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Contesting Globalization: Space and Place in the World Economy
by André C. Drainville , Laval University, Canada. With a foreword by Saskia Sassen, Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago, USA

RIPE Series in Global Political Economy

Routledge

February 2004: 234x156: 232pp: illus. 15 photos and line drawings
Hb: 0-415-31929-3: £70.00
Pb: 0-415-31930-7: £19.99

Market: Politics, Sociology and Geography

Published by: Taylor and Francis Group

Synopsis:
This book is an innovative and original addition to the literature on globalization and examines the challenges faced by those wishing to develop progressive visions of transparent global governance and civil society. The author traces the history and development of the institutions of global governance (The World Bank, IMF, WTO etc) as well as the emergence of the anti-globalization movement. The author argues that we are at a unique moment where social forces have moved from national and international struggles to a global struggle and intervention in the world economy. A series of case studies examine the ways in which cities have become contested sites for global struggles from the London dockworkers strikes of the 19th Century to the recent demonstrations against the international financial institutions in Genoa, Seattle and Washington.

'Drainville recognises that the expression of dissidence today is too often distorted by the immaterial "ghosts" who inhabit common discourse - the "people", the "workers", "patriarchy", etc. - and that resistance in our time must instead be rooted in real people and places. He explores the confusion in language that mingles a "civil society" that is called into being by dominant power as a means of "democratic legitimation", with dissent that arises out of concrete situations of injustice and oppression. This book is at the beginning of an inquiry into the metaphors and eventual concepts that will make sense of present and future struggles for social and political change.' - Professor Robert Cox, York University, Canada

'With remarkable insight and creativity, André Drainville imagines the world economy as a city and uses specific moments of urban conflict to show that global politics is a "placed politics". Far from emerging in some abstract space of flows, global power is specific, contingent, and relational. It is made and contested in situated struggles that spring from placed experiences. Contesting Globalization uses the situationist urban imaginary to enrich our understanding of the concrete making and unmaking of transnational political subjects. It is a major work in critical urban theory and international political economy.' - Professor Michael P. Smith, University of California, Davis, USA

Author's previous publications include:
The Yellow Notebooks of Valérien Francoeur, heuristic murderer (fiction) (Published French & Romanian, 2002)


Contents:
Introduction:
1. More than Ghosts: Subjects in places in the world economy
2. Three episodes from Cities in the World Economy
3. Occupying Places in the World Economy
4. The Civic Ordering of Global Social Relations
5. Integrated World-creation: Outlines of a radical articulation Conclusion