CULTURAL VALUES IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
The backlash against globalization and the rise of cultural anxiety has led to considerable re-thinking among social scientists. This book provides multiple theoretical, historical, and methodological orientations to examine these issues. While addressing the rise of populism worldwide, the volume provides explanations that cover periods of both cultural turbulence and stability. Issues addressed include populism and cultural anxiety, class, religion, arts and cultural diversity, global environment norms, international trade, and soft power.
The interdisciplinary scholarship from well-known scholars questions the oft-made assumption in political economy that holds culture “constant,” which in practice means marginalizing it in the explanation. The volume conceptualizes culture as a repertoire of values and alternatives. Locating human interests in underlying cultural values does not make political economy’s strategic or instrumental calculations of interests redundant: the instrumental logic follows a social context and a distribution of cultural values, while locating forms of decision-making that may not be rational. [Read more about the book here.]
J.P Singh. Editor. 2020. Cultural Values in Political Economy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Public video presentations based on the book:
SWEET TALK: PATERNALISM AND COLLECTIVE ACTION IN NORTH-SOUTH TRADE RELATIONS
Developed nations strive to create the impression that their hearts and pockets bleed for the developing world. Yet, the global North continues to offer unfavorable trade terms to the global South. Truly fair trade would make reciprocal concessions to developing countries while allowing them to better their own positions. However, five hundred years of colonial racism and post-colonial paternalism have undermined trade negotiations.
While urging developing countries to participate in trade, the North offers empty deals to “partners” that it regards as unequal. The book exposes the actual position beneath the North’s image of benevolence and empathy: either join in the type of trade that developed countries offer, or be cast aside as obstreperous and unwilling. A mixed-methods approach is employed including multiple regression, factor-analysis, case studies, field research, and process-tracing. The evidence reveals how the global North ultimately bars developing nations from flourishing. The findings chart a path forward, showing that developing nations can garner favorable concessions by drawing on unique strengths and through collective advocacy. Sweet Talk offers a provocative rethinking of how far our international relations have come and how far we still have to go.
J.P. Singh. 2017. Sweet Talk: Paternalism and Collective Action in North-South Trade Relations. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
Discussing “Sweet Talk” and role of culture in world affairs
UNITED NATIONS, EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC, AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION (UNESCO): CREATING NORMS FOR A COMPLEX WORLD
This book traces the history of UNESCO from its foundational idealism to its current stature as the preeminent international organization for science, education, and culture, building a well rounded understanding of this important organization. The book:
— provides an overview of the organization and its institutional architecture in the context of its humanistic idealism
— details the subsequent challenges UNESCO faced through cold war and power politics, global dependence and interdependence, and the rise of identity and culture in global politics
— analyses the functioning of UNESCO administration, finance, and its various constituencies including the secretariat, member-states, and civil society
explores the major controversies and issues underlying the initiatives in education, sciences, culture and communication
— examines the current agenda and future challenges through three major issues in UNESCO: Education or All, digital divide issues, and norms on cultural diversity
assesses the role of UNESCO in making norms in complex world of multiple actors and intersecting issue-areas.
J.P. Singh. 2011. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO): Creating Norms for a Complex World. New York: Routledge.
Discussing the role of deliberation in development, and the value of mixed-methods research
Approaches underlying the UNESCO and Globalized Arts Books
GLOBALIZED ARTS: THE ENTERTAINMENT ECONOMY AND CULTURAL IDENTITY
Our interactive world can take a creative product, such as a Hollywood film, Bollywood song, or Latin American telenovela, and transform it into a source of cultural anxiety. What does this artwork say about the artist or the world she works in? How will these artworks evolve in the global market? Film, music, television, and the performing arts enter the same networks of exchange as other industries, and the anxiety they produce informs a fascinating area of study for art, culture, and global politics.
Focusing on the confrontation between global politics and symbolic creative expression, J. P. Singh shows how, by integrating themselves into international markets, entertainment industries give rise to far-reaching cultural anxieties and politics. With examples from Hollywood, Bollywood, French grand opera, Latin American television, West African music, postcolonial literature, and even the Thai sex trade, Singh cites not only the attempt to address cultural discomfort but also the effort to deny entertainment acts as cultural. He connects creative expression to clashes between national identities, and he details the effect of cultural policies, such as institutional patronage and economic incentives, on the making and incorporation of art into the global market. Ultimately, Singh shows how these issues affect the debates on cultural trade being waged by the World Trade Organization, UNESCO, and the developing world.
J.P. Singh. 2011. Globalized Arts: The Entertainment Economy and Cultural Identity. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Winner of American Political Science Association Best Book Award in Information Technology and Politics.
