"Global phenomena are not unrelated to social and cultural problems. But they have a distinctive capacity for decontextualization and recontextualization, abstract-ability and movement, across diverse social and cultural situations and spheres of life. Global forms are able to assimilate themselves to new environments, to code heterogeneous contexts and objects in terms that are amenable to control and
valuation. At the same time, the conditions of possibility of this movement are complex. Global forms are limited or delimited by specific technical infrastructures, administrative apparatuses, or value regimes, not by the vagaries of a social or
cultural field."
1) The decline of the Asian tiger model: the author gives empirical examples of how this industry oriented economy was left by both Singapore and Malaysia. On the other hand, they were introducing new economic policy based on neoliberal ideas of expertise, technological innovation, the boom of service sector etc. the author quotes a press conference where the Singapore supremo declares about a new economy based on expertise and service boom rather than the manufacturing and industrial orientations
2) Knowledge economy: one of the basic reason for this change is the new economic policies oriented towards a knowledge economy. The knowledge economy was boosted by starting technical universities and other greater infrastructure to get the benefits out of it. The ecology produced by it envisions a new way of development. According to author “Particular alignments of knowledge, politics, and ethics also constitute an ecology of positions, whereby diverse subjects are administered in relation to each other. The government of diverse populations increasingly depends on the neoliberal calculation of the worth, as individuals and populations become operable through specific knowledge’s, techniques, and expertise"
3) Nativism, clash of citizenship and resistance: it is well argued in the book that, this change provoked a greater retaliation from the 'native' citizens who include both the elites of past who controlled the export-oriented economy and subaltern classes who are losing jobs due to structural changes in the economy. The new definition of citizenship through global assemblages and import of expertise made these people believe that they become secondary citizens and state were more preferential towards the foreign experts. “Citizenship becomes invested with technological and risk-taking values, foreigners, it appears, have been the ones to benefit most handsomely from government largess. The moral demands of a technopreneurialism citizenship have risen higher as citizens are expected to compete with Asian foreigners on home ground. The continual influx of expatriates and their coding as the scientific experts or entrepreneurial subjects have coincided with the retrenchment of less competitive workers in a variety of fields. Growing public anxiety has surfaced in the state-controlled newspaper. Some letters to the editors request that first job preference be given to locals and that only unfilled positions be occupied by foreigners"
