text-based theories of globalization:
THEORY AND THE RISE OF GLOBALIZATION STUDIES
Globalization is reshaping how we have traditionally gone about studying the social
world and human culture and a fi eld of globalization studies is now emerging across
the disciplines (Appelbaum and Robinson, 2005). These globalization studies arose
around several sets of phenomena that drew researchers’ attention from the 1970s
onwards. One was the emergence of a globalized economy involving new systems
of production, fi nance and consumption and worldwide economic integration. A
second was new transnational or global cultural patterns, practices and fl ows, and
the idea of ‘global culture(s)’. A third was global political processes, the rise of new
transnational institutions, and concomitantly, the spread of global governance and
authority structures of diverse sorts. A fourth was the unprecedented multidirectional movement of peoples around the world involving new patterns of transnational migration, identities and communities. Yet a fi fth was new social hierarchies,
forms of inequality, and relations of domination around the world and in the global
system as a whole.
The scholarly literature on these phenomena has proliferated, as have specifi c
studies of the impacts of globalization on particular countries and regions and on
gender and ethnicity, not to mention much pop treatment of the subject. Recent
research agendas have branched out into an enormous variety of topics, from transnational sexualities, to global tourism, changes in the state, the restructuring of
work, transnational care-giving, globalization and crime, the global media, and so
on. This explosion of research points to the ubiquity of the effects of globalization.
All disciplines and specializations in the academy, it seems, have become implicated
in globalization studies, from ethnic, area and women’s studies, to literature, the
arts, language and cultural studies, the social sciences, history, law, business administration, and even the natural and applied sciences.
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126 william i. robinson
The proliferating literature on globalization refl ects the intellectual enormity of
the task of researching and theorizing the breadth, depth and pace of changes
underway in human society in the early twenty-fi rst century. We fi nd two broad
categories of research: (1) those studying specifi c problems or issues as they relate
to globalization; (2) those studying the concept of globalization itself – theorizing
the very nature of the process. In a time when social relations and institutions are
everywhere subject to rapid and dramatic change, and to the extent that this change
is linked to globalization, theories of globalization are without doubt of major
import to the contemporary world. How do we theorize this phenomenon which
we will call globalization? What types of theories have been developed to explain
twenty-fi rst century social change? Are our existing theories adequate to capture
this change, or do we need new theoretical models?
If it is true that globalization is one of the key concepts of the twenty-fi rst century,
it is also true that it is one of the most hotly debated and contested. There is no
consensus on what has been going on in the world denoted by the term ‘globalization’; competing defi nitions will give us distinct interpretations of social reality.
Hence the very notion of globalization is problematic given the multitude of partial,
divergent and often contradictory claims surrounding the concept. Considering the
political implications of these claims it is clear that, at the least, globalization has
become what we refer to as an essentially contested concept. The contending battleground of such concepts is a leading edge of political confl ict since the meanings
of such concepts are closely related to the problems they seek to discuss and what
kind of social action people will engage in. Knowledge claims are not neutral. They
are grounded in situated social and historical contexts, often in competing social
interests. Nowhere is this clearer than with globalization theories.
We cannot here, given space constraints, take up the political and the normative
dimensions of the globalization debate and the relationship of distinct theoretical
discourses on globalization to these debates. Nonetheless, it would be impossible
to speak of globalization without reference to the highly confl ictive nature of the
process. Diverse actors have associated globalization with expanding worldwide
inequalities, new modes of exploitation and domination, displacement, marginalization, ecological holocaust and anti-globalization. Others have trumpeted the process
as creating newfound prosperity, freedom, emancipation and democracy. These
normative issues, whether or not they are foregrounded, will loom large in any
survey of theories of globalization. How we defi ne the process will very much
depend on what theoretical perspectives we bring to bear on the defi nition. At the
same time, our theories cannot but both shape and refl ect normative and political
signposts.
THE GLOBALIZATION DEBATE AND THEORETICAL DISCOURSES
While there is much disagreement among scholars on the meaning of globalization
and on the theoretical tools that are best to understand it, we can identify a number
of points with which, it is safe to say, most would agree. First, the pace of social
change and transformation worldwide seems to have quickened dramatically in the
latter decades of the twentieth century, with implications for many dimensions of
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social life and human culture. Second, this social change is related to increasing
connectivity among peoples and countries worldwide, an objective dimension,
together with an increased awareness worldwide of these interconnections, a subjective dimension. As well, most would agree that the effects of globalization – of those
economic, social, political, cultural and ideological processes to which the term
would allegedly refer – are ubiquitous, and that different dimensions of globalization (economic, political, cultural, etc.) are interrelated, ergo, that globalization is
multidimensional. At this point agreement ends and debates heat up. How different
theoretical approaches address a set of basic assumptions – what we will call
‘domain questions’ – will tend to reveal the domain of each theory and the boundaries among distinct and often competing theories. Theories consist of particular
ontological assumptions and epistemological principles, both of which are of concern
in examining globalization theories.
Perhaps the most important ‘domain question’, and one that cuts to the underlying ontological issue in globalization studies, is ‘when does globalization begin?’
The rise of globalization studies has served to reassert the centrality of historical
analysis and the ongoing reconfi guration of time and space to any understanding
of human affairs. How we view the temporal dimension will shape – even determine
– what we understand when we speak of globalization. Among globalization theories there are three broad approaches. In the fi rst, it is a process that has been going
on since the dawn of history, hence a 5,000–10,000 year time frame. In the second,
it is a process coterminous with the spread and development of capitalism and
modernity, hence a 500 year frame. In the third, it is a recent phenomenon associated with such processes of post-industrialization, postmodernization or the restructuring of capitalism, hence a 20–30 year frame.
