Global Shift

7 Key excerpts on "Global Shift"

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  21st Century Geography: A Reference Handbook

  • Joseph P. Stoltman(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  42 GLOBALIZATION AND GEOGRAPHY ALEX STANDISH Western Connecticut State University G lobalization is a term that gets used to describe many different phenomena. This lack of speci- ficity does not help the process of clarifying how the world has changed over recent years. In this chapter, I will focus on social forces that are driving this change and on the resultant outcomes. I will avoid the tendency to fetishize and treat globalization as some mystical force driving the world in a new direction. Within economics, politics, and culture, there have been many changes since the end of the cold war, and many of them have been global in scale. The changes have been brought about by millions of conscious decisions by people that author Harm de Blij (2009) calls globals. He claims that "globals, whether in government, indus- try, business, or other decision-making capacities, flat- ten playing fields for each other as they traverse the world from Davos to Doha" (p. 7). The globals are accompanied by a second group, the locals. Locals tend to be poorer, the least mobile, and the most susceptible to the impressions of place (p. 7). They are also in the majority of the global population. In this chapter, I discuss globalization and introduce some of the spatial processes that are reshaping the new geography of our world. As geographers, we need to understand the various processes at work (economic, political, and cultural) to comprehend the spatial patterns arising from them. Hence, we will begin with an introduc- tion to the ways in which globalization is approached before discussing globalized economics, globalized poli- tics, and globalized culture. What Is Globalization and Is It New? The term globalization entered the popular vernacular in the late 1980s and early 1990s, from where its usage has ballooned. Especially in the social sciences, this term has become a highly examined phenomenon.

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  The SAGE Handbook of Power

  • Stewart R Clegg, Mark Haugaard, Stewart R Clegg, Mark Haugaard(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  9 Powerful Geographies: Spatial Shifts in the Architecture of Globalization J o h n A l l e n INTRODUCTION Geographers, it could be argued, have a particular disadvantage when it comes to addressing a broad social science audience, namely that much of the readership already appears to have fairly well developed views on what space and place contribute to the institutional workings of something like power, especially in terms of its scope and reach. There are certain time-honoured traditions, for instance, which, it has been pointed out, have shaped spatial vocabularies, as for example in the case of state sovereignty where bounded territories and defined distances have long played a part in demarcating the jurisdictional limits of political authority (see Agnew, 1994, 1999, 2005; Biersteker and Weber, 1996; Ferguson, 2004; Hudson, 1999; Walker, 1993). In contrast, at the risk of caricature, a number of writers have tended to stress the constant mobility and flow of all things social – from people and ideas to goods and capital – as a counterweight to settled notions of any kind of authority or easy territorial fix (see, for instance, Appadurai, 1990; Castells, 1996, 2000; Kellner, 2002; Ohmae, 1991; Urry, 2000a, b). More often than not, though, in response to the challenges of globalization, there appears to be an urge among writers of different hues and backgrounds to merge or piece together the two vocabularies: to hold in some sort of tension, for example, the territorial impulses of nation states and other embedded institutions with the more fluid, networked powers of business and other transnational actors (see, for instance, Held et al., 1999; Hirst, 2005; Mann, 2003; Rosenau, 2003; Taylor, 2004; Wolf, 2004). In this more ill-defined

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  The SAGE Handbook of Economic Geography

  • Andrew Leyshon, Roger Lee, Linda McDowell, Peter Sunley, Andrew Leyshon, Roger Lee, Linda McDowell, Peter Sunley, SAGE Publications Ltd(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  But globalization has far more than discursive significance, and the task of this chapter is to explore the manifest changes in the global economy that the term is trying to capture. These encompass: the develop-ment of new information and communication technologies; the incorporation of large parts of the globe into an integrated world economy; THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY 90 the rapid growth of the newly industrializing economies (NIEs) including most recently China and India; and, most importantly, the spread of the social relations of capitalism and its inherent dynamics as the norm around which economies function. Indeed, the general rise in usage depicted in Figure 5.1 serves to conceal a heated debate within, and across, a broad range of social sci-ence disciplines as to how globalization should be defined, interpreted and analysed. As we shall see, such differences of opinion are not just semantic; they influence the concept’s utility in a number of profound ways. Economic geographers have been an integral part of these debates, although not perhaps as much – or as centrally – as one might expect given the geographical connotations of the word itself and the processes it invokes (see Dicken, 2004, for more on this). The stance that will be developed in this chapter is that globalization is most meaningfully deployed when capturing the ‘step-change’ in processes of international economic integration that has occurred over the last few decades. More specifically, this chapter will explore the interrelationships between the changing nature of the global economy and various attempts to conceptualize these changes. In particular, it will position globalization with respect to the changing international divi-sions of labour that have characterized different phases of world economic history and how these have been interpreted from a political-economic perspective.

