added Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:35:34 EDT
The Balsillie School of International Affairs recently announced the appointment of five new faculty members who will fill new academic chairs at the school. The new chairs are: William D. Coleman, CIGI Chair in Globalization and Public Policy; Paul Freston, CIGI Chair of Religion and Politics in Global Context; Kathryn Hochstetler, CIGI Chair of Governance in the Americas; Sue Horton, CIGI Chair in Global Health Economics, and David Welch, CIGI Chair of Global Security. All took up their appointments on July 1, 2009. Dr. Coleman is currently preparing a manuscript on key globalization thinkers and participating in a CIHR research project on perceptions of risk of HIV/AIDS for recent immigrants to Canada. He was the founding director of the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition at McMaster University and is Academic Editor of the Globalization and Autonomy Compendium. During his academic career, he has received several distinguished honours, including being named a Fellow/Lauréat by the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation in 2007.added Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:19:48 EDT
added Tue, 13 May 2008 12:43:28 EDT
Zapatismo Beyond Borders: New Imaginations of Political Possibility (University of Toronto Press, November 2008) www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?pid=9102&lastcatid=194&step=4
On 1 January 1994 in the far southeast of Mexico, a guerrilla army of indigenous Mayan peasants calling itself the Zapatista Army of National Liberation rose up in rebellion against 500 years of colonialism, imperialism, genocide, racism, and neoliberal capitalism. Zapatismo Beyond Borders examines how Zapatismo, the political philosophy of the Zapatistas, crossed the regional and national boundaries of the isolated indigenous communities of Chiapas to influence diverse communities of North American activists.
Providing readers with anthropological perspectives that draw on a year of fieldwork with activists, and also enriched by the author?s own experience with contemporary social justice struggles, Alex Khasnabish examines the "transnational resonance" of the Zapatista movement. He shows how the spread of Zapatismo has unexpectedly produced new imaginations and practices of radical political action in diverse socio-political movements throughout North America. Zapatismo Beyond Borders is an engaging study of a radical political philosophy that has been both a model for grassroots organizations and a rallying call for members of the anti-globalization movement. Rigorous and engaged, this will be of interest to anyone interested in indigenous rights movements, political philosophy, and the recent history of political activism.
Also by Alex Khasnabish: The chapter "The International Order of Hope: Zapatismo and the Fourth World War" in the forthcoming book Indigenous Peoples and Autonomy: Insights for a Global Age (Mario Blaser, Ravi de Costa, Deborah McGregor, and William D. Coleman, eds., UBC Press). To read a summary of this chapter, click here.
added Thu, 24 May 2007 13:22:18 EDT
The Arctic Promise: Legal and Political Autonomy of Greenland and Nunavut (University of Toronto Press, June 2007) www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?pid=8990&step=4
In Canada's Eastern Arctic and Greenland, the Inuit have been the majority for centuries. In recent years, they have been given a promise from Canadian and Danish governments that offers them more responsibility for their lands and thus control over their lives without fear of being outnumbered by outsiders. The Arctic Promise looks at how much the Inuit vision of self-governance relates to the existing public governance systems of Greenland and Nunavut, and how much autonomy there can be for territories that remain subordinate units of larger states. By means of a bottom-up approach, involving cultural immersion, contextual, jurisprudential, and historical legal comparisons of Greenland and Nunavut, The Arctic Promise examines the forms, evolution, and scope of the right to autonomy in these Arctic jurisdictions. Loukacheva argues that the right to autonomy should encompass or protect Inuit jurisdiction in legal systems and the administration of justice, and allow the Inuit direct participation in international affairs where their homelands are concerned. The Arctic Promise deals with areas of comparative constitutional law, international law, Aboriginal law, legal anthropology, political science and international relations, using each to contribute to the understanding of the right to indigenous autonomy.
Natalia Loukacheva is a post-doctoral fellow at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto.
Also by Natalia Loukacheva: The article "On Autonomy and Law" in the Globalization and Autonomy Online Compendium and the chapter "Institutions of Arctic Ordering: The Cases of Greenland and Nunavut" in the forthcoming book Global Ordering: Institutions and Autonomy in a Changing World (Louis W. Pauly and William D. Coleman, eds., UBC Press). To read a summary of this chapter in the Compendium click here.
added Fri, 06 Oct 2006 19:26:13 EDT
On 25 September 2006, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, the Honourable Vic Toews, informed the Law Commission of Canada that it was ending its funding. In doing so, the Minister was, in effect, abolishing the Commission. There are a number of political dimensions to this decision that are important. Most notably, the Commission reports to Parliament. The Commission was established by Parliament in legislation in 1996. Some would suggest that abolishing the Commission without bringing legislation before Parliament to do so is a political act that undermines Parliament's authority. When the LCC's predecessor organization, the Law Reform Commission of Canada, was abolished by the Mulroney government in 1992-93, it was done by legislation brought before Parliament.
