What the struggle over the Indonesian rainforests can teach us about the social frictions that shape the world around us Rubbing two sticks together produces heat and light while one stick alone is just a stick. It is the friction that produces movement, action, and effect. Anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing challenges the widespread view that globalization invariably signifies a clash of cultures, developing friction as a metaphor for the diverse and conflicting social interactions that make up our contemporary world. Tsing focuses on the rainforests of Indonesia, where in the 1980s and 1990s capitalist interests increasingly reshaped the landscape not so much through corporate design as through awkward chains of legal and illegal entrepreneurs that wrested the land from previous claimants, creating resources for distant markets. In response, environmental movements arose to defend the rainforests and the communities of people who live in them. Not confined to a village, province, or nation, the social drama of the Indonesian rainforests includes local and national environmentalists, international science, North American investors, advocates for Brazilian rubber tappers, United Nations funding agencies, mountaineers, village elders, and urban students—all drawn into unpredictable, messy misunderstandings, but misunderstandings that sometimes work out. Providing an invaluable portfolio of methods for the study of global interconnections, Friction shows how cultural differences are in the grip of worldly encounter and reveals how much is overlooked in contemporary theories of the global.

On January 1, 1804, Haiti shocked the world by declaring independence. Historians have long portrayed Haiti's postrevolutionary period as one during which the international community rejected Haiti's Declaration of Independence and adopted a policy of isolation designed to contain the impact of the world's only successful slave revolution. Julia Gaffield, however, anchors a fresh vision of Haiti's first tentative years of independence to its relationships with other nations and empires and reveals the surprising limits of the country's supposed isolation. Gaffield frames Haitian independence as both a practical and an intellectual challenge to powerful ideologies of racial hierarchy and slavery, national sovereignty, and trade practice. Yet that very independence offered a new arena in which imperial powers competed for advantages with respect to military strategy, economic expansion, and international law. In dealing with such concerns, foreign governments, merchants, abolitionists, and others provided openings that were seized by early Haitian leaders who were eager to negotiate new economic and political relationships. Although full political acceptance was slow to come, economic recognition was extended by degrees to Haiti--and this had diplomatic implications. Gaffield's account of Haitian history highlights how this layered recognition sustained Haitian independence.

A major new resource book for academics and students of youth studies, this work offers a rare comparative review of a field which is often focused on the local or national situation. Drawing together authors from across the world, the book combines assessments of the theory, methodology and practice of youth research, and the impact of globalization on this field of study. A particular strength of the text is its exploration of theoretical issues of globalization through substantial pieces of empirical work, some of which cover regions frequently overlooked in the international youth research scene, such as South East Asia and Eastern Europe.

This book is a thematic history of the world from 1780, the pivotal year of the revolutionary age, to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. It brings together historical data and arguments from different societies in order to show how interconnected the world was, even before the onset of modern globalization. "The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914 demonstrates how events in Asia, Africa, and South America, from the decline of the eighteenth-century Islamic empires to the anti-European Boxer rebellion of 1900 in China, had a direct impact on European and American history. Conversely, it sketches the "ripple effects" of crises such as the European revolutions and the American Civil War. The book also considers the great themes of the nineteenth-century world: the rise of the modern state, industrialization, liberalism, and the progress of world religions. Engaging and original, this book both challenges and complements the dominant regional and national approaches traditionally adopted by historians.

Gandhāran art is often regarded as the epitome of cultural exchange in antiquity. The ancient region of Gandhāra, centred on what is now the northern tip of Pakistan, has been called the ‘crossroads of Asia’. The Buddhist art produced in and around this area in the first few centuries AD exhibits extraordinary connections with other traditions across Asia and as far as the Mediterranean. Since the nineteenth century, the Graeco-Roman associations of Gandhāran art have attracted particular attention. Classically educated soldiers and administrators of that era were astonished by the uncanny resemblance of many works of Gandhāran sculpture to Greek and Roman art made thousands of miles to the west. More than a century later we can recognize that the Gandhāran artists’ appropriation of classical iconography and styles was diverse and extensive, but the explanation of this ‘influence’ remains puzzling and elusive. The Gandhāra Connections project at the University of Oxford’s Classical Art Research Centre was initiated principally to cast new light on this old problem. This volume is the third set of proceedings of the project’s annual workshop, and the first to address directly the question of cross-cultural influence on and by Gandhāran art. The contributors wrestle with old controversies, particularly the notion that Gandhāran art is a legacy of Hellenistic Greek rule in Central Asia and the growing consensus around the important role of the Roman Empire in shaping it. But they also seek to present a more complex and expansive view of the networks in which Gandhāra was embedded. Adopting a global perspective on the subject, they examine aspects of Gandhāra’s connections both within and beyond South Asia and Central Asia, including the profound influence which Gandhāran art itself had on the development of Buddhist art in China and India.

Cuban International Relations at 60 brings together the perspectives of leading experts and the personal accounts of two ambassadors to examine Cuba’s global engagement and foreign policy since January 1959 by focusing on the island’s key international relationships and issues. Thisbook’s first section focuseson Havana’s complex relationship with Washington and its second section concentrates on Cuba’s other key relationships with consideration also being given to Cuba's external trade and investment sectors and the possibility of the island becoming a future petro-power. Throughout this study due attention is given to the role of history and Cuban nationalism in the formation of the island’s unique foreign policy. This book’s examination and reflection on Cuba as an actor on the international arena for the 60 years of the revolutionary period highlights the multifaceted and complex reasons for the island’s global engagement. It concludes that Cuba’s global presence since January 1959 has been remarkable for a Caribbean island, is unparalleled, and is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Scholars of international relations, Latin American studies, and political science n will find this book particularly interesting.

The first textbook to present world history via social history, drawing on social science methods and research. This interdisciplinary, comprehensive and comparative textbook is authored by distinguished scholars and experienced teachers, and offers expert scholarship on global history that is ideal for undergraduate students. Volume 1 takes us from the origin of hominids to ancient civilizations, the rise of empires, and the Middle Ages. The book pays particular attention to the ways in which ordinary people lived through the great changes of their times, and how everyday experience connects to great political events and the commercial exchanges of an interconnected world. With 65 maps, 45 illustrations, timelines, boxes, and primary source extracts, the book moves students easily from particular historical incidents to broader perspectives, enabling them to use historical material and social science methodologies to analyze the events of the past, present and future.