A second ‘domain question’ is that of causal determination(s) in globalization.
Is the core of the process economic, political or cultural? Is there an underlying
material or an ideational determinacy? Are there multiple determinations, and how
would they be ordered? Whether distinct globalization theories choose to give a
causal priority or empirical emphasis to the material or the ideational will depend
on the larger metatheoretical and even philosophical underpinnings of particular
theories, but as well on normative and political considerations.
Other major domain questions are:
• Does globalization refer to a process (as I have been assuming here) or to a
condition? Most theories would see it as a process of transformation, and some
theorists therefore refer to globalization as a process and globality as a
condition.
• How do modernity and postmodernity relate to globalization?
• What is the relationship between globalization and the nation-state? Is the
nation-state being undermined? Has it retained its primacy? Or is it becoming
transformed in new ways? Does globalization involve internationalization, seen
as an increased intensity of exchanges among nation-states, or transnationalization, involving emerging structures, processes and phenomena that transcend the
nation-state system?
• Relatedly, to what extent is the relationship between social structure and territoriality being redefi ned by globalization? Is there a deterritorialization of social
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128 william i. robinson
relations under globalization? What is the relationship between the local and
the global? How are space and time being reconfi gured?
How different theories approach these ‘domain questions’ will reveal something
of the core ontological and epistemological claims of each theory. Recall that there
is not a single ‘theory of globalization’ but many theoretical discourses. These tend
to be grounded in broader theoretical traditions and perspectives, such as Marxism,
Weberianism, functionalism, postmodernism, critical and feminist theory, and
involve a number of distinct approaches to social inquiry, such as cultural studies,
international relations, post-colonial studies, literature and so on. However, most
theories draw on the distinctive contributions and traditions of multiple disciplines.
Indeed, one of the most refreshing hallmarks of globalization studies is its interdisciplinary – nay, transdisciplinary – character; a renewed holistic approach to the
study of social structure and change. The traditional borders between disciplines
have become blurred in both theories and empirical studies on globalization.
Rather than propose a classifi cation of globalization theories I identify here a
variety of theoretical discourses that typically serve as heuristic tools in concrete
globalization studies. The focus is on key theories and theorists that have already –
or are likely to – become markers across social sciences disciplines and humanities
for the fi eld of globalization studies. What follows is not a comprehensive review
of extant theories, which would be impossible here, but a limited selection intended
to provide a view of the range of theoretical discourse on which scholars researching
globalization are likely to draw.
A SAMPLING OF THEORIES OF GLOBALIZATION
World-system theory
Some see the world-system paradigm as a ‘precursor’ to globalization theories, and
indeed, as Arrighi has observed, ‘world-systems analysis as a distinctive sociological
paradigm emerged at least 15 years before the use of globalization as a signifi er that
blazed across the headlines and exploded as a subject of academic research and
publication’ (Arrighi 2005: 33). Yet what is distinctive to world-systems theory is
not that it has been around longer than more recent globalization theories. Rather,
this paradigm – and certainly its principal progenitor, Immanuel Wallerstein – tends
to view globalization not as a recent phenomenon but as virtually synonymous with
the birth and spread of world capitalism, c. 1500.
World-systems theory shares with several other approaches to globalization a
critique of capitalism as an expansionary system that has come to encompass the
entire world over the past 500 years. As elaborated by Wallerstein, it is constituted
on the proposition that the appropriate unit of analysis for macrosocial inquiry in
the modern world is neither class, nor state/society, or country, but the larger historical system, in which these categories are located.
The capitalist world-economy that emerged c. 1500 in Europe and expanded
outward over the next several centuries, absorbing in the process all existing minisystems and world-empires, establishing market and production networks that
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eventually brought all peoples around the world into its logic and into a single
worldwide structure. Hence, by the late nineteenth century there was but one historical system that had come to encompass the entire planet, the capitalist worldsystem, a truly ‘global enterprise’ (1974). It is in this sense that world-system theory
can be seen as a theory of globalization even if its principal adherents reject the
term globalization (see below).
A key structure of the capitalist world-system is the division of the world into
three great regions, or geographically based and hierarchically organized tiers. The
fi rst is the core, or the powerful and developed centres of the system, originally
comprised of Western Europe and later expanded to include North America and
Japan. The second is the periphery, those regions that have been forcibly subordinated to the core through colonialism or other means, and in the formative years
of the capitalist world-system would include Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle
East and Eastern Europe. Third is the semi-periphery, comprised of those states and
regions that were previously in the core and are moving down in this hierarchy, or
those that were previously in the periphery and are moving up. Values fl ow from
the periphery to the semi-periphery, and then to the core, as each region plays a
functionally specifi c role within an international division of labour that reproduces
this basic structure of exploitation and inequality.
Another key feature of this world-system is the centrality and immanence of the
inter-state system and inter-state rivalry to the maintenance and reproduction of the
world-system. The world-system paradigm does not see any transcendence of
the nation-state system or the centrality of nation-states as the principal component
units of a larger global system. Other structural constants in the world-system are
cyclical rhythms of growth and crisis, several secular trends such as outward expansion, increasing industrialization and commodifi cation, struggles among core powers
for hegemony over the whole system, and the oppositional struggles of ‘antisystemic forces’.
