Making Globalisation

222 Pages·2005·6.316 MB·English

by  Robert J. Holton (auth.)

Making Globalization
Making Globalization
Robert J. Holton
© Robert J. Holton 2005
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First published 2005 by
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Contents
List of Figures vii
Preface viii
1 Introduction 1
Contemporary scholarship and globalization 4
Defining globalization 14
Structure of the book 16
Globalization: Space and time 18
The global, the regional, the national, and the local 20
Global civil society 23
Globalization and its discontents 24
The argument of the book 26
2 When did Globalization Begin? 28
Exploring the history of globalization 29
Towards a history of globalization 40
Globalization and de-globalization in recent
world history 49
Conclusion 52
3 Global Patterning: Systems, Structures, Fields,
Networks, Webs, and Flows 55
The global field 62
Networks, webs, and flows in the study of globalization 67
Networks and governance 71
Conclusion 79
4 Globalization and the Transformation of Space, and Time 81
Time–space compression and processes of globalization 82
Does globalization ‘annihilate space’? 85
Globalization, identity, and territorial space 87
Limits to global fluidity 89
Naming spaces 91
Globalization and the proliferation of social times 98
Conclusion 104
v
vi Contents
5 Global, National, Regional, and Local:
Competing or Inter-dependent? 105
The global and the local 109
Cultural affiliation and globalization 115
Political institutions in an epoch of global challenge 117
Glocalization 126
Conclusion 129
6 Global Civil Society 132
Some historical pathways in the making of
global civil society 136
Communication and global civil society 140
Global civil society and global world-views 143
The organizational face of global civil society 148
Global civil society as an innovative radical force? 152
Conclusion 157
7 Globalization and its Discontents 159
Globalization and human welfare 162
Income and inequality 164
Free trade and fair trade 168
Global debt 170
Challenges to the making of globalization through
the Washington Consensus 172
Global discontents, knowledge, and the global
political order 176
Conclusion 183
8 The Making of Globalization: Puzzles and Prospects 185
Human agency 188
Normative issues and the making of a better world 191
Bibliography 194
Index 208
List of Figures
1 Four historical types of globalization 41
2 Gurvitch: Eight types of social time 99
3 Petrella: The global and the local 110
4 Organizational forms of global civil society 148
vii
Preface
This book is a study of globalization written by an author working in
Ireland who holds dual British and Australian nationality, having
migrated between these three countries in pursuit of academic employ-
ment. This represents only one of a range of global trajectories that
individuals and families make in the contemporary world, one located
within wealthier and more powerful settings. There are many far riskier
and often tragic global trajectories for those who seek asylum, or for
whom mobility in the search for employment and security is a day-to-day
struggle for survival in the face of exploitation and danger. In writing
any book on globalization, it is important to be aware of this, and
the obligation placed on any social analyst not simply to seek truths
about global processes, but also to identify and comment upon the way
inequalities within the global arena are understood and acted upon.
At the same time it is equally important to register the diversity of aspir-
ations that are evident amongst human actors, and the ways in which
these connect with global inequalities and global opportunities.
This book has been written very much from a sense of dissatisfaction
with the debates around globalization. These are typically polarized
between supporters and opponents, often fatalistic in their sense of an
inevitable global fate – whether for better or worse – and quick to resort
to highly moralized judgements when a healthy dose of scepticism is
called for. I hope this book will be helpful for engaged partisans for and
against globalization, but it has been written primarily for those who
remain puzzled, sceptical, and equivocal about the issues at stake, and
for those keen to understand more about the origins, dynamics, scope,
and limits of globalization.
In an enterprise of this kind, many acknowledgements are due to
those who have influenced my views and approaches. I am particularly
grateful to John Braithwaite and Roland Robertson for their different
but distinctive perspectives on the study of globalization, but have also
learnt much from a range of other scholars including Kevin O’Rourke,
Rosemary Byrne, Sandra Holton, Leslie Sklair, Saskia Sassen, Constance
Lever-Tracy, Noel Tracy, Zlatko Skrbis, and Tanya Lyons.
My postgraduate students, especially Aisling McCormack, Martha
van der Blij, and Christian Gheorghiu, also assisted greatly in responding
viii
Preface ix
to many arguments in the process of formulation with a healthy
scepticism, and sometimes incredulity. This helped me back to earth
on a number of occasions.
I am also grateful to those who contributed to seminars in which
a number of ideas in this study were first formulated, often in quite
confused form. I am especially grateful to seminar audiences at the
University of Aberdeen; University College, Cork; and Trinity College,
Dublin.
Funding for research into the theme of globalization and the nation-
state was generously provided by the Institute for International
Integration Studies at Trinity College, Dublin. I am also grateful for
financial support from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities
and the Social Sciences (IRCHSS) that permitted me to include material
from an IRCHSS-funded project on The Historical Sociology of Global
Networks within this study.
Begun on Castle Cary railway station in England, this book was written
in three countries and two hemispheres, and the toing and froing
involved was very far from the supposedly quiet and dreamy spires of
academe. In all of this I owe a particular debt of thanks to Sandra Holton,
both for her intellectual input and for her support and stoicism in the
face of many mobilities and disruptions.
1
Introduction
I think globalization is the taking over of society by a few key people in big companies.
It [globalization] can be good and it can be bad...it can be good because it can work
for people...because we all care about things like international solidarity...that
couldn’t happen without globalization.
It’s a way of using and abusing a lot of the people who don’t have a lot of power in their
hands, and a lot of the third world, and a lot of the people who are more humble. I think
its very organised, that’s why I’m here, because I feel its time that we got organised
also to combat it.
I just think it means that the world’s shrinking in terms of communication....And
really, you know good technology.
I’ve got nothing against it [globalization], I think it’s probably inevitable....But what
globalization isn’t and shouldn’t be is uncontrolled and unregulated.
– Lyons 2001
These five statements by Australians demonstrating outside the World
Economic Forum Conference in Melbourne in September 2000 (Lyons
2001) indicate a range of views amongst activists as to the meaning of
globalization. These views come from individuals and groups expressly
mobilized over the meeting of an elite organization of corporate and
government decision-makers. The processes to which they draw attention –
economic and political, technological and cultural – remain matters of
controversy, clamour, and debate. They lie at the heart of the myriad
of aspirations felt and decisions made by individuals, households, com-
munities, and governments. These affect employment and consumption,
whether to move or stay put, how to achieve security with freedom and
justice, whether to go to war or to resist.
Globalization for many signifies a major root cause of inequality,
human misery, and injustice, while for others it is seen as a way of
addressing these social ills. The polarization of much debate is important,
but it should not drown out those who see globalization as good and
bad, those who remain baffled as to what exactly it means, and finally
1