Globalization's Contradictions: Geographies Of Discipline, Destruction .

PrefaceThis collection has been long in coming, evolving from an initial project in 1999supported by Indiana University’s Center on Global Change and MultidisciplinaryVentures Fund to its present form as a collection of originally commissionedarticles on the varying dimensions of globalization’s reach. Two successive meetings in 1999 – the first a mini-conference, the second a follow-up author’s meetingand discussion of common issues – brought colleagues and experts together in thesummer and autumn of 1999 to share their views on globalization and neoliberalism’s disturbingly disastrous effects on Latin American, Caribbean and Africansocieties. Over the next two years, other scholars were invited to participate in aproject that had broadened its agenda to provide a fuller and more comprehensiveaccount of globalization’s transformative power. Mindful that the literature onglobalization was growing rapidly, we challenged our contributors to be criticaland insightful, even provocative if necessary, so that the readers would be similarlychallenged to take a much more careful look at the forces that were swirling aroundthem, bringing tremendous changes to their lives and the lives of others.In 2004, two panels were organized and held at the 100th Annual Meeting ofthe Association of American Geographers in Philadelphia by one of the editors,Dennis Conway, and one of our contributors, Christian Allen, to appraise the widergeography community of our project and its breadth of coverage of globalization’smany dimensions. A year later, the collection has finally come to fruition, and weare as excited about the collection’s messages now as we were when we embarkedupon it over five years ago. We have endeavored to keep current with the rapidlychanging global situation, but as with all contemporary accounts, we are sure therewill be unpredictable turns of events, surprises, and unforeseen changes. Becauseglobalization is such a fickle entity, and the complex of forces we are examiningare anything but steady or conformable, we know new, current events will changethe stories, and qualify our conclusions. We insist that there are essential geographies of globalization and geographies in globalization’s dynamic processes,which give a fuller account of “the beast,” albeit a spatially uneven explanation andexposition. That said, we remain convinced that globalization and neoliberalism,and their impacts and influences, are contradictory, unruly, unprecedented andelusive to grasp in their entirety. But, that is the challenge we took on, and that is theexcitement we have experienced while putting together this collection, sharing

xivPrefaceideas, synthesizing points of view and better informing each other. We trust readerswill be similarly enthused and stimulated to search for clearer answers to thetroubling questions of today’s disorderly world, and how we might fashion – ormove towards – a more socially just and equitable world that will sustain andenrich the lives of future generations – including our children’s and grandchildren’s globalized world.Dennis Conway and Nik Heynen

Part IGlobalization andneoliberalismDominating disciplines

1Globalization’s dimensionsDennis Conway and Nik HeynenIntroductionSince the “long sixteenth century,” the growth of European mercantilism and theonset of industrial capitalism in Britain, Europe and the Western world (Wallerstein1976, 1980, 1989), the uneven development and evolution of our world system isreplete with episodes of global strategies, global penetrations of local, national andregional systems, and globalizing forces and movements (Amin 1997). Though notwithout its “nay-Sayers,” who question its contemporary identity (for example,Hirst and Thompson 1999; Sen 2002), today’s era of globalization has beencharacterized as a “new, informational global economy and new culture” (Castells1998) and the product of a new “knowledge-based economy” (Thurow 2000). Tomany, including the authors of this collection, today’s globalization era appearsto be globally more comprehensive and interdependent, and fundamental in itsrestructuring of national economies and societies (Held et al. 1999; Henderson1999).Globalization in the first decade of the 21st millennium is, therefore, in Dicken’s(2004: 6, 8) words, “a syndrome of material processes and outcomes . . . that aremanifested very unevenly, in both time and space.” Providing more specificity tothis redefinition of global-to-local interactions and circulatory influences, Held(1995) centers the spatiality of the contemporary global system on social meaningsof place and space and the time–space nexus of social relations and transactions.Accordingly, he characterizes globalization as:the stretching and deepening of social relations and institutions across spaceand time, such that, on the one hand, day-to-day activities are increasinglyinfluenced by events happening on the other side of the globe and, on the otherhand, the practices and decisions of local groups can have significant globalreverberations.(Held 1995: 20)There appears to be considerable agreement that today’s globalization refers tothe processes and consequences of two interrelated phenomena that have helpedbring about the “time–space compression of global interactions” (Harvey 1989a),whereby global production, communication, travel, and exchange processes are

