This chapter explores the literature on globalization, neoliberalism and its impacts on labour and labour movements. The chapter begins with a critical exploration of globalization, drawing particularly on the theorist Boaventura de Sousaâsdefinition of âglobalizationsâ. This is followed by a brief history of the rise of neoliberal globalization, globalizations contemporary hegemonic form and a mapping out of the major transformations that have taken place. Finally, we explore the implications of neoliberal globalization for workersâ movements, pinpointing particular structural transformations that require new and innovative responses from organized labour.
What is globalization?
Globalization has in many ways become the catchphrase of our era and is used by academics, politicians and journalists to explain phenomena across a whole range of social and political domains. This is reflected in shifts in its usage in the social sciences, as researchers grapple with the reality that something fundamental has changed in the contemporary world, and that those changes are affecting broad areas of our social, political and material world. New phrases that reflect this shift, such as âglobalityâ, âglobalismâ and âglocalizationâ, have appeared over the last 20 years. Although there remains a tendency to use âglobalizationâ as a synonym for such things as âliberalismâ, âuniversalismâ and âwesternizationâ, which, while perhaps reflecting some aspects of globalization, does not do justice to its complexity and indeed can be highly misleading (Scholte 2000).
Despite the different range of âtime-framesâ1 that authors use to chart the rise of globalization, the word itself has emerged over the last 30 years as part of the attempt to make sense of the changes that have taken place in the world with the collapse of the Soviet Union; the global recession of the late 1960s and early 1970s; the end of the Cold War; rapid improvements in information technologies; the collapse of Keynesian economics; and the ascendancy of neoliberalism, which has facilitated the emergence of a truly global economy (Shaw 2000). While some authors initially saw globalization as the inevitable spread of free market economics (Ohmae 1995; Gray 1998; Reich 1991), others rejected this âjuggernaut thesisâ suggesting that little had changed and that the interconnectedness between nations was greater at the turn of the last century (Hirst and Thompson 1996), and that the period merely represented a heightening of imperialism (Callinicos 2003; Petras 2003). However, as the years have passed, globalization has increasingly been recognized as neither inevitable nor just a simple extension of past tendencies. Instead, it is understood as a set of highly complex and contested processes rather than one single phenomenon producing indeterminate and unexpected outcomes (see Shaw 2000; Gills 2000; Gill 2003; Waterman 2001; Mittelman 2000; Othman and Kessler 2000; Hay 2002; Santos 2002).
In understanding globalization as a set of complex processes, the work of Boaventura de Sousa Santos has been instructive. Central to Santosâs concept of globalization is that we are in a period of profound transformation (Santos 1999). Here globalization is defined as being more than the rise over the last 30 years of transnational processes of the production of goods and services and an increase in the power of Transnational Corporations (TNCs) and International Financial Institutions (IFIs) as international actors. Instead, Santos offers a definition that incorporates the social, political and cultural dimensions of globalization as well as the economic, arguing that what we term âglobalizationâ is actually âa set of social relationsâ and should always be treated in the plural (Santos 1999: 188â93). This complex set of social relations involves power and conflict, winners and losers. Historically, definitions are normally written by the winners, and thus provide a distorted view of events, hence globalization is often depicted as the synonym for the victorious spread of neoliberal economics while obscuring less successful alternative globalizations.
Santos (1999: 216) sees globalization as âthe process by which a given local condition or entity succeeds in extending its reach over the globe and, by doing so, develops the capacity to designate a rival social condition or entity as localâ. This definition has several important implications. Firstly, what we generally call globalization is inevitably the successful globalization of a given localism. The process of globalizing a given localism ensures that competing localisms are confined to their particular geographic area, or even removed. The example of the spread of English is illustrative here. This local language (English) globalizes, and in doing so prevents the spread of other potential globalizing localisms, such as French, while re-localizing or distorting local languages. Here we can think of the way English words have penetrated many local languages and how many localized languages are being systematically eliminated (c.f. Phillipson 1992; Skutnabb-Kangas 2000).2 A further example is the way Coca Cola and McDonalds and other fast food products have broken down local cultural eating habits (Schlosser 2002) as these MNCs have extended production and distribution across the world. When we examine a process of globalization, we need to simultaneously explore processes of re-localization as their inevitable counterpart: neoliberalism spreads as Keynesianism shrinks. The global and the local are not, therefore, binary opposites but two sides of the same globalizations coin (Gibson-Graham 2002).
