What determines the flow of labor and capital in this new global information economy? Who has the capacity to coordinate this new system, to create some measure of order? What happens to territoriality and sovereignty, two fundamental principles of the modern state? And who gains rights and who loses rights? Losing Control? examines the rise of private transnational legal codes and supranational institutions, such as the World Trade Organization and universal human rights covenants, and shows that though sovereignty remains an important feature of the international system, it is no longer confined to the nation-state. Other actors gain rights and a kind of sovereignty by setting some of the rules that used to be within the exclusive domain of states. Saskia Sassen tracks the emergence and the making of the transformations that mark our world today, among which is the partial denationalizing of national territory. Two arenas in particular stand out in the new spatial and economic order by their capacity to set their own rules: the global capital market and the series of codes and institutions that have mushroomed into an international human rights regime. As Sassen shows, these two quasi-legal realms now have the power and legitimacy to demand action and accountability from national governments, with the ironic twist that both depend upon the state to enforce their goals. From the economic policy shifts forced by the Mexico debt crisis to the recurring battles over immigration and refugees around the world, Losing Control? incisively analyzes the events that have radically altered the landscape of governance in an era of increasing globalization.

Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization

Business & Money

Sassen, Saskia

International

Columbia University Press

Losing Control?: Sovereignty in the Age of Globalization (Leonard Hastings Schoff Lectures)

Losing Control?: Sovereignty in the Age of Globalization

This groundbreaking study focuses on the importance of place, scale, and nation to the study of globalization. Sassen identifies two sets of processes that make up globalization: the first and more commonly studied set of processes is global institutions, from the World Trade Organization to the War Crime Tribunals; the second and less frequently explored set of processes occur at the national and local level, including state monetary policy, small-scale activism that has an explicit or implicit global agenda, and local politics. Emphasizing the interplay between global and local phenomena, Sassen insightfully examines new forms and conditions such as global cities, transnational communities, and commodity chains. This unique approach to globalization offers new interpretive and analytic tools to understand the complexity of global interdependence. Sociology of Globalization is part of the Contemporary Societies series.

A Sociology of Globalization (Contemparary Societies)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

W.W.Norton&Company

The Mobility of Labor and Capital: A Study in International Investment and Labor Flow

Professor Sassen has updated her conclusions for this paperback edition.

Cambridge University Press

Professor Sassen has updated her conclusions for this paperback edition.

Economics

Soaring income inequality and unemployment, expanding populations of the displaced and imprisoned, accelerating destruction of land and water bodies: today's socioeconomic and environmental dislocations cannot be fully understood in the usual terms of poverty and injustice, according to Saskia Sassen. They are more accurately understood as a type of expulsion--from professional livelihood, from living space, even from the very biosphere that makes life possible.
This hard-headed critique updates our understanding of economics for the twenty-first century, exposing a system with devastating consequences even for those who think they are not vulnerable. From finance to mining, the complex types of knowledge and technology we have come to admire are used too often in ways that produce elementary brutalities. These have evolved into predatory formations--assemblages of knowledge, interests, and outcomes that go beyond a firm's or an individual's or a government's project.
Sassen draws surprising connections to illuminate the systemic logic of these expulsions. The sophisticated knowledge that created today's financial "instruments" is paralleled by the engineering expertise that enables exploitation of the environment, and by the legal expertise that allows the world's have-nations to acquire vast stretches of territory from the have-nots. Expulsions lays bare the extent to which the sheer complexity of the global economy makes it hard to trace lines of responsibility for the displacements, evictions, and eradications it produces--and equally hard for those who benefit from the system to feel responsible for its depredations.

Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy

Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press

An Observer Architecture Book of the Year
Soaring income inequality and unemployment, expanding populations of the displaced and imprisoned, accelerating destruction of land and water bodies: today's socioeconomic and environmental dislocations cannot be fully understood in the usual terms of poverty and injustice, according to Saskia Sassen. They are more accurately understood as a type of expulsion―from professional livelihood, from living space, even from the very biosphere that makes life possible.
“Saskia Sassen’s Expulsions describes the global forces that make ever more tenuous and fragile most people’s grip on the places where they live.” ―Rowan Moore, The Observer
“Coupled with her earlier work, this may be a paradigm breaking/making work.” ―Michael D. Kennedy, Contemporary Sociology
“Once again, sociologist Sassen uses her considerable knowledge to think creatively at both the local and global levels…In place of the principle of inclusion in the pre-1980s Keynesian era, the planet is increasingly dominated by a principle of exclusion of people, land, natural resources, and water. Sassen presents a powerful conceptual analysis and an equally powerful and timely call to action.” ―M. Oromaner, Choice

Massive and parallel changes have occurred in New York City since the late 1970s and in London and Tokyo since the early 1980s. What transformed these urban centers, with their diverse histories, into "global cities" that share comparable economic and social structures? Saskia Sassen argues that their remarkable similarity arises from their position as command posts in international finance and advanced services for business.

The Global City

Princeton University Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sassen, Saskia. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Sassen, Saskia

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sassen, Saskia. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization

Losing Control?: Sovereignty in the Age of Globalization (Leonard Hastings Schoff Lectures)

Losing Control?: Sovereignty in the Age of Globalization

A Sociology of Globalization (Contemparary Societies)

The Mobility of Labor and Capital: A Study in International Investment and Labor Flow

The Mobility of Labor and Capital: A Study in International Investment and Labor Flow

The Mobility of Labor and Capital: A Study in International Investment and Labor Flow

Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy

Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy

The Global City