Global Future Research Articles

Distributed production under the pandemic shock: Vulnerability, resilience and the new stage of globalization

The paper draws attention to a new wave of public and academic debate on the future of globalization and on rationality of countries’ further participation in distributed production, i.e., their involvement in global value chains (GVCs) and value-added trade. Raised during the COVID-19 pandemic shock, this debate is the reaction of countries to the global diffusion of downfalls through transborder supplies. We analyze vulnerabilities of GVCs to sudden shocks, demonstrate the role of these risks in escalating the 2020 global recession and in shaping its unique features, as well as scrutinize the emerging post-pandemic strategies of leading MNEs for enhancing the GVC resilience. We argue that despite the collapse of the just-in-time supply system and the crucial dependency of many domestic industries on imports from China, the pandemic shock could neither undermine foundations of distributed production nor lead to mass reshoring. On the contrary, both analyzed practice and surveyed econometric literature confirm that benefits of countries’ participation in GVCs outweigh risks of their falling under potential rippling disruptions. Moreover, MNEs’ resilience strategies, which we classified into three interrelated lines of action (restructuring of GVCs’ supplier networks, production optimization, and GVCs’ digital transformation), give globalization a new impetus. We conclude with describing the changing features of distributed production under the ongoing GVCs’ restructuring and outline a number of promising export opportunities that objectively open up in the 2020s for developing economies, including Russia. In the course of our study, we examine key properties of resilient systems (robustness, flexibility, redundancy), some new notions (disruption risks, ripple effect, etc.), and new management approaches relevant for all types of economies and businesses under increased uncertainty.

Swedish free school companies going global: Spatial imaginaries and movable pedagogical ideas

ABSTRACT Enabled by market-oriented policies implemented in the early 1990s, a nation-wide for-profit education industry has emerged and flourished in Sweden. As a more recent expansion strategy, Swedish school companies have begun exporting their school and early childhood education and care services internationally. In this article, three such companies and a selection of the foreign operations they have set up are studied to analyse how they describe the education services they are establishing in the new national settings. The findings show that the companies have developed and followed different edu-business models, using and transforming particular pedagogical ideas and connecting them to different spatial imaginaries. These include the Swedish/Scandinavian as both places and idealized spaces, infused with borderless global transformative spatial imaginaries on the creation of autonomous learners and futuristic education visions for global futures. Educational profiles and concepts from the Swedish context are both adjusted and marketed to the foreign settings, and entail stories on spaces and mobilities, encompassing pedagogy, teachers and students.

Human Capital, Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction Nexus: Why Investment in Free Compulsory Universal Education Matters for Africa

This study uses a quantitative correlational design model to investigate the effects of human capital and economic growth on poverty reduction. The study sampled and analyzed 140 countries’ data from United Nations Human Development Index report, 2010 to 2018. Comparing data from Africa, Europe and Asia, the study found that human capital had a positive effect on economic growth, while economic growth had a negative effect on poverty. The study argues that poverty reduction in Africa matters in creating sustainable global futures and recommends investment into free universal pre-tertiary education as a strategy to combat poverty.

Quality of adolescent and youth-friendly health services in Dehana district public health facilities, northeast Ethiopia: Using the Donabedian quality framework.

Adolescents and youths who need exceptional healthcare are the shapers and leaders of our global future. However, many of them are died prematurely, while others suffer from diseases partly because of the poor quality of health services. Thus, this study aimed to assess the quality of Adolescent and Youth-friendly Health Services (AYFHS) and associated factors in the public health facilities of Dehana district, Northeast Ethiopia. A facility-based quantitative cross-sectional study supported with a qualitative component was conducted from February 24 to March 30, 2020. The quality of AYFHS was measured using the Donbidean framework (structure, process and output component). Accordingly, a total of 431 adolescents and youths, five health facilities, twenty-five client-provider interaction observations, and nine key informant interviews were conducted. Binary logistic regression analysis was done, and variables with a p-value of < 0.05 and Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR) with its 95% Confidence Interval (CI) were used to measure the association. The qualitative data were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Then, Open Code 4.03 software was used to manage and analyze the data. The quality of adolescent and youth-friendly health services was 58.8, 46.4, and 47.2% for structural, process, and output quality dimensions, respectively. The predictor variables for output quality were, being a student (AOR: 2.07, 95%CI: 1.07-3.40), farmers (AOR: 2.59, 95%CI: 1.25-5.39), own income sources (AOR: 1.99, 95%CI: 1.03-3.85), exempted services (AOR: 2.30, 95%CI: 1.43-3.71) and long waiting time (AOR: 3.8495%CI: 1.80-8.23). The overall quality of adolescent and youth-friendly health services was still lower than the WHO good quality standards. The structural quality dimension was affected by the unavailability of adequate and trained health service providers, poor engagement of adolescents and youths in the facility governance structure, unavailability of guidelines, protocols and procedures. In contrast, the process quality dimension was also compromised due to the provider's poor compliance with the national AYFHS guidelines. Therefore, health facilities need to engage adolescents and youths in the health facility governance structure, and providers should comply with the national guideline.