4Dennis Conway and Nik Heynenincreasing in rapidity, transferability and spatial scope. The first is technologicalchanges in processing and disseminating information related to finance, production, logistical systems of transportation, information services and consumption.The second is the international spread of technical competence and educationaladvancement worldwide (Ferleger and Mandle 2000). What Thurow (2000) seesas a post-1980s “knowledge-based economy” depends upon this global technicaland linguistic reach, however unevenly diffused and culturally contested itmight be.On the one hand, there is an apparent global acceptance of English as the language of science, technology, international business, information dissemination,record-keeping, financial accounting and media coverage, among others. But, asCassen (2005: 14) points out, “Anglophone domination is a fashion, not anecessity,” and furthermore, that English is a central cultural icon of the neoliberalglobalization system, as central and advantageous to US imperial power as theUS dollar is to the international monetary system. Cassen (2005), importantly,reminds us that Chinese, Romance-language speakers, and Arabic speakers, aswell as English-speakers, all equally qualify to occupy a central role in the globallinguistic universe. Indeed, other global languages are finding their niches in therapidly growing spread of internet communication systems, and competing withthis Western, modernizing, educational icon (Guillén 2001). For example, fewerthan 50 percent of world users of the internet know English as their first languageand the proportion is dropping as the new medium diffuses into Asia (China,especially) and Latin America. Even in English-speaking cultural realms, Romancelanguages such as Spanish challenge English in parts of North America, and inAsia, Mandarin Chinese is an emerging important second language in Korea.Rather than a monolingual global world, we should expect considerable variety inshared languages of groups, communities and population strata, with English,Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, French and Kiswahili emerging as internationally shared languages (Cassen 2005; Guillén 2001). Perhaps, we might morerealistically hypothesize that globalization will foster multilingual knowledge- andinformation-sharing, rather than perpetuate the imperialistic monolingual dominance of “English-as-the-global-language” (Mazlish 1993).Distinguishing this contemporary era of globalization from its imperial, mercantile and early capitalist forerunners is its “hyperactivity,” the “hyper-mobility” ofpeople, capital, information, ideas, and its greater degree of interconnectedness,complexity and volatility (Giddens 2003; Thrift 1989; Dicken 2003). Thrift (2002)offers us a challenging set of new global spaces, or “cartographies of global capitalism,” that demonstrate the comprehensive restructuring of our global world, anddepict a new world order undergoing rapid and unpredictable change. In his depiction of globalization’s “new clothes,” Thrift was at pains to demonstrate the partiality in any explanation of globalization which privileges one determining factor,or feature, or attempts to explain globalization’s emergence as a consequence ofone major transformation. Rather, conflicting views are interrogated, and three“cartographies of global capitalism” were found to have substance and significance: Jameson’s (1991) post-structuralist position, Castells’ (1989) technological

Globalization’s dimensions 5answer, and Harvey’s (1989) geographical point; each being representative, yetpartial “maps” of the current global system’s transformative nature. In addition toadding more complexity to the dimensions of globalization of Thrift’s “hyperactive world,” we add our own “cartography of global capitalism” to those ofCastells (1989) and Harvey (1989), and so characterize globalization’s inherentcontradictory character as “unruly, volatile and unpredictable” (see Table 1.1).Declaring the need to better understand our “runaway world,” in 1999 Giddenshad this to say about its complexity and its transformative dynamic:This is not – at least at the moment – a global order driven by collective humanwill. Instead, it is emerging in an anarchic, haphazard, fashion, carried alongby a mixture of economic, technological and cultural imperatives. It is notsettled or secure, but fraught with anxieties, as well as scarred by deepdivisions. Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have no control.Can we re-impose our will upon them? I believe we can. The powerlessnesswe experience is not a sign of personal failings, but reflects the incapacities ofour institutions. We need to reconstruct those we have, or create new ones, inTable 1.1 A hyperactive, runaway world: a new form of global capitalism? Globalization of spheres of production, commerce and logistical systemsGlobalization of financial systems: “soft-capitalism,” “fictitious capital”Globalization of corporate power – mega-mergers, oligopolies: “predatory capitalism”Globalization of communication and information technology: “digital divide”Globalization of employment, work and migrationGlobalization of human effects on biosphere/environmental degradationGlobalization of supranational, geopolitical conflict over regulatory and legal authority“Globalization from below”: global, national and local resistance and human rightsmovements Globalization of consumption, “homogenization” of international culture, culturalchallenges Globalization of militarization, conflict and “fear”: post-Cold War continuity,post-9/11 tensions Globalization of underground economy: narcotrade, money-laundering, humantrafficking. The accelerated internationalization of economic processesA frenetic international financial system – “insider” controlled and managedThe use of new information technologies – urban-based, urbanization-drivenIncreasing involvement (interpretation) of culture as a factor in and of production hybridization.Three “cartographies” of global capitalism Capitalism’s “hyper-mobility”: new kinds of (economic) mobile space of flows(Castells 1989) Capitalism’s “time–space compression”: annihilation of space and time (Harvey 1989) Capitalism’s contradictions: its unruliness, volatility and unpredictable global-to-localeffects (Conway and Heynen 2006)

