[URBANTH-L] Another New Book: Alan Smart's _Petty Capitalists and Globalization_

[Angela Jancius]

From: Alan Smart <asmart at ucalgary.ca>

Since we are in the new book announcement mode, here is one more:
      

Petty Capitalists and Globalization
Flexibility, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Development.  SUNY Press, 
2005.  Alan Smart and Josephine Smart (eds.)

      Globalization is often seen as driven by large corporations and 
supranational organizations. Enterprises operated by petty capitalists may 
be small, but there is nothing petty about their significance for the 
operation of economies or our understanding of contemporary societies, 
families, and localities. Petty Capitalism and Globalization uses 
ethnographic research to examine how small firms in Europe, Asia, and Latin 
America have been compelled to operate and compete in a fast-moving 
transnational economic environment. From Nepalese rug makers to German 
bakers to Taiwanese memory chip designers, these fascinating case studies 
delve into the complex situation of petty capitalists, often ambiguously 
situated between capital and labor, cooperation and exploitation, family and 
economy, tradition and modernity, friends and competitors. Understanding the 
position of petty capitalists in a global economy provides lessons in the 
potential and limitations of promoting small firms and entrepreneurship as a 
route to sustainable development.

      Contributors include Michael Blim, Hans Buechler, Judith-Maria 
Buechler, Hill Gates, Simone Ghezzi, Jinn-yuh Hsu, B. Lynne Milgram, Susana 
Narotzky, Donald M. Nonini, Tom O'Neill, Frances Abrahamer Rothstein, Alan 
Smart, Josephine Smart, Adrian Smith, and Gavin Smith


      Alan Smart
      University of Calgary