Bøger i Dialectics of the Global serien

Infrastructures are fundamental means through which societies create spaces, but little is known about the precise ways in which this occurs. How have infrastructures animated certain understandings of space? How do infrastructures stabilize, or undermine, the spatial formats in which we live, which shape our everyday practices and which regulate access to services and resources? And, conversely, how do spaces frame the ways infrastructural provision is organized? How do existing spaces shape infrastructural development and the scope and forms of access to vital services such as transport and water? In this volume, historians and sociologists draw on a range of fascinating case studies and provide compelling answers to these questions. Exploring, among others, the provision of irrigation water in nineteenth-century Los Angeles, the invention of airport transit zones, and the infrastructural practices of homeless people in Berlin, the book demonstrates how the making of spaces through infrastructure is deeply political. Intent on revealing uneven geographies of provision and hierarchies of access, the contributors highlight how infrastructures are products of global entanglements.

It is now widely recognised that a Cold War perspective falls short in unfolding the complex geographies of connections and the multipolarity of actions and transactions that were shaped through the movement of individuals and ideas from Africa to the "East" and from the "East" to Africa in the decades in which African countries moved to independence. Adopting an interdisciplinary, transregional perspective, this volume casts new light on aspects of the role of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the decolonisation of Africa. Taking further themes explored in a collection of essays published by the editors in 2019, the twelve case studies by authors from South Africa, Czech Republic, Portugal, Russia, Hungary, Italy, Canada, Serbia, and Germany draw on new sources to explore the history of the ties that existed between African liberation movements and the socialist bloc, some of which continue to influence relationships today. Chapters contribute to three relevant main themes that resonate in a number of scholarly fields of inquiry, ranging from Global Studies, Transregional Studies, Cold War Studies, (Global) History to African Studies, Eastern European, Russian and Slavic Studies: Reconsiderations, Resources, and Reverberations. Drawing upon newly opened archives and combining transregional perspectives with sources in different languages, chapters explicitly point out the shortcomings of past research and debates in the respective field. They highlight new avenues which have been developing and which need to be further developed (Reconsiderations). Selected case studies address the resources of those being active and involved in decolonisation processes, be it in East, North, West and South. They reveal: Which resources (both material and intellectual) are the actors drawing upon? On the other hand: From which resources are individuals on one side or the other reciprocally or intermittently (intentionally) kept away? (Resources). Finally, the third theme puts an emphasis on the historicity of the processes depicted. Studies point to the gaps and dead ends of international support, the paths that peter out, but also to repercussions and reverberations up until today. (Reverberations) Taken these three themes together, the individual chapters contribute to the overall question of: Which general historical narratives about the second half of the 20th century are changing based on these new research findings?

As essential components of globalization, the study of practices and processes of space formation promotes a nuanced understanding of globalization. How do people create spaces for social action under the global condition, especially since the nineteenth century, when global interconnectedness increased rapidly? We explore the problem through specific case studies. Anthropologists, historians, geographers, sociologists, global studies scholars, and cultural studies scholars examine the agency of, e.g., members and staff of African regional organizations, Indian migrant workers, female GDR activists, Soviet planning experts, or US novelists. By studying elites as well as middle-class and micro-entrepreneurs - i.e. more and less influential actors - we encourage reflection on the relationship between power and space and examine how spatial entrepreneurs attempt to influence the shaping of space and their spatial literacy. The analysis aims at a better understanding of the different globalization projects, their crisis-like clashes, and the resulting conflictual development of spatial orders.

This book presents a multi-sited ethnographic study of the global development of the Taiwanese Buddhist order Fo Guang Shan. It explores the order's modern Buddhist social engagements by examining three globally dispersed field sites: Los Angeles in the United States of America, Bronkhorstspruit in South Africa, and Yixing in the People's Republic of China. The data collected at these field sites is embedded within the context of broader theoretical discussions on Buddhism, modernity, globalization, and the nation-state. By examining how one particular modern Buddhist religiosity that developed in a specific place moves into a global context, the book provides a fresh view of what constitutes both modern and contemporary Buddhism while also exploring the social, cultural, and religious fabrics that underlie the spatial configurations of globalization.

The French Revolution has primarily been understood as a national event that also had a lasting impact in Europe and in the Atlantic world. Recently, historiography has increasingly emphasized how France's overseas colonies also influenced the contours of the French Revolution. This volume examines the effects of both dimensions on the reorganization of spatial formats and spatial orders in France and in other societies. It departs from the assumption that revolutions shatter not only the political and economic old regime order at home but, in an increasingly interdependent world, also result in processes of respatialization. The French Revolution, therefore, is analysed as a key event in a global history that seeks to account for the shifting spatial organization of societies on a transregional scale.

This book suggests that shifting the focus towards spatialization processes and spatial imaginations in 19th century cultural discourse provides unprecedented insights into the placemaking dynamics of the American West. Introducing spatial literacy into the humanities highlights the epistemic fracture points of traditional analytical categories, therefore emphasizing the utility of spatialization processes in literary and cultural studies.

This volume investigates transnational religious spaces in a comparative manner by juxtaposing East Asian and African examples. It highlights flows of ideas, actors, and organizations out of, into, or within a given continental space - flows patterned mainly by colonialism or migration. The book examines cases where the transnational space in question encompasses both East Asia and Africa.

This volume explores connections between liberation movements in Southern Africa and between those movements and countries in the Eastern Bloc in the Cold War decades of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The many different forms such connections took have been little investigated. Articles in this edition enter that research gap and showcase studies of such interactions, seeking to explain why they took the form they did

Contributions to this volume summarize and discuss the theoretical foundations of the Collaborative Research Centre at Leipzig University which address the relationship between processes of (re-)spatialization on the one hand and the establishment and characteristics of spatial formats on the other hand.

While ports are traditionally considered national infrastructure sites that connect states to global markets, special economic zones and past free ports are portrayed as threats to national sovereignty. This book calls these narratives into question as it explores the history of planning Mumbai¿s ports and free zones during periods of global and regional transition from the British Raj, to national independence, to economic liberalization. The book opens with a study of an unsuccessful plan hatched by merchants in 1833 to make Bombay a free port to deal with an emerging British India and the advent of free trade. The book ends with how Indiäs current special economic zones and emphasis on port expansion are part of broader goals to reposition India in transregional Asian trade, to connect Mumbai with northern India, and to enact local plans for a global city that threaten the very port that first connected Mumbai to the world. To understand the functionality of these port and zone projects beyond typical policy prescriptions, this book proposes portals of globalization as a spatial format that fosters processes of reterritorialization.