Re: reference suggestion -- 2nd try

Note: For some reason, my message gets chopped off after several lines. I am 
sending it again to see if it will go through intact this time. Sorry.  

Hi,

If you are looking for an overview of the processes of evolution of modern 
interstate system, especially for undergraduates, try Chapter 1, "The 
Territorial State and Global Politics" in  Global Transformations, prepared by 
David Held, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt, and Jonathan Perraton. Also try 
"The European System Becomes Worldwide," in Adam Watson, in The Evolution of 
International Society. 
For your second question, (incidentally,  I would like to point out some 
troubling underlying assumptions in your second question. Cultural forms of 
business did not and do not spread from the center to the periphery, for that 
matter, in a certain identifiable uniform pattern), you may have to go to a 
number of case studies rather than any single satisfactory work. In the above 
mentioned Global Transformations, you may find two or three chapters that deal 
with globalization of financial activities and global diffusion of corporate 
forms of business. If you want to introduce to your students specific details 
about things like, the introduction of business suit, office building, etc. in 
other cultures, you should try the excellent historical example from the 
Japanese Meiji period. Try works by Marius Jansen and of other scholars who 
have studied the transition of Japan from the Tokugawa to Meiji period. If you 
want some contrasts for comparative purposes, try some works by Jonathan Spence 
(about China,  if you are interested in questions like, Why did the Chinese 
mandarins fail to change into the Western forms? Or why did  the Japanese 
'samurais" successfully transform themselves into 'Western-style' businessmen? 
).  As Max Weber must have learned many years ago, the "profit and wealth 
accumulation as a creed" is historically and culturally specific, somewhat 
grounded in a tension between religious tradition and the quest for legitimacy 
of new opportunity structure. There are several excellent critiques (and 
re-analyses) of the classic, "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of 
Capitalism" and it is usually a great undergraduate experience of having to go 
through the literature and critiques. (See Richard F. Hamilton, The Social 
Misconstruction of Reality, and the recent work by Jere Cohen, Protestantism 
and Capitalism: The Mechanism of Influence.)
Quee-Young   Kim
Sociology
University of Wyoming
Kim@uwyo.edu