways to inform anti-colonial, anti-racist and anti-oppressive research practice. It argues that decolonial research requires defiance and resistance against non-relational, hierarchical, and extractive practices, involving critical examination of assumptions and values, centring non-Western voices and perspectives, dismantling coloniality and working towards social and epistemic justice in solidarity with Indigenous and other historically marginalised and oppressed groups. It calls researchers to integrate decolonial principles and frameworks into their research practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that the social reproduction discourse from the 1970s onwards, or the so-called domestic labour debate, has been about two things: value on the one hand, and the body and intimacy on the other. While there is a highly visible stake in how domestic labour is understood from the viewpoint of value, which is still debated today, the contribution of the discourse to understanding the body and intimacy in capitalism is more hidden and less discussed. In this paper, I review the discourse on social reproduction from the perspective of value, with a particular focus on recent contributions, Jared Sacks' and Alessandra Mezzadri's works. Then, I will discuss the discourse of social reproduction from the perspective of the body and intimacy and finally link this aspect to the lessons around value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite limited progress within international institutions, the need for articulating a regulatory framework for cyber operations in outer space is becoming a pressing concern. One precondition for regulation is to share cybersecurity and outer-space common terminology that can inform the negotiation of standards, policies and laws. While the UN Institute for Disarmament Research has recently issued a baseline policy glossary, binding technical definitions are missing, and the lack of a binding international cybersecurity regime adds to the obsolescence of a binding outer-space regime tracing back to half a century ago. As the IEEE SA embarks on the drafting of the first-ever technical standard for cybersecure-by- design outer-space missions, scoping and conceptual challenges abound. Technical standards are US-centred, non-binding, engineering-intensive exercises, where lawyers and Asian jurisdictions are only marginally involved; nevertheless, as China's framework for cybersecurity is refined and its involvement in outer-space policing deepens, its disengagement from Western-driven standard-setting bodies appears unsustainable. Drawing on the specific challenge of defining what makes a cyber system 'mission-critical', I expose the necessity to examine how domestic cybersecurity laws from a diverse range of States identify 'critical' information infrastructure. Generalising therefrom, I advocate a jurisdictionally inclusive process that combines American supremacy in technical standard-setting for outer-space missions with Chinese normative contributions to cybersecurity regulation, including on data localisation and mandatory multilevel cyber-hygiene requirements. I further argue that involving legal experts from a diverse range of jurisdictions and sociolegal cultures may enhance the global reception of standardisation outputs, thus securing higher degrees of voluntary compliance therewith. This could foster cooperation and promote regional and global satellite cybersecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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A growing body of work has problematised how global epistemic inequality is reproduced in contemporary university settings and epistemic cultures – thinking through the lens of Eurocentrism and utilising the language of a Global North and South. However, the extent to which a relationship between geopolitical and epistemic inequality is woven into knowledge production within Europe has received less attention. Rising EU funding opportunities have facilitated a corresponding climb in transnational European social science collaborations, in concert with an expansion of empirical locations with which these projects engage. Still, increases in member state participation do not necessarily contribute to a more balanced epistemic landscape for knowledge production. Not all countries are treated equally as cases and often, these patterns of inequality reflect what Maria do Mar Pereira calls the epistemic status of nations: the idea that certain countries and continents are considered more or less likely to produce valuable or exportable scholarly knowledge. In this article, Pereira's theory of epistemic status is extended in its implications to study choices for the selection of countries as cases. We use both quantitative data from the EU CORDIS register and ethnographic data exploring academic and collaborative practices in transnational EU-funded projects. The article addresses the 'where' of collaborative research by focusing on epistemic attributes rather than participatory optics. In doing so, we reflect not only on the structures and strategies of science funding in Europe but also further unsettle discussions around global epistemic inequality within academic theory and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a high interest in art's change potential towards sustainability. Yet, there is still a lot unknown about this change potential, including from the perspective of artists themselves. The research questions, thus, are: Do artists who create climate-related art have goals and target audiences regarding their climate-related work? If so, which goals and audiences do they aim for, and why? 30 interviews with artists having been born or living in the United Kingdom, United States of America or Germany were conducted and analyzed. A framework of eco-social change was applied to the interview transcripts, and artists' goals and audiences were analyzed through thematic analysis. The research finds that artists have a desire for societal impact and wider audiences, but some also have narrower audiences and smaller changes in mind. Moreover, some artists engage in an impact reflexivity about not only the potential but also the limits of their practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview and analysis of how the study of sport at the intersection with the media has developed in the Slovenian context over the last three decades. The first part of the article briefly explains the importance and role of sport and media in the broader social context. By looking in particular at sports journalism and introducing the Slovenian context, the purpose of the study is clarified. The second part identifies and reviews all academic research contributions published on the highlighted intersection and during the selected period. Based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the most frequently addressed aspects of the sports media system, the main research topics identified and the media outlets studied, the main findings are summarized and highlighted. While studies addressing different aspects of nationality predominate, attention to gendered nationalism is highlighted as particularly valuable in the context of studies focusing on gender and its intersections. Event-oriented and decontextualized sports content is problematized in the context of recent studies focusing on some aspects of sports journalism. In the final section of the article, some guidelines are formulated to encourage further research in (and of) this geographical area (and beyond). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grewal, Guha, and Becker (2024; GGB) provided an initial position paper, outlining the promises and perils of AI, as well as three grand societal challenges linked to AI. Seven sets of researchers have provided insightful commentaries in response to GGB (2024), in efforts that introduce new themes or else challenge some of the initial claims. With this response paper, we summarize those commentaries, clarify points of agreement and contrast, and augment the themes in GGB (2024) based on the insights gained from the commentaries. Specifically, we present two additional grand societal challenges linked to AI, reflecting our continued dedication to broadening discussions about both the promises and the perils of AI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A production boundary consistent with Marx's theory of value may be drawn around labor that is quantitatively predicated by output at the point of exchange, as opposed to being merely causally predicated. The key difference between that production boundary and received Marxist doctrine on unproductive labor is that all other labor is excluded, rather than only such other labor that also falls to be treated as forming part of the "sphere of circulation." Alternatively put, both sides of the "smile curve" are unproductive of value, rather than just the right-hand side. This conclusion substantiates the analytical nexus as between material production and global inequality to be found in critical global value chain literature. JEL Classification : B51, D43, D46, F66, O34 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book review titled "Book Review: Pollution Is Colonialism" discusses Max Liboiron's book, which offers a radical perspective on science and technology studies (STS) from an anticolonial standpoint. Liboiron, the founder of the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR), explores the ethics of data collection and use, emphasizing the importance of good land relations and anticolonialism. The review highlights the book's critique of dominant science, particularly in the field of economics, and its call for a comprehensive transformation of thinking and living to address pollution and promote good land relations. The reviewer suggests that the book's insights are valuable for political economy and advocates for a recognition of the planet as land rather than a resource. [Extracted from the article]

The republican tradition seems to have a blind spot about global justice. It has had little to say about pressing international issues such as world poverty or global inequalities. According to the old, if apocryphal, adage: extra rempublicam nulla justitia. Some may doubt that distributive justice (as opposed to freedom or citizenship) is the primary virtue of republican institutions; and at any rate most would agree that republican values have traditionally been realized in the polis not in the (oxymoronic) cosmopolis. The article sketches a republican account of global non-domination which suggests that duties of distributive justice are not bounded to the institutions of a single society. In particular, it argues that republicans have good reasons to seek to curb those global inequalities which underpin what I call capability-denying domination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patents are a performance, in both their creation and subsequent enactions. They require skill, tacit/embodied knowledge, and practice if they are to be successfully enacted. Western intellectual property law, however, is blind to the performative aspect of patents. This sociolegal reality has helped to create significant asymmetries between nations, particularly after the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) exported Western patent law to all corners of the globe. The article begins by reviewing the philosophical underpinnings of Western patent law, focusing specifically on those aspects that locate intellectual property within the disembodied subject. Next, attention turns to detailing the formation and implementation of TRIPS. Two asymmetries created by TRIPS are then discussed, which take place at the front and back ends of the patenting process. When taken together, these asymmetries work to further lock in global inequalities. The article concludes with suggestions about how these global inequalities might be reduced in light of this argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the emergence of informal leadership in multinational teams. Building on and extending status characteristics theory, the article proposes and tests a model that describes how global inequalities reproduce in multinational teams, and accounts for who gets to lead these teams. It is argued that an individual’s language (i.e. a specific status characteristic) and nationality (i.e. a diffuse status characteristic) predict deference received from peers (i.e. leadership status). However, individuals enhance and/or compensate for the effects of their status characteristics by virtue of their core self-evaluations. A study of over 230 individuals from 46 nationalities working in 36 self-managing teams generally supports the expected main and moderation effects. Individual core self-evaluations enhance an otherwise weak effect of English proficiency, but compensate for low levels of national development. The article concludes with implications for practice, and linking micro- and macro-level theories of status and global inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scholarly tradition of New Institutional Economics has tended to explain the «rise of the West» and global inequalities through models distinguishing virtuous institutional paths, which grant property rights and the enforcement of contracts, to non-virtuous ones of which Mediterranean absolutist monarchies are considered to be paradigmatic examples. This essay retraces the emergence of this grand narrative, examining its Anglo-centric leanings and its use of the concept