ПЕРСПЕКТИВЫ ГЛОБАЛИЗАЦИИ В XXI ВЕКЕ

The article considers the issue of the prospects of globalization, which receives ambiguous and contradictory assessments in the expert community and the mass media. Since negative judgments about the future of globalization are mainly based on assessments of the state of the contemporary economy, the article analyzes the trends in the development of the global economy in the context of the stages of globalization. The changes that took place in the world economy are shown, attention to the growth of its unification and uniformity is paid. It is concluded that by the beginning of the 21th century, the successful globalization processes had reached their peak. Then the recession, associated with the two world wars and the emergence of a bipolar world began. After the end of the cold war, a new rise in globalization begins, a single mechanism of the world economy is being formed. In general, it is concluded that the historical context and recent events in the world do not give grounds to talk about the end of globalization. Today, there is only some slowing down of global processes, after which a new recovery should be expected.

What India and China Once Were: The Pasts That May Shape the Global Future. Edited by Sheldon I. Pollock and Benjamin A. Elman

What India and China Once Were: The Pasts That May Shape the Global Future. Edited by Sheldon I. Pollock and Benjamin A. Elman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. Pp . xiii + 365. $35.

Brief Synopses of New Arabic-Language Publications

Brief Synopses of New Arabic-Language Publications

Scenarios for an impact assessment of global bioeconomy strategies: Results from a co-design process

The replacement of fossil resources with renewable biomass in a bioeconomy is seen as a major contribution to climate change mitigation. This transformation will affect all members of society, making it crucial to consider the views of different stakeholders to ensure a socially acceptable transition towards a sustainable bioeconomy. To explore potential outcomes of bioeconomy strategies assuming different future pathways, a scenario analysis is a tool to inform decision-makers about policy impacts and trade-offs. The inter- and transdisciplinary research project “BioNex – The future of the biomass nexus” is the first project to develop bioeconomy scenarios together with stakeholders from politics, industry, and civil society in an iterative co-design process. As a result, three storylines describing diverging potential global futures are developed and quantified: Towards sustainability, business as usual, and towards resource depletion. The futures are driven by different assumptions on climate policy, cropland expansion, productivity growth in agriculture, prices of fossil energy, and consumption behaviour. Additionally, in the co-design process, three bioeconomy policies are developed: policy as usual, stronger development of the bioeconomy, and no policies. Besides presenting the results of the stakeholder workshops, this paper evaluates the strengths and shortcomings of a stakeholder approach in terms of policy-oriented research. According to the experience made within this study, it provides valuable insights for researchers and funding authorities they can use to optimise the employment of stakeholder-based research approaches.

Developing a valid and reliable Perceived Global Future Scale.

To develop a valid and reliable data collection tool to define individuals' perceptions of the global future. This methodological study was carried out on 870 participants in Istanbul, a city with the country's highest and most diverse population. Content validity, construct validity, item analyses, and stability of the draft tool were tested. The seven-factor scale structure was confirmed. Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the scale was .93. The Perceived Global Future Scale, consisting of 36 items and seven dimensions, was used. It is a valid and reliable tool to define perceptions of individuals on the global future.

Educating for Public Happiness and Global Peace: Contributions from a Portuguese UNESCO Chair towards the Sustainable Development Goals

For a positive global future, it is fundamental to tackle the existing web of psychological, economic, sociological, and cultural processes reflected in current education systems. Confronted with complex issues that are essential to the stability of civilizations, we need more voices addressing a critical analysis of education in its key role. This can result in more people participating as happy, informed, and engaged citizens. This paper introduces the argument for education to promote public happiness (Felicitas Publica) and support global peace, addressing the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) #3, #4, and #16. It begins by mapping the landscape of promising education-related practices supporting these SDGs and provides recommendations for research and actions. In addition, it presents the work of the UNESCO Chair on Education for Global Peace Sustainability, based at the Universidade de Lisboa, in Portugal, as an illustrative example. With this paper, we hope to convey the input of different branches of psychology that have the common good as their aim and address the positive transformation of our current educational processes.

