Arguing globalizations: Propositions towards an investigation of global formation

Abstract

Theorizing globalization in all its contradictions and unevenness is still at a very formative stage. Too many theories are either characterized by reductive appropriations of the phenomenon or by studied vagueness. This article attempts to answer the question how can we set up a method for understanding such a variable set of processes associated with globalization(s) while still recognizing broad and changing dominant patterns of practice across world history. The article begins with the apparently simple issue of defining globalization, suggesting that definitional issues often hide a multitude of methodological questions. It then goes onto to develop a series of propositions about the nature of globalization and how we might move from detailed empirical studies of different social processes of extension across world space and time to an understanding of the changing nature of the spatiality and temporality itself. This is linked to an argument about the structures of power and subjection.

Notes

1. Earlier examples of the commodification of pictures of planet earth can be found, particularly from travel companies. For example, advertisements from Thomas Cook, Shaw Savill Lines, and Nippon Yusen Kaisya at the beginning of The Geographical Magazine Atlas (Philip, 1938) use images of the globe. However, they are quite limited in their generalization. For more recent examples see Cosgrove (1994).

2. Abstraction is used here as a social-relational term in the material sense of ‘drawn away’ from the immediacy of embodied or face-to-face relations. Capitalist exchange is, for example, more abstract than reciprocal exchange in the sense that the particularities of the persons involved in the exchange process become less and less relevant to the nature of that exchange. It is still material rather than virtual in the sense that it is practised in patterned ways by people doing or effecting things, however mediated.

3. In the early 1990s, Robertson (1992, pp. 173–174) used the concept advisedly. However, by the middle of the decade it unreservedly took a central place in his writings (Robertson, 1995).

4. I concentrate on this book because it is so widely used on university courses and prominent in the field, but also because it boldly attempts to get beyond the usual range of vague or reductive definitions.

5. See by contrast Cosgrove (2003). Rather than attributing the subjectivity of globalization to a single revolution in science he documents the deep history of globalism back through Ortelius to the Classical Romans and Greeks.

6. All the following quotes from Waters (2001) are from pp. 19–20.

7. The first sustained development of this approach was Sharp's (1985). Most recently see also Nairn and James (2005), and James (2005).

8. My definition of ‘globalism’ as the subjectivity or ideology framing the projection of the globe is therefore broader than Manfred Steger's (2002) when he emphasizes the intersection of globalism and neo-liberalism. Subjectivities and ideologies of globalism in the definition of this article have taken many forms from heliocentrism to classical imperialism and cosmopolitanism, as well as neo-liberal globalism.

9. See, for example, Ulrich Beck's presumptive and therefore unhelpful definition of globalization as denoting ‘the processes through which sovereign national states are criss-crossed and undermined’ (Beck, 2000, p. 11).

10. The classic early statement on the fragmentations of postmodernity by a structuralist is Fredric Jameson's ‘(1991). Similarly, David Harvey's (1989) is a brilliant attempt to theorize the structures of the changing world, but he still falls back upon the postmodernist language of fragmentation without providing us with an account of the levels at which fragmentation actually occurs.

11. This is to shift gear and talk of levels of epistemological abstraction; not the broader category of levels of ontological abstraction that the earlier part of the essay briefly addressed.

12. John Gray, London School of Economics, cited in The Economist, 29 September 2001.

13. This descent into methodological incoherence does not compare well with his overall position presented in the two volumes of A Critique of Historical Materialism. There he posited a gently modified mode-of-production argument in intersection with an emphasis on the mode of organisation: the extension of allocative resources under conditions of capitalism/industrialism.

14. For example, security is a social theme rather than a mode of practice, but we can analyze the different historical forms that generating security have taken through examining the dominant modalities of organization or exchange that they have taken.

15. From the opening article of the special lift-out on globalization by The Economist, 29 September 2001.

16. The following section recontextualizes research that I first did for a chapter in Darby (1997).

17. UN annual development report figures reported in The Guardian, 9 July 2003.

18. Going back to the early period of writings on globalization, see, for example, Robert Keohane's (1984) highly regarded text, After Hegemony: Co-operation and Discord in the World Economy. Despite the title of his book, he devotes a grand total of two paragraphs to what he calls ‘negative reciprocity’, that is, ‘attempts to maximize utility at the expense of others’ (p. 128). There are of course exceptions. See for example, Amin (1990).

19. For a discussion of levels of extension in relation to the changing form of the economy see Hinkson (1993, pp. 23–44).

20. Cf. the writings of Walter D. Mignolo (2000) who rightly continues to emphasize the continuing relevance of colonialism.

21. For a useful discussion of the relevance of a non-reductive ‘modes of production’ approach to the study of international relations see Cox (1987).