Some would consider the world-system approach not a theory of globalization
but an alternative theory of world society. This, however, would depend on how
we defi ne the contested concept of globalization. If a bare-bones defi nition is intensifi ed interconnections and interdependencies on a planetary scale and consciousness
of them, then certainly world-system theory is a cohesive theory of globalization,
organized around a 500 year time scale corresponding to the rise of a capitalist
world-economy in Europe and its spread around the world, and must be included
in any survey of globalization theories.
On the other hand, however, it is not self-identifi ed as a theory of globalization,
is not a theory of the worldwide social changes of the late twentieth and early
twenty-fi rst centuries, and there is no specifi c concept of the global in world-system
literature. Wallerstein has himself been dismissive of the concept of globalization.
‘The processes that are usually meant when we speak of globalization are not in
fact new at all. They have existed for some 500 years’ (2000: 250). Wallerstein has
put forward an explanation of late twentieth/early twenty-fi rst century change from
the logic of world-system theory as a moment of transition in the system. In
an essay titled ‘Globalization or the Age of Transition?’ (2000), he analyzes the
late twentieth and early twenty-fi rst century world conjuncture as a ‘moment of
transformation’ in the world-system, a ‘transition in which the entire capitalist
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world-system will be transformed into something else’ (2000: 250). In this analysis,
the system has entered into a terminal crisis and will give way to some new, as of
yet undetermined historical system by the year 2050. Wallerstein’s thesis on the
terminal crisis of the system can be said to provide an explanation for social change
in the age of globalization consistent with his own world-system theory.
Theories of global capitalism
Another set of theories, what I catalogue here as a global capitalism school, shares
with the world-systems paradigm the critique of capitalism, an emphasis on the
long-term and large-scale nature of the processes that have culminated in globalization, and the centrality of global economic structures. Yet this group of theories
differs from the world-system paradigm in several essential respects. In particular,
these theories tend to see globalization as a novel stage in the evolving system of
world capitalism (hence these theorists tend to speak of capitalist globalization),
one with its own, qualitatively new features that distinguish it from earlier epochs.
They focus on a new global production and fi nancial system that is seen to supersede
earlier national forms of capitalism, and emphasize the rise of processes that cannot
be framed within the nation-state/inter-state system that informs world-system
theory – and indeed, much traditional macrosocial theory.
Sklair (2000, 2002) has put forward a ‘theory of the global system’, at the core
of which are ‘transnational practices’ (TNPs) as operational categories for the
analysis of transnational phenomena. These TNPs originate with non-state actors
and cross-state borders. The model involves TNPs at three levels: the economic,
whose agent is transnational capital; the political, whose agent is a transnational
capitalist class (TCC); and the cultural-ideological, whose agent is cultural elites.
Each practice, in turn, is primarily identifi ed with a major institution. The transnational corporation is the most important institution for economic TNPs; the TCC
for political TNPs; and the culture-ideology of consumerism for transnational cultural-ideological processes. Locating these practices in the fi eld of a transnational
global system, Sklair thus sets about to explain the dynamics of capitalist globalization from outside the logic of the nation-state system and critiques the ‘state-centrism’ of much extant theorizing. His theory involves the idea of the TCC as a new
class that brings together several social groups who see their own interests in an
expanding global capitalist system: the executives of transnational corporations;
‘globalizing bureaucrats, politicians, and professionals’, and ‘consumerist elites’ in
the media and the commercial sector (Sklair 2000).
Robinson (2003, 2004) has advanced a related theory of global capitalism involving three planks: transnational production, transnational capitalists and a transnational state. An ‘epochal shift’ has taken place with the transition from a world
economy to a global economy. In earlier epochs, each country developed a national
economy that was linked to others through trade and fi nances in an integrated
international market. The new transnational stage of world capitalism involves the
globalization of the production process itself, which breaks down and functionally
integrates what were previously national circuits into new global circuits of production and accumulation. Transnational class formation takes place around these
globalized circuits. Like Sklair, Robinson analyzes the rise of a TCC as the class
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group that manages these globalized circuits. Transnationally oriented fractions
achieved hegemony over local and national fractions of capital in the 1980s and
1990s in most countries of the world, capturing a majority of national state apparatuses, and advancing their project of capitalist globalization. Globalization creates
new forms of transnational class relations across borders and new forms of class
cleavages globally and within countries, regions, cities and local communities, in
ways quite distinct from the old national class structures and international class
confl icts and alliances.
However, in distinction to Sklair, for whom state structures play no role in the
global system, Robinson theorizes an emergent transnational state (TNS) apparatus.
A number of globalization theories see the rise of such supranational political and
planning agencies as the Trilateral Commission, the World Economic Forum, the
Group of Seven and the World Trade Organization, as signs of an incipient transnational or global governance structure (see, inter alia, Held et al. 1999). Robinson,
however, wants to get beyond what he sees as a national-global duality in these
approaches. This TNS is a loose network comprised of supranational political and
economic institutions together with national state apparatuses that have been penetrated and transformed by transnational forces. National states as components of
a larger TNS structure now tend to serve the interests of global over national accumulation processes. The supranational organizations are staffed by transnational
functionaries who fi nd their counterparts in transnational functionaries who staff
transformed national states. These ‘transnational state cadres’ act as midwives of
capitalist globalization. The nature of state practices in the emergent global system
‘resides in the exercise of transnational economic and political authority through
the TNS apparatus to reproduce the class relations embedded in the global valorization and accumulation of capital’.
