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Part Three of the book turns to the question of international society and international relations after September 11, starting with a chapter by Richard Falk, who argues that international society remains a useful starting point for studying today's globalized world because it is predicated on the dual assertions of international anarchy and a (potentially) global normative order – a duality that provides a fertile breeding ground for different accounts of what the world should look like. The author discusses the changing geopolitical context of globalization and global governance, suggesting that if globalization is to be retained as a label for the current phase of international relations, its net must be cast far more broadly than it has been – since the events of 2001 it needs to be interpreted far less economistically, and more comprehensively. The last part of the chapter considers approaches to global governance, international society, and world society given this altered understanding of ‘globalization’. The author identifies five overlapping accounts of globalization that provide alternative and competing pictures of the future of global governance and international society: corporate globalization, which refers to the growth of transnational business and the forging of common interests and values based on neoliberal economics; civic globalization, which in many ways is a civil society response to the corporate variety and has manifested itself in a number of transnational anti‐globalization movements, but has now moved beyond straightforward opposition towards the articulation of new global political agendas; imperial globalization, which is a US‐led form of globalization that seeks not the creation of a genuinely multinational neoliberal global economy but rather the extension of American power and the satisfaction of US interests narrowly conceived; apocalyptic globalization, the variant promoted by Osama Bin Laden and his followers and aims to overthrow the society of states and replace it with an Islamic world state; and regional globalization, in which a number of regions around the world are developing their own subsystems as a way of moderating pressures created by the global flow of capital. The author argues that none of these forms of globalization is likely to predominate completely, but that the relationship between them is likely to shape the nature of global governance for the foreseeable future.

This chapter has an explicitly political focus and thus places the large corporation directly in the political science sphere. First, UN thinking and policy on CSR is outlined within a broader context of progressive UN ideas in the fields of development and governance, identifying a trend towards convergence in CSR policy between UN organizations, the World Bank, and the IMF over the last few decades. This new approach culminated in 1999 with the UN's ‘Global Compact’ initiated by Kofi Annan. Second, a more critical view of CSR is taken with respect to its developmental effectiveness and the type of development model that it reinforces. Developmental contributions being defined here as those that support social inclusiveness, sustainability, and the human rights of people in developing economies and not solely economic growth.

This chapter presents an abbreviated (modern) history of outsourcing, from the identification of the so-called new international division of labor in the 1970s, through the ascendancy of outsourcing as an innovatory business practice from the late 1980s and through the 1990s, to the rancorous “offshoring” debates of the last decade. Chapter 2 provides a genealogical and political-economic commentary on the rise of global outsourcing, from an epiphenomenon of the crisis of competitiveness facing some of the major manufacturing firms of North America and Western Europe in the 1970s, through the digital revolutions of the 1990s and the opening up of white-collar outsourcing markets, to the construction of the contemporary outsourcing “industry,” with its peculiar mix of strong growth, corporate regularization, political stigmatization, and second-class status.

This chapter discusses the Istanbul Protocol, guidelines for documenting consequences of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and severe human rights abuses, which was developed from 1996 to 1999. It evaluates the role of such guidelines, and of the medical and psychiatric disciplines that created them, in addressing human rights violations linked to activities of corporate globalization and the new global economy. The chapter analyzes the legal suit brought by Burmese villagers against the pipeline company Unocal in relation to its Yadana Pipeline project.