Articles On Globalization
Articles On Globalization
Articles On Globalization
'Globalization'
Ibrahim Aoude, Andrew Davidson, Sergio Fiedler, Michael Humphrey,
Owen Sichone.
Books Reviewed:
Jonathan Friedman, Cultural Identity & Global Process. (London: Sage
Publications, 1994). Reviewer: Ibrahim Aoude.
Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999). Reviewer: Andrew Davidson.
Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of
Globalization. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
Reviewer: Sergio Fielder.'
Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences. (Cambridge:
Polity, 1998). Reviewer: Michael Humphrey.
Anthony Giddens, Runaway World: How Globalisation is Reshaping Our
Lives. (London: Profile Books, 2000). Reviewer: Owen Sichone.
Introduction
This review explores the uses of the concept, globalization, in a selection
of books over the last decade. Also included are books that use the term
'globalization' implicitly but has as their subject, globalism. They all contribute to an analysis of the transformation of the relationship between the
global and local resulting from globalization. Individuality, culture, identity.
Social Analysis, Volume 46. Issue 2, Summer 2002
158
Review Articles
and freedom (empowerment), rather than markets are the issues explored to
reveal the dynamic between the global and the local. Jonathan Friedman's
focus is cultural identity. He argues that the integration of the local in the
global occurs at the expense of its fragmentation. The formation of cultural
identity in the era of globalization is therefore intimately tied up with the
larger processes of the world system. Bauman makes a similar observation
stating that the local loses its characteristics as a location of meaning, social
autonomy and durability. Sen explores the relationship between the global
and the local through the concept of development. His key point is that
globalization will not be beneficialbring real developmentif the freedom of the market is not matched by individual freedoms (social and cultural rights) supported by a protective and caring state. Appadurai's analysis
of the global and the local is his reconfiguring of sodal space through his
postnational 'landscapes'spaces constituting new forms of social relationships and identities.
What is distinctive about the books selected is the division between
those which develop their analysis of globalization in the contexts of earlier paradigms of developmentFriedman's use of world systems and Sen's
focus on development theoryand those which explore globalization as a
question of the transformation of modernity to postmodernityAppadurai,
Bauman, Giddens. In Appadurai's case this involves a reconceptualization
of sodal space and identity; however, in the case of Bauman and Giddens,
it is a discussion about the consequences for social forms of modernity.
Bauman's central theme is the social effects of time/space compression.
Giddens is more concerned with the consequences of the erosion of the
social premises of modernity.
One of the difficulties very apparent in these reviews with the concept,
modernity, is its level of abstraction and the generality with which it is
applied. Interestingly, two of the books reviewed hereBauman's and Giddens'are quite short. The tendency towards abstraction apparently facilitates brevity, but not without some serious shorting comings, as Sichone
points out.
Review Articles
159
and deeper into political and economic chaos, as witnessed most recently
in the political economic affairs of Argentina and Brazil. More chaos is sure
to follow if the war on 'terrorism' takes an ugly turn towards full-scale war
against Iraq, as the Bush Administration is threatening to do. In the Bush
Administration's world vision, culture figures only as a source of polarizing
conflict, Huntington's 'clash of civilizations.'
Usually, the critique of the dominant globalist paradigm operates
within a narrow political economic framework, leaving culture outside the
globalization discourse. Friedman's book, a collection of essays written
between the late 1970s and early 1990s, offers a different approach to
understanding the concept of culture in a global world. Friedman deconstructs many of the myths perpetrated on academe in the name of intellectual rigor and openness to new ideas (read the new ideology of the
marketglobalism). As a collection of anthropological essays on culture,
modernity, postmodernism, and identity, the book offers a social science
model to understanding culture and identity in ways that disciplines in the
social sciences and humanities, because of their intellectual parochialism,
have been unable to fulfill.
Addressing the problematic of cultural identity, Friedman is confronted
with the weight of anthropological practice ranging from the modern to the
postmodern. His critique of structural functionalism allows him to debunk
"the linear relation between the anthropologist from the center and his
object in the periphery ... (p. 7]." Instead of ossifying the subject in an
ahistorical study of social institutions, Friedman proposes to begin conceptually with social reproduction, in order to allow us to focus on social
process and social transformation.