Hardt and Negri’s twin studies, Empire (2000) and Multitude (2004), have been
referred to by some as a postmodern theory of globalization that combines Marx
with Foucault. They take the global capitalism thesis a step further, proposing an
empire of global capitalism that is fundamentally different from the imperialism of
European domination and capitalist expansion of previous eras. This is a normalized
and decentred empire – a new universal order that accepts no boundaries and limits,
not only in the geographic, economic and political sense, but in terms of its penetration into the most remote recesses of social and cultural life, and indeed, even into
the psyche and biology of the individual. While for Sklair and Robinson the TCC
is the key agent of capitalist globalization, for Hardt and Negri there is no such
identifi able agent. In more Foucaultian fashion, an amorphous empire seems to be
a ubiquitous but faceless power structure that is everywhere yet centred nowhere
in particular and squares off against ‘the multitude’, or collective agencies from
below.
Other variants of the global capitalism thesis have been taken up by McMichael
(2000), Ross and Trachte (1990), and Went (2002), among others. There is as well
a considerable amount of theoretical work on globalization among international
relations (IR) scholars, a subdiscipline that has come under special challenge by
globalization given that it is centrally concerned – by defi nition – with the state
system and the interstate system. Here there is a tension between those theories that
retain a national/international approach and view the system of nation-states as an
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immutable structural feature of the larger world or inter-state system, and those
that take transnational or global approaches that focus on how the system of nationstates and national economies are becoming transcended by transnational social
forces and institutions grounded in a global system rather than the interstate system.
Notable here is the ‘neo-Gramscian school’ in IR, so-called because these scholars
have applied the ideas of Antonio Gramsci to attempt to explain changes in world
power structures and processes from a global capitalism perspective. Scholars from
the neo-Gramscian school have been closely identifi ed with the works of Cox (see,
esp., 1987), and have explored the rise of new global social forces and sets of transnational class relations, and internationalization of the state, and transnational
hegemony and counter-hegemony in global society.
THE NETWORK SOCIETY
Manuel Castells’ groundbreaking trilogy, The Rise of the Network Society (1996,
1997, 1998), exemplifi es a ‘technologistic’ approach to globalization. While his
theory shares with world-system and global capitalism approaches an analysis of
the capitalist system and its dynamics, it is not the logic of capitalist development
but that of technological change that is seen to exercise underlying causal determination in the myriad of processes referred to as globalization. Castells’ approach
has been closely associated with the notion of globalization as representing a new
‘age of information’. In his construct, two analytically separate processes came
together in the latter decades of the twentieth century to result in the rise of the
network society. One was the development of new information technology (IT), in
particular, computers and the Internet, representing a new technological paradigm
and leading to a new ‘mode of development’ that Castells terms ‘informationalism’.
The other was capitalist retooling using the power of this technology and ushering
in a new system of ‘information capitalism’, what Castells and others have alternatively referred to as the ‘new economy’.
This new economy is: (1) informational, knowledge-based; (2) global, in that
production is organized on a global scale; and (3) networked, in that productivity
is generated through global networks of interaction. Castells’ defi nition of the global
economy is an ‘economy with the capacity to work as a unit in real time, or to
choose time, on a planetary scale’, and involving global fi nancial markets, the globalization of trade, the spread of international production networks, and the selective globalization of science and technology. A key institution of this new economy
is the ‘networked enterprise’, which Castells sees as the vanguard of a more general
form of social organization, the network society itself. This involves a new organizational logic based on the network structure in interaction with the new technological paradigm. The network form of social organization is manifested in different
forms in various cultural and institutional contexts.
Here Castells, along with global capitalism approaches, that of Harvey (see
below), Lash and Urry (1987), Cox (1987), and others, draw on a number of strands
of late twentieth-century political economy scholarship, especially that of postFordism and fl exible accumulation, involving a breakdown of the old rigid, vertical
corporate structures and the rise of new horizontal and fl exible structures. In
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Castells’ view, ‘the networked enterprise makes material the culture of the informational, global economy: it transforms signals into commodities by processing
knowledge’ (1996: 188). Castells goes on to argue that the image of giant transnational corporations (TNCs) as centralized structures driving the global economy is
‘outdated’ and ‘should be replaced by the emergence of international networks of
fi rms and of subunits of fi rms, as the basic organizational form of the informal,
global economy’ (1996: 206–7).
Castells sees a close linkage between culture and productive forces in this informational mode of development due to the centrality of the symbolic order, of sign
production, and of consumption to IT. Indeed, Castells’ approach can be seen as
much a cultural as an economic theory of globalization. Human society has moved
from a verbal order in pre-literate societies to an alphabetic order and later an
audiovisual system of symbols and perceptions. In the globalized age this gives way
to the integration of various modes of communication into an interactive network
involving the formation of hypertext and a meta-language integrating into a single
system the written, oral and audiovisual (or text, image and sound) modalities of
human communication. This interaction takes place along multiple points in a
global network, fundamentally changing the character of communications. In turn,
‘communication decisively shapes culture because we do not see . . . reality as it “is”
but as our languages are’. He adds, ‘we are not living in a global village, but in
customized cottages, globally produced and locally distributed’ (1996: 370).
The Internet, in this regard, constructs a new symbolic environment, global in
its reach, which makes ‘virtuality a reality’. One of Castells’ core concepts that
captures this image is the space of fl ows and timeless time. As a space of fl ows
substitutes for the space of places, time becomes erased in the new communications
systems, ‘when past present and future can be programmed to interact with each
other in the same message’. The space of fl ows and timeless time become ‘the material foundations of a new culture’ (1996: 406).
