 |
Globalization and
the American South
Edited by James C. Cobb
and William Stueck Jr.
$19.95
University of Georgia Press |
|
Essays examine ‘globalized’ South
In 1955 Fortune magazine’s
list of America’s largest corporations included just 18 with
headquarters in the Southeast. By 2002 the number had grown to 123.
In fact, the South attracted more than half of the foreign businesses
drawn to the United States in the 1990s.
The eight essays in Globalization
and the American South consider this dynamism in ways that
help readers see anew the region’s place in that ever-accelerating,
transnational flow of people, capital and technology known collectively
as “globalization.” The book is edited by UGA history
professors James Cobb and William Stueck.
Moving between local and global perspectives, the essays discuss
how places like Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Indian subcontinent
are now having an impact on the South. One essay, for example, looks
at issues behind the explosive growth of North Carolina’s
Latino population, which grew by almost 400 percent during the 1990s.
Showing that global forces are often on both sides of the matchup—reshaping
the South but also adapting to and exploiting its peculiarities—many
of the essays make the point that, although the new ethnic food
section at the local Winn Dixie is one manifestation of globalization,
so is the export of such Southern phenomena as NASCAR and Kentucky
Fried Chicken. |