It is instructive that Friedman utilizes the terms of "center" and "periphery" as he points out the necessity of understanding cultural identity within
a world system's approach. He does so at a time when Andre Gunder Frank
ignores these terms in his ReOrient. TWo points need to be made here: firstly,
the study of culture and identity has to be understood in the context of the
world system. Whether one agrees with Wallerstein (that the capitalist world
system dates back to 1500) or with Frank (that the world system has been
around for five thousand years) seems to be immaterial to the study of cultural identity. Be that as it may, Friedman's sympathies are closer to Wallerstein than they are to Frank. His whole notion of the capitalist system and
his use of global systems clearly indicate that to be the case. Secondly, that
the world system/global systems have regional and local structures, including "center/periphery."
160
Review Articles
The second point above is critical since global systems possess cultural
properties. Cultural identity is about differences and similarities. But cultural process can only be understood through the study of hegemony, of
dominant and "subaltern" discourses. Hence the center is the point of
departure "since it is in the geographic expansion of the system that its cultviral properties emerge" (p. 25).
A related and conceptually essential point is the interplay between the
local and the global in the study of cultural identity and globalization or,
more precisely, global systemic processes. The local is indispensable to
take into account because the integration of the local area in the global
occurs at the expense of the fragmentation of the local. In this sense, the
local is a function of the global because "local processes are aspects of the
larger global process (p. 198)." The dialectic of fragmentation/integration
is absolutely essential for understanding contemporary cultural identity.
This appreciation of the dynamic articulation between the global and local
is markedly different from that (mis) understanding of modernist anthropologists and cultural theorists who look at identity as an attribute of a
group or individual subject.
Equally important to recognize is that under conditions of capitalist crisis, fragmentation of the global system gives rise to new identity construction. Friedman's deconstruction of culture sets him apart from Ceertz's
understanding that there is no such thing as culture; only "specific cultures" exist. For Friedman there is a difference between "generic culture,"
shared by all Homo sapiens, "that is specific to human behavior" (p. 72)
and "differential culture," which "is merely the realization of generic culture in its historical and spatial specificity" (p. 73). In other words, "differential culture" constructs/identifies the Other.
The resulting cultural pluralism (multiculturalism) of a crisis-ridden
global capitalist system is the postmodern reality of a fragmented system
in which assimilation and homogenization have failed. If hegemony
brought about global integration of fragmented local areas, then, in view
of capitalist crisis, de-hegemonizadon accelerated the process of "differential culture." We now witness de-hegemonization as cvdtural essentialization in the form of ethnicity and even racism, both expressions of a
global system in the stage of disintegration. In this way the modern transforms into the postmodern.
Postmodernism is not the (re) solution of the modern; instead, it is the
condition of a system in crisis. This reality implies that everything in the
system experiences crisis, including the individual who becomes fragmented as well.
Review Articles
161
162
Review Ardctes
usually operatefroma safe haven, but of the designated beneficiaries of development policies formulated on the basis of faulty premises and paradigms.
What does this portend for the analysis and understanding of development, especially in today's increasingly interconnected or globalized world?
Although Sen does not explicitly use the concept, globalization, his
understanding of development is clearly articulated against the backdrop of
global realties, and represents an interesting contribution to contemporary
thinking about globalism and global processes. Originally prepared as a
series of discussion papers for the World Bank, Development as Freedom
directly challenges the shibboleths of development economics. Sen quickly
departs from long-standing economic thought, taking issue with development fetishism and its focus on economic growth to the exclusion of individual economic well-being and political freedom, or more aptly phrased,
unfreedoms that leave people little choice and opportunity to exercise "their
reasoned agency" as "citizens and participants in the social, political and
economic life of the community." To this end. Sen presents a wide-ranging
account of development that integrates ethics, values and economic theory,
drawing inspiration from what the anthropologist Levi-Strauss termed
hricolage by bringing together diverse ideas in a way that exceeds the
boundaries imposed by conventional wisdom.
While the globalized capitalist economy is not new, contemporary globalization is a different phenomenon. In this respect, the debate over development in a globalizing world, as Sen so lucidly shows, is not simply about
the mechanics or rhetoric of ongoing transformations within capitalism. At
the forefront are contested images of what constitutes 'the good life' and
whether development is "expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy."