6Dennis Conway and Nik Heynenways appropriate to the global age. We should and we can look to achievegreater control over our runaway world. We shan’t be able to do so if we shirkthe challenges, or pretend that all can go on as before. For globalization is notincidental to our lives today. It is a shift in our very life circumstances. It is theway we now live.(Giddens 2003)Globalization’s contradictory complexity and consequencesThe main debates over globalization’s existence, definitional characterization,historical prominence, and societal contribution(s), not to mention its processes ofincorporation and the resultant complex and contradictory outcomes, need to bebriefly introduced here because they provide a theoretical backdrop to what willfollow in the main body of the collection.Reviewing the authoritative range of assessments of globalization’s particularcharacteristics that have blossomed in an outpouring of academic and populistinterest, Held et al. (1999) distinguish three schools of thought, each with distinctlydifferent assessments of globalization’s virtues, strengths and weaknesses.Hyperglobalizers such as Ohmae (1995) argue that a new era has dawned inwhich global forces supercede nation-states, and a much more efficient “borderless” global economy emerges through the establishment of transnational networksof production, finance and commerce in which corporate capital thrives, achievesefficiencies and encourages accumulation and “progress.” Another, Greider(1997), warns that contemporary globalization represents an unwelcome triumphof supranational global capital, and this argumentative group of hyperglobalizers,regardless of their relatively extreme right-wing or left-wing ideological persuasions, all tend to agree that globalization is a process driven and dominated bymacroeconomic forces.Skeptics such as Hirst and Thompson (1996), on the other hand, oppose thehyperglobalist view and argue that today’s era does not represent a new characterization of global capitalism, but a “myth.” All the claims for a more globallyinterconnected world are refuted, or disputed, and skeptics especially point to geographical differences of experience and the continuation of deeply embeddedsocial and economic inequalities, as their proof that the world hasn’t fundamentally changed under globalization’s umbrella.Transformationalists, one of whom is Giddens (1990, 1996), are convinced thatglobalization is an unprecedented major force causing the rapid social, economicand political restructuring of our “runaway world.” For Rosenau (1997) also, thedomestic–foreign frontier is an expanding set of intertwined spaces of interchangeand exchange, such that globalization is not only not diminishing the authorityof national governments, but is in fact helping to reconstitute and restructurenational/civil power and influence, as adaptations to the growing complexity ofsupranational governance, regulation and global consensus-building in an everincreasingly, interconnected world. Convinced that globalization needs situatingin its sociohistorical context and explained in terms of its contingent structural

