Global Arena (global + arena)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


An ethnographer in the global arena: globography perhaps?

GLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 4 2003
Joy Hendry
In this article Hendry addresses the difficulties and apparent contradictions of applying the qualitative rigour of the ethnographic research method to fieldwork carried out in a global context. While pursuing a discourse evidently shared by people indigenous to many different parts of the world, the author reflects on why she feels the work she is doing still draws on elements of the qualitative strength of the method first developed by her own discipline of social anthropology. This subject is now somewhat unfashionable for reasons precisely associated with the discourse she is following, namely a status inequality seen as implicit in the representation of ,other' peoples. In the article she argues against throwing the baby out with the bathwater, however, and seeks to demonstrate how the value the ethnographic method gleaned from social anthropology offers an important contribution to understanding local aspects of global issues. [source]


Narrating deglobalization: Danish perceptions of a lost empire

GLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 3 2003
Karen Fog Olwig
This study of Danish engagement in the Danish West Indies, a colony sold to the United States in 1917, exemplifies deglobalization. This case shows that while globalization can be reversed in terms of interconnectedness, it may continue unabated in stories of former global ventures. Indeed, the delinked Danish West Indian past has offered a rich, imagined resource for Danish narratives of past achievements on the global arena that bear little relation to the modest Danish contribution to colonial history. Globalization therefore does not just involve actual interconnectedness, but cultural interpretations of global engagement, past or present. [source]


The Success of Sharing Societies: Lessons from History

HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 3 2007
Trevor Getz
Global history is often viewed as a competitive battleground in which civilizations, nations, or peoples repeatedly clash over resources or ideology. Correspondingly, victory in the global arena is often seen as belonging to the most inventive or innovative societies. Yet a more complex look at innovation reveals that it is often the result of a gradual and widely collaborative process, often involving the efforts or contributions of citizens of several states or societies. This article suggests that the myths surrounding invention and the reification of innovation as a cultural trait have distracted social scientists and policy makers from recognizing the significance of imported technologies, ideas, strategies, and products in helping societies overcome a wide range of challenges. It illustrates this contention with evidence from several historical episodes that suggest that successful societies are not only open to innovation from among their own populace, but also to contributions from abroad. [source]


Measurement and analysis of truck and rail shipping environment in India

PACKAGING TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE, Issue 6 2007
S. P. Singh
Abstract Free trade agreements have been on the rise in all regions of the world in the past decade. This has allowed for global distribution and marketing of products in an international market. Products once produced for domestic markets must now be able to compete in international markets without trade barriers. Increased international commerce and manufacturing have forced many packaging and logistics engineers to broaden their true understanding of the global distribution environment. India is a recent entrant on the global arena for manufacturing and services. While China's economic developments have dominated global headlines, India's own growth has been impressive as well, with a gross domestic product rising 5% per annum on average since 1990. India is hence primed to follow China as the next low-cost manufacturing super power. With an increasing interest from multinational corporations in conducting commerce with India, there arises a great need to understand the conditions of the transportation infrastructure there to promote logistical understanding of the distribution environments. This paper provides a brief overview of the road and rail transportation environment in India. It also provides the results of a 2 year study that measured and analysed truck and rail transport vibration for the major freight distribution routes between New Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkatta. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Mapping Common Futures: Customary Communities, NGOs and the State in Indonesia's Reform Era

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 1 2005
Carol Warren
The post-Suharto ,Reform Era' has witnessed explosive revitalization movements among Indonesia's indigenous minorities or ,customary'(adat) communities attempting to redress the disempowerment they suffered under the former regime. This study considers the current resurgence of customary claims to land and resources in Bali, where the state-sponsored investment boom of the 1990s had severe social and environmental impacts. It focuses on recent experiments with participatory community mapping, aimed at reframing the relationship between state and local institutions in planning and decision-making processes. Closely tied to the mapping and planning strategy have been efforts to strengthen local institutions and to confront the problems of land alienation and community control of resources. The diversity of responses to this new intervention reflects both the vitality and limitations of local adat communities, as well as the contributions and constraints of non-governmental organizations that increasingly mediate their relationships to state and global arenas. This ethnographic study explores participants' experiences of the community mapping programme and suggests its potential for developing ,critical localism' through long-term, process-oriented engagements between communities, governments, NGOs, and academic researchers. [source]


Toward a Geography of the Globalization of Architecture Office Networks

JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION, Issue 3 2005
PAUL L. KNOX
This paper examines the globalization of architectural practice, focusing on the global strategies of architectural firms in relation to those of advanced business services and to the evolving network of world cities that provides the spatial framework for economic globalization. A basic geography of global architecture office networks is identified, and multivariate statistical analysis is used to identify four distinctive global arenas in which architectural firms are involved. In a final section, the implications of these findings for architectural education are discussed. [source]


Managing complex development projects: arenas, knowledge processes and time

R & D MANAGEMENT, Issue 5 2002
Jonas Söderlund
The literature on project management has been dominated by techniques and methods for separating activities and making thought out plans. Closely related to this research stream is the research on product development, which seems to advocate somewhat of a different strategy where managing projects is a matter of enabling the crossing of functions and knowledge bases. This paper attempts to integrate these two lines of research. The paper is based on two in,depth case studies of project management in product development contexts. The projects under study were highly complex and consisted of multiple interrelated parts, which called for ,tightly coupled' organizational solutions. From our point of view, much effort by the project management teams was put into establishing a project that was responsive and where participating local units were oriented toward various ,global' measures. In our conception, the overall deadline seemed to have played an important role for promoting communal and interactive problem solving. Furthermore, the deadline emphasized the need for global arenas where the interactive problem solving could take place. It is argued that time,based controls set a global time for the project. The paper also demonstrates the importance of various global arenas, such as testing activities and project management forums, in order to keep track of time limits and to trigger global knowledge processes. Furthermore, based on the notion of ,separation' and ,coupling' of sub,systems and project phases, the paper suggests a model identifying four types of project organizations. The paper contributes to the knowledge on project management in complex product development. [source]