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  An Introduction to International Migration Studies

  European Perspectives

  • Marco Martiniello, Jan Rath(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Amsterdam University Press

    (Publisher)

  In contrast, this chapter contends that the factors that drive migration are connected through complex patterns of interdependence and feedback mechanisms. It encourages a broad interdisciplinary approach to mi-gration studies, in particular for the linking of micro-level studies of local causes and effects of migration to a broader political economy of global relationships. Linking across socio-spatial levels also means ad-dressing the dialectics of structure and agency in every aspect of hu-man mobility. Social transformation, globalisation and migration 1 shifts The idea of social transformation implies a fundamental change in the way society is organised that goes beyond the continual processes of social change that are always at work (see Polanyi 2001, first published in 1944) and which arises when there are major shifts in dominant power relationships. The massive shifts in global economic, political and military affairs since the 1970s represent this type of fundamental change. The effects of globalisation are uneven, involving a process of inclusion in world capitalist market relations for particular regions and social groups, while excluding others from this market (Castells 1996). The penetration of Southern economies by Northern investors and multi-national corporations leads to economic restructuring, through which some groups of producers are included in the new economy, while other groups find their workplaces destroyed and their qualifications devalued. Thus, economic globalisation leads to the pro-found transformation of societies in all regions. The neglect of this connection on the part of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international financial institutions (IFIs) has led to failures that ‘ have set back the development agenda, by unnecessarily corroding the very fabric of society ’ (Stiglitz 2002: 76-77). 156 STEPHEN CASTLES

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  The Geography of the World Economy

  • Paul Knox, John A Agnew, Linda Mccarthy, John Agnew(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  consolidation. Decentralization has led to an attenuation of regional and interurban gradients in economic well-being; consolidation has contributed to an increased spatial differentiation in terms of the conditions of production and exchange, and the hierarchical structure of control.

  At the same time, we have to consider the effects on core countries of wider changes in the world economy and globalized capitalism. We begin, therefore, with a brief outline of the main outcomes of these transformations. In the broadest of terms, three key changes can be identified: An altered relationship between capital and labor; new regional divisions of labor; and new roles for the state. Together, they contributed to the development of a distinctive context for economic development in core countries.

  7.1 The Context for Urban and Regional Change

  Flexible production has taken hold as companies throughout the developed world have exploited new technologies and new strategies in order to remain competitive in a global economy. In the process, the relationship between capital and labor has been transformed, with corporations recapturing the initiative over wage rates and conditions. New technologies have played a major role in this transformation. The introduction of robotics in factories and information-processing technologies in offices, for example, has made for dramatic increases in productivity but has also created a long-term threat: That of substituting machines for workers that puts them in a weak bargaining position.

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  Globalization, 3rd edition

  Theory and Practice

  • Eleonore Kofman, Gillian Youngs(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Continuum

    (Publisher)

  Nonetheless, despite the shift that relational approaches have brought to our under- standing of global processes, particular narratives, subjects and spaces are privileged whilst others are silenced. The political geographies of the previous turn of the century did this (Gilmartin and Kofman, 2004); we are in danger of repeating the same mistakes. The val- orized narratives of today include financial flows, transnational corporations and the elite who circulate at the global scale and shape those sites of strategic importance and dominance in the global economy. The narrative of eviction (Sassen, 2000a) covers heterogeneous groups, spaces and practices. There are certainly attempts to include the geopolitics of 22 ELEONORE KOFMAN those who do not write its scripts or who are not written into them, such as indigenous peoples, migrants, anti-liberal globalization protesters, and women in the charting of neo- liberalism, imperialism and security. Women, for example, have demonstrated that they can jump scales (Staeheli, 1994) and forge global alliances (Runyan, Steans, this volume) with relatively few resources. The actors, willing and unwilling, in processes of globalization are not just those at the apex of the power-geometry. Those left out of its accounts both con- stitute counter geographies of globalization and are integral to its formal and informal processes and practice. Notes 1. Agnew rejects the term 'empire' which he associates with centralized rule and organi- zation as a description of American power but prefers the term 'hegemony' as a loose description of dominant economic, cultural and political practices connected with a networked geography of power. However, many writers, including Hardt and Negri (2000), deploy this term to refer to a more networked and diffuse power structure.

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  Sustainable Development and Geographical Space

  Issues of Population, Environment, Globalization and Education in Marginal Regions

  • Heikki Jussila, Roser Majoral(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  3-24. Shannon, T. R. (1996), An Introduction to the World System Perspective, Westview, Boul­ der, CO. Taylor, P.J. (1989), Political Geography, Longman, New York. Taylor, P.J., M.J. Watts and R.J. Johnston (1996), ‘Global Change at the end of the Twenti­ eth Century’, in R.J. Johnston, P.J. Taylor and M.J. Watts (eds.), Geographies o f Global Change: Remapping the World in the Twentieth Century, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, pp. 1-10. Todaro, M.P. (1994), Economic Development, Longman, New York. Tosi, A. (1996), ‘The Excluded and the Homeless: The Social Construction of the Fight Against Poverty in Europe’, in E. Mingione (ed.), Urban Poverty and the Underclass: A Reader, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, pp. 83-104. Wacquant, J.D. (1996), ‘Red Belt, Black Belt: Racial Division, Class Inequality and the State in the French Urban Periphery and the American Ghetto’, in Mingione, E. (ed.), Urban Poverty and the Underclass: A Reader, Blackwell Publishers Inc., Oxford, pp. 234-274. Wild, V. (1997), Profit not for Profit's Sake: History and Business Culture o f African En­ terprise in Zimbabwe , Baobab Books, Harare. World Bank (1993, 1999), World Development Report , Oxford University Press, New York, NU. Young, C. (1988), The African Colonial State and its Political Legacy5, in D. Rothchild and N. Chazan (eds.), The Precarious Balance: State and Society in Africa , Westview Press, Boulder, CO. 208 Sustainable Development and Geographical Space 16 Economic change and transportation deregulation in selected marginal and critical areas of the US Pacific Northwest1 STEVEN KALE Introduction The consequences of deregulation continue to trouble numerous analysts of social and economic change in marginal and critical areas. Deregulation is believed to place marginal and critical areas at a disadvantage because the private sector may choose to reduce or end services in areas where the government subsidized or required provision of services before deregula­ tion laws were enacted.

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