Understanding Globalisation: Challenges and Prospects

The book examines contemporary globalisation, which signifies a growing interconnectedness between people and societies across the world through increasing flows of people, goods, services, finance, and ideas across the borders. The concept of globalisation and its meaning is discussed through insights from scholars such as David Held, Anthony Giddens, David Harvey, Arjun Appadurai, Ulrich Beck, Manuel Castells, Saskia Sassen, and many other scholars to explain divergent perspectives of globalisation. The book also studies threats like nuclear weapons proliferation, global terrorism, environmental security issues, global justice, poverty, migration, and global shifts. It aims to generate readers’ interest in understanding globalisation and analysing the changing dynamics of world politics by studying it from diverse viewpoints.

The emergence of COVID-19 and resurgence of great power politics has given rise to the debate of de-globalisation and return of a new kind of ‘cold war’. In this context, this volume will also help readers to understand globalisation in the present changing world order.

The book will be useful to the students of political science, international relations, and other interdisciplinary social sciences subjects like political economy and global/international politics.

Nirmal Jindal (PhD, University of Delhi) was Principal and Professor of Political Science at Satyawati College, University of Delhi, India. She was a recipient of Fulbright Scholarship (1984–1985) to pursue research at the Center for Science and International Affairs, JFK School of Government, Harvard University, and Best College Lecturer Award for the year 2017–2018 by the Directorate of Higher Education, Government of Delhi. She has also been a recipient of ICSSR and UGC grants to participate in international conferences abroad. She has published four books, titled War as a Political Weapon in the Nuclear Age, US Foreign Policy, Global Politics: Issues and Perspectives and International Relations: Theory and Practice. She has published more than 25 articles on the issues of nuclear war, proliferation, security issues, conflict resolution, foreign policy, the Kashmir issue, and globalisation in books and journals of national and international repute. She has participated in various national and international conferences and presented about 50 research papers, including at the International Studies Association (ISA), Portland, Oregon, USA, and St Gallen University, Switzerland. She has been a resource person for professional development programmes at CRPF, Internal Security Academy, Mount Abu, and CPDHE several times. She has been a member of various professional bodies and represented India in the Forum of Federations (an Ottawa-based international forum) in Germany and Switzerland. She has participated in panel discussions on foreign policy and security issues on Zee News, NDTV, and other channels like Nation UpToDate. At present, she is a member of National Testing Agency, UGC-NET.

Kamal Kumar (PhD, University of Delhi) is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts, University of Allahabad, Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, India. He received the Academic Excellence Award in graduation at the Hindu College and secured a university position at University of Delhi. He was a recipient of the All-India Postgraduate Scholarship (2011), UGC Junior Research Fellowship (2013), and ICSSR International Travel Grant (2018) to attend the MPSA Annual Conference held in April 2018 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He attended U21 Masters Intensive Module 2012 organized in collaboration by the University of Birmingham, University of Delhi, and University of Melbourne in 2012. He has published several research articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Mainstream, Social Action, World Focus, and Indian Forester, and contributed a couple of articles in national newspapers. He has co-edited two books titled Global Politics: Issues and Perspectives (2018) and International Relations: Theory and Practice (2020) and authored over 15 articles for different textbooks and reference books published by reputed publishers. He has also presented over a dozen research papers in various national and international conferences. His research interests include comparative politics, global politics, indigenous knowledge systems, environmental politics, and social movements.