Sen is particularly concerned with the types of social relations, institutions
and human values upon which freedom is conceived, both as the means to
and as a goal of development. It has been commonly assumed that checking social and political rights is a luxury that society can ill afford, until
some critical level of economic prosperity is first achieved. According to
Sen, this is clearly wrong. To the contrary. Sen argues that both social and
political freedom are in fact conducive to economic growth. Located within
this perspective. Freedom as Development can provide an expansive reflection on the relationship between development and globalization.
Globalization and its supportive norms comprise some of the more
puzzling ontological scapes in development theory, especially the enigmatic
division of economy, society, culture, and polity, as well as between structure and agency. Discourses on globalization (and development) have been
Review Articles
163
164
Review Articles
NOTE
"The Definition of Development," in Showcase State: The Illusion of Indonesia's 'Accelerated' Modernisation, ed. R. Mortimer. Sydney, 1973.
Review Articles
165
166
Review Articles
Review Articles
167
quences" of globalizing processes. The key idea is that space/time compression captures change in the human condition. Historically, space has
been transformed by technologies of mobility. In traditional societies the
unmediated human body largely determined the limits of command and
control. With the emergence of the modem state, the organization of space
was liberated from the constraints of the human body, and produced as
modern engineered space. The third space, cyberspace, has been produced
above "organized space," collapsing spatial dimensions through a global
web of information. Bauman argues that exploring the social origins and
outcomes of that compression reveals that globalization divides as much as
it unites. While globalization means greater freedom for some, it means
entrapment for others.
While emphasizing that speed and mobility are the central characteristic of globalization, Bauman reveals that globalization is not merely producing a hyper-modernity through the intensification of the relationships
and patterns of the past. Bauman's proposition is that globalization is eroding the cultural, political, and social forms of modernity leading to stratification, segregation, and exclusion. The relationship between the global
and local is not merely "glocal"the global being mediated through the
local( Robertson 1992). The resulting social transformations are fragmentary, producing neo-tribalism and fundamentalism of local cultures as
well as the hybridization of cosmopolitan culture. Globalization is producing a polarization between the globalized and localized worlds, between
top and bottom, with the resulting breakdown in communication. Increasingly meaning and values are more and more "extraterritorial and emancipated from local constraints" (Bauman 2000: 3). The cultural consequences
are the bifurcation and polarization of human experience between comfort
and anxiety. The need to subdue these fears and neutralize discontent only
reinforces further polarization. In response to the complexity of globalizing
processes is their simplification and management as "law and order"
issues. Cases falling below the idealized norm are criminalized. Safety
focused on the body, and possessions becomes "overloaded" with wider
concerns about insecurity and uncertainty.
The technological 'annulment of space' through globalization produces
more than a stratified distance between the 'globals' and 'locals.' It is challenging the very possibility of the autonomy of local life. The deterritorialization of power produced through globalization has enormous
consequences for the local organization of life, social cohesion, and community. The very capacity to generate social meaning is at stake: "Some can
move out of the localityany localityat will. Others watch helplessly the
168
Review Articles
sole locality they inhabit moving away from under their feet" (p. 18). In
cities, public space is being eroded through its privatization or through
redesign as restrictive and filtered "interdictory spaces," This erosion of
public space contributes to "the disintegration of locally grounded forms of
togetherness and shared communal living" (p. 21). The very possibility of
community, local leadership or local opinion is increasingly denied.
The legibility and transparency of space has been a key element in the
administration of populations by modern bureaucracies. Foucault's Panopticon encapsulated the idea of total surveillance as the basis for administrative control. The intensification of surveillance involved going beyond
merely mapping existing space, to designing space to increase legibility
and therefore order. Forced legibility through urban development and
renewal has had enormous impact on local lives. The social cost of uniformity is conformity "and conformity's other face is intolerance" (p. 47).
Urban social homogeneity limits the capacity to cope w;ith human difference and situations of uncertainty. Once built for security to protect its citizens from outsiders, the city itself is now the source of fear and concerns
with fortification of house and privacy.
Whereas the Panopticon was designed to impose discipline and uniform behaviorthe few watched the manynow surveillance is used to
exclude. Panoptic data sorts use cross-matching database to confirm the
credibility of people, their reliability as consumers. Moreover, there is now
a shift to the Synopticon of the mass media where the many watch the few.
Previously, the "Panopticon forced people into a position where they could
be watched. The Synopticon needs no coercionit seduces people into
watching" (p. 52). Watching serves to detach people from their localities.
Locals watch the globals, celebrities of all kinds, whose authority is secured
by their distance and extraterritorial identities.
