Contemporary articles citing Appadurai A (1996) Modernity Large Cult

globalization, largely, world, importance, sociological, seeks, implicit, studies, increasingly, turn

Saito, Hiro. 2011. "An Actor-network Theory of Cosmopolitanism." Sociological Theory. 29:2 124-149. Link

A major problem with the emerging sociological literature on cosmopolitanism is that it has not adequately theorized mechanisms that mediate the presumed causal relationship between globalization and the development of cosmopolitan orientations. To solve this problem, I draw on Bruno Latour's actor-network theory (ANT) to theorize the development of three key elements of cosmopolitanism: cultural omnivorousness, ethnic tolerance, and cosmopolitics. ANT illuminates how humans and nonhumans of multiple nationalities develop attachments with one another to create network structures that sustain cosmopolitanism. ANT also helps the sociology of cosmopolitanism become more reflexive and critical of its implicit normative claims.

Shamir, R. 2005. "Without Borders? Notes on Globalization as a Mobility Regime." Sociological Theory. 23:2 197-217. Link

While globalization is largely theorized in terms of trans-border flows, this article suggests an exploratory sociological framework for analyzing globalization as consisting of systemic processes of closure and containment. The suggested framework points at the emergence of a global mobility regime that actively seeks to contain social movement both within and across borders. The mobility regime is theorized as premised upon a pervasive ``paradigm of suspicion'' that conflates the perceived threats of crime, immigration, and terrorism, thus constituting a conceptual blueprint for the organization of global risk-management strategies. The article draws on multiple examples, singling out some elementary forms of the mobility regime, emphasizing the sociological affinity between guarded borders on the one hand and gated communities on the other. In particular, the article aims at theorizing the translation of the paradigm of suspicion into actual technologies of social screening designed to police the mobility of those social elements that are deemed to belong to suspect social categories. Specifically, the article points at biosocial profiling as an increasingly dominant technology of intervention. Biosocial profiling, in turn, is theorized in juxtaposition to other modalities of power, namely, legal and disciplinary measures.

Ritzer, G. 2003. "Rethinking Globalization: Glocalization/grobalization and Something/nothing." Sociological Theory. 21:3 193-209. Link

The concept of ``grobalization'' is proposed to complement the popular idea of ``glocalization.'' In addition, a sociologically relevant concept of ``nothing'' is defined and juxtaposed with ``something.'' Two continua are created-grobalization-glocalization and nothing-something-and their intersection creates four quadrants: the grobalization of nothing, glocalization of nothing, grobalization of something, and glocalization of something. Of greatest importance are the grobalization a nothing and the glocalization of something, (is well (is the conflict between them. The grobalization of nothing threatens to overwhelm the latter and everything else. Other issues discussed include the loss of something in a world increasingly dominated by nothing, the disappearance of the local, and the relationship of the triumph of nothing to political economy, especially social class. I conclude that no social class is immune to this process and that the poor and lower classess may be ``doomed'' to something.

Brenner, N. 1999. "Beyond State-centrism? Space, Territoriality, and Geographical Scale in Globalization Studies." Theory and Society. 28:1 39-78. Link

Altman, D. 1999. "Globalization, Political Economy, and Hiv/aids." Theory and Society. 28:4 559-584. Link

Brubaker, R, M Loveman & P Stamatov. 2004. "Ethnicity as Cognition." Theory and Society. 33:1 31-64. Link

This article identifies an incipient and largely implicit cognitive turn in the study of ethnicity, and argues that it can be consolidated and extended by drawing on cognitive research in social psychology and anthropology. Cognitive perspectives provide resources for conceptualizing ethnicity, race, and nation as perspectives on the world rather than entities in the world, for treating ethnicity, race, and nationalism together rather than as separate subfields, and for re-specifying the old debate between primordialist and circumstantialist approaches.

Kim, Jaeeun. 2009. "The Making and Unmaking of a ``transborder Nation'': South Korea During and After the Cold War." Theory and Society. 38:2 133-164. Link

The burgeoning literature on transborder membership, largely focused on the thickening relationship between emigration states in the South and the postwar labor migrant populations and their descendants in North America or Western Europe, has not paid due attention to the long-term macroregional transformations that shape transborder national membership politics or to the bureaucratic practices of the state that undergird transborder claims-making. By comparing contentious transborder national membership politics in South Korea during the Cold War and Post-Cold War eras, this article seeks to overcome these limitations. In both periods, the membership status of colonial-era ethnic Korean migrants in Japan and northeast China and their descendants was the focus of contestation. The distinctiveness of the case-involving both a sustained period of colonial rule and a period of belated and divided nation-state building interwoven with the Cold War-highlights the crucial importance of three factors: (1) the dynamically evolving macro-regional context, which has shaped transborder national membership politics in the region in distinctive ways; (2) the essentially political, performative, and constitutive nature of transborder nation-building; and (3) the role of state registration and documentation practices in shaping the contours of transborder national membership politics in the long run. By incorporating Korea-and East Asia more broadly-into the comparative study of transborder nation-building, this article also lays the groundwork for future cross-regional comparative historical studies.