George ritzer globalization the essentials pdf

Globalization

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Globalization a basic text GeorGe ritzer and Paul dean second edition

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ritzer, George. Globalization: a basic text / George Ritzer and Paul Dean. – Second edition. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-118-68712-3 (pbk.) 1. Globalization. I. Title. JZ1318.R577 2015 303.48′2–dc23 2014029766

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to bodhi axel Ritzer, With Much love and Great Hope for a better World in Your Future

(GR)

to tia Shields Dean, My Wonderful and Caring Wife who has Helped to Make this book and so Much More Possible

(PD)

Contents

About the Website xi List of Figures xii Preface xiii

1 GLOBALIZATION I 1 Liquids, Flows, and structures

some of the Basics 2 From solids to Liquids (to Gases) 3 Flows 6 Heavy, Light, Weightless 8 Heavy structures that expedite Flows 11 Heavy structures As Barriers to Flows 15 subtler structural Barriers 18 on the Increasing Ubiquity of Global Flows and structures 20 thinking about Global Flows and structures 21 Chapter summary 22

2 GLOBALIZATION II 27 some Basic Issues, Debates, and Controversies

Is there such a thing As Globalization? 28 Is It Globalization or transnationalization? 30 If there Is such a thing As Globalization, When Did It Begin? 31 Globalization or Globalizations? 38 What Drives Globalization? 41 Does Globalization Hop Rather than Flow? 42 If there Is such a thing As Globalization, Is It Inexorable? 43 Does Globaphilia or Globaphobia Have the Upper Hand? 45 What, If Anything, Can Be Done about Globalization? 50 Chapter summary 51

3 GLOBALIZATION AND RELATED PROCESSES 55 Imperialism, Colonialism, Development, Westernization, easternization, and Americanization

Imperialism 56 Colonialism 59 Development 61 Westernization 63 easternization 64 Americanization 67 Comparisons with Globalization 75 the era of the “Posts” 77 Chapter summary 78

Contentsviii

4 NEOLIBERALISM 83 Roots, Principles, Criticisms, and neo-Marxian Alternatives

the Past, Present, and Future of neoliberalism 84 neoliberalism: An exemplary statement and the Basic Principles 89 Popular neoliberal “theory”: the Case of thomas Friedman 92 Critiquing neoliberalism 94 neoliberalism as exception 96 neoliberalism: the Case of Israel 98 The End of History 99 the Death of neoliberalism? 101 neo-Marxian theoretical Alternatives to neoliberalism 101 Chapter summary 107

5 GLOBAL POLITICAL STRUCTURES AND PROCESSES 111 on Political Processes and Flows 112 the nation-state 113 In Defense of the nation-state 117 “Imagined Community” 118 Changes in Global nation-state Relations 120 other Global Political Developments and structures 122 Regional Political organizations 126 Global Governance 127 Civil society 131 Chapter summary 138

6 STRUCTURING THE GLOBAL ECONOMY 141 Before Bretton Woods 142 Bretton Woods and the Bretton Woods system 144 the end of Bretton Woods 153 Changes in, and Critiques of, Bretton-Woods-era organizations 154 organization for economic Cooperation and Development (oeCD) 158 european Union (Common Market) 159 north American Free trade Agreement (nAFtA) 161 MeRCosUR 163 oPeC 164 the Multinational Corporation (MnC) 164 World economic Forum 167 the Myth of economic Globalization? 168 Chapter summary 168

7 GLOBAL ECONOMIC FLOWS 173 Production and Consumption

trade 174 Increasing Competition for Commodities 182 the economic Impact of the Flow of oil 183 Race to the Bottom and Upgrading 186 outsourcing 187 Financial Globalization 189

Contents ix

Corporations, People, and Ideas 193 Consumption 195 Chapter summary 201

8 GLOBAL CULTURE AND CULTURAL FLOWS 205 Cultural Differentialism 207 Cultural Hybridization 215 Cultural Convergence 219 Chapter summary 233

9 HIGH-TECH GLOBAL FLOWS AND STRUCTURES 237 technology, Mass Media, and the Internet

technology, time-space Compression, and Distanciation 238 Mass Media 244 the Internet and social Media 251 Chapter summary 260

10 GLOBAL FLOWS OF PEOPLE 263 Migration, Human trafficking, and tourism

Migrants 264 Migration 265 Human trafficking 286 tourism 289 Chapter summary 291

11 GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL FLOWS 295 Modernization and environmental Flows 297 Differences among nation-states 299 Global Climate Change 299 other environmental Problems 304 Global Responses 312 From Lightness to Heaviness in environmental Flows 322 Collapse 322 Chapter summary 323

12 NEGATIVE GLOBAL FLOWS AND PROCESSES 327 Dangerous Imports, Diseases, Crime, terrorism, War

Dangerous Imports 329 Borderless Diseases 331 Crime 336 terrorism 340 War 346 the Impact of negative Global Flows on Individuals 353 Chapter summary 354

