Globalization
From the perspective of today, it's easy to forget that until a couple decades ago the governments of most countries made serious efforts to restrain rather than encourage many kinds of economic globalization -- and then suddenly that changed. Why?
I've looked at this question by studying the establishment of free trade in North America -- Canada, Mexico, and the United States. My view is that many critics, who say globalization has been a top-down project imposed by elites, are basically correct. But they have badly misunderstood many things about globalization, about the people who have made globalization happen, and about how they have done so. I'm trying to help the critics and the advocates understand each other better.
My last major paper on globalization, which appeared in the American Journal of Sociology in 2014, won best article awards from the American Sociological Association sections on Political Sociology and Global-Transnational Sociology, and an honorable mention from the Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology.
In the autumn of 2019, I have a book coming out from Oxford University Press on this issue. Here’s what early reviewers have been saying about it:
"This excellent study dissects the role that businesses, economists, and political elites each played in constructing hyper-globalization. Fairbrother eschews easy generalizations, yet provides a unified and convincing account that challenges accepted theories." -- Dani Rodrik, Harvard University
"Fairbrother identifies the real pro-globalization coalitions at work in the global economy." -- Mark Blyth, Brown University
"Fairbrother's work will give us a great deal to think about." -- Sarah Babb, Boston College