Globalization’s dimensions 7processes, “transformationists” argue that explanations of contemporary globalization’s open-ended trajectory need to deal with a complex and dynamic set ofchanging interrelationships between causal factors – economic, technological,political and sociocultural. Commentators of this persuasion are neither soextremely positive about globalization’s effects, nor are they as extremely criticalof globalization’s oppressive, structural dominance as are the left-wing advocatesof the “hyperglobalizers.” Rather, “transformationalists” are optimists, but pragmatic in their assessments, that the global processes which have been charted by thecurrent groups of influential actors can be re-charted, refocused and restructuredby influential stakeholders, if the political and economic will is present.Although Dicken (2004) complained that geographers have not been fullyengaged in the earlier debates on globalization’s influences, we beg to differ.We feel we can add a fifth school of thought – global geographies – in whichpolitical- and economic-geographers have engaged globalization as a scalesensitive process of geographical processes and patterns, and have theorized ontheir geographical consequences as well as their time–space interconnections(Peck 2002; Swyngedouw 1997). Not only have geographers paid close attentionto the many varied scalar connections which occur when global processes cascadefrom the global to the local, but there is a growing recognition of the significance ofglobal geographical differences in outcomes and consequences. Johnston et al.(2002: 3) put it succinctly when they note there is “geography and globalization,”“geography in globalization,” “geography of globalization,” and “geography forand against globalization.”Globalization’s impacts are unevenly distributed geographically. Neoliberalism’s messages and capitalist models vary geographically, so that decidedlydifferent versions of advanced capitalist governmental regimes emerge; contrastUS and Canadian versions for their different treatments of public social welfareprovision, or contrast the US and German economic democratic regimes with thesocial democratic regimes of Scandinavia. Then there are contrasts betweenJapanese, Korean and Malaysian capitalist regimes and between this group’spractices of public–private partnerships with China’s and India’s as they all pursuetheir own paths of export-oriented economic growth and expansion. In LatinAmerica, Cuban, Venezuelan and Brazilian models of capitalist enterprise andsocial democratic priorities are similar in some general respects, yet different inmany ways. The “globalization story” for other global regions could be expandedto further exemplify geographical/territorial difference, but let these aforementioned examples suffice to demonstrate the point that geopolitical, global–cultural processes and their unruly antitheses concentrate and disperse acrossdifferent “spaces” and “localities.” And, different experiences and practices are therule not the exception.Global technological diffusion is uneven, geographically concentrated, and assuch it geographically divides the world into “haves” and “have-nots,” “insiders”and “outsiders” – with digital divides, technological advantages and innovationsprivileging and depriving simultaneously. Destructive, disciplinary and transformative geographies cause spatial and societal vulnerabilities, as much as they

8Dennis Conway and Nik Heynencontribute to the centralization and concentration of wealth and power in thehands of an elite minority and the increasing global social divide of “winners”and “losers” in the neoliberal capitalist model of unbridled free marketeering andprivatization. Globalization’s contradictory impacts are felt at many geographicalscales, in widely varying geographical locations, regions and communities, and inevolving global, national, regional and local social systems of information,knowledge and communication exchange.Amin (2002) and Dicken (2004) add to the theoretical depth of these geographicalconceptualizations of globalization, by stressing the importance of actor networksin the global-to-local hierarchies of interconnected influences and outcomes,thereby providing a balance to the more familiar spatial emphases on scalar andterritorial relationships and connections. Amin (2002), Amin and Graham (1997),Sassen (2002) and Taylor (2004) also make the important point that globalizationnetworks have provided a new dynamic to city growth and global city interactions.Indeed, the growing importance of global cities – and globalizing cities – as the“new” and “renewed” sites for globalization’s geographical expressions means ourcollection visits and revisits this transformative urban dimension as much as itvisits and revisits nation-state and regional geographies.That said, we prefer to examine “geographies of globalization and their contradictory tendencies” because this keeps us firmly focused on the real world ofpeoples’ experiences and the divisions and divisiveness that is globalization’slegacy. At the same time, such a “geographical optic” enables us to assess thepower and influences of structural forces and the accompanying agency interactions, which make many of globalization’s consequences and neoliberalism’seffects so disquieting as well as unpredictable, volatile and dehumanizing. Viewedfrom a behavioral perspective which privileges agency and peoples’ actions,global structural forces and the structural imper

9 Globalization has a home address: the geopolitics of globalization 127 JOHN AGNEW Cultural globalization 10 The globalization of culture: geography and the industrial production of culture 144 DON MITCHELL AND CLAYTON ROSATI The globalization of fear 11 The globalization of fear: fear as a technology of governance 161 BYRON MILLER PART III