13 GLOBAL INEQUALITIES I 357 Class and Rural–Urban Inequalities

Class Inequality 359

Contentsx

Rural–Urban Inequality 369 Chapter summary 381

14 GLOBAL INEQUALITIES II 385 Inequalities of Race, ethnicity, Gender, and sexuality

Defining Majority–Minority Relations 386 Race and ethnicity 392 Gender 404 sexuality 411 Responding to and Resisting Global Minority status:

the Case of Women 413 Chapter summary 415

15 DEALING WITH, RESISTING, AND THE FUTURES OF, GLOBALIZATION 419

Dealing with Globalization 420 Alter-Globalizations 430 the Futures of Globalization 440 Chapter summary 443

Appendix 447 Disciplinary Approaches to Globalization

Anthropology 448 sociology 448 Political science 449 economics 450 Geography 451 Psychology 452 Literary Criticism (Postcolonial) 453 other Fields 455

Glossary 457 References 467 Index 517

About the Website

The Globalization: A Basic Text, Second Edition, companion website includes a number of resources created by the author that you will find helpful.

www.wiley.com/go/ritzer/globalization

For students

• Student Study Guide • Chapter Summaries • Additional Readings • Website Links • Discussion Questions • Additional Questions

For instructors

• Teaching Notes • Discussion Question Answer Frames • Additional Question Answer Frames • PowerPoint Teaching Slides

Figures

1.1 transportation routes 12 1.2 Airline passenger volume 13 2.1 Mobile-cellular subscriptions 35 3.1 global english 65 4.1 the top 50 billionaires 103 5.1 World areas of recurrent conflict 130 7.1 trade flow 175 8.1 the domains of the major religions 212 9.1 spread of computer virus 253 10.1 the world divided: core and periphery in the early

twenty-first century 267 11.1 coastline at 10 meters 302 11.2 global water risk 308 12.1 Malaria 332 13.1 World metro population 373 13.2 cities powering globalization 376 14.1 serbia and its neighbors 397 14.2 World maternal mortality 406 14.3 Legality of homosexual acts 412 14.4 enfranchisement of women 414

PREFACE

As we revise this preface in July, 2014, we are struck by how much the events of the day both reflect, and are profoundly changing, the process of globalization. For example, we write this only hours before watching Lionel Messi and Argentina take on the Netherlands in the World Cup – the most famous global sporting event. Football (or soccer, as it is known in the United States) is the most played and most watched sport around the world. Football fandom also reflects a global culture and, with FIFA as its gov- erning body, it has a global organizational structure.

It has been particularly fascinating to watch global events unfold as we were writing the second edition of this book. For instance, the first edition was published in the midst of the Great Recession. The ways in which economic processes (e.g. mortgage failures, credit freezes, the failure of legendary financial firms and banks), largely originating in the US, flowed around the world in relatively short order was breathtaking. As the crisis deepened and widened, political unrest grew, and the future of the global economy was uncertain. As of this writing, the global economy has stabilized but it has not yet rebounded to its pre- recessionary levels for many Americans and for many others in most parts of the world. A great number of scholars and activists argued that it was neoliberal policy (see Chapter 4) that led to the Great Recession, and as the economic turmoil wore on, some predicted its demise. Now, having emerged from the Great Recession, it is clear that neoliberalism remains a strong force in both global politics and the global economy.

Numerous recent events have also profoundly changed the process of globalization. For example, global climate change is dramatically affecting economic processes and flows of people. Tens of thousands of people are losing their homes to rising sea levels, and are being displaced to other countries, and creating new conflicts. Environmental problems flow seamlessly across national borders and many of these problems, such as global warming and deforestation, have come to affect the entire planet. Many previous skeptics are finally acknowledging human-caused global warming, even though governments around the world continue dragging their feet on combatting the problem (current scientific evidence is even more definitive than it was when the first edition was published).

Another area that is experiencing rapid developments, and is dramatically shaping glo- balization, is the various global high-tech flows (see Chapter 9). This encompasses much more than the explosive growth of social networking sites (e.g. Facebook) and other social media (e.g. Twitter), but the ways in which technological flows are monitored, governed, and used to promote other types of change. Through the efforts of Edward Snowden and Wikileaks, we now know more about how governments and corporations are spying on their citizens and customers. Our understanding of this surveillance has also facilitated changes in how the Internet is governed, marking a shift from a US-dominated framework to a more global (and potentially fragmented) governance system. Such high-tech flows have also been used by activists promoting political change, as was seen in the so-called “Twitter Revolution” in much of the Arab world.

Prefacexiv

The changes noted above illustrate some ways in which this second edition has been revised, and suggest that such topics will continue to be further revisited as other global processes become more apparent. Nonetheless, the basic foci, perspectives, concepts, and theories offered here apply to whatever changes are occurring in, and are in store for, glo- balization. Change is nothing new to globalization, indeed it could be argued that change, including cataclysmic events and changes (the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1919, the Great Depression, WW II), is an integral part of it. More recently, we have seen a variety of economic crises in, for example, Asia, Russia, and Argentina, that are also part of the pro- cess of globalization. Any useful perspective on globalization must be able to help us better understand such occurrences.

