Globalization in Practice

The concept of globalization has become ubiquitous in social science and in the public consciousness and is often invoked as an explanation for a diverse range of changes to economies, societies, politics and cultures - both as a positive liberating force and as a wholly negative one. Whilst our understanding of the politics, economics, and social resonance of the phenomenon has become increasingly sophisticated at the macro-level, this book argues that globalization too often continues to be depicted as a set of extra-terrestrial forces with no real physical manifestation, except as effects. The essays challenge this dominant understanding of 'globalization from above' through explorations of the mundane means by which globalization has been achieved. Instead of a focus on the meta-political economy of global capitalism, the book concentrates on the everyday life of capitalism, the not-so-'little' things that keep the 'large' forces of globalization ticking over. With its eye on the mundane, the book demonstrates that a series of everyday and, consequently, all but invisible formations critically facilitate and create the conditions under which globalization has flourished. The emphasis is on concrete moments in the history of capitalism when these new means of regular reproduction were invented and deployed. Only by understanding these infrastructures can we understand the dynamics of globalization. In short, punchy essays by distinguished researchers from across a range of disciplines, this book provides a new way of understanding globalization, moving away from the standard accounts of global forces, economic flows, and capitalist dynamics, to show how ordinary practices and artefacts are crucial elements and symbols of globalization.

Nigel Thrift is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Warwick. He joined Warwick from the University of Oxford where he was made Head of the Division of Life and Environmental Sciences in 2003 before becoming Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research in 2005. He has been the recipient of a number of distinguished academic awards including the Royal Geographical Society Victoria Medal for contributions to geographic research in 2003, Distinguished Scholarship Honors from the Association of American Geographers in 2007 and the Royal Scottish Geographical Society Gold Medal in 2008. He was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 2003 and received an Honorary LLD from the University of Bristol in 2010. His current research spans a broad range of interests, including international finance; cities and political life; non-representational theory; affective politics; and the history of time. Adam Tickell is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research and Knowledge Transfer) and Professor of Geography at the University of Birmingham and has worked at the Universities of Leeds, Manchester, Southampton and London. He received his BA and PhD from the University of Manchester. He was editor of Transactions, Institute of British Geographers, has co-edited books on economic geography with Trevor Barnes, Jamie Peck and Eric Sheppard and has authored numerous papers on his areas of interest. Steve Woolgar is Chair of Marketing at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, Head of the Science and Technology Studies group at InSIS (Institute for Science, Innovation and Society), and is a Professorial Fellow of Green Templeton College. He has published widely in social studies of science and technology, social problems and social theory, including Laboratory Life: the construction of scientific facts (with B Latour, Princeton), Science: the Very Idea (Routledge), Knowledge and Reflexivity (Sage), The Cognitive Turn: sociological and psychological perspectives on science (with S.Fuller and M.de Mey, Kluw