In contemporary global capitalism, the most powerful corporations are innovation or intellectual monopolies. The book’s unique perspective focuses on how private ownership and control of knowledge and data have become a major source of rent and power. The author explains how at the one pole, these corporations concentrate income, property and power in the United States, China, and in a handful of intellectual monopolies, particularly from digital and pharmaceutical industries, while at the other pole developing countries are left further behind. The book includes detailed empirical mappings of how intellectual monopolies develop and transform knowledge from universities and open-source collaborations into intangible assets. The result is a strategy that combines undermining the commons through privatization with harvesting from the same commons. The book ends with provoking reflections to tilt the scale against intellectual monopoly capitalism and arguing that desired changes require democratic mobilization of workers and citizens at large. This book represents one of the first attempts to capture the contours of an emerging new era where old perspectives lead us astray, and the old policy toolbox is hopelessly inadequate. This is true for the idea that the best, or only, way to promote innovation is to transform knowledge into private property. It is also true for anti-trust policies focusing exclusively on consumer prices. The formation of global infrastructures that lead to natural monopolies calls for public rather than private ownership. Scholars and professionals from the social sciences and humanities (in particular economics, sociology, political science, geography, educational science and science and technology studies) will enjoy a clear and all-embracing depiction of innovation dynamics in contemporary capitalism, with a particular focus on asymmetries between actors, regions and topics. In fact, its topical issue broadens the book’s scope to those curious about how innovation networks shape our world.

Almost a decade in, Empire remains the 21st Century's dominant mode of cultural production, and North America remains at the apex of the colonial imperative. The contributors to this volume argue that, far from being a post-colonial world, the struggle for independence of polity and culture is still alive and relevant. The book brings together relevant examples of anti-colonial discourse and struggle from across the US and Canada, providing unique perspectives on resistance, activism, scholarship and pedagogy. Anti-colonialism is an evolving framework to which this book hopes to make a unique contribution, with the range, depth and analytical approach of the chapters it contains. The emphasis on anti-colonial resistance here is significant, as it consistently reveals the personal commitment required for the undoing of domination, as well as the ways in which people can collectively pursue radical politics in their aim of bringing about social justice. The book examines a multitude of actions which could be termed anti-colonial, from student walkouts along the US/Mexico border, to interrogations of the relationship between indigenous and anti-racist struggles in North America, to analyses of the implications of anti-colonialism for community unionism as well as disability rights struggles. Chapters also look at the movement for Africentric schools in Toronto, provide an annotated and comparative look at the myriad struggles for and by the Fourth World and Fourth World nations, and analyze the creation of an anti-colonial classroom in a Montreal university. They also explore the colonial underpinnings of multicultural education in the US. With contributions from leading thinkers such as Henry Giroux, Ward Churchill, and Peter McLaren, as well as fresh perspectives from junior academics, this book provides a diverse and varied survey of anti-colonialism in the US and Canada. It will be a thought-provoking read for those working in a wide variety of disciplines, from Sociology to Politics. In daring and incisive ways, Arlo Kempf's collection further positions anti-colonialism as the necessary educational project for the colonizer and colonized within us all; it reflectively re-sets the radical education agenda, with telling historical and current instances that are used by the book's authors to move constructively forward in critical ways. John Willinsky, Stanford University, USA

A comprehensive theoretical and practical guide to the operating principles of knowledge auditing, illustrated with numerous case studies. A knowledge audit provides an “at a glance” view of an organization's needs and opportunities. Its purpose is to improve an organization's effectiveness through a better understanding of the dynamics and levers of knowledge production, access, and use. However, this developing field is hampered by the lack of a common language about the origins and nature of knowledge auditing. In Principles of Knowledge Auditing, Patrick Lambe integrates the theory and practices of the field, laying out principles and guidelines for a clearer and more pragmatic approach to knowledge auditing that makes it more accessible to practitioners and researchers. Lambe examines knowledge auditing in the context of the development of communications, information, and knowledge management in the twentieth century. He critiques and clarifies ambiguities in how knowledge audits are approached and described, as well as how the results are conveyed within organizations. He discusses the benefits and risks of knowledge management standards. Knowledge auditors, he says, need a common frame of reference more than they need standards. Standards have their uses, but they provide only markers and sign posts and are poor representations of the richness of the landscape. He concludes with a set of guiding principles for practitioners.

A review devoted to the historical statistical and comparative study of politics, economics and public law.

Despite the influence corporations wield over all aspects of everyday life, there has been a remarkable absence of critical inquiry into the social constitution of this power. In analysing the complex relationship between corporate power and the widespread phenomenon of share ownership, this book seeks to map and define the nature of resistance and domination in contemporary capitalism. Drawing on a Marxist-informed framework, this book reconnects the social constitution of corporate power and changing forms of shareholder activism. In contrast to other texts that deal with corporate governance, this study examines a diverse and comprehensive set of themes, from socially responsible investing to labour-led shareholder activism and its limitations. Through this ambitious and critical study, author Susanne Soederberg demonstrates how the corporate governance doctrine represents an inherent feature of neoliberal rule, effectively disembedding and depoliticising relations of domination and resistance from the wider power and paradoxes of capitalism. Examining corporate governance and shareholder activism in a number of different contexts that include the United States and the global South, this important book will be of interest to students and scholars of international political economy, international relations and development studies. It will also be of relevance to a wider range of disciplines including finance, economics, and business and management studies. Winner of the Davidson/Studies in Political Economy Award.

In this groundbreaking study, S. Jonathan Wiesen explores how West German business leaders remade and marketed their public image in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust. He challenges assumptions that West Germans - and industrialists in particular - were silent about the recent past during the years of denazification and reconstruction, revealing how German business leaders attempted to absolve themselves of responsibility for Nazi crimes while recasting themselves as socially and culturally engaged public figures. Through case studies of individual firms such as Siemens and Krupp, Wiesen depicts corporate publicity as a telling example of postwar selective memory.