Writing a general overview of globalization has been, to put it mildly, a daunting task. It is almost literally about everything – every place, every thing, everybody, and virtually every field of study. It also requires a sense of a wide expanse of history and of what it is about the present “global age” that differentiates it from epochs that came before it. We have been involved in textbooks before, including one that covers all of classical and contempo- rary sociological theory, but none has been more challenging than this one. Beyond the sheer magnitude of what needs to be covered, there is the fact that globalization, at least in its present form, is quite new, with the term itself entering the lexicon only three decades ago. As a relatively new phenomenon, it is constantly changing, as are conceptions of it. With few precedents to rely on, we have had to “invent” an approach to globalization (based on major theoretical sources), as well as create a structure for the book that encompasses most of the major topics and issues in globalization today. This is difficult enough, but it is made far more difficult by the fact that global changes (e.g. the price of that all-important commodity, oil; the landscape of global protests and conflict) occur constantly.

This is related to the issue of sources for this book, which include popular books (e.g. those of Thomas Friedman, although we are highly critical of his work), newspapers, maga- zines, and websites. These are atypical sources for a textbook designed to offer an overview of what we know about a field from a scholarly point of view. However, globalization occurs in the real world and continues apace in that world. Such occurrences either do not find their way into academic works or do not do so for years after they have happened. Thus, in order to be up to date – and it is important that a text on globalization be current – this book relies, in part, on a variety of popular sources. Popular sources also serve the function of providing down-to-earth, real-world examples and case studies of globalization. They serve to make globalization less abstract.

However, because it is an academic text, this book relies far more on scholarly work, especially journal articles and academic monographs of various types. It is heavily refer- enced and the many entries in the References section at the end of the book (as well as sug- gested readings at the end of each chapter) provide students with an important resource should they wish to learn more about the many topics covered in this book.

Another challenge has been to bring together these popular and academic sources in a coherent overview of globalization and what we know about it. A related challenge is the need to write a book that is not only accessible, useful, and of interest to undergraduates (the main audience for this book), but also of use to beginning graduate students and even scholars looking for a book that gives them an overview of the field, its major topics, and key works in the area. We have tried to deal with a good portion of the increasingly voluminous scholarly work on globalization, but in a student-friendly way. We have also sought to use many exam- ples to make the discussion both more interesting and more relevant to the student reader.

Preface xv

We have sought to put together a coherent overview of globalization based on a theoretical orientation (increasing liquidity as the core of today’s global world) and a conceptual appa- ratus (“flows,” “barriers,” etc.) developed in the first chapter. The rest of the book looks at globalization through the lens of that perspective and those concepts. Great emphasis has been placed throughout on key concepts and “thick” descriptions of important aspects of globalization. We have tried not to get bogged down in the text itself with data and statistics on globalization (which are highly fluid and often open to question), but we have included a number of maps designed to summarize, in a highly visual way, important aspects of the data related to globalization.

The focus here, as suggested above, is on the flows among and between areas of the world (as well as barriers to them). That means that the focus is not on the areas themselves – the global North and South, the nation-states of the world, regions, etc. – but rather that which flows among and between them. Nevertheless, all of those areas come up often in these pages, if for no other reason than that they are often the beginning or end-point of various flows. We have tried to cover many areas of the world and nation-states in these pages, but the US looms large in this discussion for several reasons. First, it is the world leader in being both the source of many global flows and the recipient these days of many more, and much heavier, flows (of goods from China, etc.). Second, we are led by both its historical domi- nance and contemporary importance to a focus on the role of the US in globalization (although recent significant declines lead to the notion that we are now entering the “post- American” age). Third, the predispositions, and the resources at the disposal, of two American authors lead to a focus on the US, albeit one that is at many points highly critical of it and its role in globalization. Although there is a great deal of attention on the US, the reader’s focus should be on the flows and barriers which are found throughout the world and are of general importance globally.

Theory plays a prominent role in this analysis, not only in the framework developed in Chapter 1 and used throughout the book, but also in a number of specific chapters. These include theories of imperialism, colonialism, development, Americanization (and anti- Americanism) in Chapter 3, neoliberalism in Chapter 4, theories of cultural differentialism, convergence, and hybridization in Chapter 8, and global inequality in Chapters 13 and 14. We have worked hard to make these theories accessible and to relate them to more down- to-earth examples.

While this is a textbook on globalization, there are some key themes that run through the book. One relates, as mentioned above, to the increasing fluidity of the contemporary global age and how much more fluid it is than previous epochs. Related to this is the similarly metaphorical idea that virtually everything in the contemporary world (things, people, ideas, etc.) is “lighter” than it has ever been. In the past, all of those things were quite “heavy” and difficult to move, especially globally, but that is increasingly less the case. Because things are lighter, more fluid, they can move about the globe more easily and much more quickly. However, it is also the case that many past structural barriers remain in place and many others are being created all the time to stem various global flows (e.g. the wall between Israel and the West Bank and the more recently constructed border fence between Greece and Turkey). Thus, one of the perspectives we would like the reader to come away with after reading this book is of the ongoing relationship between flows and barriers in the global world.

Another key theme is that globalization does not equal economic globalization. All too often there is a tendency to reduce globalization to economic globalization. While economic

Prefacexvi

globalization is important, perhaps even the most important aspect of globalization, there is much more to the latter than its economic aspects. While we devote two chapters (6 and 7) to economic globalization, attention is devoted to many other aspects of globalization (e.g. political, cultural, technological, demographic, environmental, criminal, inequalities, and so on) throughout the book. In their totality, these other topics receive far more attention than economics (although, to be fair, all of the other topics have economic aspects, causes, and consequences).

