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To properly assess the relative places of China and the United States in the world system, the fact of the transformation of old, and the emergence of new, centers of capital accumulation needs to be established, and some attempt made to develop means of measuring these developments. This paper, working within the framework of Uneven and Combined Development, will suggest a new metric by which we can assess the geography of capital accumulation in the world economy, a metric with three components. The first component examines national income, both per capita and as shares of the world total. The second component refines the latter to an examination of share of world manufacturing, with a specific examination of distribution of the key sector of high-technology manufacturing. The third and final component examines the distribution of large corporations through the world economy, and introduces a new term – the relative weight of large corporations. All components of this metric suggest that key aspects of the modern economy remain “territorially bound” and clearly reveal the steady, long-term decline of the United States as the dominant center of capital accumulation, and the simultaneous emergence of new centers of capital accumulation in an increasingly multi-polar world economy.

Most well-known conceptualizations of sex, gender and sexuality privilege one version or another of a Western European or North American bi-polar paradigm. However, such a focus ignores the ethnographic evidence for a larger range of sex–gender–sexuality constructs. This paper outlines parameters for known variations in cultural constructs of sex–gender–sexuality systems, and raises questions about contemporary trends in understanding sex, gender and sexuality. As a first step, and because the data are more plentiful, I focus on variations in cultural constructions of sex, gender and sexuality relevant to physiological males, leaving a thorough exploration of constructions relevant to physiological females for another paper. The contemporary spread of Western cultural hegemony, as well as some opposition to that model, has categorized many indigenous, multi-polar sex–gender–sexuality systems as either in need of modernization or simply not quite civilized. The result is a loss, not only of knowledge about human plasticity in this area, but also a loss of cultural flexibility in organizing and dealing with human biocultural variation.

Regional civilizations have existed for more than 5,000 years. Each has evolved from primitive, social and political systems into much more complex ones to meet the challenges of historical ages and successive world civilizations (Yakovets, 2000). In the third millennium, regional civilizations face a new challenge – globalization and post-industrial world civilization.

Strategic analysis in a global setting involves competition in industries that extend across national boundaries and among firms with different national home bases that may tap into strategic resources in more than one location. Such analysis involves multiple levels: the global order, the global industry, individual countries, the firm (and its ecosystems), and specific activities within the firm. The international business (IB) field, during these three decades, has developed useful analytical frameworks for each of these levels, but integrating them across these levels has often been a challenge. The key integrating concept is value: how is value created, captured, and delivered. As the IB environment becomes more volatile and unpredictable, the importance of identifying and integrating useful frameworks for conducting global strategic analysis is even greater.

Over the past few decades, European multinational enterprises (MNEs) have been faced with a rapidly changing and difficult-to-predict international policy environment. Waves of privatisation, liberalisation and deregulation have alternated with periods of reregulation and institutional volatility. The proclaimed era of ‘globalisation’ turned out to be more regional than many of its protagonists anticipated (Rugman & Verbeke, 2004). Nevertheless, the ‘home advantage’ of many companies has come under increased pressure, and even their relationships with traditionally supportive, non-market domestic stakeholders such as governments, trade-unions and other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have been affected. In addition, the ‘host advantage’ sought by European MNEs in many developing countries has also become increasingly challenged, especially by new generations of emerging market MNEs. Part of the explanation for the success of these new entrants has been their privileged relationships with non-market actors in their domestic policy environment. Five international policy changes have accompanied these developments (Fig. 1).

The popular uprising, the Aragalaya, was a response to a debt crisis as well as a catharsis of accumulated public discontent, which overlapped with the pandemic. A key lesson from the pandemic was the need to strengthen state social provisioning capacities to protect the health status of citizens. In addition, enhancing local economies and sustainable livelihoods is central to avoiding the vulnerabilities of international migrant labour and tourism. The limitations of representative politics highlight the need to strengthen democratic social movement politics. Along with cross cultural alliances, building multi-class alliances is central for strengthening politics of redistribution. In a context of integration of party politics with criminal networks, demilitarisation as well as the abolition of prisons is indispensable for democratisation. In a global scale, democratising financial markets and platform economies suggests regulation and regional experiments not simply by the state but also multiple publics. In demanding participation in representative institutions, the Aragalaya combined a protest movement with a sense of commons. In turn, it pointed towards the possibilities of a public-driven economy based on the democratisation of the state as well as markets. In framing this movement as a ‘struggle of love’, it revitalised the realm of life politics and alternative pleasures of life.

This paper proposes that ethnic identity and identification in the modern nation-state is a process of dialogical interaction between self-perceived notions of identity and sociopolitical contexts, often defined by the state. Each example of ethnic identification has at least two levels of discourse, articulated internally and externally. As suggested by Bakhtin, whose study of Dostoevsky posed fundamental questions of self and society, identity and ideology: The endlessness of the external dialogue emerges here with the same mathematical clarity as does the endlessness of internal dialogue. … In Dostoevsky’s dialogues, collision and quarrelling occurs not between two integral monologic voices, but between two divided voices quarreling (one of those voices, at least, is divided). The open rejoinders of the one answer the hidden rejoinders of the other (Bakhtin, 1981 [1963], pp. 253, 254).

This paper is ambitious. Its central purpose is to examine how a number of developed economies, plus the largest developing economy, vary in terms of corporate governance: USA, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy, South Korea, Taiwan, Sweden, Switzerland and mainland China. We understand corporate governance in a very broad sense, descriptive not prescriptive: as who controls and influences firms, and how. We are thus dealing very much with varieties of capitalism. In a sense, we shall be seeking to characterise national systems of corporate governance, but we must stress that our concern is always with the situation of the individual firm. We shall find it convenient most of the time to give one label to a country's whole economy, but this will always be an approximation, which conceals variations among that country's firms. At other points, we shall distinguish types of firm and indicate the rough proportions of each type in a particular economy.

This paper aims to do three things. The first is to present some core aspects of my approach to globalization, humiliation (or ‘outrageous’ displacement) and conflict. The second is to compare my own approach to displacement cycles and conflict with Randall Collins's approach to interaction ritual chains and violence. The third is to see if there is any prospect that a ‘conversation’ between the two approaches might advance our understanding of the triangular relationship between conflict, violence and humiliation. The essence of peacemaking is not the elimination of conflict but the eradication, to the greatest possible degree, of violence and humiliation.