Knowledge is playing an important role in the development of contemporary capitalism. This book addresses the questions such as: how labour movements learn, and what strategies they deploy to defend their interests.

'Globalization and Economy' is the second set which looks at economics broadly conceived, including global markets, global finance, global economic institutions and global labour.

"This book offers analysis of the causes and extent of the movement's current malaise from a variety of vantage points. It provides eight national and regional studies - China, Britain, France, the US, Eastern Europe, Brazil, Ghana and Cameroon - that detail problems face and the revitalisation strategies trade unions have pursued in response. It also offers fresh scholarly perspective on a host of pressing labour issues: the extent and impact of global corporate restructuring; the ongoing fight to achieve core labour standards; the enduring importance of gender and diversity; the fortunes of the international labour movement; the relationship between trade unions and NGOs; the intellectual response to organised labour's present predicament; and the role of labour in the global social justice movement." -- BACK COVER.

The dominant form of globalisation, i.e. financial globalisation, is the biggest challenge for employees and their representations of interest. If it remains largely unregulated, not only the natural resources will be destroyed, but also social sustainability will be prevented. The negative effects of this development are first of all to be felt on the local and regional level. It is here, therefore, where counter initiatives and strategies have to start. The quality of life and working-life has not necessarily increased through globalisation and the New Economy, though the possibilities of improved communication via email and Internet were positively acknowledged. The biggest challenge is the increasing inequality on a global scale, which is produced so far by the New Economy. As education contributes to enlarge this gap, it has to be adapted to the new social needs to overcome this polarisation. The ongoing development must be reversed: Real needs demand more spending for public than for private consumption. Intermediate organisations can play a positive role in this process."

The Chinese Communist Party’s response to the wave of factory strikes in the early summer of 2010 has raised important questions about the role that labour plays in the transformation of world orders. In contrast to previous policies of repression towards labour unrest, these recent disputes centring round wages and working conditions have been met with a more permissive response on the part of the state, as the CCP ostensibly seeks to facilitate a transition away from a model of political economy based on ‘low-road’ labour relations and export dependence. Labour and Development in East Asia shows that such inter-linkages between labour, geopolitical transformations, and states’ developmental strategies have been much more central to East Asia’s development than has commonly been recognised. By adopting an explanatory framework of the labour-geopolitics-development nexus, the book theorises and provides an historical analysis of the formation and transformation of the East Asian regional political economy from the end of the Second World War to the present, with particular reference to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China. This book will be required reading for students and scholars of international relations, development studies and comparative politics.

Contributors, ranging from Chancellor Gordon Brown to the Guardian newspaper's Polly Toybee, discuss the Labour Party's political philosophy and address key topics like globalization, constitutional reform, equality and the 'third way'.

Written by the UK's foremost employment lawyers, this textbook is both comprehensive and engaging with detailed commentary and integrated materials.

This exciting book, available in paperback for the first time, provides an illuminating account of contemporary globalisation that is grounded in actual transformations in the areas of production and the workplace. It reveals the social and political contests that give 'global' its meaning, by examining the contested nature of globalisation as it is expressed in the restructuring of work.Rejecting conventional explanations of globalisation as a process that automatically leads to transformations in working lives, or as a project that is strategically designed to bring about lean and flexible forms of production, this book advances an understanding of the social practices that constitute global change. Through case studies that span from the labour flexibility debates in Britain and Germany, to the strategies and tactics of corporations and workers, the author examines how globalisation is interpreted and experienced in everyday life. Contestation, she argues, is about more than just direct protests and resistances. It has become a central feature of the practices that enable or confound global restructuring.This book offers students and scholars of international political economy, sociology and industrial relations an innovative framework for the analysis of globalisation and the restructuring of work.

This collection explores the connections between globalization, competitiveness and human security and their relevance for development studies. These issues, amongst others, are also explored in a number of case studies taken from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

At the 1996 EADI Conference, the papers presented in the World Trade and Trade Policy workshop looked at the new trends in regionalism from a variety of points of view for different institutions. They considered the effects of regions, their implications for policy and performance in the developing countries and for international economic institutions, and tried to interpret them in terms of economic and political theory.