One of the reasons that the multidimensionality of globalization is accorded so much emphasis here is frustration over the near-exclusive focus on economic globalization by both scholars and laypeople. Another is our concern when we hear people say that globali- zation is not good for “us” and we need to stop, or at least contain, it. We always ask them which globalization they want to stop or contain. Do they want to limit or stop the flow of inexpensive imports from China and on offer at Wal-Mart? Of life-saving pharmaceuticals? Of illegal drugs? Of participation in, or the televising of, the Olympics? Of global prohibi- tions against the use of landmines? Of oil and water? Of online social networking? Of terrorists? Of tourism? Of pollutants? The point is that one might be opposed to some of these (and other) forms of globalization, but no one is, or could be, opposed to all the myriad forms of globalization.

A number of important concepts are introduced throughout this book. Definitions of those concepts in bold typeface are found not only in the text, but also in the glossary at the end of the book, as well as often more briefly in boxes in the margins of the text.

There are a number of people to thank for their help in the years of work involved in writing this book. First, we would like to thank a number of graduate assistants including Nathan Jurgenson, Jillet Sam, and Michelle Smirnova, who assisted on the first edition of the book. Michelle was especially helpful in the early stages of the writing of this book, while Nathan and Jillet were of great help in the later stages in assisting the first author in getting the manuscript to the publisher. Nathan ably handled the inclusion of the many maps and Jillet was invaluable in hunting down missing sources and information. We would also like to thank the graduate students in various seminars on globalization, especially those in the fall 2008 seminar who read a draft of the first edition and offered numerous ideas on improving it. Then there are the three anonymous reviewers who offered very use- ful comments on revising this book for its second edition. The people associated with Wiley-Blackwell, including Louise Spencely, developmental editor Claire Cameron, and especially Ben Thatcher, have been extraordinarily helpful. Ben assisted us throughout the entire revision for the second edition, including in the arduous process of securing copy- rights. Finally, we would like to thank our long-time editor at Wiley-Blackwell, Justin Vaughan, who has been deeply involved in this project, as well as many others already pub- lished or in the works. We owe him much gratitude, including for taking the first author “punting” in Oxford – a truly global and unforgettable experience.

Globalization: A Basic Text, Second Edition. George Ritzer and Paul Dean. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Chapter

GLOBaLIZatION I LIQUIDS, FLOWS, aND StrUCtUreS

1

Some of the Basics From Solids to Liquids (to Gases)

■ Solids ■ Liquids and gases

Flows ■ types of flows

Heavy, Light, Weightless Heavy Structures That Expedite Flows Heavy Structures as Barriers to Flows Subtler Structural Barriers On the Increasing Ubiquity of Global Flows and Structures Thinking About Global Flows and Structures Chapter Summary

Global Liquids, Flows, and Structures2

Globalization 1 is increasingly omnipresent. We are living in a – or even the – “global

age” (Albrow 1996). Globalization is clearly a very important change; it can even be argued (Bauman 2003) that it is the most important change in human history.2 This

is reflected in many domains, but particularly in social relationships and social structures,3 especially those that are widely dispersed geographically. “In the era of globalization. . . shared humanity face[s] the most fateful of the many fateful steps” it has made in its long history (Bauman 2003: 156, italics added).

The following is the definition of globalization4 to be used in this book (note that all of the italicized terms will be discussed in this chapter):

globalization is a transplanetary process or set of processes involving increasing liquidity and the growing multidirectional flows of people, objects, places and information as well as the structures they encounter and create that are barriers to, or expedite, those flows . . .5

In contrast to many other definitions of globalization, this one does not assume that greater integration is an inevitable component of globalization. That is, globalization can bring with it greater integration (especially when things flow easily), but it can also serve to reduce the level of integration (when structures are erected that successfully block flows).

SOMe OF the BaSICS

In spite of the focus in this book on globalization, there are many scholars who do not accept the idea that we live in a global age (see Chapter 2). Nevertheless, this book embraces, and operates from, a “globalist” perspective (Hirst and Thompson 1999) – globalization is a reality. In fact, globalization is of such great importance that the era in which we live should be labeled the “global age.”

Debates about globalization are one of the reasons that there is undoubtedly no topic today more difficult to get one’s head around, let alone to master, than globalization. However, of far greater importance are the sheer magnitude, diversity, and complexity of the process of globalization which involves almost everyone, everything, and every place and each in innumerable ways. (The concept of globality refers to the condition [in this case omnipresence] resulting from the process of globalization [Scholte 2004].)

For example, this book is being written by two Americans; our editor and copy-editor are in England; the development editor was in Canada; reviewers are from four continents; the book is printed in Singapore and distributed by the publisher throughout much of the world; and you might be reading it today on a plane en route from Vladivostok to Shanghai. Further, if it follows the pattern of many of our other books, it may well be translated into Russian, Chinese, and many other languages. This book is also available for Amazon’s wire- less portable reading device, Kindle. This would make the book highly liquid since it would be possible for it to be downloaded anywhere in the world at any time.

