This chapter applies the capability approach (CA) to explore work capabilities across diverse occupations and countries. In a globalised world of work, the CA offers a human-centred framework for understanding how individual agency and structural conditions interact to shape people’s opportunities at work. The chapter begins by outlining the CA and its relevance to work and employment. It then examines key capabilities required in different occupations, focusing on how education, labour markets, workplace practices, and social policies support or constrain these capabilities. Cross-national and occupational comparisons highlight the variation in work capabilities across different contexts. In conclusion, the chapter offers recommendations for creating inclusive and enabling work environments that are relevant to policy and practice. By analysing work through the lens of the CA, this chapter contributes to a deeper understanding of how to expand human capabilities in the workplace and promote decent, empowering work across global contexts.

In previous chapters, the added value of the capability approach (CA) for work was demonstrated at the conceptual level, organisational levels, and several specific contexts. In this chapter, we aim to demonstrate its added value for new developments in work, some of which are already underway and others that are foreseeable. We argue that even for disruptive, unforeseeable changes, the CA provides a framework for action dealing with them. Through the lens of the capability model, workers, enabled by leaders and professionals, can create environments that empower employees to adapt to changes while achieving their full potential. It highlights the importance of fostering resilience, flexibility, and sustainability within organisations to meet the challenges and opportunities presented by global trends. Actionable strategies for leveraging digital tools, embracing cultural diversity, and implementing eco-friendly practices can be implemented to enhance employee capabilities. By integrating these elements, decision-makers should drive transformative change that supports both individual well-being and organisational success in a rapidly evolving work landscape.

The chapter explores the role of music in shaping Spanish popular culture, linked to the construction of a national identity, considering the tensions between modernisation and tradition. The text examines genres such as the cuplé and Spanish song (later called copla). The latter became tied to the cultural autarky of early Francoism with a strong influence of Andalusian elements as the dictatorship progressed, music played a role in articulating mild youth dissent (rock, beat, yeye) and open political dissent (nova cançó, singer-songwriters). During late Francoism and the democratic transition, various genres articulated countercultural (psychedelia, progressive rock), regional (Andalusian or ‘gypsy rock’), youth (punk, Basque radical rock), and class (urban rumba, urban rock, hard rock) identities. The chapter also analyses La Movida, discussing its contested transgressive and postmodern elements. Finally, it examines new discourses of authenticity in Spanish indie music and glocal sounds, the revival of singer-songwriters, and musical proposals responding to the negotiation between globalisation and difference (rap), as well as transcultural hybridisations of pop with various Latin music styles, urban music, and electronic sounds up to the present day.

By now, we have established firmly that the green transition will cause accelerated economic growth. By the performance-stability trade-off discussed in Chapter 3, this accelerated growth could occur at the expense of economic stability. This is because the green transition will cause untold upheaval. In this chapter, we lay out the pace and scale of this likely upheaval, looking at the great transformation that inevitably has to take place across industry, trade, investment and geopolitical power. Different countries will face different challenges, some gaining in international economic power, others losing. This will inevitably lead to a brand new map of international relations worldwide, of debtor–creditor relationships, of trade relationships and of international purchasing power. We discuss the challenges that developing countries face in financing a transition towards environmental and financial sustainability.

This chapter explores the relationship between international trade and sustainable development, with a particular focus on climate change. It traces the evolution of the multilateral trading system from its origins in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade to the present day, highlighting the shift from a focus on trade liberalisation to a broader commitment to sustainable development. The chapter examines how the World Trade Organization has grappled with integrating environmental concerns into its framework, including the development of ‘greening’ jurisprudence, institutions, and rules. It proposes a reform agenda to further align the trading system with global sustainability goals, emphasising the need for alignment with climate change commitments, harmonised sustainability standards, reformed subsidy approaches, governance and institutional reforms, and a focus on equity and justice.

This chapter extends the discussion of discrimination, as well as the exceptional provisions of Article XX of GATT, and incorporates analysis of the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade, the Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, and the General Agreement on Trade in Services to describe the scope of constraint on national governments’ regulatory autonomy.

This introduction to The Cambridge Companion to World Trade Law introduces the book’s purpose and structure. The volume is intended to be an authoritative and accessible guide to the field, appealing to both legal specialists and those with no specialist knowledge of trade law. It is written by experts and provides a compact discussion of the perspectives, enduring issues, and emergent challenges in the field. The introduction also discusses the current context of world trade, highlighting the divisions in the world following decades of growth and the challenges posed by globalisation. It sets the stage for the chapters that follow.

