The Blackwell Companion to Globalization

George Ritzer, George Ritzer

• Éditeur: Wiley-Blackwell
• Année: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781119538530
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Politics & International Relations
• Sous-sujet: Globalisation

This companion features original essays on the complexity of globalization and its diverse and sometimes conflicting effects. Written by top scholars in the field, it offers a nuanced and detailed examination of globalization that includes both positive and critical evaluations.

• Introduces the major players, theories, and methodologies
• Explores the major areas of impact, including the environment, cities, outsourcing, consumerism, global media, politics, religion, and public health
• Addresses the foremost concerns of global inequality, corruption, international terrorism, war, and the future of globalization
• Wide-ranging and comprehensive, an excellent text for undergraduate and graduate students in a range of disciplines

Part I
Introduction

Introduction to Part I

GEORGE RITZER

Part I offers a series of essays that, in combination, constitute a general introduction to the study and phenomenon of globalization, especially from the point of view of sociology and the other social sciences.

We begin with Anthony McGrew’s wide-ranging and magisterial overview of globalization studies from both an intellectual and political perspective. In fact, the issue of globalization, and the debate over it, has served to invigorate both scholarly work and political action. On the one hand, many scholars have been drawn to the study of globalization and, because it is such a highly contested idea, into many scholarly debates, as well. On the other hand, many politicians, lay people and activists (and some scholars) have become enmeshed in the red-hot political debates on problems, and protests over them, associated with many of the real-world effects of contemporary globalization. Since the process of globalization is not going away anytime soon, if ever, public discussion, protests and scholarly work will continue and, if anything, accelerate. At the same time, the political issues that surround globalization (for example, the inequities that seem endemic to the process), like the scholarly ones, show every sign of continuing, and likely increasing in number and intensity.

Broadly speaking, the debate involves, as discussed in the Introduction to this volume, those who have ‘globophilia’ versus those who suffer from ‘globophobia’. The former group includes, among others, those who adopt a neoliberal approach, especially capitalists and politicians who see their firms and countries benefiting from globalization. Those who can be said to suffer from globophobia include those who adopt both far right and far left political positions. Those on the right often see their nation and identity being threatened by global flows, while those on the left are enraged by the injustices associated with globalization. Many activists, both from the right and especially the left, can be seen as having globophilia.

Among scholars, especially sociologists, another source of their interest in, and concern about, globalization is that it threatens some of their most basic and long-lasting ideas. Many of the basic units of analysis in sociology – economy, polity, society and especially the state – are threatened, if not undermined, by globalization. All of these phenomena seem to interpenetrate in a global world and are increasingly difficult to clearly distinguish from one another. Many of them, but especially the state, seem to be undermined by the process of globalization. Most generally, there are those who believe that the basic unit of analysis in today’s world should be the globe rather than social science’s traditional units of analysis.

At its most extreme, this indicates that the social sciences in general, and sociology in particular, are in need of, if not undergoing, a paradigm shift. In Thomas Kuhn’s (1962/1970) now classic work on paradigms and revolutions in scientific fields, basic to any paradigm is its fundamental image of the subject matter of the science in question (Ritzer 1975/1980). It is arguable that in the past sociology, at least at the macro-level, has focused on society in general and the nation-state in particular, but such foci seem weak in the era of globalization since society and the nation-state are being penetrated and eroded by the process of globalization. This is leading to a shift towards the globe as the fundamental unit of analysis, at least in macro-sociology. Such a shift would have profound implications for much of sociology, especially its theories and methods (see Robinson and Babones in this part of the book). It could be argued that sociology, and other social sciences, are undergoing a paradigm shift, a revolution, as a result of the growing power and importance of globalization.

McGrew offers two basic ways of mapping globalization scholarship. The first involves outlining four ‘waves’ that have framed academic scholarship on the topic. The second is four ‘modes’ of analyzing globalization.

The first ‘wave’ is theoreticist involving theoretical work that addresses several basic issues, all of which are contested and hotly debated. First, there is the issue of how to conceptualize globalization. This issue, and differences among scholars on it, will reappear throughout this book, especially in the various efforts to define globalization. Indeed, the very fact that there are such differences in definition makes it clear just how contested the entire idea of globalization is and remains. Second, there is the question of what are the basic dynamics involved in the process of globalization. Finally, there is the question of the systemic and structural consequences of globalization as a secular process of social change. That is, what is its impact on, among others, social structures, social institutions and so on.

A second wave of scholarship is historicist. Here a key issue, indeed a central issue in globalization scholarship in general, is what, if anything, is new about globalization today in comparison to other periods in history. There are those who see globalization as beginning with the fall of the Soviet Union, others who trace it to the end of World War II, still others who see its beginnings centuries ago, and even those who argue that globalization can be traced back thousands of years. For those who see globalization today as something unique in history, there is the issue of its general implications, and most specifically its implications for progressive values and projects of human emancipation. Most generally, the issue is whether globalization improves or worsens the overall human condition. A key question is whether globalization promises to reduce or exacerbate social inequality within given nations (say, the United States) and the world (say, between the global North and the South).

