Few discussions in modern social science have occupied as much attention as the changing nature of welfare states in Western societies. Gosta Esping-Andersen, one of the foremost contributors to current debates on this issue, here provides a new analysis of the character and role of welfare states in the functioning of contemporary advanced Western societies. Esping-Andersen distinguishes three major types of welfare state, connecting these with variations in the historical development of different Western countries. He argues that current economic processes, such as those moving toward a postindustrial order, are shaped not by autonomous market forces but by the nature of states and state differences. Fully informed by comparative materials, this book will have great appeal to all those working on issues of economic development and postindustrialism. Its audience will include students of sociology, economics, and politics."

The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism

Theory of International Politics

‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.

The Production of Space

This article aims (1) to analytically disaggregate agency into its several component elements (though these are interrelated empirically), (2) to demonstrate the ways in which these agentic dimensions interpenetrate with forms of structure, and (3) to point out the implications of such a conception of agency for empirical research. The authors conceptualize agency as a temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed by the past (in its “iterational” or habitual aspect) but also oriented toward the future (as a “projective” capacity to imagine alternative possibilities) and toward the present (as a “practical‐evaluative” capacity to contextualize past habits and future projects within the contingencies of the moment).

What is agency

The authors analyze the nation‐state as a worldwide institution constructed by worldwide cultural and associational processes, developing four main topics: (1) properties of nation‐states that result from their exogenously driven construction, including isomorphism, decoupling, and expansive structuration; (2) processes by which rationalistic world culture affects national states; (3) characteristics of world society that enhance the impact of world culture on national states and societies, including conditions favoring the diffusion of world models, expansion of world‐level associations, and rationalized scientific and professional authority; (4) dynamic features of world culture and society that generate expansion, conflict, and change, especially the statelessness of world society, legitimation of multiple levels of rationalized actors, and internal inconsistencies and contradictions.

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World society and the nation-state

Globalization as a Problem The Cultural Turn Mapping the Global Condition World-Systems Theory, Culture and Images of World Power Japanese Globality and Japanese Religion The Universalism-Particularism Issue 'Civilization,' Civility and the Civilizing Process Globalization Theory and Civilization Analysis Globality, Modernity and the Issue of Postmodernity Globalization and the Nostalgic Paradigm 'The Search for Fundamentals' in Global Perspective Concluding Reflections

Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture

Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity

This paper deals with the idea of glocalisation as a refinement of the concept of globalisation. Globalisation is apparently widely thought of as involving cultural homogenisation; even more specif...

Globalisation or glocalisation

Mapping the Global Condition: Globalization as the Central Concept

Sport, in particular football, constitutes one of the most dynamic, sociologically illuminating domains of globalization. This paper examines the globalization of football with particular reference to Robertson's theorizations of global processes. We examine football's cultural globalization through the concept of 'glocalization', which highlights the interdependence of local and global processes within the game's identities and institutions. We address economic globalization in football by considering the world's leading clubs as 'glocal' transnational corporations. We assess the political globalization of football with reference to the possible enhancement of democracy within the game's international governance. We conclude by affirming the utility of sport in advancing our empirical and theoretical understanding of globalization processes.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2004.00037.x

Roland Robertson

Papers

Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture

Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity

Globalisation or glocalisation

Mapping the Global Condition: Globalization as the Central Concept

The globalization of football: a study in the glocalization of the ‘serious life’