While the technological intensification of surveillance and mapping
has eclipsed the prerogatives of state sovereignty it has not been replaced
by another political center. In fact, as Bauman points out:
the deepest meaning conveyed by the idea of globalization is that of the indeterminate, unruly and self-propelled character of world affairs; the absence of a centre, of a controlling desk, of a board of directors, of a managerial office (p. 59).
Globalization seems to refer to global effects, not what we hope to do but
'what is happening to us' (p. 60).
Yet despite the transnational processes challenging it, the nation-state
remains the principle framework for economic management and political
action. Bauman points out that globalization is diminishing sovereignty yet
Review Articles
169
170
Review Articles
Review Articles
171
172
Review Articles
ment of terror suspects in America and Europe suggests that we are all savages now, and that the moral high ground necessary for 'the end of history'
to be realized has been lost. If there is a single explanation for the new 'terrorism' it is that some people are angry, and the anger of the French man
or Swedish youth hurling rocks through the windows of fast food restaurants is not very different from that of the hijackers. They are not opposed
to individual freedom, but to the lack of choice that fast food restaurants
represent. This is the same point about freedom that Amartya Sen makes.
The violence from below and violence from above are equally barbaric. The
confident claim that "there is world order" is certainly going to be tested
during current so-called "clash of civilizations" as the difference between
the just wars fought against Saddam Hussein or an absolutized and banalized 'Terror' become more and more difficult to discern in the eyes of the
majority (Hardt and Negri 2000).
Giddens' examines globalization through the following familiar concepts
and in a unilinear model used by sociologists to explain the emergence of
modernity tries to do the same for postmodemity or postindustrial society.
Globalization
Giddens' highlights the role of new media such as the internet over that of
the printed magazine, and that of Indian internet experts over that of the
Hollywood actor, Indian restaurants or alternative therapists and Gurus in
the global village. The references to CNN, cellular telephony, electronic
money markets, and jumbo jets always ignores the way the majority of the
human race lives. In a way, the quiet manner in which the average Taj
Mahal or Great Wall restaurant blends in with its environment, and the
loudness of the yellow and red of McDonalds misleads many people into
thinking that there are more American influences around the world than
there are Chinese, Indian, or Thai. As far as restaurants are concerned,
globalization is more Eastemization than Americanization. While admitting
that globalization is only partly Westernization, Giddens nevertheless labels
Eastemization as reverse colonization, rather than an integral part of the
same process.
Risk
While Giddens accepts the external risk experienced by people in traditional society, he has difficulties comprehending that people without
nuclear power stations can also experience risk created by the very impact
of our developing knowledge upon the world. Many people have long been
concerned that so-called nattiral disastersfloods, plagues and famines are
Review Articles
173
really the product of human actions. What is poison gas but a pesticide writ
large? Whether the poison is put in a well and wipes out a village or is
delivered by missiles and kills millions the crime is the same. Giddens
apparently has not recovered from the belief that capitalism, science, and
liberal democracy were responsible for the beginning of modern history, in
the same way that the end of the Soviet Union marked an end of history.
He thus sees risk as a peculiarly modern response to hazards.
In contrast, Mary Douglas has no difficulty in switching from the here
to the U.S. Risk is socially constructed. The actuarial reckoning of risk is
modem hut this does not necessarily make it an adequate way to assess
risk. The major difference is between communal risk [sins that affect all
generations), and individual risk whereby technology is to blame. In both
communal society and high modernity there are no accidents and although
risk is experienced differently, it is an ever-present fact of life. Whether a
drought is believed by scientists to result from global warning or by diviners to be caused by incest in the royal familynatural processes or magical onesit is human agency that is blamed. Why should the scientific
explanation be more important?
Unlike Mary Douglas, Giddens is trapped in western paradigms. His
analysis of globalization is Eurocentric, even when he makes references to
life in other parts of the world as a way of highhghting the differences.
Where in the past, the sociology of industrial society was a well-developed
discipline, today the sociology of globalization is an inadequate social science unless it can be comprehensively multilingual.
Jhidition
All traditions are invented traditions. Giddens makes this sound like a great
discovery and maybe it is. Sociology has tended to teach us that tradition
ends where modernity starts, and that therefore invention is an attribute of
modernity. But to invent is human and even though nothing is ever invented
whole, but partly inherited or learned, the key issue with traditions is present ownership not origins. It has little to do with the past in practical terms.
