How can the Japanese anomaly be explained? A review essay of Atul Kohli's Imperialism and the Developing World - Atul Kohli, Imperialism and the Developing World: How Britain and the United States Shaped the Global Periphery, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

The impact of imperialism on long-term development in the non-Western world was once a popular agenda of inquiry. After the modernization paradigm turned into despair for postcolonial economies, the notions of informal empire (Gallagher and Robinson, 1953) and dependency (Prebisch, 1950; Frank, 1967; Cardoso and Faletto, 1979) marked economists' discussions on underdevelopment in the non-Western world. The agenda, however, lost its momentum after the 1970s, when some Latin American and East Asian economies began growing and research interests and policy agendas shifted from blaming external constraints to identifying internal enablers (Haggard, 1990, 2018). The externalist scholarship became almost moribund thereafter, although its leitmotif was taken over by some Marxian scholarship such as the world-systems theory (Wallerstein, 1974) and its structuralist and anti-globalization offshoots – also partly reincarnated in the literature on the resource curse (Auty, 1993; Karl, 1997).

GEOPOLITICS IN THE INFRASTRUCTURAL IDEOLOGIES OF 5G

This paper explores how infrastructural ideologies function as tools in geopolitical struggles for dependence and independence of world powers. Meese Frith and Wilken (2020) suggest that controversies around 5G stem from infrastructural anxieties best examined in the framework of geopolitics. We build on this work by analyzing the emerging infrastructural imaginary of 5G in light of the changing global division of labor. Sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff and Kim 2015) refer to the vision of technologies themselves, while ideologies refer to the totality of social relations, translating the objective reality of material conditions to subjective lived experience (Bory 2020). The Western imaginaries around 5G infrastructures reflect, deflect, translate and sublimate the infrastructural anxieties tied to the development and deployment of new network paradigms. Their controversial nature, contradictory content, and fragmented presentation is a necessary part of living through the trauma of lost historical agency on the part of Western superpowers. We engaged in code ethnography (Rosa 2019) of GSM, internet, and 5G technologies, as well as participant observation in the main standard-development organizations of the internet and 5G, and semi-structured interviews with equipment vendors and network operators. Our methodological assumption, taken from World Systems Theory (Wallerstein and Wallerstein 2004), is that the character and content of imaginaries and their underpinning ideologies creatively reflect the position of actors in the global division of labor. This paper contributes to the understanding of the role of infrastructures in geopolitical power tussles and straddles the fields of science and technology studies and international relations.

Diaspora knowledge networks for development

This paper will consider the concept of Diaspora Knowledge Networks, (DKNs) and examine the relationship between DKNs and homeland development. Using a framework of World Systems Theory, it will lay out how skilled labour migration leads to diaspora network formation and that tactical brain circulation on the part of DKNs can provide home countries with the agency in the World System through a form of transnationalism from below. Recognizing that DKNs are socially constructed, and as a result replete with gender and power imbalances, it is posited that DKNs feed into and reproduce the global division of labour and with it all the implications for migration that go with this new global order. Finally this paper lays out the gaps within the literature on DKNs, namely in the areas of gender, race and the role of state securitization, and calls for further research so that policies harnessing DKNs for development may be more effective.

Diaspora knowledge networks for development

This paper will consider the concept of Diaspora Knowledge Networks, (DKNs) and examine the relationship between DKNs and homeland development. Using a framework of World Systems Theory, it will lay out how skilled labour migration leads to diaspora network formation and that tactical brain circulation on the part of DKNs can provide home countries with the agency in the World System through a form of transnationalism from below. Recognizing that DKNs are socially constructed, and as a result replete with gender and power imbalances, it is posited that DKNs feed into and reproduce the global division of labour and with it all the implications for migration that go with this new global order. Finally this paper lays out the gaps within the literature on DKNs, namely in the areas of gender, race and the role of state securitization, and calls for further research so that policies harnessing DKNs for development may be more effective.