This chapter focuses on the history of English in Gibraltar, its current sociolinguistic landscape and position within theoretical models of analysis, and the attitudes of speakers towards the drastic changes taking place. In recent years English has become dominant among younger generations of speakers, indicating a steady shift in Gibraltar towards monolingualism, a process in which, we argue, globalisation plays an essential role. The chapter also reports on the ongoing and challenging compilation of the Gibraltar component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GBR), and presents a quantitative analysis of morphosyntactic features which occur in the print publications included in ICE-GBR.

It is likely that you have experienced the impact of place on your education without even thinking about it. Maybe you’ve had a class on a boiling hot day, with bad lighting and no aircon. Maybe you’ve had to sit in traffic on the way to class, and thought ‘Wow, I wish I didn’t have to be at school by 8 am!’. Maybe you’ve accessed your education online, and felt the differences (good and bad), between in-person and online learning. Or perhaps you’ve sat under a lovely tree after class and chatted with your friends. Maybe you’ve experienced traditional ways of learning on Country, and connectedness to the environment around you. Whatever it may be, you get the drift – if you’ve had an education, it’s happened somewhere.

Chapter 3 moves to the global level, exploring the history of technology control and its historical links to geopolitics. It begins by considering control of technology in the context of the Cold War and technology as being explicitly considered a security issue in terms of the conflict between the US and the Soviet Union. It covers the CoCom technology restrictions imposed by the US, and Soviet Union attempts to gain access to critical technologies through Comecon, before considering how the approach to technology changed substantially with the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the belief in the triumph of the liberal international order and globalism as reflected by the World Trade Organization and ‘free trade’. It then explores the multifaceted crises impacting upon this conviction in the benefits and resilience of the global trade system, the increased economic conflict between the US and China as a rising technological power, and a move from multilateralism in a ‘unipolar’ system to increased nationalism and protectionism in a ‘multipolar’ system, and what this meant for the EU’s sense of insecurity and vulnerability in the context of geopolitical reordering.

A changed attitude to globalisation emerged out of the aura of crisis: now there was a growing trend to manage it. The Australasian colonies resolved to seize opportunities to develop new commodities for export and to manage the social outcomes by building an edifice of progressive liberal ‘state experiments’. Led by Premiers John Ballance (1891-3), Richard Seddon (1893-1906), and Sir Joseph Ward (1906-12) – two of whom were Irish-born and all of whom were immigrants – a series of Liberal governments from 1891 to 1912 set out to transform New Zealand into a democratic social laboratory. In doing so, they enacted an Australasian model of state development.

Globalisation has always shaken the kaleidoscope of connections between people into new patterns. In the greatest global shift of power since the United States assumed Britain’s former role in the world, China and India returned to global supremacy in the twenty-first century. By 2000, China loomed on the horizon as the next global juggernaut. Half a millennium after Europe rose to dominance, the world witnessed a fundamental rebalancing of West and East from the developed countries to the developing powers of North and South Asia. This metamorphosis in economic and power relations reshaped New Zealand’s export economy.

This chapter surveys the international legal framework governing transnational corporations (TNCs) and human rights. It begins with a brief history of the corporation, traces the rise of transnational corporate power since the 1970s, and offers a definition of the TNC. It then outlines the various ways in which corporate activities can adversely affect human rights, drawing on some of the most notorious incidents of recent decades. The chapter highlights the persistent difficulty of regulating corporations at the international level and describes the current regime under which states bear primary responsibility for preventing and remedying human rights abuses within their territories, including those committed by businesses. Since 2010, several states have introduced modern slavery legislation requiring companies to conduct due diligence on their operations and supply chains.

The idea of regional trade agreements like ASEAN, the AfCFTA, MERCOSUR and even the USMCA as useful linchpins for development and prosperity is driven by globalisation. Most of these fragmented trade regimes that have emerged in the later part of the twentieth and the early twenty-first century have been informed by the discourse on globalisation and the connectivity of international economic order. Therefore, this chapter explores the linkages between the concept of globalisation and regional trade agreements. These linkages are explored to provide some contexts in the second part of the book on how the idea of prosperity as a fundamental rationale behind RTAs in the Global South is more of a myth than reality. It further analyses the evolving discourse on the nexus between regional integration and prosperity to better improve existing and future RTAs to the benefit of its constituent members.