The influence of custom and tradition on our behavior will not shrink precisely because we will all continue to invent new customs. Sahlins once
joked that when new cxiltural expression emerges in Europe it is a renaissance, but when it happens elsewhere it is the invention of tradition. As
with risk, tradition is everywhere, only it is produced differently. But as with
risk, Giddens suggests that in medieval society they did not need the concept because all they knew was what was tradition and custom.
174
Review Articles
In many traditional societies, but not all, a woman might have ten pregnancies. If she was part of a polygynous household where babies were
breast-fed for several years, and strict taboos about combining sex with
nursing were observed, this would be very unlikely. Having said correctly
that tradition is recent, Giddens nevertheless falls into the trap of seeing the
always pregnant and always barefoot peasant woman as a product of a non
previous society, and not a product of modernity. Female virtue in its Ghristian guilt-ridden format is hardly what all traditions axe about, and much
sexual banter and license was encouraged in many non-westem societies.
Similarly, homosexual activity may be widespread but they all call it by different names. By universalizing his own meaning, that is, by being so
monolingual, Giddens cohfirms that what people dislike about globalization is the inability to hear other voices. Giddens can show that the European traditional family was, in fact, a transitional phase from the 1950s, but
cannot say the same for the Indian or African models. But have we not
already established that tradition is invented? Is the present not always
transitional? Why does Giddens assume now that sex and reproduction
have been divorced, and the final family form has arrived? Coupledom and
Review Articles
175
single person households that appear in Social Trends are surely an economic fact. When and why are residence, family and employment not
linked? Sexual equality and democracy are good, but they too manifest
themselves in many different forms; that is what human life creates. Sexual equality is believed to be new, and incompatible with the 'traditional
family,' by which is meantin Europe, the peasant family. There has
always been a great variety of marriage forms and sexual practices. Gidden's sociological repertoire is just too limited to do justice to the great variety of human inventiveness and this has nothing to do with current global
integration. If, for example, African children lacked rights (in relation to
their parents) this did not apply to all adults. In relation to grandparents or
uncles, they enjoyed many rights and privileges. Furthermore, childhood
need not be a status acquired through agebut a relational one. A ten-yearold boy could be uncle or classificatory father to a twenty year old. Once all
these alternative configurations are, the confident claim that modernity liberates sounds quite arrogant. Even polygamous recognized marriage can
liberate and empower women from frequent pregnancies, domestic, and
other chores, which assume their most exploitative form in the monogamous peasant family. The experience of many children in different parts of
the world similarly suggest that it is not the children growing up in the traditional family who are at risk, but those without families.
As he shows for homosexuality, its growth and acceptance in the West
is due more to the separation of sex from reproduction than from a growth
in liberal tolerance. Despite his awareness that traditions are invented and
re-invented, Giddens relapses into describing a time, in the past, when tradition was the normand "a bit like a state of nature" (p. 60). But it has
always been more complex than that, and even though the Reith lectures
do not allow him to cover everything, I strongly suspect that part of the
problem lies in having limited non-western sources. There are many different democracies of the emotions and globalization as universalization has
been trying to outlaw non-western models. Needless to say many battles
are going to be fought over this one.
Democracy
The battleground of the twenty-first century, Giddens suggests, will pit fundamentalism against cosmopolitan tolerance. But why should the cosmopolitans be the good guys. And in any case, what makes this a peculiarly
twenty-first century scenario? As already mentioned, Ibn Khaldun demonstrated how fundamentalism replacing corrupt city rulers followed regular
cycles for centuries. Fundamentalism does not imply backwardness or even
176
Review Articles
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hardt, M. and A. Negri, Empire. Cambridge, 2000.
Hart, K. "Money in an unequal world." Anthropological Theory 1, no. 3 ( 2001):
307-330.
Moyo, S. Land Reform Under Structured Adjustment in Zimbabwe. Uppsala,
(2001): 140-143.
Nair, K. In Defense of the Irrationcd Peasant. Chicago, 1999.
Robertson, R. "Glocalization," in Global Modernities, ed. M. Featherston et al.
London, 1992.
Stoller, P. "Globalizing Method: The Problems of doing Ethnography in
Tl-ansnational Spaces." Anthropology and Humanism 11, no. 1 (1997): 91.
The Post < www.post.co.zm > Thursday, 19 September 2001.