Examining the ideas of globalisation and development critically: what role for political economy?

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

Ben Fine, Department of Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H OXG, UK.

Thanks to many for comments on earlier drafts. The research for this article was undertaken whilst in receipt of a Research Fellowship from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) under award number R000271046 to study ‘The New Revolution in Economics and Its Impact upon Social Sciences’. For an account, see http://www.soas.ac.uk/departments/departmentinfo.cfm?navid=4 90/

I will begin by placing globalisation in inverted commas as my main concern is with the idea of globalisation, although, at times, its use will refer to the material processes that it is deemed to represent. After dropping inverted commas, meaning should be clear in context.

David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Edinburgh University Press, 2000), p. 13. Harvey continues: ‘Does it [globalisation] describe something essentially new?’. This is to raise issues concerning both the distinct nature of contemporary capitalism and how it comes to be represented ideologically and analytically. These problems are addressed on occasion throughout what follows.

David Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference (Blackwell, 1996), p. 429.

Goran Therborn, ‘Introduction: From the Universal to the Global’, International Sociology, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2000), pp. 149–50. See also Table below.

Goran Therborn, ‘Globalizations: Dimensions, Historical Waves, Regional Effects, Normative Governance’, International Sociology, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2000), pp. 151–79.

Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (University of Minnesota Press, 1996).

Ulrich Beck, What is Globalization? (Polity, 2000).

Ash Amin & Nigel Thrift, ‘Living in the global’, in: Ash Amin & Nigel Thrift (eds), Globalization, Institutions, and Regional Development in Europe (Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 257–60.

David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Blackwell, 1990).

Ian Woodward et al., ‘Consumerism, Disorientation and Postmodern Space: A Modest Test of an Immodest Theory’, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 51, No. 2 (2000), pp. 339–54.

On this and other aspects of the individual within economics, see J. Davis, The Theory of the Individual in Economics: Identity and Value (Routledge, 2003).

For an exception that proves the rule despite protests to the contrary, see S. Cullenberg et al. (eds), Postmodernism, Economics and Knowledge (Routledge, 2001).

James Carrier & Daniel Miller (eds), Virtualism: The New Political Economy (Berg, 1998).

Ben Fine, The World of Consumption: The Material and Cultural Revisited (Routledge, 2002), ch. 2, for a discussion in the context of globalisation.

George Akerlof, ‘George A. Akerlof’, in: Richard Swedberg (ed.), Economics and Sociology, Redefining Their Boundaries: Conversations with Economists and Sociologists (Princeton University Press, 1990).

Fine, The World of Consumption.

Beck, What is Globalization?, pp. 161–2.

For the distinction between the two schools, see Ben Fine, ‘Beyond the developmental state: towards a political economy of development’, in: H. Hirakawa et al. (eds) Beyond Market‐Driven Development: A New Stream of Political Economy of Development (Nihon Hyoron Sha, 2001), in Japanese, with English edition to follow.

Jens Bartelson, ‘Three Concepts of Globalization’, International Sociology, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2000), pp. 180–96.

For critical exposition of the new financial economics, see Sedat Aybar & Costas Lapavitsas, ‘Financial system design and the post‐Washington consensus’, in: Ben Fine et al. (eds), Development Policy in the Twenty‐First Century: Beyond the Post‐Washington Consensus (Routledge, 2001), pp. 28–52.

Anthony Giddens, Runaway World: How Globalisation is Reshaping Our Lives (Profile, 1999).

See, for example, Ben Fine, Social Capital versus Social Theory: Political Economy and Social Science at the Turn of the Millennium (Routledge, 2001).

For critical exposition of the post‐Washington consensus and its relationship to the Washington consensus, see Fine et al., Development Policy in the Twenty‐First Century.

Joseph Stiglitz, ‘Markets, Market Failures and Development’, American Economic Review, Vol. 79, No. 2 (1989), pp. 197–202.

Joseph Stiglitz & Karla Hoff, ‘Modern economic theory and development’, unpublished paper presented to symposium on Future of Development Economics in Perspective, Dubrovnik, 13–14 May 1999.

Nobel Prize website, Markets with Asymmetric Information, Advanced Information, available at http:// www.nobel.se/economics/laureates/2001/public.html.

David Moore, ‘Levelling the Playing Fields and Embedding Illusions: “Post‐Conflict” Discourse and Neo‐Liberal “Development” in War‐Torn Africa’, Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 27, No. 83 (2000) pp. 11–28.

Privatisation creep in other words. See World Bank, Private Sector Development Strategy: Issues and Options, first released in June 2001, and for a critique Kate Bayliss & David Hall, ‘A PSIRU Response to the World Bank’s Private Sector Development Strategy: Issues and Options', University of Greenwich, available at http://www.psiru.org/reports/2001–10‐U‐wb‐psd.doc.

Joseph Stiglitz, The IMF's Missed Opportunity, Project Syndicate, available at: http://www.project‐ syndicate.org/series/series text en.asp?id=663.

See Ben Fine & Degol Hailu, ‘Convergence and consensus: The political economy of stabilisation, poverty and growth’, mimeo, available on CDPR website, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2003.

First published in 1960, third edition 1990, Cambridge University Press.

Rene Bonnel, ‘HIV/AIDS and Economic Growth: A Global Perspective’, South African Journal of Economics, Vol. 68, No. 5 (2000), p. 849.

Although, at time of writing, Lenin's pamphlet hit the top ten of books on international affairs.

For the UK, the contribution of financial services to GDP has risen from 13 to 25% between 1970 and 1999. For overview of the globalisation of finance, see Kavaljit Singh, Globalisation of Finance: A Citizen's Guide (Zed, 1999).

See Robert Brenner, ‘The Economics of Global Turbulence’, New Left Review, No. 229 (1998), pp. 1–264, and The Boom and the Bubble: The US in the World Economy (Verso, 2002).

See collections in Historical Materialism, Nos. 4 and 5, (1999); and Ben Fine et al., ‘Addressing the World Economy: Two Steps Back’, Capital and Class, No. 67 (1999), pp. 47–90.

Cited in Daniel Purdy, The Tyranny of Elegance: Consumer Cosmopolitanism in the Era of Goethe (John Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 74.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ben Fine

Ben Fine, Department of Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H OXG, UK.