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The purpose of this article is to analyse one of the very first European-level instances of trade union and social movement interaction in defence of the public sector, namely, the Coalition for Green and Social Procurement, an alliance of European trade unions and green and social non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and its campaign for an amendment of the new public procurement directives from 2000 to 2003. It will be examined to what extent this campaign was able to change the directives and counter neoliberal restructuring effectively as well as what the possibilities but also limits of trade union and social movement cooperation are as exemplified in this particular case study.

"This paper contests the cosmopolitan consensus in contemporary Marxism that Marx and Engels's vision of capitalism was 'global' and that nations are essentially 'cultural' constructs. It contributes to a wider project arguing that nations are material by taking a closer look at Marx and Engels's writings on free trade and protectionism and, in particular, at Marx's notes on Friedrich List's National System of Political Economy (1841/56). This examination shows that Marx and Engels had a keen understanding of the economic roles of states, national and imperial, and thought about free trade and protection in geopolitical terms. Though Marx aimed his characteristically caustic wit and forensic critique at List's contradictions, silences, and hypocrisies as a bourgeois thinker, he accepted that nation-states played economic and geopolitical roles in a capitalist world and that developmental states were possible, indeed necessary. The ground for these arguments is prepared by outlining the centrality of the economic roles of states in the development of modern capitalism and by showing how the recent revival of Marxist accounts of capitalist geopolitics is hampered by a purely economic, non- or anti-statist conception of capitalism."

Looking at the formation of transnational advocacy networks, this article argues that central aspects evade attention unless approached from a discursive orientation. Utilizing interviews and first-person observation from a particular example of transnational mobilization-critical of negotiations to expand the World Trade Organization's General Agreement on Trade-in-Services-the article demonstrates how an expanded focus on discourse can help research better understand: (1) the self-driving momentum within networks through which those actors involved experience a reconstituted identity and affinity to one another; (2) the role played by earlier moments of collective action in providing both an infrastructure of pre-existing relations and politicization from which the network may draw upon; (3) the often porous character of campaign activity where there is rarely one but, in fact, many overlapping networks at play as part of a much wider discursive process; and (4) the role abstract signifiers such as 'global'-as in 'Global Campaign for …'-play in framing the network despite an often uneven geographic distribution to campaign activity and power within the network

This article investigates the impact of trade-based social clauses on labor rights enforcement. Drawing on insights from recent theoretical work on transnational advocacy networks and labor rights, the study examines how transnational groups and domestic actors engage the labor rights mechanisms under the NAFTA labor side agreement, the NAALC. A statistical analysis of original data drawn from NAALC cases complements interviews with key participants to analyze the factors that predict whether the three national mediation offices review labor dispute petitions. This study suggests that transnational activism is a key factor in explaining petition acceptance. Transnational advocates craft petitions differently from other groups and, by including worker testimony in the petitions, signal to arbitration bodies the possibility of corroborating claims through contact with affected workers.

"For 500 years the West was on the rise, culminating in Globalizaiton 1.0-the open system of trade, information flows and the spread of technology on the terms and in the image of the West. The benefits of that system over the last 30 years have led to the rise of the emerging economies. As a result we are entering the new era of Globalization 2.0 characterized by new forms of non-Western modernity and the interdependence of plural identities. The advent of this new era has been hastened by the fiscal and financial crisis in Europe and the United States. Turkey, with its Islamic-oriented democracy that has become a template for the liberated peoples of the Arab Spring, and China, with its effective neo-Confucian form of governance, are the most sharply defined new players in this multi-polar and multi-dimensional world. In this section, one of Turkey's most insightful sociologists examines the post-secular transformation of that nation. One of China's more provocative philosophers proposes a hybrid model that combines what has been learned from the experience of Western and Chinese governance in a way that "enhances democracy" in both systems."

"This article explores why governments commit to human rights enforcement by joining the International Criminal Court (ICC). Compared with other international institutions, the ICC has substantial authority and autonomy. Since governments traditionally guard their sovereignty carefully, it is puzzling that the ICC was not only established, but established so rapidly. Looking beyond traditional explanations for joining international institutions, this study identifies a new causal factor: a country's dependence network, which consists of the set of other states that control resources the country values. This study captures different dimensions of what states value through trade relations, security alliances, and shared memberships in international organizations. Using event history analysis on monthly data from 1998 to 2004, we find that dependence networks strongly affect whether and when a state signs and ratifies the ICC. Some types of ratification costs also influence state commitment, but many conventional explanations of state commitment receive little empirical support."

"Documents and maps describe settlement locations and objects possessed by the Carib, or Kalinago, in the Commonwealth of Dominica during the post-Columbian period. Archaeological testing at multiple sites in northern Dominica reveals that historical Carib settlements functioned as trading sites, observation posts, or refuges, but such testing has not recovered material culture described in the documents. Part of the explanation for the lack of correspondence between ethnohistory and archaeology is the inadequacy of the Carib ethnonym, which has been manipulated by the political and economic interests of European colonizers since 1492. Beginning with the first voyages of Columbus, the Carib were portrayed as warlike cannibals who raided the "peaceful" natives of the Greater Antilles. Carib-French contacts in the seventeenth century recorded origin myths and linguistic evidence that fit with the initial Spanish impressions of native Caribbean peoples. Archaeological findings reveal some of the heterogeneity that has been obscured by the Carib category recorded in the ethnohistoric sources."

The presence of Filipinos as corporeal and discursive subjects within both America and Asian America has long been contested. On one hand, the dynamic juridical status of Filipinos in America has ranged from American colonial subjects and American nationals to naturalized and native-born citizens. On the other hand, the presence of Filipinos in America has provided labor in key industries from agriculture to nursing. Filipino America has always been a transnational social formation whose history, economy, and culture reflect the interrelated histories of the Philippines and the United States. This essay explores Filipino American aesthetic practices that engage with the corporeal and discursive production of the "Filipino" in both America and Filipino America. The essay investigates the implications of Filipino American visual art and artists "returning" to the Philippines and argues that a cultural logic of "fictions of return" forms a central part of the production of Filipino America as a transnational sociospatial formation. The first section discusses the production of Filipino America in the context of America's exhibitionary complex. The article proceeds to trace exhibitionary practices in the transnational art project Galleon Trade Arts Exchange. The article then discusses works by Christine Wong Yap, Stephanie Syjuco, Reanne Estrada, and Gina Osterloh to highlight how Filipino American visual art has critically engaged with the multiple contradictions within Filipino and Filipino American experiences. The article ends with a rumination on the relationship between cultural production and desire to return and belong.