Before proceeding to the next section, a note is needed on the use of metaphors (Brown 1989), which will occupy a prominent place in the ensuing discussion. A metaphor involves the use of one term to better help us understand another term. Thus in the next section, we will use the metaphor of a “solid” to describe epochs before the era of globalization.6 Similarly, the global world will be described as being “liquid.” The use of such metaphors is designed to give the reader a better and a more vivid sense of the global age and how it differs from prior epochs.

Globalization: transplanetary

process(es) involving

increasing liquidity and

growing multidirectional flows as well as

the structures they encounter

and create.

Globality: Omnipresence of the process of globalization.

Metaphors: Use of one

term to help us better

understand another.

Global Liquids, Flows, and Structures 3

FrOM SOLIDS tO LIQUIDS (tO GaSeS)

SOLIDS

Prior to the current epoch of globalization (and as we will see, to most observers there was a previous global epoch [see Chapter 2], if not many previous epochs, of globalization), it could be argued that one of the things that characterized people, things, information, places, and much else was their greater solidity. That is, all of them tended to be hard or to harden (metaphorically, figuratively, not literally, of course) over time and therefore, among other things, to remain largely in place. As a result, people either did not go anywhere or they did not venture very far from where they were born and raised; their social relationships were restricted to those who were nearby. Much the same could be said of most objects (tools, food, and so on) which tended to be used where they were produced. The solidity of most material manifestations of information – stone tablets, newspapers, magazines, books, and so on – also made them at least somewhat difficult to move very far. Furthermore, since people didn’t move very far, neither did information. Places were not only quite solid and immoveable, but they tended to confront solid natural (mountains, rivers, oceans) and humanly constructed (walls, gates) barriers that made it difficult for people and things to exit or to enter.

Above all, solidity describes a world in which barriers exist and are erected to prevent the free movement of all sorts of things. It was the nation-state that was most likely to create these “solid” barriers (for example, walls [e.g. the Great Wall of China; the wall between Israel and the West Bank], border gates, and guards), and the state itself grew increasingly solid as it resisted change. For much of the twentieth century this was epitomized by the Soviet Union and its satellite states which sought to erect any number of barriers in order to keep all sorts of things out and in (especially a disaffected population). With the passage of time, the Soviet Union grew increasingly sclerotic. The best example of this solidity was the erection (beginning in 1961), and maintenance, of the Berlin Wall in order to keep East Berliners in and Western influences out. There was a more fluid relationship between East and West Berlin prior to the erection of the wall, but that fluidity was seen in the East as being disadvantageous, even dangerous. Once the Wall was erected, relations between West and East Berlin were virtually frozen in place – they solidified – and there was compara- tively little movement of anything between them.

The Wall, to say nothing of East Germany and the Soviet Union, are long gone and with them many of the most extreme forms of solidity brought into existence by the Cold War. Nonetheless, solid structures remain – e.g. the nation-state and its border and customs controls – and there are ever-present calls for the creation of new, and new types, of solid structures. Thus, in many parts of Europe there are demands for more barriers to author- ized and unauthorized immigration. This has reached an extreme in the US with concern over undocumented Mexican (and other Latin American) immigrants leading to the erec- tion of an enormous fence between the two countries. Thus, solidity is far from dead in the contemporary world. It is very often the case that demands for new forms of solidity are the result of increased fluidity. However, a strong case can, and will, be made that it is fluidity that is more characteristic of today’s world, especially in terms of globalization.

Of course, people were never so solid that they were totally immobile or stuck completely in a given place (a few people were able to escape East Berlin in spite of the Wall and many

Solidity: people, things, information, and places “harden” over time and therefore have limited mobility.

Global Liquids, Flows, and Structures4

would still be able to enter the US without documentation even if a fence on the Mexican border were to be completed), and this was especially true of the elite members of any society. Elites were (and are) better able to move about and that ability increased with advances in transportation technology. Commodities, especially those created for elites, also could almost always be moved and they, too, grew more moveable as technologies advanced. Information (because it was not solid, although it could be solidified in the form of, for example, a book) could always travel more easily than goods or people (it could be spread by word of mouth over great distances even if the originator of the information could not move very far; it moved even faster as more advanced communication technologies emerged [telegraph, telephone, the Internet]). And as other technologies developed (ships, automo- biles, airplanes), people, especially those with the resources, were better able to leave places and get to others. They could even literally move places (or at least parts of them) as, for example, when in the early 1800s Lord Elgin dismantled parts of the Parthenon in Greece and transported them to London, where to this day they can be found in the British Museum.7

LIQUIDS aND GaSeS

However, at an increasing rate over the last few centuries, and especially in the last several decades, that which once seemed so solid has tended to “melt” and become increasingly liquid. Instead of thinking of people, objects, information, and places as being like solid blocks of ice, they need to be seen as tending, in recent years, to melt and as becoming increasingly liquid. It is, needless to say, far more difficult to move blocks of ice than the water that is produced when those blocks melt. Of course, to extend the metaphor, blocks of ice, even glaciers, continue to exist (although, even these are now literally melting), in the contemporary world that have not melted, at least completely. Solid material realities (people, cargo, newspapers) continue to exist, but because of a wide range of technological developments (in transportation, communication, the Internet, and so on) they can move across the globe far more readily.

