Globalization

Abstract

“Globalization”, as Featherstone and Lash (in Rosenberg, 2000, p. 2) note, became “the central thematic for social theory” some time following the collapse of “really existing socialism”. The literature around globalization went wild, and globalization was increasingly paired with just about every imaginable issue. Zygmunt Bauman (1999a, p. 1) captures the ubiquity of “globalization”, and, at the same time, doubts about its deployment: “‘Globalization’ is on everybody’s lips; a fad word fast turning into a shibboleth, a magic incantation, a pass-key meant to unlock the gates to all present and future mysteries. For some, ‘globalization’ is what we are bound to do if we wish to be happy; for others ‘globalization’ is the cause of our unhappiness”. The scepticism in Bauman’s voice, here, is on point: we should wonder about the newness of such globalization; we should ponder the explanatory adequacy implied by the myriad pairings made with globalization; and we should want to think about the political-ideological meaning of this sudden, startling flowering of globalization-talk across and beyond the spheres of academia, business, and government. Further, in contrast to the early sense of globalization’s unstoppability and inevitability, haven’t we seen, in the wake of the global financial crisis beginning 2008, much discussion (for instance, United Nations (2009)) directing us in precisely the opposite direction, as if the nation, the state, protectionism, planning, and the like are not, after all, “zombie categories” (Beck, 2007)?