This groundbreaking study focuses on the importance of place, scale, and nation to the study of globalization.
Sassen identifies two sets of processes that make up globalization: the first and more commonly studied set of processes is global institutions, from the World Trade Organization to the War Crime Tribunals; the second and less frequently explored set of processes occur at the national and local level, including state monetary policy, small-scale activism that has an explicit or implicit global agenda, and local politics. Emphasizing the interplay between global and local phenomena, Sassen insightfully examines new forms and conditions such as global cities, transnational communities, and commodity chains. This unique approach to globalization offers new interpretive and analytic tools to understand the complexity of global interdependence. Sociology of Globalization is part of the Contemporary Societies series.
Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Member, The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University (www.saskiasassen.com).
Her new books are Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages ( Princeton University Press 2008) and A Sociology of Globalization (W.W.Norton 2007). Other recent books are the 3rd. fully updated Cities in a World Economy (Sage 2006), the edited Deciphering the Global (Routledge 2007), and the co-edited Digital Formations: New Architectures for Global Order (Princeton University Press 2005). She has just completed for UNESCO a five-year project on sustainable human settlement with a network of researchers and activists in over 30 countries; it is published as one of the volumes of the Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (Oxford, UK: EOLSS Publishers) [http://www.eolss.net ]. The Global City came out in a new fully updated edition in 2001.
Her books are translated into twentyone languages. She has received several honors and awards, most recently a doctor honoris causa from Delft University and DePaul University. She serves on several editorial boards and is an advisor to several international bodies. She is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Cities, and chaired the Information Technology and International Cooperation Committee of the Social Science Research Council (USA). She has written for The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek International, OpenDemocracy.net, Vanguardia, Clarin, the Financial Times, HuffingtonPost.com, among others.