Everywhere we turn, more things, including ourselves, are becoming increasingly lique- fied. Furthermore, as the process continues, those liquids, as is the case in the natural world (e.g. ice to water to water vapor), tend to turn into gases of various types. Gases are lighter than liquids and therefore they move even more easily than liquids. This is most easily seen literally in the case of the global flow of natural gas through lengthy pipelines. More meta- phorically, much of the information now available virtually instantly around the world wafts through the air in the form of signals beamed off satellites. Such signals become news bulletins on our television screens, messages from our global positioning systems letting us know the best route to our destination, or conversations on our smart phones.

It should be noted, once again, that all of the terms used above – solids, liquids, gases – are metaphors – little of the global world is literally a solid, a liquid, or a gas. They are meta- phors designed to communicate a sense of fundamental changes taking place as the process of globalization proceeds.

Karl Marx opened the door to this kind of analysis (and to the use of such metaphors) when he famously argued that because of the nature of capitalism8 as an economic system “everything solid melts into air.” That is, many of the solid, material realities that preceded capitalism (e.g. the structures of feudalism) were “melted” by it and were transformed into liquids. To continue the imagery farther than Marx took it, they were ultimately transformed into gases that diffused in the atmosphere. However, while Marx was describing a largely

Global Liquids, Flows, and Structures 5

destructive process, the point here is that the new liquids and gases that are being created are inherent parts of the new world and are radically transforming it. In the process, they are having both constructive and destructive effects (Schumpeter 1976).

Marx’s insight of over a century-and-a-half ago was not only highly prescient, but is far truer today than in Marx’s day. In fact, it is far truer than he could have ever imagined. Furthermore, that melting, much like one of the great problems in the global world today – the melting of the ice on and near the North and South poles as a result of global warming (see Chapter 11) – is not only likely to continue in the coming years, but to increase at an exponential rate. Indeed, the melting of the polar icecaps can be seen as another metaphor for the increasing fluidity associated with globalization, especially its problematic aspects. And, make no mistake, the increasing fluidity associated with globalization presents both great opportunities and great dangers.

Thus, the perspective on globalization presented here, following the work of Zygmunt Bauman (2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2011), is that it involves, above all else, increasing liquidity (Lakoff 2008) (and gaseousness).9 Several of Bauman’s ideas on liquidity are highly relevant to the perspective on globalization employed here.

For example, liquid phenomena do not easily, or for long, hold their shape. Thus, the myriad liquid phenomena associated with globalization are hard-pressed to maintain any particular form and, even if they acquire a form, it is likely to change quite quickly.

Liquid phenomena fix neither space nor time. That which is liquid is, by definition, opposed to any kind of fixity, be it spatial or temporal. This means that the spatial and tem- poral aspects of globalization are in continuous flux. That which is liquid is forever ready to change whatever shape (space) it might take on momentarily. Time (however short) in a liquid world is more important than space. Perhaps the best example of this is global finance where little or nothing (dollars, gold) actually changes its place (at least immediately), but time is of the essence in that the symbolic representations of money move instantaneously and great profits can be made or lost in split-second decisions on financial transactions.

Liquid phenomena not only move easily, but once they are on the move they are difficult to stop. This is exemplified in many areas such as foreign trade, investment, and global financial transactions (Knorr Cetina 2012; Polillo and Guillen 2005), the globality of trans- actions and interactions (e.g. on Facebook, Twitter [Birdsall 2012]) on the Internet, and the difficulty in halting the global flow of drugs, pornography, the activities of organized crime, and undocumented immigrants (Ryoko 2012).

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, that which is liquid tends to melt whatever (espe- cially solids) stands in its path. This is clearest in the case of the much discussed death, or at least decline,10 of the nation-state and its borders in the era of increasing global flows (see Chapter 5). According to Cartier (2001: 269), the “forces of globalization have rendered many political boundaries more porous to flows of people, money, and things.”

It is clear that if one wanted to use a single term to think about globalization today, liquidity would be at or near the top of the list. That is not to say that there are no solid structures in the world – after all, we still live in a modern world, even if it is late modernity, and modernity has long been associated with solidity. And it does not mean that there is not a constant interplay between liquidity and solidity with increases in that which is liquid (e.g. terrorist attacks launched against Israel from the West Bank during the Intifada) leading to counter-reactions involving the erection of new solid forms (e.g. that fence between Israel and the West Bank), but at the moment and for the foreseeable future, the momentum lies with increasing and proliferating global liquidity.

Liquidity: Increasing ease of movement of people, things, information, and places in the global age.

Gaseousness: hyper-mobility of people, things, information, and places in the global age.

Global Liquids, Flows, and Structures6

FLOWS

Closely related to the idea of liquidity, and integral to it, is another key concept in thinking about globalization, the idea of flows (Appadurai 1996); after all liquids flow easily, far more easily than solids. In fact, it is the concept of flows that is widely used in the litera- ture on globalization11 and it is the concept that will inform a good deal of the body of this book.12

Because so much of the world has “melted” or is in the process of “melting” and has become liquefied, globalization is increasingly characterized by great flows of increasingly liquid phenomena of all types, including people, objects, information, decisions, places, and so on.13 For example, foods of all sorts increasingly flow around the world, including sushi globalized from its roots in Japan (Bestor 2005; Edwards 2012), Chilean produce now ubiquitous in the US market (and elsewhere), Indian food in San Francisco (and through- out much of the world), and so on. In many cases, the flows have become raging floods that are increasingly less likely to be impeded by, among others, place-based barriers of any kind, including the oceans, mountains, and especially the borders of nation-states. This was demonstrated once again in 2008 in the spread of the American credit and financial crisis to Europe (and elsewhere), which continues to be felt today: “In a global financial system, national borders are porous” (Landler 2008: C1).

