Why businesses should never underestimate the power of place. Today's business leaders are so obsessed with all things global and virtual that they risk neglecting the critical impact of physical place. It's a paradox of the Internet age: now that it's possible for businesses to be everywhere at once, they need to focus on what it means to be one specific place at a time. The best global brands, from IBM to McDonald's, are by design also the leading local brands. For instance, your decision to patronize Starbucks will depend on whether it's the best local coffee shop in your neighborhood, not on how many thousands of global locations it has. Marketing experts John Quelch and Katherine Jocz offer a new way to think about place in every strategic decision-from how to leverage consumer associations with locations to where to position products on the shelf. They explore case studies such as Nike and The Apple Store, which use place in creative ways. Drawing on a blend of hard data and engaging anecdotes, this book will help any business-from global mega-brands to boutique, small town stores- influence customers more effectively.

Global news on anthropogenic climate change is shaped by international politics, scientific reports and voices from transnational protest movements. This timely volume asks how local communities engage with these transnational discourses.The chapters in this volume present a range of compelling case studies drawn from a broad cross-section of local communities around the world, reflecting diverse cultural and geographical contexts. From Greenland to northern Tanzania, it illuminates how different understandings evolve in diverse cultural and geographical contexts while also revealing some community.

Globalization is often described as the spread of western culture to other parts of the world. How accurate is the depiction of 'cultural flow'? In Counterworks, ten anthropologists examine the ways in which global processes have affected particular localities where they have carried out research. They challenge the validity of anthropological concepts of culture in the light of the pervasive connections which exist between local and global factors everywhere. Rather than assuming that the world is culturally diverse, this book proposes that culture is itself a representation of the similarities and difference recognized between forms of social life. The authors address issues of globalization in terms of diverse histories and traditions of knowledge, which may include the construction of difference as cultural. In its attention to specific local situations, such as Bali, Cuba, Bolivia, Greece, Kenya, and the Maoris in New Zealand, Counterworks argues that the apparent oppositoin between strong westernizing, global forces and weak concept of culture, which supposes cultures to be integrated and possessed of essential properties, needs rethinking in a contemporary world where a marked sense of culture has become a wide-spread property of people's social knowledge. The book will have wide appeal to anthropologists, to students of comparative studies in history, religion and language, and to anyone interested in the phenomenon of postmodernism.

A history of our time.

This astute book initiates a broad discussion from a variety of different disciplines about how we place children nationally, globally and within development discourses. Unlike other books of its kind, it does not seek to dwell solely on the abiding complexities of local comparisons. Rather, it elaborates larger concerns about the changing nature of childhood, young people’s experiences, their citizenship and the embodiment of their political identities as they are embedded in the processes of national development and globalization. In particular, this book concentrates on three main issues: nation building and developing children, child participation and activism in the context of development, and globalization and children’s live in the context of what has been called "the end of development." These are relatively broad research perspectives that find focus in what the authors term "reproducing and developing children" as a key issue of national and global concern. They further argue that understanding children and reproduction is key to understanding globalization.