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While it may no longer be particularly controversial to highlight water as a matter of politics, to describe water’s matter as political still challenges mainstream understandings of natural resource management. Indeed, water provides a sticky medium for the formation and consolidation of broader social, economic and discursive relations, which are enabled or constrained by the production history or ‘cultural biography’ of the commodity. This has been widely demonstrated in relation to capitalist urbanization and neoliberal accumulation in the field of political ecology, with both processes shown to be dependent on the prior commodification of water. This chapter will provide an original perspective on water commodification by demonstrating how desalination technology has allowed for the commercialization and ‘worlding’ of the water sector in Singapore, elucidating the close linkage between economic clustering and resource management. Before the 2000s, when desalination and recycled water were introduced, Singapore was dependent on imported water from Malaysia, requiring ongoing and contentious diplomatic negotiations. The politicized character of the supply network prevented the restructuring and commercialization of the sector, but with the fourfold increase in privately manufactured desalinated water, the Singapore government could apply its cluster development policy to the embryonic industry. The sector, now home to 180 water companies and 26 research centres, has been designated a key growth frontier, with water acting as an agent of worlding in the global knowledge economy.

World-systems analysis studies the development of our world-system. Its units of analysis to explain social change are not nation-states, but world-systems. There were, until the nineteenth century, many different and dissimilar types of world-systems – world-empires and world-economies – in the world. These have over the centuries been subjugated by the capitalist world-economy which emerged at the end of the Middle Ages in Europe. Analysing these long-term historical processes is central in world-systems analysis. It focuses not on the newest features of globalization, but on the processes which over the centuries have formed our modern world-system. This started as a European world-economy and has always functioned as a capitalist world-economy. It has over the centuries gone through several distinct phases of development and has subsequently incorporated all areas on the globe. The peripheralization of these areas enabled the core to prosper. World-systems analysis focuses on the complex processes through which the inequalities in the world-system are reproduced at the systems level, but are changeable at the state level. The semi-periphery plays an important role in both stabilizing the world-system as a whole and enabling some states to improve their position in the world-system. These changes in position in the world-system are linked to its economic cycle of growth and stagnation and its political cycle of rivalry and hegemony. Besides these recurrent cycles there are also trends which change and undermine the present world-system.

Research into ‘world cities’ has helped rooting (urban) geography in globalization debates. The world city literature focuses on a broad range of topics, and adopts very different ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies. In spite of this multiplicity, the literature collectively deepens and extends our understanding of how (1) specific cities function as key platforms in the organization of a globalized economy/society; and (2) how this impacts socio-spatial changes within those cities. Nonetheless, because the literature lacks a central paradigm, even the most widely cited contributions are best understood as specific building blocks within an increasingly diverse literature on cities in globalization. The chapter reviews key conceptualizations of world cities and how these have become increasingly extended and contested; the main spatiotemporal and organizational dimensions of world city-formation; discusses a mapping of world cities based on the geographies of the office networks of producer services firms; and charts major future research agendas.

Work-family researchers point out the need to broaden the scope of research in order to shed light on the interactions between public policies at the country level, collective agreements at the industry level, and workplace policies and practices at the organizational level. Policies and practices in organizations and collective agreements at the industry and organizational level can supplement and restrict existing statutory family policies. Moreover, it is in the context of the workplace that policies play out and affect work-family experiences. This chapter by den Dulk, Yerkes and Peper reviews research on the adoption and management of work-family policies in organizations and collective bargaining. Recent research on the adoption of workplace policies suggests a positive relationship exists between state and workplace policies, although differences between organizations remain. There is a need for longitudinal data and more research on the role of collective bargaining. Managers play a crucial role in the translation of policies into entitlements and practices in the workplace. Research to date suggests that although the organizational context is the most important layer of context in understanding the way work-family policies are implemented, the management of work-family policies is also shaped by the broader national and global context.

Latin America has witnessed dramatic changes over the past two decades as millions of women have entered the labor force with enormous direct and indirect consequences on demographic patterns, family arrangements and strategies to reconcile work and family. The chapter by Blofield and Mart'nez Franzoni investigates these changes and their outcomes. The authors find that given the persistent income inequality pervasive in the region, strategies to reconcile work and family have been highly unequal. Meanwhile, and across income levels, male participation in unpaid care and domestic work has remained basically unchanged. The first decade and a half of the twenty-first century witnessed a period of intense statecraft as governments across Latin America pursued more equity-enhancing policies to cope with work-family relations. The authors argue that measures taken reflect a deliberate government response to involve state institutions, and to a lesser degree men, in caregiving. Early child education and care services and parental leaves are a case in point. They find that overall, while far behind the major structural changes the region has experienced, policy changes reflected an increasing recognition among political actors that work and family reconciliation is a matter that will require more rather than less state intervention.

The chapter by Björnberg addresses women’s rights within family contexts using a global perspective. It is important to illuminate discriminating practices on women just because they are women and which prevent them from using their capabilities. The aim of the chapter is to argue for a feminist family policy. The author presents some perspectives on conditions for family life against a background of changing living conditions for women, migration and different family forms. Examples of these are changing ways of subsistence for women in a global economy, migration and social mobility. Economic conditions, cultural norms and values are challenges to the ways in which women can build and sustain the needs of family members and of themselves. Björnberg’s perspective on the conditions of women’s reproductive work is inspired by the capability approach developed by Nussbaum and Sen, since it sheds light on the obstacles that women confront, based on structures, institutions and culture. The author draws on evaluation reports from the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and other reports from the United Nations and the World Bank as well as analysis of case studies in the CEDAW on how conventions on woman’s human rights are implemented in national law.

This chapter focuses on Delaware’s efforts to crack down on disclosure-only settlements. The authors test one theory of plaintiff law firms: that there are “white hat” and “black hat” firms, that is, firms that bring meritorious cases and firms that bring weak ones. They find evidence consistent with the existence of “black hat” firms, but also evidence that “white hat” firms may in fact be “gray,” filing strong cases in Delaware and weaker cases outside it. To deal with the problem of “gray hat” behavior, the authors suggest that Delaware probe lead counsel applicants’ conduct outside of Delaware in making lead counsel appointments. Delaware can use its unique position as the center of corporate law to assure that meritorious cases continue to be brought there.

This book has described the growing political and regulatory scrutiny to which the tax strategies of multinational corporations (MNCs) have been subject in recent years. Despite their growing importance, however, the theoretical or conceptual place of journalists, leakers and whistleblowers in the international anti-avoidance regime remains under-researched. This chapter addresses this gap by describing some of the ways in which whistleblowing and investigative journalism have drawn attention to, and helped to counter, aggressive tax planning strategies. Using survey data and accounting research on the regulatory impact of reputational damage, this chapter evaluates the potential impacts of three regulatory models that have proven effective in other policy arenas. The models discussed are drawn from the environmental protection and corporate governance literature. The chapter argues that, in the case of aggressive tax avoidance, whistleblowers and journalists exercise little effect independently of government, but rather prompt, enable or force further action through official channels.