Looking at a very different kind of flow, many people in many parts of the world believe that they are being swamped by migrants, especially poor undocumented migrants (Moses 2006; Wang 2012). Whether or not these are actually floods, they have come to be seen in that way by many people, often aided by media personalities and politicians in many coun- tries who have established their reputations by portraying them as “illegal” immigrants flooding their country. For example, conservative pundit Ann Coulter is known for her inflammatory attacks on immigrants, such as “assimilating immigrants into our culture isn’t really working. No, they’re assimilating us into their culture” (Blumenfeld 2013). A well-known government official is Arizona’s Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Maricopa County, who spoke out against undocumented immigration and illegally targeted Latinos during traffic stops and raids; Arpaio was later found guilty of violating Latinos’ constitutional rights (Santos 2013). Undoubtedly because of their immateriality, ideas, images, and information, both legal (blogs) and illegal (e.g. child pornography), flow (virtually) everywhere through interpersonal contact and the media, especially now via the Internet.14 To take a specific example within the global circulation of ideas, “confidentiality” in the treatment of AIDS patients flowed to India (and elsewhere) because of the efforts of experts and their profes- sional networks. The arrival of this idea in India made it possible to better manage and treat AIDS patients who were more likely to seek out treatment because of assurances of confi- dentiality. Confidentiality was very important in this context because of the reticence of many Indians to discuss publicly such matters as sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS (Misra 2008: 433–67).

Decisions of all sorts flow around the world, as well as over time: “The effect of the [economic] decisions flowed, and would continue to flow, through every possible conduit. Some decisions would be reflected in products rolling off assembly lines, others in prices of securities, and still others in personal interactions. Each decision would cascade around the world and then forward through time” (Altman 2007: 255). At the moment, much of the world is experiencing slow growth (United Nations 2013a) and continues to be adversely

Flows: Movement of

people, things, information,

and places due, in part, to the increasing

porosity of global

barriers.

Global Liquids, Flows, and Structures 7

affected by the 2007–2008 financial crisis, including a wide array of bad economic decisions made in the previous decade or more, especially in the United States.

Even places can be said to be flowing around the world as, for example, immigrants re-create the places from which they came in new locales (e.g. Indian and Pakistani enclaves in London). Furthermore, places (e.g. airports, shopping malls) themselves have become increasingly like flows (for more on this and the transition from “spaces of places” to “spaces of flows,” see Castells 1996).

Even with all of this increasing fluidity, much of what would have been considered the height of global liquidity only a few decades, or even years, ago now seems increasingly sludge-like. This is especially the case when we focus on the impact of the computer and the Internet on the global flow of all sorts of things. Thus, not long ago we might have been amazed by our ability to order a book from Amazon.com and receive it via an express pack- age delivery system in as little as 30 minutes through the use of drones (CBS News 2013). But an even more liquid form of delivery is the ability to download that book in seconds on Amazon’s Kindle system (a wireless reading device to which books and other reading matter can be downloaded).

tYpeS OF FLOWS

It is worth differentiating among several different types of flows. One is interconnected flows. The fact is that global flows do not occur in isolation from one another; many different flows interconnect at various points and times. Take the example of the global sex industry (Farr 2005, 2013). The sex industry requires the intersection of the flow of people who work or are trafficked in the industry (usually women) with the flow of customers (e.g. sex tourists). Other flows that interconnect with the global sex industry involve money and drugs. Then there are the sexually transmitted diseases that are carried by the partici- pants in that industry and from them branch off into many other disease flows throughout the world.

A very different example of interconnected flows is in the global fish industry. That industry is now dominated by the flows of huge industrial ships and the massive amount of frozen fish that they produce and which is distributed throughout the world. In addition, these huge industrial ships are putting many small fishers out of business and some are using their boats for other kinds of flows (e.g. transporting undocumented immigrants from Africa to Europe) (LaFraniere 2008: A1, A10). Over-fishing by industrial ships has emptied the waters of fish and this has served to drive up their price. This has made the industry attractive to criminals and the result is an increase in the global flow of illegal fish (Rosenthal 2008a: A1–A6).

Then there are multidirectional flows. Globalization is not a one-way process as con- cepts like Westernization and Americanization (see Chapter 3) seem to imply (Marling 2006; Singer 2013). While all sorts of things do flow out of the West and the United States to every part of the world, many more flow into the West and the US from everywhere (e.g. Japanese automobiles, Chinese T-shirts, iPhones manufactured in China, Russian sex workers, and so on). Furthermore, all sorts of things flow in every conceivable direction among all other points in the world.

Still another layer of complexity is added when we recognize that transplanetary pro- cesses not only can complement one another (e.g. the meeting of flows of sex tourists and sex workers), but often also conflict with one another (and with much else). In fact, it is

Interconnected flows: Global flows that interconnect at various points and times.