Globalization and its Impact on Higher Education: The Case of Colleges of Technology in Oman

The main aim of this paper is to explore the impact of globalization processes on higher education institutions, with a particular focus on Colleges of Technology (CsoT) in Oman. To achieve this aim, this paper first defines and illustrates the concept of globalization and then draws upon the World Systems Theory and Dependency Theory to contextualize Oman in terms of its global position. Through the lens of these theories, the paper explores the consequences of implementing English as a medium of instruction (EMI) policy at CsoT. The findings reveal that English language is still considered a foreign language, yet EMI is implemented at higher education. Moreover, despite the challenges faced by students, some exhibited a positive attitude towards the implementation of the EMI policy. For instance, many students perceived learning and using English as a means of endowing them with high international status, referencing its utility in relation to global communication, development, and employment. Such an impact is arguably linked to semi-colonialization. A link is then made to the concept of memorization, which is historically associated with the Islamic culture of Oman. The paper explains how the memorization strategy could be misunderstood. The paper contends that memorization is the first step in learning and understanding, not a substitute. A link is also made to the EMI policy, in which the low levels of achievement among students at these colleges have driven them to memorize and does not reflect a lack of critical thinking skills.

4. Critical Approaches to Global Politics

This chapter investigates critical approaches to global politics. While liberal and realist theorists probe each other’s ideas for faults and weaknesses, neither have challenged capitalism and its implications for social, economic, and political order. Marxism, on the other hand, which developed around the mid-nineteenth century, has provided very different perspectives and presents a significant challenge for mainstream approaches to global order in both theory and practice. Post-Marxist Critical Theory, along with historical sociology and world-systems theory, emerged in the twentieth century, giving rise to schools of thought which continue the critique of capitalism and the social and political forces underpinning it. Meanwhile, ideas arising from social theory, such as the extent to which perceptions of reality are socially conditioned and indeed ‘constructed’, achieved greater prominence following the end of the Cold War, an event which prompted many scholars to start asking new questions about global politics and the assumptions on which traditional theories rested. Constructivism, postmodernism, and poststructuralism remain concerned with issues of power and justice but provide different lenses through which these issues may be viewed in the sphere of global politics.

Globalization and its Impact on Higher Education: The Case of Colleges of Technology in Oman

The main aim of this paper is to explore the impact of globalization processes on higher education institutions, with a particular focus on Colleges of Technology (CsoT) in Oman. To achieve this aim, this paper first defines and illustrates the concept of globalization and then draws upon the World Systems Theory and Dependency Theory to contextualize Oman in terms of its global position. Through the lens of these theories, the paper explores the consequences of implementing English as a medium of instruction (EMI) policy at CsoT. The findings reveal that English language is still considered a foreign language, yet EMI is implemented at higher education. Moreover, despite the challenges faced by students, some exhibited a positive attitude towards the implementation of the EMI policy. For instance, many students perceived learning and using English as a means of endowing them with high international status, referencing its utility in relation to global communication, development, and employment. Such an impact is arguably linked to semi-colonialization. A link is then made to the concept of memorization, which is historically associated with the Islamic culture of Oman. The paper explains how the memorization strategy could be misunderstood. The paper contends that memorization is the first step in learning and understanding, not a substitute. A link is also made to the EMI policy, in which the low levels of achievement among students at these colleges have driven them to memorize and does not reflect a lack of critical thinking skills.

A Global American University

Today's higher education institutions are engaged in fierce competition over research dollars, attracting students, and reputation. And the institutions of the Global North have begun to demonstrate a proactive desire to drive the academic exchange occurring on the global stage via the creation of strategic partnerships abroad. The purpose of this chapter is to understand the role played by American universities in the internationalization of higher education as national systems of education respond to globalization. Through a discourse analysis, the authors apply world systems theory to the analysis of a single U.S. institution with several American institutions abroad in multiple periphery societies and ask the following questions: How do U.S. higher education institutions define global education? And in what ways do U.S. higher education institutions contribute to the countries they operate in?

Sustainable Food Consumption in the Neoliberal Order

In recent decades, we have seen the rise of the sustainable food consumption field and its push for disciplinary space in development studies. This chapter turns to the original impetus of sustainable food consumption and the question of how neoliberal order can be reconciled with the need to save the ecology. Beyond the fundamental objectives, there is a need to assess the links between the global food system, as influenced by neoliberal order, and the signs that it leads to adversity for low-income countries. A review of relevant literature in the sustainable consumption field is explored using content analysis to examine links between neoliberal food consumption dynamics, the logic of global food politics, and the emerging terminological shifts from food consumption to food system. The world systems theory and the Marxian political ecology framework are used to show that sustainability is notable for emphasizing resource efficiency and equitability, which can be useful when sustainability challenges are matched with ecological policies. This chapter makes some policy recommendations.