Globalizing Issues

This book is an invitation to question conventional and often misleading visions of globalization. No problem is global by nature: issues are transformed by the action of claims-makers to become ‘problems’ debated in supra-national forums, triggering policy choices and policy transformations.  Contributions highlight how health issues, environmental issues and/or political issues are framed as global by a set of stakeholders (scientific experts, bureaucrats, political parties or actors, social movements, social networks, firms). As the volume maps the social logic behind the globalization of problems, it also presents an opportunity for the very cross-disciplinary collaboration it calls for: researchers mobilizing the “agenda-setting” paradigm of issue globalization and those working within the “social constructionist” model are both represented here, providing a unique opportunity to examine the dynamics of globalization from the perspectives of (political, media, economic) sociology, international relations,  social movement studies, and beyond.

Erik Neveu is Emeritus Professor of Political Science in the Research Team ARENES/CNRS, University of Rennes, France. His research fields covers media and the public sphere, social movements and the construction of public problems.Muriel Surdez is Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Her research interest is in the sociology of professions and of public policies.