UNDERSTANDING GLOBALIZATION

1 UNDERSTANDING GLOBALIZATION

3 One of the most commonly used definitions of globalization is

4 David Harvey’s expression ‘time space compression’ (Harvey 1989).

5 This relates to the idea that we are now living in a ‘global village’,

6 all increasingly interconnected and closer to one another. Harvey’s

idea of ‘time space compression’ expresses the idea that time is

8 increasingly eradicating space – that the time that it takes for people

9 and goods to move around the planet today has been significantly

10 diminished by developments in things like communication

1 technologies and transportation. The phrase ‘globalization’ has

2 become common parlance in the media and politics since the 1980s

3 and yet, what is lacking is any real agreement as to what globalization

4 actually is. As Brenner (1999: 3) has pointed out, globalization is

5 what might be termed an ‘essentially contested concept’. This means

6 that there is no agreement whatsoever as to what globalization is,

7 whether it is even happening and, more fundamentally how we

ascribe meaning (understand, interpret, analyse) the processes

9 associated with globalization. Furthermore, debates also rage about

20 the impact of globalization in terms of the widening of inequality 1222 and the globalization of poverty.

2 Many liberal scholars would argue that globalization is opening

up opportunities for some of the poorest countries and people in

the world. For example, the opening of a large call centre industry

6 in a country such as India has been the result of processes that we

7 generally associate with globalization such as the growth in foreign

8 direct investment by MNCs and the rapid global spread of communi-

9 cation technologies. An economic liberal analyst would point to the

30 positive outcomes of these investments, showing how they provide

1 new opportunities for employment, which in turn has beneficial

2 effects on the whole local economy. However, critics would point to

3 the widening social inequalities that often accompany these types of

4 investments, so call centres may provide much needed employment

5 in countries like India, but it is only the relatively wealthy and well

6 educated who are able to take advantage of these new opportunities.

7 For the vast majority of a country’s rural poor, poverty is as much

a feature of their daily existence as it ever was.

138 R ECONFIGURING WORLD POLITICS MULTIDIMENSIONAL GLOBALIZATION

Standard definitions of globalization associate it with a number of different processes of change – the idea that something has fundamentally altered in the world that we live in today. In this chapter, we focus on three different ‘dimensions’ of globalization – the economic, the cultural and the political. However, this is not to suggest that we are putting forward a coherent definition of what globalization IS. Rather our aim here is to overview many of the different processes that have come to be included with definitions of globalization. It should be noted at this point, however, that separating out the economic, political and cultural dimensions of globalization is a somewhat artificial process – in fact, we would suggest all three of these processes are, in different ways, inextricably bound-up with one another.

AN ECONOMIC DIMENSION Discussions of globalization often focus on a definition of global-

ization that views it almost entirely as an economic phenomenon. The changing nature of production (how goods are manufactured) is one of the most obvious dimensions of economic globalization (Dicken, 2003). The production of goods in today’s global economy looks very different compared to the early twentieth century when industrial production was dominated by a few states in North America, Europe and, in Asia, Japan. The growth of faster trans- portation and communications links has meant that many firms have sought to relocate some of the more labour-intensive elements of their production process to countries where labour costs are significantly cheaper. The production of manufactured goods has also become increasingly complex – in the production of clothing for example, there are vast networks of small firms that produce clothing for the major brands like The Gap or Levis. Often these brands have no real idea where their products are being made at all. Service sector industries have also become increasingly global. We now have global media empires, call centres located in Bangalore servicing the European and American market, and huge global management consultancy, insurance and banking corporations.

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1 An important element of the processes associated with economic

2 globalization is the growth of what we might term a global financial

3 market (that revolves around the trading of different currencies and

4 other financial products against one another). Large investment banks

5 have grown in power and influence on the back of their ability to

6 make massive profits from currency fluctuations (the constantly

changing value of currencies). New technologies not only have

8 increased the speed at which we can travel and communicate, but

9 also have made possible the electronic transfer of money, so that

10 money can move across the world at the press of a button. The easy

1 transfer of money across state boundaries is no doubt something

2 that you will have experienced if you have travelled abroad and have

3 used your ATM card to withdraw cash. So obviously, the electronic

4 transfer of money is in some respects a good thing because it is a

5 convenient technology that has contributed to making our lives easier.