The third wave identified by McGrew is institutionalist (the Thomas and Boli and Petrova chapters in this section are strongly affected by this wave). Here the focus is on social institutions, especially economic, political and cultural institutions. The issue is, most generally, whether – and in what ways – globalization is leading to change in these institutions, especially whether there is continued global divergence, or increasing convergence, throughout the world in these institutions. This bears on a general issue that is central to the globalization literature in general, and this volume in particular, and that is whether globalization brings with it increasing homogenization, supports extant heterogenization or even brings with it further heterogeneity.

The final wave identified by McGrew is the poststructuralist (or constructivist). This involves several shifts in focus in globalization scholarship. For one thing, concern moves from globalization as an all-encompassing macro-process to one that is contingent and that involves the importance of agents and the ways in which they construct it as a process. Relatedly, this involves a shift in the direction of the importance of ideas about globalization, especially as both hegemonic and counterhegemonic discourse. This focus leads to several key issues such as whether the definitions of agents and the rise of counter-globalization discourse is leading to the demise of globalization; whether we are in, or moving toward, a post-global age. At the minimum, it leads to the view that there is not one form of globalization, but multiple globalizations. That is, we should think in terms of globalizations rather than globalization.

Given these four waves of globalization scholarship, McGrew turns to a second mapping device – four modes for analyzing globalization, the first of which is defensive globalization. In this view, globalization is a really existing and enduring condition (although far from inexorable or irresistible) that is changing societies throughout the world. It can be divided into liberal and transformationalist perspectives.

In the liberal view (for an overview and critique, see Antonio, below), globalization is generally seen as a benign process that has continuities with the past and historical changes. It is primarily economic in nature and leads to increasing integration through the market and technology. While liberals see merit in globalization, they can be differentiated from the crude neoliberal, Washington Consensus view that globalization is an unmitigated good producing increased prosperity, democratization, cosmopolitanism and peace throughout the world. The liberals recognize that there are problems associated with globalization, but adopt the view that it can be made to function better.

In contrast, the transformationalist position is that globalization today is unique in history and that it involves much more than simply economic changes. Not only are there political, cultural and social manifestations of globalization above and beyond the economic manifestations, but all of them, including the economic, can be distinguished from one another and are often contradictory. While there are benefits to globalization, especially market-led globalization, there are also problems such as great inequality in and across societies. Democratic reforms are needed to produce a process of globalization that leads to both economic efficiency and social justice.

Post-globalizing is the second mode of analysis. Here the view is that globalization either never occurred, or that it is in decline or disappearing as borders of nation-states are being reasserted (e.g. between the United States and Mexico), nationalism is being revived and so on (all of these changes can be seen as involving ‘deglobalization’). In any case, in this view the whole idea of globalization has been ‘oversold’ as a description of social reality, an explanation of social change and as an ideology of social progress. Rather than a global world, we continue to live in a world dominated by national societies and states. Thus, the issue is the construction of a better world either through the better use of extant state power or by taking control over and transforming the uses to which it is put.

Whatever its status in the real world, globalization remains important as an idea and as discourse (in the speeches of politicians and the rhetoric of protestors). It provides people with social means and with frames with which to think about and act in the social world. Ideas associated with globalization also serve to both legitimate and de-legitimate social and political change.

The third mode is critical globalism. As its title suggests, this view is critical of globalization because it is associated with the extension and transnationalization of power. The best-known idea associated with this perspective is Hardt and Negri’s (2000) ‘empire’. However, this mode goes beyond critique to point to new subjective and transnational forms of resistance to this extension of power (Hardt and Negri’s [2004] ‘multitude’). Agency, subjectivity and social struggle are central to this resistance. The conflict between, for example, empire and multitude is leading to struggles over the distribution of the world’s resources and over recognition and identity (ethnic, gender and so on). Globalization is generally accepted as a social reality, but the issue is how to realize its progressive, even more its revolutionary, potential.

The final mode of analysis is glocalism. This involves the widely accepted view among contemporary globalization scholars that the focus of studies on this topic should be on both the global and the local in combination with one another, the dialectical relationship between the two. There is a great deal of work in the field that focuses on the issue of glocalization, or on the closely related ideas of hybridization and creolization. In fact, this mode of analysis is so hegemonic that I recently suggested the idea of ‘grobalization’ as a complement to the concept of glocalization (Ritzer 2004a). That is, it is important not only to focus on the integration of the global and the local, but also on the imposition of the latter on the former. The need for both ideas is clear in a distinction made by McGrew and others in this volume (e.g. Kahn and Kellner) between ‘globalization from below’ (McGrew associates this with critical globalism) and ‘globalization from above’. Glocalization would be more in tune with the former while grobalization well expresses the latter.

McGrew offers one of many possible road maps for understanding the literature on globalization, as well as the remainder of the chapters in this volume. Given the diversity of approaches, McGrew anticipates the continuation of disagreements in the study of globalization and that the concept itself is likely to remain fiercely contested.

Robertson and White outline their thinking on globalization which is informed by the glocalization perspective discussed by McGrew and which is closely associated with the work of the senior author of that chapter. That concept plays a role in th...