While the normative structure of world-system and global capitalism approaches
is decidedly critical of what those theories conceive of as globalization, Castells is
more upbeat on the possibilities opened up by the global network society. Nonetheless, a central theme is the division of the world into those areas and segments of
population switched on to the new technological system and those switched off or
marginalized, giving rise to the oft-cited digital divide.
THEORIES OF SPACE, PLACE AND GLOBALIZATION
This notion of ongoing and novel reconfi gurations of time and social space is central
to a number of globalization theories. It in turn points to the larger theoretical issue
of the relationship of social structure to space, the notion of space as the material
basis for social practices, and the changing relationship under globalization between
territoriality/geography, institutions, and social structures. For Anthony Giddens,
the conceptual essence of globalization is ‘time-space distanciation’. Echoing a
common denominator in much, if not all, globalization theories, Giddens defi nes
time-space distanciation as ‘the intensifi cation of worldwide social relations which
link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events
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134 william i. robinson
occurring many miles away and vice versa’ – social relations are ‘lifted out’ from
local contexts of interaction and restructured across time and space (1990: 64).
In a distinct variant of this spatio-temporal motif, David Harvey, in his nowclassic 1990 study The Condition of Postmodernity, argues that globalization represents a new burst of ‘time-space compression’ produced by the very dynamics of
capitalist development. While Harvey’s concept is similar to that of Giddens, the
former’s involves a normative critique of the global capitalist order and its restructuring whereas the latter would seem to be almost celebratory. What Harvey means
by time-space compression is the process whereby time is reorganized in such a way
as to reduce the constraints of space, and vice-versa.
Here Harvey is close to the global capitalism thesis (although he does not refer
specifi cally to a new epoch in the history of world capitalism), and as well to worldsystem theory, in that a key causal determinant in the new burst of time-space
compression that started in the late twentieth century was the cyclical crises of
capitalism. In particular, the world economic crisis that began in the early 1970s
led to the breakdown of the old Fordist-Keynesian model and the development of
fl exible accumulation models. Drawing on Marx’s analysis of accumulation crises,
Harvey shows how each major crisis in the historical development of capitalism has
been resolved, in part, with new forms of social organization of capitalism made
possible by new technologies and predicated on successive waves of time-space
compression. And Harvey also makes reference to Marx’s characterization of capitalist expansion as the ‘annihilation of time through space’.
The matter of a transformation in the spatial dynamics of accumulation and in
the institutional arrangements through which it takes place is taken up by Saskia
Sassen, whose works have generated new imageries of a restructuring of space and
place under globalization. Sassen’s modern classic The Global City (1991) has had
an exceptionally broad impact across the disciplines and left an indelible mark on
the emergent fi eld of globalization studies. Sassen’s study is grounded in a larger
body of literature on ‘world cities’ that view world-class cities as sites of major
production, fi nances or coordinating of the world economy within an international
division of labour, and more recent research on ‘globalizing cities’ (see, e.g., Marcuse
and van Kempen 2000).
Sassen proposes that a new spatial order is emerging under globalization
based on a network of global cities and led by New York, London and Tokyo.
These global cities are sites of specialized services for transnationally mobile
capital that is so central to the global economy. This global economy has involved
the global decentralization of production simultaneous to the centralization of
command and control of the global production system within global cities. Here
Sassen draws on the basic insight from the sociology of organization that any
increase in the complexity of social activity must involve a concomitant increase in
the mechanisms of coordination. Global cities linked to one another become
‘command posts’ of an increasingly complex and globally fragmented production
system. It is in these cities that the myriad of inputs, services and amenities are to
be found that make possible centralized coordination. In Sassen’s words, ‘the combination of spatial dispersal and global integration has created a new strategic role
for major cities’ (1991: 3).
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Sassen identifi es four key functions of the global city: (1) they are highly concentrated command posts in the organization of the world economy; (2) they are key
locations for fi nances and for specialized service fi rms providing ‘producer services’,
which are professional and corporate services inputs for the leading global fi rms
such as fi nances, insurance, real estate, accounting, advertising, engineering and
architectural design; (3) they are sites for the production and innovation of these
producer services and also headquarters for producer-service fi rms; (4) they are
markets for the products and innovations produced and in these cities. Sassen documents how New York, London and Tokyo as the quintessential global cities have
restructured from manufacturing centres to producer service centres, and how producer service activities become ‘networked’ across global cities.
The social order of the global city shatters the illusions of the affl uent service
economy proposed by such commentators as Bell (1976) and Toffl er (1980). Producer service jobs are global economy jobs, yet they involve a new class and spatial
polarization, involving new high-income sectors involved in professional work such
as investment management, research and development, administration and personnel, and so on, and enjoying affl uent lifestyles made possible by the global economy.
On the other side are low income groups providing low-skilled services such as
clerical, janitorial, security and personal services. These low-income groups are
largely constituted by transnational migrants drawn from Third World zones. In
these global cities we see a concentration of new gendered and racialized transnational labour pools increasingly facing the casualization and informalization
of work.
What this all represents is ‘a redeployment of growth poles’ in the global economy.
Global cities are new surplus extracting mechanisms vis-à-vis transnational hinterlands. ‘The spatial and social reorganization of production associated with dispersion makes possible access to peripheralized labor markets, whether abroad or at
home, without undermining that peripheral condition’ (Sassen 1991: 31). This new
transnational structure creates new forms of articulation between different geographic regions and transforms their roles in the global economy. It involves as well
a global hierarchy of cities. The stock markets of New York, London and Tokyo,
for example, are linked to those of a large number of countries, among them Hong
Kong, Mexico City, Sao Paolo and Johannesburg.
