Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in a Postmodern World / Edition 1

by Michael Burawoy, Joseph A. Blum, Sheba George, Zsuzsa Gille, Millie Thayer

Overview

In this follow-up to the highly successful Ethnography Unbound, Michael Burawoy and nine colleagues break the bounds of conventional sociology, to explore the mutual shaping of local struggles and global forces. In contrast to the lofty debates between radical theorists, these nine studies excavate the dynamics and histories of globalization by extending out from the concrete, everyday world.

The authors were participant observers in diverse struggles over extending citizenship, medicalizing breast cancer, dumping toxic waste, privatizing nursing homes, the degradation of work, the withdrawal of welfare rights, and the elaboration of body politics. From their insider vantage points, they show how groups negotiate, circumvent, challenge, and even re-create the complex global web that entangles them. Traversing continents and extending over three years, this collaborative research developed its own distinctive method of "grounded globalization" to grasp the evaporation of traditional workplaces, the dissolution of enclaved communities, and the fluidity of identities. Forged between the local and global, these compelling essays make a powerful case for ethnography's insight into global dynamics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520222168
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	10/01/2000
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	408
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

All of the authors were affiliated with the Sociology Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

Table of Contents

Preface

1. Introduction: Reaching for the Global
Michael Burawoy

PART ONE • GLOBAL FORCES
Introduction to Part One

2. Global Discourses of Need:
Mythologizing and Pathologizing Welfare in Hungary
LynneHaney

3· Excavating "Globalization" from Street Level:
Homeless Men Recycle Their Pasts
Teresa Gowan

4· Degradation without Deskilling:
Twenty-Five Years in the San Francisco Shipyards
Joseph A. Blum

PART TWO· GLOBAL CONNECTIONS
Introduction to Part Two

5· "Dirty Nurses" and "Men Who Play":
Gender and Class in Transnational Migration
Sheba George

6. Net-Working for a Living:
Irish Software Developers in the Global Workplace
Sean 6 Riain

7. Traveling Feminisms:
From Embodied Women to Gendered Citizenship
Millie Thayer

PART THREE· GLOBAL IMAGINATIONS
Introduction to Part Three

8. Cognitive Cartography in a European Wasteland:
Multinational Capital and Greens Vie for Village Allegiance
Zsuz.sa Gille

g. Contesting the Global City:
Pittsburgh's Public Service Unions Confront a Neoliberal Agenda
Steven H. Lopez

10. From Private Stigma to Global Assembly:
Transforming the Terrain of Breast Cancer
Maren Klawiter

CONCLUSION
11. Grounding Globalization

Michael Burawoy
Bibliography
Index