Capital, Crisis and Chaos: Indonesia and Malaysia in a Globalizing Era

Abstract

The phenomenon generally labeled ‘globalization’ has dominated discussions increasingly in academic journals, policy forums and the popular media, particularly over the last decade. Some of the proponents of the process insist that globalization is about the remaking of a new world, envisioned as a borderless world created with the help of new communications technology, in which all peoples will have unobstructed access to resources in a global marketplace (Ohmae 1990). Detractors warn that unless we question the process by which this borderless world is constructed, we risk socioeconomic disjunction, as the rich grow richer while new groups of the poor are left to languish in what may become uninhabitable areas of the globe (Bauman 1998).