Grounding Globalization

*Winner of the 2009 Distinguished Scholarly Monograph Prize, awarded by the American Sociological Association Labor and Labor Movements section* Claims have been made on the emergence of a new labour internationalism in response to the growing insecurity created by globalization. However, when persons face conditions of insecurity they often turn inwards. The book contains a warning and a sign of hope. Some workers become fatalistic, even xenophobic. Others are attempting to globalize their own struggles. * Examines the claim that a new labour internationalism is emerging by grounding the book in evidence, rather than assertion * Analyzes three distinct places - Orange, Australia; Changwon, South Korea; and Ezakheni, South Africa - and how they dealt with manufacturing plants undergoing restructuring * Explores worker responses to rising levels of insecurity and examines preconditions for the emergence of counter-movements to such insecurities Highlights the significance of 'place' and 'scale', and demonstrates how the restructuring of multi-national corporations, and worker responses to this, connect the two concepts "Grounding Globalization represents a culmination of the individual and collective efforts of the authors to establish a 'new' international labour studies. It is a bold and ambitious project, but it is also one precisely based on a 'grounded' understanding of how workers live their lives, adapt to the discipline of the market, and sometimes vigorously contest it." ( Labor History Journal , November 2008)