In a world of flux, as old territorial borders dissolve and new nations come together, who controls ideas, information, and creativity? Who patrols the new frontiers? This volume opens a window to the dark side of globalization and the struggles for autonomy it has generated from forest disputes to Indigenous land claims to conflicts between farmers and the patent owners of genetically modified seeds. The work of Palestinian poets, whose attachment to the land is explored in a powerful Coda, shows that a politics of place brings to the fore intense feelings of attachment, something common to all struggles over territory and autonomy.

A historical analysis of the geopolitics of real estate with settler-colonialism on the one side and the rise of über-wealthy foreign real estate investors on the other.

Individual foreign investment in residential real estate by new middle-class and super-rich investors is re-emerging as a key issue in academic, policy and public debates around the world. At its most abstract, global real estate is increasingly thought of as a liquid asset class that is targeted by foreign individual investors who are seeking to diversify their investment portfolios. But foreign investors are also motivated by intergenerational familial security, transnational migration strategies and short-term educational plans, which are all closely entwined with global real estate investment. Government and local public responses to the latest manifestation of global real estate investment have taken different forms. These range from pro-foreign investment, primarily justified on geopolitical and macro-economic grounds, to anti-foreign investment for reasons such as mitigating public dissent and protecting the local housing market. Within this changing geopolitical context, this book offers a diverse range of case studies from Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Russia, Australia and Korea. It will be of interest to academics, policymakers and university students who are interested in the globalisation of local real estate. The chapters in this book were originally published in the International Journal of Housing Policy.

How has it come about that indigenous cultures, body parts, and sequences of musical notes are considered property? How has the movement from collective to privatized systems affected notions of property? At what point in transaction chains do native cultures, indigenous medicines, or cyberdata become objects and therefore propertized, and what are the social, economic, and ethical considerations for such transformations? Addressing these hotly contested issues and many more, Property in Question interrogates the very concept of property and what is happening to it in the contemporary world, in case studies ranging from Romania to Kazakhstan, Africa to North America. The book examines not only the changing character of the property concept, but also its ideological foundations and political usages. Authors address bio-transactions, music copyright, cyberspace, oil prospecting, debates over privatization of land and factories, and dilemmas arising with new forms of ownership of businesses. Offering a fresh perspective on contemporary economic transformation, this volume is a long overdue investigation of the power of the private property concept, as well as an exploration of how the global economy may be subtly, even invisibly, changing what property means and how we relate to it.

In the last two decades, accelerating technological progress, increasing economic globalization and the proliferation of international agreements have created new challenges for intellectual property law. In this collection of articles in honor of Professor Joseph Straus, more than 60 scholars and practitioners from the Americas, Asia and Europe provide legal, economic and policy perspectives on these challenges, with a particular focus on the challenges facing the modern patent system. Among the many topics addressed are the rapid development of specific technical fields such as biotechnology, the relationship of exclusive rights and competition, and the application of territorially limited IP laws in cross-border scenarios.

Recent years have seen a globalization of property rights as the Western conception of property over land has extended across the world. As formerly community-owned land and natural resources are privatized and titling schemes proliferate, Property Rights from Below questions the trend toward treating land as a commodity and explores alternatives to the Western model. As we enter an era of resource scarcity and as competition for land and associated natural resources increases, purchasing power cannot become the sole criterion for land allocation; and the law of supply and demand in increasingly financialized markets cannot become the sole metric through which the value of land is determined. Using a range of examples from around the world, Property Rights from Below demonstrates that alternatives to this model often emerge from social innovations supported by local communities and that there is an urgent need for a broader political imagination when it comes to land governance. This innovative cross-disciplinary perspective on the pressing problems surrounding global property rights will be of interest to academics, students and professionals with an interest in property law, development economics and land governance.

This collection of essays in Governing Global Land Deals provides new empirical and theoretical analyses of the relationships between global land grabs and processes of government and governance. Reframes debates on global land grabs by focusing on the relationship between large-scale land deals and processes of governance Offers new theoretical insights into the different forms and effects of global land acquisitions Illuminates both the micro-processes of transaction and expropriation, as well as the broader structural forces at play in global land deals Provides new empirical data on the different actors involved in contemporary land deals occurring across the globe and focuses on the specific institutional, political, and economic contexts in which they are acting

Fields of Gold critically examines the history, ideas, and political struggles surrounding the financialization of farmland. In particular, Madeleine Fairbairn focuses on developments in two of the most popular investment locations, the US and Brazil, looking at the implications of financiers' acquisition of land and control over resources for rural livelihoods and economic justice. At the heart of Fields of Gold is a tension between efforts to transform farmland into a new financial asset class, and land's physical and social properties, which frequently obstruct that transformation. But what makes the book unique among the growing body of work on the global land grab is Fairbairn's interest in those acquiring land, rather than those affected by land acquisitions. Fairbairn's work sheds ethnographic light on the actors and relationships—from Iowa to Manhattan to São Paulo—that have helped to turn land into an attractive financial asset class. Thanks to generous funding from UC Santa Cruz, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

Drawing from field research in Cameroon, Ghana, Viet Nam, and the Amazon forests of Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru, this book explores the relationship between gender and land, revealing the workings of global capital and of peopleOCOs responses to it. A central theme is the peopleOCOs resistance to global forces, frequently through an insistence on the uniqueness of their livelihoods. For instance, in the Amazon, the focus is on the social movements that have emerged in the context of struggles over land rights concerning the extraction of Brazil nuts and baba u kernels in an increasingly globalized market. In Viet Nam, the process of OC de-collectivizingOCO rights to land is examined with a view to understanding how gender and other social differences are reworked in a market economy. The book addresses a gap in the literature on land tenure and gender in developing countries. It raises new questions about the process of globalization, particularly about who the actors are (local people, the state, NGOs, multinational companies) and the shifting relations amongst them. The book also challenges the very concepts of gender, land, and globalization. THE EDITORS Dzodzi Tsikata is Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research, and Deputy Head, Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy, University of Ghana. Pamela Golah worked as a Program Officer with the Women's Rights and Citizenship Program at the International Development Research Centre, Canada. In 2009, she joined the Research and Evaluation Branch at Citizenship and Immigration Canada as a Policy and Research Analyst.

We live today in an interconnected world in which ordinary people can became instant online celebrities to fans thousands of miles away, in which religious leaders can influence millions globally, in which humans are altering the climate and environment, and in which complex social forces intersect across continents. This is globalization. In the fifth edition of his bestselling Very Short Introduction Manfred B. Steger considers the major dimensions of globalization: economic, political, cultural, ideological, and ecological. He looks at its causes and effects, and engages with the hotly contested question of whether globalization is, ultimately, a good or a bad thing. From climate change to the Ebola virus, Donald Trump to Twitter, trade wars to China's growing global profile, Steger explores today's unprecedented levels of planetary integration as well as the recent challenges posed by resurgent national populism. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.