Global cities draw our attention to another leading motif in globalization theory,
how to conceive of the local and the global. Roland Robertson’s concept of glocalization suggests that the global is only manifest in the local. By glocalization,
Robertson means that ideas about home, locality and community have been extensively spread around the world in recent years, so that the local has been globalized,
and the stress upon the signifi cance of the local or the communal can be viewed as
one ingredient of the overall globalization process (Robertson 1995). For Appadurai,
locality is less a physical than ‘a phenomenological property of social life’ (1990: 182)
and involves in the age of globalization new translocalities, by which he means local
communities located in particular nation-states but culturally and phenomenologically existing beyond the local and national context (such as tourist localities). For
others, the local-global link means identifying how global processes have penetrated
and restructured localities in new ways, organically linking local realities to global
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136 william i. robinson
processes. Burawoy and his students have called for a global ethnography. Their
diverse locally situated studies show how ‘ethnography’s concern with concrete, lived
experience can sharpen the abstractions of globalization theories into more precise
and meaningful conceptual tools’ (Burawoy et al. 2000: xiv).
THEORIES OF TRANSNATIONALITY AND TRANSNATIONALISM
Although limited in the questions it can answer, the study of global cities gives us
a glimpse of how transnationalized populations reorganize their spatial relations on
a global scale, a topic taken up as well, and with quite a different perspective, by
theories of transnationality and transnationalism. The former refers to the rise of
new communities and the formation of new social identities and relations that
cannot be defi ned through the traditional reference point of nation-states. The latter,
closely associated, denotes a range of social, cultural and political practices and
states brought about by the sheer increase in social connectivity across borders.
Transnationalism is referred to more generally in the globalization literature as an
umbrella concept encompassing a wide variety of transformative processes, practices
and developments that take place simultaneously at a local and global level. Transnational processes and practices are defi ned broadly as the multiple ties and interactions – economic, political, social and cultural – that link people, communities
and institutions across the borders of nation-states.
Within the fi eld of immigration studies, transnationalism came to refer to the
activities of immigrants to forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link
their societies of origin and settlement as a single unifi ed fi eld of social action (Basch
et al. 1994: 7). Innovations in transportation and communications have made possible a density and intensity of links not previously possible between the country of
origin and of settlement. This, in turn, has allowed for these communities to live
simultaneously in two or more worlds or to create and live in ‘transnational spaces’
to a degree not previously known. Recognizing this new reality, the scholarly literature undertook a paradigm shift from international migration to transnational
migration, and began to refer to these communities as transnational communities.
Such communities come in different varieties, including those formed by new immigrant groups migrating to First World countries, as well as those older diasporic
populations whose status and attitude is continuously infl uenced by the accelerating
pace of economic, cultural and institutional globalization.
Scholars such as Levitt (2001), Smith and Guarnizo (1998), and Portes and his
colleagues (1999) point to the novel character of transnational links in the era of
globalization. Transnational ties among recent immigrants are more intense than
those of their historical counterparts due to the speed and relatively inexpensive
character of travel and communications and that the impact of these ties is increased
by the global and national context in which they occur (Levitt 2001, Portes 1995;
Portes et al. 1999). Transnational migration theorists have in this regard questioned
seemingly dichotomous and mutually exclusive categories, such as external vs internal, national vs international, sending vs receiving countries, sojourner vs settler,
citizen vs non-citizen, and to look for continuities and overlaps between and among
them. Scholars working within the framework of transnationalism generally see
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 theories of globalization 137
transnational links, activities and spaces as both an effect of globalization and as
a force that helps to shape, strengthen and fuel it. The immigrants and nonimmigrants who create these links and spaces are seen not only as objects upon
which globalization acts but also as subjects who help to shape its course. Another
set of questions these theories take up is the extent to which, and in what ways,
transnational practices increase the autonomy and power of the migrants and nonmigrants engaged in them; to what extent transnational ties or spaces are liberating
or to what extent they reinforce or challenge existing power structures.
The concepts of transnationality and transnationalism have increasingly been
given a broader interpretation beyond immigration studies. In acknowledgment of
the broad and expanding range of experiences that are truly transnational, scholars
have argued that the transnational experience should be conceived as involving
several layers and that transnationality should be understood as a form of experience that cannot be restricted to immigrant groups (Roudometof 2005).
The experience involves, for instance, the transnational mobility of more affl uent
sectors, such as professional and managerial groups. Transnationality must be seen
as constructed through class and racial boundaries and as a gendered process. Transnational social spaces can extend into other spaces, including spaces of transnational sexuality, musical and youth subcultures, journalism, as well as a multitude
of other identities, ranging from those based on gender to those based on race,
religion or ethnicity. They also involve communities constructed by members of
professional and non-governmental associations (Kennedy and Roudometof 2002).
Members of cultural communities who live in different countries but remain connected to each other through their cultural taste or pastimes may also construct
transnational communities. Transnational social spaces, hence, are constructed
through the accelerated pace of transnational practices of actors worldwide. These
practices become routine to social life and may involve transient as well as more
structured and permanent interactions and practices that connect people and institutions from different countries across the globe.
