In this follow-up to the highly successful Ethnography Unbound, the authors break the bounds of conventional sociology, to explore the mutual shaping of local struggles and global forces. In contrast to the lofty debates between radical theorists, these nine studies excavate the dynamics and histories of globalization by extending out from the concrete, everyday world.

 The authors were participant observers in diverse struggles over extending citizenship, medicalizing breast cancer, dumping toxic waste, privatizing nursing homes, the degradation of work, the withdrawal of welfare rights, and the elaboration of body politics. From their insider vantage points, they show how groups negotiate, circumvent, challenge, and even re-create the complex global web that entangles them. Traversing continents and extending over three years, this collaborative research developed its own distinctive method of "grounded globalization" to grasp the evaporation of traditional workplaces, the dissolution of enclaved communities, and the fluidity of identities. Forged between the local and global, these compelling essays make a powerful case for ethnography's insight into global dynamics.

 --- From the Publisher

Preface 
Introduction: Reaching for the Global p. 1
Global Forces p. 41
Global Discourses of Need: Mythologizing and Pathologizing Welfare in Hungary p. 48
Excavating "Globalization" from Street Level: Homeless Men Recycle Their Pasts p. 74
Degradation without Deskilling: Twenty-Five Years in the San Francisco Shipyards p. 106
Global Connections p. 137
"Dirty Nurses" and "Men Who Play": Gender and Class in Transnational Migration p. 144
Net-Working for a Living: Irish Software Developers in the Global Workplace p. 175
Traveling Feminisms: From Embodied Women to Gendered Citizenship p. 203
Global Imaginations p. 235
Cognitive Cartography in a European Wasteland: Multinational Capital and Greens Vie for Village Allegiance p. 240
Contesting the Global City: Pittsburgh's Public Service Unions Confront a Neoliberal Agenda p. 268
From Private Stigma to Global Assembly: Transforming the Terrain of Breast Cancer p. 299
Conclusion p. 335
Grounding Globalization p. 337
Bibliography p. 351
Index p. 375