NEGOTIATION AND THE GLOBAL INFORMATION ECONOMY
What role do diplomacy and negotiations play in economic globalization? Many argue that great powers shape diplomacy to their advantage, others that, in a ‘flat world’, diplomacy helps everyone. Going beyond these polarized views, this book explores the conditions under which negotiations matter and the ways in which diplomacy is evolving in the global commercial arena. J. P. Singh argues that where there is a diffusion or decentralization of power among global actors, diplomacy can be effective in allowing the adjustment of positions so that mutual gains will result. In contrast, when there is a concentration of power, outcomes tend to benefit the strong. There will be little alteration in perception of interest, and coercion by strong powers is common. Singh’s book suggests that there are possibilities for transformational problem-solving through multilateral diplomacy. Empirically, the book examines the most important information-age trade issues.
Singh, JP. 2009. Negotiation and the Global Information Economy. Cambridge University Press.
LEAPFROGGING DEVELOPMENT: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS RESTRUCTURING
Examines how developing countries have restructured their telecommunications in order to “leapfrog” or accelerate development.
Telecommunications restructurings are now seen as important barometers in the shift among developing countries toward market-based economies. They are often posited as helping developing countries “leapfrog,” or accelerate their pace of development, and “connect” with the world economy. This bookshows that most states in developing countries are unable to resolve the myriad pressures they face in restructuring important sectors like telecommunications to effect accelerated or “leapfrogging” development.
The scope, pace, and sequencing of restructuring varies according to how different types of states respond to micro sub-sectoral pressures or to macro-level pressures from coalitions of groups. After examining seven generalizable cases (Singapore, South Korea, Mexico, Malaysia, China, Brazil, Myanmar), the book examines India as an in-depth “most-likely case.” Leapfrogging Development? proposes a unique framework that shows how groups and coalitions articulate development preferences and how different types of states respond to or shape these preferences.
J.P. Singh. 1999. Leapfrogging Development? The Political Economy of Telecommunications Restructuring. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
EDITED VOLUMES
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND ART IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
This volume brings together 19 original chapters, plus four substantive introductions, which collectively provide a unique examination of the issues of science, technology, and art in international relations. The overarching theme of the book links global politics with human interventions in the world: We cannot disconnect how humans act on the world through science, technology, and artistic endeavors from the engagements and practices that together constitute IR. There is science, technology, and even artistry in the conduct of war―and in the conduct of peace as well. Scholars and students of international relations are beginning to explore these connections, and the authors of the chapters in this volume from around the world are at the forefront.
J.P. Singh, Madeline Carr, and Renée Marlin-Bennett. Editors. 2019. Science, Technology and Art in International Relations. New York: Routledge.
GLOBALIZATION, CULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT: THE UNESCO CONVENTION ON CULTURAL DIVERSITY
This edited collection outlines the accomplishments, shortcomings, and future policy prospects of the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, arguing that the Convention is not broad enough to confront the challenges concerning human rights, sustainability, and cultural diversity as a whole.
Christiaan De Beukelaer, Miikka Pyykkönen, J.P. Singh. Editors. 2015. Globalization, Culture, and Development: The UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan
INTERNATIONAL CULTURAL POLICIES AND POWER
Political scientists by and large ignore cultural industries and technologies whereas they are prominent in other disciplines. This book provides insights from local, societal, national, and international levels in understanding cultural industries, technologies, and policies and integrates these perspectives into the study of political science.
J.P. Singh. Editor. 2010. International Cultural Policies and Power. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES AND GLOBAL POLITICS: THE CHANGING SCOPE OF POWER AND GOVERNANCE
Examines how information technologies may be shifting power and authority away from the state.
Returning to the fundamentals of political science, namely power and governance, this book studies the relationship between information technologies and global politics. Key issue-areas are carefully examined: security (including information warfare and terrorism); global consumption and production; international telecommunications; culture and identity formation; human rights; humanitarian assistance; the environment; and biotechnology. Each demonstrates the validity of the view now prevalent within international relations research—the shifting of power and the locus of authority away from the state.
Three major conclusions are offered. First, the nation-state must now confront, support, or coexist with other international actors: non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations; multinational corporations; transnational social movements; and individuals. Second, our understanding of instrumental and structural powers must be reconfigured to account for digital information technologies. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, information technologies are now reconstituting actor identities and issues.
James N. Rosenau & J.P. Singh. Editors. 2002. Information Technologies and Global Politics: The Changing Scope of Power and Governance. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
at the Oxford Internet Institute with Helen Margetts