Grounding global environmental assessments through bottom-up futures based on local practices and perspectives

Future scenarios and pathways of potential development trajectories are powerful tools to assist with decision-making to address many sustainability challenges. Such scenarios play a major role in global environmental assessments (GEAs). Currently, however, scenarios in GEAs are mostly developed at the global level by experts and researchers, and locally imagined, bottom-up scenarios do not play a role in such assessments. In this paper, we argue that addressing future sustainability challenges for achieving more equitable development in GEAs requires a more explicit role for bottom-up inspired futures. To this end, this paper employs an innovative global assessment framework for exploring alternative futures that are grounded in local realities and existing practical actions, and that can be appropriately scaled to the required decision-making level. This framework was applied in the context of the UN’s Global Environment Outlook 6, a major example of a GEA. We developed novel methods for synthesizing insights from a wide range of local practices and perspectives into global futures. We collected information from crowdsourcing platforms, outcomes of participatory workshops in different regions of the world, and an assessment of reported regional outlooks. We analysed these according to a framework also used by an integrated assessment model in the same GEA. We conclude that bottom-up approaches to identify and assess transformative solutions that envision future pathways towards greater sustainability significantly strengthen current GEA scenario-development approaches. They provide decision makers with required actionable information based on tangible synergistic solutions that have been tested on the ground. This work has revealed that there are significant opportunities for the integration of bottom-up knowledge and insights into GEAs, to make such assessments more salient and valuable to decision makers.

Pivots, pirouettes and practicalities: Actions and reactions of work-integrated learning practitioners

One impact of the global pandemic of 2020 was a rapid shift in the delivery of work-integrated learning (WIL) to remote activity among WIL practitioners, students and educators alike. Along with professional practice research in higher degrees, WIL practice, including placements and non-placements, responded actively and sometimes reactively to the challenges of sudden transition to online environments. What strategies - pivots and pirouettes - did WIL practitioners use to weather the storm of Covid-19? What does this tell us about the nature of WIL? This paper captures the seemingly overnight response to shifting work-based learning to online and other spaces. With change came the opportunity to reflect on the varying areas of WIL: from the practical processes of ensuring students are cared for to pivoting to the learning opportunities it presented in building digital literacies and adapting to the global future of work. This study is a Trans-Tasman collaboration of four WIL practitioners exploring their responsiveness to disruption in WIL contexts. We present collective autoethnographic responses to such themes as disruption, becoming resilient, pivoting to change, changing perceptions of WIL and the legacies of the pandemic. These themes apply to learners and educators alike, and our words embody the experiences of both groups. Our responses to phenomena highlighted this need for resilience and agility. Methodologically, the researchers’ micro-narrative responses to key themes structure themselves into a macro-narrative that demonstrates the lived experiences of the researchers as educators in the WIL space and explores implications for ongoing and future practice.

「氷の大陸」南極は地球の将来にどう関わるのか？

「氷の大陸」南極は地球の将来にどう関わるのか？

“Dyfodol Llwyddiannus” i’n “Dyfodol Byd-eang?” – Goblygiadau Cwricwlwm 2022 ar addysgu a dysgu ieithoedd rhyngwladol.

This article discusses the future of teaching and learning international languages in Welsh schools in light of the changes being introduced by the 2022 curriculum. It is a well-known fact that the numbers studying foreign languages as GCSE and A Level subjects have fallen significantly in recent years. The aim of the government’s Global Futures strategy (Welsh Government: 2015) was to increase these numbers. With this five-year strategy about to come to an end and with preparations for the 2022 curriculum underway, it is timely to ask whether we can anticipate an increase in the number of pupils choosing languages such as French, Spanish and German as a GCSE subject over the next few years. To explore this question, we will look at research into the teaching and learning of foreign languages in primary schools in England and Scotland, and the practical challenges involved (Finch, Theakston &amp; Serratrice, 2018; Holmes &amp; Myles, 2019; Giraud-Johnstone, 2017). Secondly, we discuss the role of motivation in learning a foreign language and argue that the limitations of the option boxes in years 8 or 9 prevent some pupils from choosing a modern language as a GCSE subject (Estyn, 2016; Abrahams, 2018). Thirdly, we elaborate on the widespread view among pupils that learning a foreign language is difficult and challenging (Coleman, Galaczi &amp; Astruc, 2007; Coffey, 2018; Rodeiro, 2017; British Council, 2019). To conclude, some recommendations are proposed on how to ensure the success of the international languages element of the new curriculum to try and address the current shortage of pupils choosing the subject and teachers to teach the subject.