6 However, the easy flow of money across state boundaries can also

7 have quite devastating consequences in times of financial crisis. Such

is the significance of global financial markets today that a currency

9 collapse in one part of the world can affect other states around the

20 world in rapid succession. In July 1997, the collapse of the currency 1222 in Thailand triggered currency and stock market collapses in

2 Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and South Korea as investors

3 rushed to pull out from these states. These events are now referred

4 to as the Asian Financial Crisis. The crisis sent shock waves around

5 the world and is widely viewed as a significant turning point in the

6 economic and political history of these Asian nations. What the Asian

7 Financial Crisis example shows is that economic events in one country

8 can have significant knock-on effects elsewhere, and this is more the

9 case than ever before. For many, this level of economic interdepen-

30 dence is evidence that we now live in a globalized world economy.

1 Importantly though one issue that is often swept aside in

2 discussions of economic globalization is the role of labour. In part,

3 there is a good reason for this – whereas capital finds it increasingly

4 easy to roam around the world – this has not been the case for workers

5 (Munck 2002; Castree et al. 2004). Witness the massive debates

6 concerning immigration and asylum that have taken place in almost

7 all states in the industrialized world in recent years. Indeed, there

has been a progressive tightening of borders – it was far easier to

140 R ECONFIGURING WORLD POLITICS move round the world in the nineteenth century than it is today.

However, a number of studies have sought to examine how global- ization impacts upon workers employed in some of the world’s most globalized industries – garment manufacture, electronic goods assembly, call centre employment and tourism (Freeman 2000; Rosen 2002; Salzinger 2003; Adler and Adler 2004; Elias 2004). What these studies point to is the great efficiency with which global corporations are able to source supplies of low cost labour from around the world. In this context, states are often portrayed as competing to attract foreign direct investment through things like restrictions on trade union activities or lowering of minimum wages. Importantly, this is

a process that has taken place in both developed and developing countries.

A CULTURAL DIMENSION

Understandings of globalization have extended beyond these eco- nomic processes and have sought also to look at the cultural dimensions of globalization (Stevenson 2000). Some would suggest, for example, that the peoples of the world are becoming more similar in terms of their tastes, values and expectations; that businesses are increasingly pursuing the same kinds of practices; and we are increasingly watching the same TV shows, eating the same foods, shopping in the same shops.

Some would argue that cultural globalization is a process whereby all peoples of the world are becoming culturally similar or, at the very least, are being exposed to the same cultural values and products. One view of cultural globalization, therefore, equates it with a process of universalization whereby we are all becoming culturally more and more alike. For others, this is not universalization, but Westernization – witness the increasingly widespread use of the English language for example. Ideas of universalization and Westernization appear in the work of the liberal scholar Francis Fukuyama. Fukuyama famously argued that we had reached an ‘end of history’ with the ending of the Cold War and that all peoples of the world had embraced ‘universal’ values of democracy, human rights and, importantly,

a capitalist economic system – values that have their roots in the economic, cultural and political systems of the West (Fukuyama

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1 1992). In this liberal-informed perspective on globalization, an

2 emerging cultural homogeneity is viewed as a positive development

3 and, indeed, a force for peace and prosperity.

4 Others, while accepting that processes of cultural globalization

5 are taking place, seek to challenge the extent to which this is a positive

6 development. It has been suggested, for example, that diverse national

cultures are being swept away in favour of a new global culture

8 based almost entirely on the consumption of standardized products

9 like Big Mac hamburgers or Nike training shoes. This point of view

10 sees the hand of big business corporations in undermining cultural

1 diversity in order to sell as many consumer products to us as possible.

2 Hence cultural globalization has also been labelled ‘McDonaldization’

3 – whereby individuals emerge simply as consumers of mass produced

4 goods. The hallmark of this global culture for writers such as Leslie

5 Sklair (2002) is a worldwide commitment to a culture of consumerism

6 that works in the interests of big business. Others have introduced

7 the idea that cultural globalization is effectively a process of

‘Americanization’, a process whereby the cultural hegemony (that

9 is to say, dominance) of the United States acts to back up its political

20 and economic hegemony. Gender theorists of globalization also 1222 employ ideas of cultural hegemony. R.W. Connell (2005), for

2 example, has suggested that the emergence of a global capitalist

3 economic system is rooted in a particular form of gender politics

4 whereby cultural values and attributes associated with a Western,

5 male, middle class business elite are privileged. This ‘hegemonic

6 masculinity’ underpins the dominant status of a certain class of

7 (business) men in contemporary global politics.