Everyday Politics of the World Economy

Analyses how 'everyday' decisions and actions can shape and transform the world economy.

John M. Hobson (Edited by), Leonard Seabrooke (Edited by)

9780521877725, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 November 2007

264 pages, 6 tables
23.6 x 15.9 x 2 cm, 0.542 kg

' … this book should be credited for signalling a much-needed ontological shift in international political economy …' Development and Change

How do our everyday actions shape and transform the world economy? This volume of original essays argues that current scholarship in international political economy (IPE) is too highly focused on powerful states and large international institutions. The contributors examine specific forms of 'everyday' actions to demonstrate how small-scale actors and their decisions can shape the global economy. They analyse a range of seemingly ordinary or subordinate actors, including peasants, working classes and trade unions, lower-middle and middle classes, female migrant labourers and Eastern diasporas, and examine how they have agency in transforming their political and economic environments. This book offers a novel way of thinking about everyday forms of change across a range of topical issues including globalisation, international finance, trade, taxation, consumerism, labour rights and regimes. It will appeal to students and scholars of politics, international relations, political economy and sociology,

1. Introducing everyday IPE: decentring the discipline - revitalising the margins John M. Hobson and Leonard Seabrooke
Part I. Regimes as Cultural Weapons of the Weak: 2. The agency of labour in global change: reimagining the spaces and scales of trade union praxis within a global economy Andrew Herod
3. The agency of peripheral actors: small state tax havens and international regimes as weapons of the weak J. C. Sharman
4. Southern sites of female agency: informal regimes and female migrant labour resistance in East Asia Michele Ford and Nicola Piper
Part II. Global Economic Change From Below: 5. The everyday social sources of imperial and hegemonic financial orders Leonard Seabrooke
6. Everyday investor subjects and global financial change: the rise of Anglo-American mass investment Paul Langley
7. Peasants as subaltern agents in Latin America: neoliberalism, resistance, and the power of the powerless Adam David Morton
Part III. Bringing Eastern Agents In: 8. Eastern agents of globalisation: oriental globalisation in the rise of Western capitalism John M. Hobson
9. Diasporic agents and trans-Asian flows in the making of Asian modernity: the case of Thailand Ara Wilson
10. The agency of subordinate polities: Western hegemony in the East Asian mirror Shogo Suzuki
11. Conclusion: everyday IPE research, teaching and policy agendas John M. Hobson and Leonard Seabrooke.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Development economics & emerging economies [KCM], Macroeconomics [KCB], International relations [JPS]