Global futures of trade impacting the challenge to decarbonize the international shipping sector

International shipping accounts for around 2 % of global CO2 emissions. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has set the ambition to halve shipping GHG emissions by 2050 to help mitigate climate change. As shipping connects countries and sectors, its future development is highly dependent on regional and sectoral trends. So far, the literature on the decarbonization of shipping has focused on sectoral analyses while integrated assessment models (IAMs) have paid little attention to this matter. In this study, the IMAGE model is used to assess different futures of energy, agricultural and industry impacting the effort required to meet IMO's target for 2050. To that end, long-term seaborne trade projections are created from outputs of the IMAGE model. The results show that varying pathways of socio-economic development strongly affect the size of the sector. The mass shipped globally ranges from 17 to 35 Gt/yr in 2050. This corresponds to an energy demand between 9 and 25 EJ in the same year, which would require significant amounts of low-carbon fuels. Interestingly, in a climate policy scenario, the avoided trade of fossil energy, although partially compensated by an increase of biofuel trade, lowers the international shipping mitigation effort.

Tantangan Agama di Era Globalisasi: Analisis Strategi Komunikasi, Karakteristik dan Materi Dakwah

The revolution in technology and communication media in this era of globalization has made the phenomenon of Islamic da'wah experience significant progress globally. This can be seen when the da'wah style has used advances in information technology so that the da'wah message is more widespread that is able to touch international aspects. But in reality, this change in pattern gave birth to new problems in the world of da'wah. This article tries to answer the main problems formulated in the major questions, namely; What are the challenges of religion in the era of globalization, using an analysis of communication strategies, characteristics and material for da'wah? According to Gill Branston and Roy Stafford (2010), there are several points explained about globalization. First, approaches to globalized media. Explain how to approach da'wah in the use of global media. Second, global–local flows. Explain how far the development of the flow of da'wah ideas that have reached the global world. Third, global futures? Explain how changes will occur in the world of da'wah in the future global era. In the end, the research provides insight into the topic of the problem in this paper. First, practically the da'wah movement in information technology and media in the era of globalization is based on Islam rahmatan lil 'alamin. Even though on the other hand, the impact of the globalization process related to religious life is the increasingly diminishing space for human religiosity itself. Second, the orientation in spreading da'wah globally is ukhuwah basyariyah which always fosters brotherhood among human beings. The attitude of humanism regardless of religious background, skin color and race. Third, have hope in the waiting period for the day to come (Al-Muntazhar). A principle that gives good news about a bright future and the implementation of all social justice for all mankind.

Your (Internet) Connection Is Unstable

Your (Internet) Connection Is Unstable

Embracing Liminality and "Staying with the Trouble" on (and off) Screen

Embracing Liminality and "Staying with the Trouble" on (and off) Screen

Risk perceptions, anxiety and the future of international trade: a cross-national study of public trade preferences in Asia under COVID-19

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has stalled the world’s economic activities and obscures the future of economic and trade. Many observers concern that the pandemic would result in growing protectionist attitudes in trade. This article provides one of the first systematic assessments to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the public’s trade preferences. Using original cross-national surveys in six key and highly integrated economies in Asia – Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand – we found that most people support establishing closer trade relationships with foreign countries. However, most people prefer to buy more domestic products than foreign products. We test a behavioural model of trade preferences to understand the psychological impacts of COVID-19 pandemic. Consistent with prior studies, we found that a greater level of anxiety is negatively associated with support for trade and foreign product preference, after controlling for the effects of ethnocentrism, education and other socioeconomic factors. Job and health insecurities reduced public preference for buying more foreign products, but it stimulated more support for trade with other countries. This study contributes to the behavioural theory of international political economy and sheds light on the future of economic globalization.

Equity at a time of pandemic.

Health promotion has long aspired for a world where all people can live to their full potential. Yet, COVID-19 illuminates dramatically different consequences for populations bearing heavy burdens of systemic disadvantage within countries and between the Global South and Global North. Many months of pandemic is entrenching inequities that reveal themselves in the vastly differential distribution of hospitalization and mortality, for example, among racialized groups in the USA. Amplified awareness of the intimate relationship between health, social structures, and economy opens a window of opportunity to act on decades of global commitments to prioritize health equity. Choices to act (or not act) are likely to accelerate already vast inequities within and between countries as rapidly as the COVID-19 pandemic itself. Recognizing the inherently global nature of this pandemic, this article explores how determinants of equity are embedded in global responses to it, arguing that these determinants will critically shape our global futures. This article aims to stimulate dialogue about equity-centered health promoting action during a pandemic, using the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research (CCGHR) Principles for Global Health Research to examine equity considerations at a time of pandemic. Attentiveness to power and the relationship between political economy and health are argued as central to identifying and examining issues of equity. This article invites dialogue about how equity-centered planning, decision-making and action could leverage this massive disruption to society to spark a more hopeful, just, and humane collective future.