I asked my class this week what "globalization" was, a term almost all
of them said they had heard. The main idea that came back was
19th-century liberalism -- bigger markets, more trade, more competition.
It's also true that the word is often used as a euphemism for capitalism
or for imperialism. It is also a common euphemism for modernization.
For some people it is an all-purpose evil force. I put it to the list
that given this vast confusion, it is impossible to use "globalization"
in a sensible sentence.
Re the material from a colleague that Carrol passes on:
> Where imperialism was a form associated with the
> international expansion of various nation states into colonial
> regimes, empire designates the name of the emerging global regime
> that is organized around a claim to transnational juridical and moral
> authority, that wages its genocidal violence via police actions, and
> whose enemies are figured either as rebels (Zapatistas, labor unions,
> etc) or barbarians (the arab nations, Serbia, etc.) rather than as
> competing nation states or socio-economic systems.
There is a smart point here about political culture and ideology. But
note the analytical slipperiness of "associated with" and "organized
around." The problem with much of the globalization literature that has
come out of the humanities is that it totalizes too quickly. It assumes
that there is some easy way of binding together politics, economics, and
culture. It typically assumes as a matter of social ontology that the
world at any moment is characterized by one dominant process, a
juggernaut squashing anything that is not part of it. Often it assumes
that basic issues of economic analysis have been solved and we just have
to figure out the superstructure that corresponds to a transparent,
thoroughly-understood base. A lot of this assuming is, unfortunately,
done in the name of Marxism. You get perceptive cultural analysis
linked to economic analysis so crude it would make a fundamentalist
Marxist blush.
Best, Colin