of «absolutism ». By reviewing historiographical studies dealing with the question of southern Italy’s economic decline during the early modern age, and by investigating the reforms enacted during the eighteenth century in the Kingdom of Naples in order to create economically efficient institutions, it challenges dichotomous images opposing predatory absolutist states to development-enhancing institutional models dominated by merchants and entrepreneurs. Through an archive-based analysis of the reforms of the judicial and the customs system, it argues that economic and political power asymmetries amongst different states deeply affect the attempts at institutional reform within individual states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global environmental change (GEC) carries serious implications for developing countries and for North/South relations. The article argues that global inequalities need to be understood against the background of structural adjustment and indebtedness that characterized the 1980s. Environmental policy priorities are largely concerned with livelihood sustainability in the South, rather than the longer-term risks usually associated with GEC. However, the `global' agenda of climate change, biodiversity loss and deforestation is intimately linked to the everyday livelihood concerns of poor people in developing countries. Looked at from the perspective of the South there are serious difficulties in agreeing to take measures to reduce atmospheric emissions when the `problem' was not one of their making. The authors conclude that, for this reason alone, a real global contract will need to address underlying `development' issues, principally poverty, before the global concerns of the Worth can be successfully met. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a term, the ‘structure of informality’ aims to elucidate how informality is produced, and why it persists. I argue that informality is engendered through the informal/formal dialectic, which constitutes a multiscalar process that creates global inequalities across time and space. We can better understand informality by studying colonial socio-spatial inequalities created through urbanization. Taking seriously the arguments put forward by Cobbinah and Olajide, I argue that the structure of informality must also be applied to understand contemporary neocolonial practices in relation to sustainable development. These practices include the use and misuse of informality in relation to three topics: (1) as a mode of generating and sustaining socio-spatial and economic inequalities; (2) the nascent and undertheorized relationship between informality and climate change; and (3) the importance of understanding and theorizing global informality at the heart of sustainable development to influence policy and practice. These topics have grown in salience because of the global push towards decarbonization, and despite informality being a dominant mode of economic, spatial, and political life in most of the world. Informality lies at the heart of sustainable development, thus making it essential to re-energize debates on its structures, forms, and driving forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to introduce a holistic framework of power that can serve to examine constraining and enabling manifestations of power within international Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) partnerships. The article is grounded in the recognition that the international SDP sector is wrapped up in 'post-colonial residue' and brings to the fore issues and power and inequality based on the construction and maintenance of hegemonic power relations. The article calls for SDP scholars to challenge the nature of partnerships and practices within the sector between international partners from the global north and global south. To develop and advance the case for this novel theoretical framework for studying power in SDP, the article is organized into three parts. The first part highlights the critical literature from the SDP and international development sectors concerning the nature of power relations with a specific focus on critical debates concerning social hierarchies. The second part offers a theoretical proposition and a three-phase theoretical model drawing on the work of Giulianotti, Lukes and Coleman to argue that power within international SDP partnerships is not static but needs to be recognized as a complex interplay of actions and outcomes. Finally, the article highlights how and why the holistic theoretical framework may be useful for SDP scholars in analysing and challenging power relations in future empirical-based research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed significant variation in the scale and form of decommodification across the capitalist world economy. To explore these uneven decommodification geographies this article develops a new conceptual framework that combines a critical Polanyian reading of decommodification with Latin American insights into centre-periphery structures and relations. The decommodification of land and labour in Britain (centre) and Ecuador (periphery) are then analysed from this conceptual perspective. The comparative analysis reveals significant variation in the scale and form of decommodification between the two countries during the pandemic. However, some important similarities are also observed, especially in relation to the (de) commodification of land. Here, the article draws on the corporate food regime literature to better understand similarities and differences between Britain and Ecuador. By revealing the uneven and shifting terrain of decommodification, this article makes a novel contribution to wider debates about the capitalist conjuncture and the intensifying crises of neoliberal capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The articles in this special section employ histories of cities to examine the relationship between human ambitions and the transformation of space, the development of power discrepancies, and unequal access to material and natural resources. They also reveal the relevance of this quintessential human creation to global dynamics on our planet by unveiling the complex and often messy intersection between urban trajectories, local, imperial, or national histories and longue durée global developments. More than a case study, each article delves into the details of the materiality of the urban history they examine to explain how cities exist in the world, or in Richard Harris's words, "how cities matter" to our shared planetary past and present. In this manner, they answer the call for new conversations about the historical relationship between our urban past and our broader global reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]