The second key point concerns power differentials involved in processes of globalization. Timeâspace compression, which is often presented as a key aspect of globalization, contains key power differentials within it. Timeâspace compression refers to the annihilation of space through time, whereby technological advances and new organizational practices reduce spatial and temporal distances and allow for a radical change in the parameters under which capitalism operates (Harvey 1989). One striking example of this has been the phenomenon of call centres located in countries such as India where labour costs are far cheaper than in the core, developed nations. The distance between Western consumers and Indian service providers are made less relevant by virtue of advanced information technology. Distance and time, which would have previously prevented this activity, have thus been removed as an obstacle (compressed) through technological advances thus allowing for the outsourcing of labour, which would previously have taken place within the confines of the nation-state, hence changing the parameters of the possible and economically feasible.
Santos (1999) calls for an exploration of the relations of power within âtimeâ space compressionâ, arguing that it is not a neutral process, and while some population groups are in control of these processes, others are less so. Financial elites are better able to take charge of âtimeâspace compressionâ and turn it to their advantage, while refugees and migrant workers, though moving, are much less in control of that movement. Another example of this differential power relation that is implicit in âglobalizationsâ is that key contributors to processes of globalization may be confined to certain locales. Santos (ibid.) offers two examples from Latin America to illustrate this: the drug growers of Colombia and Bolivia (who contribute to the globalization of a drug culture, but are bounded in local circumstances), and the urban poor in Brazil (who are trapped in poverty but see their musical culture exported globally). Examining the basis of unequal social relations characterized by asymmetries in power is thus crucial to an understanding of the uneven nature of globalization processes.
These unequal global power relations often mean that core, developed countries specialize in âglobalized localismsâ, while âlocalized globalismsâ are generally imposed on the peripheral âless developed nationsâ. This definition of globalization assists in understanding how the local/global relationship is mutually constituted and riven with differences in power. It also begins the process of pinpointing âpowerâ and its unequal distribution within the contemporary world. What is less clear, however, in Santosâs exposition, are the differential power relations within and between âglobalized localismsâ such as neoliberalism, human rights, democracy, fast food consumption and so on. Are they equally important? Do some âglobalized localismsâ dominate, and should we be more concerned about certain forms of globalization than others? Furthermore, while Santos provides a clear conceptual framework for understanding differential power relations between North and South for accounting for the preponderance of globalized localisms coming from the developed North, he is less attentive to explaining unequal power relations within and among nation-states and between social classes. For us, however, what is vital is the necessity of treating globalization in the plural (globalizations) and recognizing that there are many forms of globalization. This allows us then to articulate why the badly named âanti-globalizationâ movement is actually an âalterâ globalization movement, and that the struggle is not against the âglobalâ,but against particular forms of globalization â neoliberalism being the current dominant form â and for alternative modes of globalization, particularly the globalization of solidarity, social struggle, social justice and popular resistance, in all its varied forms.
Globalizations, thus, for us can serve as a âmetaâ concept for a whole range of transnational processes that are taking place, which collectively reflect the sense that we are in a period of global transition, the outcomes of which will be âdetermined by âstruggleâ and âcontestâââ. This conceptualization perhaps explains the re-emergence of interest in Polanyiâs classic work The Great Transformation (1957), which described an earlier period of profound change â the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, Munck (2002) talks of the âGlobalization Revolutionâ in precisely those terms. Polanyi described the miraculous development of the tools of production that were, however, accompanied by a profound and catastrophic dislocation of ordinary peopleâs lives. His focus was on the relationship between market and society as he explored the destructive nature of the notion of a âself-regulated marketâ and talked of this as a âmarket dystopiaâ that would destroy both man and nature if it were not countered by the self-defence mechanisms of society (Polanyi 1957: 3). This process of societal defence to the destructive nature of the market was known as the âdouble-movementâ, whereby the market was tamed and placed firmly under the control of societal institutions. One key mechanism for the taming of this âmarket dystopiaâ was working class struggle and the organized labour movement, and it is our hope that the labour movement can once again reemerge as both a source of collective power and a real provider of development alternatives, a point we will turn to in the next chapter. Prior to that, we now wish to focus in more detail, on neoliberalism, as the hegemonic form of globalization of our era, which has had profound implications for labour organizing and the wellbeing of the working class.