Transnationalism/ality has also been central to theories of ethnic group formation
and racialization in global society. These theories have focused on transnational
immigrant labour pools and new axes of inequality based on citizenship and noncitizenship (see, e.g., Espiritu 2003). A popular motif in post-colonial theory is a
view of globalization as a new phase in post-colonial relations (Wai 2002). Similarly,
studies of transnationalism have emphasized the gendered nature of transnational
communities, changing gender patterns in transnational migration, and the impact
of globalization and transnationalism on the family. There has been an explosion
of research and theoretical refl ection on women, gender and globalization. Predicated on the recognition that the varied processes associated with globalization are
highly gendered and affect women and men differently, research has taken up such
themes as young women workers in export-processing enclaves, the feminization of
poverty, and the rise of transnational feminisms.
Notable here is Parreñas’s (2001) theory of the ‘international division of reproductive labor’. Women from poor countries are relocating across nation-states
in response to the high demand for low-wage domestic work in richer nations. A
global South to global North fl ow of domestic workers has emerged, producing a
global economy of care-giving work and a ‘new world domestic order’ in which
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138 william i. robinson
reproductive activities themselves become transnationalized within extended and
transnationally organized households, in broader transnational labour markets, and
in the global economy itself.
MODERNITY, POSTMODERNITY AND GLOBALIZATION
Another set of theoretical approaches to globalization refers to the process in terms
of modernities and postmodernities. Some theories concluded we are living now in
a postmodern world while others argue that globalization has simply radicalized or
culminated the project of modernity. Robertson, Giddens, and Meyer and his colleagues take this latter view. For Robertson, an early pioneer in globalization theory,
the process represents the universalization of modernity. In his 1992 study, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture, Robertson provided perhaps the most
widely accepted defi nition of globalization among scholars: ‘Globalization as a
concept refers both to the compression of the world and the intensifi cation of consciousness of the world as a whole . . . both concrete global interdependence and
consciousness of the global whole in the twentieth century’ (Robertson 1992: 8). In
what appears as a clear application of the Parsonian social system to the globe as
a whole, the ‘global fi eld’ is constituted by cultural, social and phenomenological
linkages between the individual, each national society, the international system of
societies and humankind in general, in such a way that the institutions of modernity
become universal. But Robertson’s particular theory is also centrally concerned with
the subjective, cultural and phenomenological dimensions of globalization, to which
I will return below.
For Giddens, who advances a similar construct, this universalization of modernity
is central to the very concept of globalization. This process involves the universalization of the nation-state as the political form, the universalization of the capitalist
system of commodity production, a Foucaultian surveillance by the modern state,
and the centralization of control of the means of violence within an industrialized
military order. Here Giddens views globalization, defi ned earlier as ‘time-space distanciation’, as the outcome of the completion of modernization – he terms it ‘late
modernity’ – on the basis of the nation-state as the universal political form organized along the four axes of capitalism, industrialism, surveillance and military
power. Hence the title of his noted 1990 publication, [globalization constitutes] The
Consequences of Modernity.
Meyer and his colleagues put forward an institutional and network analysis to
globalization that can be viewed as a cultural as well as an institutional theory of
globalization, and they have alternatively referred to their approach in terms of
‘world polity’ and of ‘world society’, as distinct from global society (for a synthesis,
see Lechner and Boli 2005). Globalization is seen as the spread and ultimate universalization of sets of modern values, practices and institutions through ‘isomorphic’ processes that operate on a global scale. The growth of supranational
institutional networks and of universal modern norms of organization bring about
what they refer to as ‘world society’ (Boli and Thomas, 1999; Meyer et al. 1997).
Educational institutions are singled out as central to the isomorphic transmission
of culture and values that become global in scope.
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 theories of globalization 139
For Albrow, in contrast, the transition from modern to postmodern society is the
defi ning feature of globalization. A new ‘global age’ has come to supersede the age
of modernity (Albrow 1997). Albrow argues that globalization signals the end of
the ‘modern age’ and the dawn of a new historic epoch, the ‘global age’. In Albrow’s
Weberian construct, the quintessence of the modern age was the nation-state, which
was the primary source of authority, the centralized means of violence, and of
identity among individuals, and hence the locus of social action. However, the contradictions of the modern age has resulted in the decentring of the nation-state, so
that under globalization both individuals and institutional actors such as corporations relate directly to the globe, rendering the nation-state largely redundant. As
the nation-state is replaced by the globe, the logic of the modern age becomes
replaced by a new logic in which the globe becomes the primary source of identity
and arena for social action.
Much of the literature on modernity, postmodernity and globalization exhibits
certain continuity with an earlier generation of modernization theories associated
with development sociology, so that globalization is insinuated to be a continuation
at the global level of the processes of modernization that were formally studied and
theorized at the nation-state level. Indeed, from this genealogical perspective, we
could say that if mainstream modernization theory has metamorphized into theories
of global modernity and postmodernity, early radical theories of development have
metamorphized into theories of the world-system, global capitalism, time-space
compression, global cities, and so on. Nonetheless, another striking feature of the
set of theories associating globalization with modernity and postmodernity is
the continued centrality accorded to the nation-state and the inter-state system, in
contrast to propositions on the transcendence of the nation-state that constitute a
core motif of competing theories.
THEORIES OF GLOBAL CULTURE
Finally, a number of theories are centrally, if not primarily, concerned with the
subjective dimension of globalization and tend to emphasize globalizing cultural
forms and fl ows, belief systems and ideologies over the economic and/or the
political. Such approaches distinctively problematize the existence of a ‘global
culture’ and ‘making the world a single place’ – whether as a reality, a possibility
or a fantasy. They emphasize the rapid growth of the mass media and resultant
global cultural fl ows and images in recent decades, evoking the image famously
put forth by Marshall McLuhan of ‘the global village’. Cultural theories of globalization have focused on such phenomena as globalization and religion, nations and
ethnicity, global consumerism, global communications and the globalization of
tourism.
