There are now many books on postcolonial theory, yet relatively few of them gather together sustained, dynamic and insightful analyses of visuality, art and art history outside of hegemonic Euro-American themes and concerns. Global and Local Art Histories explores what it means to have a global and local experience of art. The 15 essays published here suggest ways of interpreting works of art from a broad range of cultural perspectives, many of them transcultural. Here are voices contesting concepts of history and culture, evaluating and exploring global and local identities in a changing world. Because of the variety of different approaches and cultural perspectives that Global and Local Art Histories brings together, the book presents a unique opportunity to question what we mean by that dangerously globalising category: “the work of art” and “art history” exploring “g-local” approaches that challenge such falsely universalising rubrics.

Increasing overseas traveling, booming Internet and electronic communication, and expanding global social ties are primary features of intensifying global connectivity and integration. Global Connectivity and Local Transformation conceptualizes global connectivity as a powerful but varied mechanism that links local people to the global society. Professor Jiaming Sun explores the massive global connectivity that has been woven in two decades in Shanghai. People with stronger and more extensive global connectivity with a net of other social economic characteristics make significant differences in terms of cultural adaptation in local society. By employing the empirical study method, this study features detailed quantitative analyses to measure global connectivity in an innovative and compelling way.

This groundbreaking collection focuses on what may be, for cultural studies, the most intriguing aspect of contemporary globalization—the ways in which the postnational restructuring of the world in an era of transnational capitalism has altered how we must think about cultural production. Mapping a "new world space" that is simultaneously more globalized and localized than before, these essays examine the dynamic between the movement of capital, images, and technologies without regard to national borders and the tendency toward fragmentation of the world into increasingly contentious enclaves of difference, ethnicity, and resistance. Ranging across issues involving film, literature, and theory, as well as history, politics, economics, sociology, and anthropology, these deeply interdisciplinary essays explore the interwoven forces of globalism and localism in a variety of cultural settings, with a particular emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region. Powerful readings of the new image culture, transnational film genre, and the politics of spectacle are offered as is a critique of globalization as the latest guise of colonization. Articles that unravel the complex links between the global and local in terms of the unfolding narrative of capital are joined by work that illuminates phenomena as diverse as "yellow cab" interracial sex in Japan, machinic desire in Robocop movies, and the Pacific Rim city. An interview with Fredric Jameson by Paik Nak-Chung on globalization and Pacific Rim responses is also featured, as is a critical afterword by Paul Bové. Positioned at the crossroads of an altered global terrain, this volume, the first of its kind, analyzes the evolving transnational imaginary—the full scope of contemporary cultural production by which national identities of political allegiance and economic regulation are being undone, and in which imagined communities are being reshaped at both the global and local levels of everyday existence.

The chapters in this volume seek to bring hybrid language practices to the center of discussions about English as a global language. They demonstrate how local linguistic resources and practices are involved in the refashioning of identities in a variety of cross-cultural and geographical contexts, and illustrate hybridity as an enactment of resistance and creativity. Drawing on a variety of disciplines and ideological perspectives, the authors use contexts as diverse as social media, Bollywood films, workplaces and kindergartens to explore the ways in which English has become a part of localities and social relations in ways that are of significant sociolinguistic interest in understanding the dynamics of mobile cultures and transcultural flows.

Globalization is often described as the spread of western culture to other parts of the world. How accurate is the depiction of 'cultural flow'? In Counterworks, ten anthropologists examine the ways in which global processes have affected particular localities where they have carried out research. They challenge the validity of anthropological concepts of culture in the light of the pervasive connections which exist between local and global factors everywhere. Rather than assuming that the world is culturally diverse, this book proposes that culture is itself a representation of the similarities and difference recognized between forms of social life. The authors address issues of globalization in terms of diverse histories and traditions of knowledge, which may include the construction of difference as cultural. In its attention to specific local situations, such as Bali, Cuba, Bolivia, Greece, Kenya, and the Maoris in New Zealand, Counterworks argues that the apparent oppositoin between strong westernizing, global forces and weak concept of culture, which supposes cultures to be integrated and possessed of essential properties, needs rethinking in a contemporary world where a marked sense of culture has become a wide-spread property of people's social knowledge. The book will have wide appeal to anthropologists, to students of comparative studies in history, religion and language, and to anyone interested in the phenomenon of postmodernism.

China at 60 explores the interactions between China and the world, over the course of 60 years of Communist Party rule since 1949 and the impact of these interactions on China's domestic development. To understand China's development experience and its transformation, it is necessary to examine the trajectory of development from pre-reform to post-reform periods. While the book may concur with previous findings on the changing development of China under economic reform, more importantly, it demonstrates the areas of continuity of the PRC's existence over the entire six decades. To that end, a dual theme — change-and-continuity and global-local interactions on China's development — is adopted to assess the historical development of China's policies in various issue areas over the past 60 years. The focus is chiefly on the domestic impacts of China's increasing engagement with the world, the global implications of China's reform efforts and growing power, and the long-lasting uniqueness of this rising non-European nation.The book brings together a team of international experts to share their perspectives on global-local interactions within a range of different topics, including foreign policy, domestic politics, macroeconomic policy, the central-local relations, the People's Liberation Army, public health, energy security, finance and banking, foreign trade, and intellectual property rights, as well as changes in the state's policies towards interest groups such as ethnic minorities.

This collection of essays forms a comprehensive overview of this crucial component of human cognitive function.

Japanese carmaker Honda has pioneered a new breed of multinational enterprise - true manufacturing at the global scale. Honda has been a leader in confounding predictions that Japan's carmakers would and could never transfer their success abroad, and that a wholesale 'Japanization' of the west would be provoked if they did. The book covers manufacture, research and development, sourcing of components, human resources and labour relations, collaboration with western firms, political controversy, and the role of concepts and ideas, in Japan, North America, and Europe.

It is widely acknowledged that a central aim of science is to achieve understanding of the world around us, and that possessing such understanding is highly important in our present-day society. But what does it mean to achieve this understanding? What precisely is scientific understanding? These are philosophical questions that have not yet received satisfactory answers. While there has been an ongoing debate about the nature of scientific explanation since Carl Hempel advanced his covering-law model in 1948, the related notion of understanding has been largely neglected, because most philosophers regarded understanding as merely a subjective by-product of objective explanations. By contrast, this book puts scientific understanding center stage. It is primarily a philosophical study, but also contains detailed historical case studies of scientific practice. In contrast to most existing studies in this area, it takes into account scientists' views and analyzes their role in scientific debate and development. The aim of Understanding Scientific Understanding is to develop and defend a philosophical theory of scientific understanding that can describe and explain the historical variation of criteria for understanding actually employed by scientists. The theory does justice to the insights of such famous physicists as Werner Heisenberg and Richard Feynman, while bringing much-needed conceptual rigor to their intuitions. The scope of the proposed account of understanding is the natural sciences: while the detailed case studies derive from physics, examples from other sciences are presented to illustrate its wider validity.