The Law Commission of Canada is a partner organization of the Major Collaborative Research Initiative (MCRI) on Globalization and Autonomy. It became a partner because it shared with the Globalization and Autonomy research team an interest in understanding globalization and its effects. When the MCRI was funded, I was invited as project director to give a presentation on our plans to the Commission, which I did in April 2002. We had a full and vigorous discussion at that meeting and the Commission urged me to consider the legal dimensions of globalization in our work. It followed this recommendation up by sending a representative to each of our team meetings, a person who came to participate actively in the project, Lorraine Pelot. Work done by the Commission on governance beyond borders was of particular interest to our team, but also research related to indigenous legal traditions, legal pluralism, and transformative justice. The Commission's commitment to investigating the links between law and the human condition was an important one for all Canadians. A small organization with a limited budget, the LCC mobilized thinking and sparked discussion of key issues of our time. It will be sorely missed by most of our researchers and by many others in the country dealing with globalization and social justice issues.
Interested readers might wish to examine the Press Release from the Law Commission following the government's announcement: www.lcc.gc.ca/resources/news_releases-en.asp?id=113
An open letter on this issue was also published in the Toronto Star on 29 September and is available at: www.thestar.com
William D. Coleman, Project Director
MCRI on Globalization and Autonomy
added Sun, 08 Jan 2006 02:26:13 EST
Wars of Position: The Cultural Politics of Left and Right (Columbia University Press, February 2006)
Taking stock of contemporary social, cultural, and intellectual currents, Brennan documents how a certain social-democratic vision of politics was banished from public discussion, leading to an unlikely convergence of the political right and the academic left. In discussing narratives of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Clinton impeachment as well as the critical receptions of Rushdie, Said, and Gramsci, Brennan examines key moments when the humanities entered the cultural-political mainstream.
added Wed, 16 Nov 2005 00:00:00 EST
"Globalization, Power and Authority. The Emergence of New Connectivities" by Ulf Hedetoft, Professor of International Studies and Director of The Academy for Migration Studies in Denmark (AMID).
In the paper, Professor Hedetoft examines the multiple inter-linkages between sovereignty, security, historical identity, and mass/elite (dis)trust. These constitute a useful matrix for delineating the major challenges that globalization represents to contemporary statehood and attendant structures of power and authority.
"The Trans-moralists" by Timothy Brennan, Professor of English and Culture Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota.
In this paper, Professor Brennan looks at the current climate of research and debate on globalization in the United States. In particular, he is concerned with the impact on this climate of the "trans-moralists" — those "highly publicized, cross-over intellectuals, often with a foot in the university but showcased in a variety of media, who write breezy mass-market books with claims both to scholarship and philosophical depth, and who enjoy invitations as consultants to policy think tanks, corporations, and national governments."
"Globalization and Autonomy in China" by Yu Keping, Director of the Centre for Chinese Government Innovations at Peking University and the China Centre for Comparative Politics and Economics in Beijing
Professor Keping surveys the key debates about globalization among Chinese scholars. He also looks at some of the measures that the Chinese government has adopted in actively engaging in globalization processes while protecting its autonomy.
added Fri, 21 Oct 2005 08:00:00 EDT
"On Autonomy and Law" by Natalia Loukacheva, Postdoctoral Fellow, Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto.
In this paper, Dr. Loukacheva examines the concept of autonomy and its place in international public law and comparative constitutional law.
added Fri, 21 Oct 2005 08:00:00 EDT
Date: Thursday, 23 March 2006
Time: 7:00 pm
Location: Council Chambers, Gilmour Hall Rm 111, McMaster University
Dr. Etienne Balibar is a Professor of Philosophy at University of Paris-X. His most recent book in English is Politics and the Other Scene (Verso, 2000).
added Fri, 21 Oct 2005 08:00:00 EDT
Topic: "Regionalism as Strategic Response to Globalisation"
Date: 26-28 October 2005
Location: Scarman House, University of Warwick, UK
Co-ordinated by Chris Hughes and Michela Redoano from CSGR, Philippe De Lombaerde from UNU-Comparative Regional Integrations Studies (Belgium), and Andy Cooper from the Centre for International Governance Innovation (Canada).