For Robertson (1992), the rise of global or planetary consciousness, meaning
that individual phenomenologies will take as their reference point the entire world
rather than local or national communities, is part of a very conceptual defi nition of
globalization. Such a global consciousness means that the domain of refl exivity
becomes the world as a whole. Hence ‘the world has moved from being merely
“in itself” to being “for itself” ’ (1992: 55). In Robertson’s account, the gradual
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140 william i. robinson
emergence of a global consciousness, an awareness of the world as a single place,
signals a Durkheimian collective conscience that becomes now a global
consciousness.
Cultural theories of globalization tend to line up along one of three positions
(Tomlinson 1999; Nederveen Pieterse 2004). Homogenization theories see a global
cultural convergence and would tend to highlight the rise of world beat, world cuisines, world tourism, uniform consumption patterns and cosmopolitanism. Heterogeneity approaches see continued cultural difference and highlight local cultural
autonomy, cultural resistance to homogenization, cultural clashes and polarization,
and distinct subjective experiences of globalization. Here we could also highlight
the insights of post-colonial theories. Hybridization stresses new and constantly
evolving cultural forms and identities produced by manifold transnational processes
and the fusion of distinct cultural processes. These three theses certainly capture
different dimensions of cultural globalization but there are very distinct ways of
interpreting the process even within each thesis.
Ritzer (1993, 2002) coined the now popularized term ‘McDonaldization’ to
describe the sociocultural processes by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant came to dominate more and more sectors of US and later world society. Ritzer,
in this particular homogenization approach, suggests that Weber’s process of rationalization became epitomized in the late twentieth century in the organization of
McDonald’s restaurants along seemingly effi cient, predictable and standardized lines
– an instrumental rationality (the most effi cient means to a given end) – yet results
in an ever deeper substantive irrationality, such as alienation, waste, low nutritional
value and the risk of health problems, and so forth. This commodifi cation and
rationalization of social organization spreads throughout the gamut of social
and cultural processes, giving us ‘McJobs’, ‘McInformation’, ‘McUniversities’,
‘McCitizens’ and so forth (Ritzer 2002; Gottdiener 2000). As McDonaldization
spreads throughout the institutions of global society cultural diversity is undermined
as uniform standards eclipse human creativity and dehumanize social relations.
Ritzer’s McDonaldization thesis is part of a broader motif in critical approaches
to the cultural homogenization thesis that emphasize ‘coca-colonization’, hyperconsumerism and a world of increasingly Westernized cultural uniformity (indeed,
‘McWorld’). Ritzer has himself more recently extended the McDonaldization thesis
with the notion of the ‘globalization of nothing’ (2004), by which he means culturally meaningful institutions, sites and practices locally controlled and rich in indigenous content – ‘something’ – are being replaced by (corporate driven) uniform
social forms devoid of distinctive substance – ‘nothing’.
Another recurrent theme among cultural theories of globalization is universalism
and particularism. While some approaches see particularisms as being wiped out
others see cultural resistance, fundamentalism and so on, a rejection of uniformity
or universalism. A key problematic in these theories becomes identity representation
in the new global age.
Appadurai’s thesis on the ‘global cultural economy’ refers to what he sees as the
‘central problem of today’s global interactions’, the tension between cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization (1990: 296). To illustrate this tension he
identifi es ‘global cultural fl ows’ that ‘move in isomorphic paths’. These fl ows generate distinct images – sets of symbols, meanings, representations and values – that
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 theories of globalization 141
he refers to as ‘scapes’, or globalized mental pictures of the social world, perceived
from the fl ows of cultural objects. These ‘scapes’ illustrate for Appadurai what he
refers to as a disjunctive order, or a disjuncture between economy, culture and politics in the globalization age. Ethnoscapes and produced by the fl ows of people
(immigrants, tourists, refugees, guest workers, etc.). Technoscapes are produced
from the fl ows of technologies, machinery and plant fl ows produced by TNCs and
government agencies. Financescapes are produced by the rapid fl ows of capital,
money in currency markets and stock exchanges. Mediascapes are produced by the
fl ow of information and are repertoires of images, fl ows produced and distributed
by newspapers, magazines, television and fi lm. Finally, ideoscapes involve the distribution of political ideas and values linked to fl ows of images associated with state
or counter-state movements, ideologies of freedom, welfare, right, and so on. These
different fl ows, in Appadurai’s view, create genuinely transnational cultural spaces
and practices not linked to any national society and may be novel or syncretic; hence
a disjuncture between culture and the economy and culture and politics.
A CONCLUDING COMMENT
As noted earlier, there are many theories I am unable to include in the preceding
survey, intended only as a sample of the range of theoretical discourse on which
scholars researching globalization may draw. These and other theories have informed
empirical research into global processes, helped recast varied current social science
agendas in light of globalization, and provided paradigmatic points of reference for
studying social change in the twenty-fi rst century.
If we contemplate more broadly the monumental changes sweeping the planet in
the new century we can truly appreciate the real and potential contribution of globalization theory. Clearly, future theoretical work into globalization would do well
to theorize more systematically changes in the nature of social action and power
relations in the globalization age, and how globalization may extend the ‘limits of
the possible’. Such urgent problems – indeed crises – as global terrorism, militarism,
authoritarianism, ecological degradation and escalating social polarization make
imperative the theoretical enterprise that has been the object of this chapter.
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank Christopher J. Kollmeyer and George Ritzer for their critical comments
on an earlier draft of this chapter.
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