Multi­ directional flows: all sorts of things flowing in every conceivable direction among many points in the world.

Global Liquids, Flows, and Structures8

usually these conflicting flows that attract the greatest attention. This is most obvious in the case of the ongoing “war” on terror between the United States and Islamist militants and jihadists (e.g. al-Qaeda). On the one hand, al-Qaeda and other Islamist militants are clearly trying to maintain, or to increase, their global influence and, undoubtedly, to find other ways of engaging in a range of terrorist activities. For its part, the US is involved in a wide variety of global processes designed to counter that threat, stymie al-Qaeda’s ambitions, and ultimately and ideally to contain, if not destroy, it. This encompassed first the US invasions of Iraq15 and Afghanistan, and now the ongoing involvement in global flows of military personnel and equipment to other locales (e.g. Pakistan, Syria, and, increasingly, African countries); and counter-terrorism activities (e.g. drone strikes) designed to find and kill its leaders, and ongoing contact with intelligence agencies of other nations in order to share information on Islamist militants, and so on.

Then there are reverse flows. In some cases, processes flowing in one direction act back on their source (and much else). This is what Ulrich Beck (1992) has called the boomerang effect. In Beck’s work the boomerang effect takes the form of, for example, pollution that is “exported” to other parts of the world but then returns to affect the point of origin. So, for example, countries may insist that their factories be built with extremely high smokestacks so that the pollution reaches greater heights in the atmosphere and is thereby blown by prevailing winds into other countries and perhaps even around the globe (Ritzer 2008b: 342). While this seems to reduce pollution in the home country, the boomerang effect is manifest when prevailing winds change direction and the pollution is blown back to its source. In addition, nations that are the recipients of another nation’s air pollution may find ways of returning the favor by building their own smokestacks even higher than their neighbors.

heaVY, LIGht, WeIGhtLeSS

There is another set of conceptual distinctions, or metaphors, that are useful in thinking about globalization. In addition to the change from solids to liquids (and then gases), we can also think in terms of change that involves movement from that which is heavy to that which is light (this is another distinction traceable to the work of Zygmunt Bauman) and most recently to that which is lighter than light, that which approaches being weightless (the gases mentioned above).

The original Gutenberg Bible (mid-fifteenth-century Germany) was usually published in two volumes, ran to close to 1,400 pages, and was printed on very heavy paper or vellum. It was in every sense of the term a heavy tome (almost like the one you are now reading), dif- ficult, because of its sheer weight and bulk, to transport. Fast forward to 2015 and a much lighter bound copy of the Bible could easily be purchased from Amazon.com and trans- ported in days via express mail virtually anywhere in the world. That Bible had also become weightless since it could be downloaded using the Kindle system or another e-reader.

More generally, it could be argued that both pre-industrial and industrial societies were quite “heavy,” that is, characterized by that which is difficult to move. This applies both to those who labored in them (e.g. peasants, farmers, factory workers), where they labored (plots of land, farms, factories), and what they produced (crops, machines, books, automo- biles). Because of their heaviness, workers tended to stay put and what they produced (and what was not consumed locally) could be moved, especially great distances, only with great

Conflicting flows:

transplanetary processes that

conflict with one another

(and with much else).

Reverse flows:

processes which, while

flowing in one direction,

act back on their source.

Global Liquids, Flows, and Structures 9

effort and at great expense. Later advances, especially in technology, made goods, people, and places “lighter,” easier to move. These included advances in both transportation and technology that made all sorts of industrial products smaller, lighter, and easier to trans- port (compare the mini-laptop computer of today to the room-size computer of the mid- twentieth century).

Karin Knorr Cetina (2005: 215) has written about what she calls “complex global microstructures,” or “structures of connectivity and integration that are global in scope but microsociological in character.” She has described financial markets (Knorr Cetina and Bruegger 2002; Knorr Cetina 2012) in these terms and, more recently, global terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda. We will have more to say about these global microstructures (see Chapter 12), but the key point here is that while Knorr Cetina sees these global microstructures as having several characteristics, of primary importance is their “lightness” in comparison to “heavy” bureaucratic systems. Thus, unlike the armed forces of the United States, Islamist militants (e.g. al-Qaeda) are not heavy bureaucratic structures, but rather light “global microstructures.” It is their lightness that gives them many advantages over the extremely cumbersome US military, and the huge bureau- cracy of which it is a part.

It could be argued that we moved from the heavy to the light era in the past century or two. However, by about 1980, we can be said to have moved beyond both of those epochs. We are now in an era that is increasingly defined not just by lightness, but by something approaching weightlessness. That which is weightless, or nearly so, clearly moves far more easily (even globally) than that which is either heavy or light. The big changes here involved the arrival and expansion of cable and satellite television, satellite radio, cell phones, personal computers, tablets, and, most importantly, smart phones and the advent of the Internet (and networking sites such as Twitter). It is with the personal computer and the Internet that globalization reaches new heights in terms of the flow of things and of social relationships in large part because they, and everything else, have approached weightlessness.

An excellent example of this can be found in the world of music. Vinyl records were quite heavy and the shift to cassettes and later CDs did not make music much lighter. However, the creation of advanced technologies such as iPods and smart phones allows us to carry around thousands of once very heavy albums in our pockets, or we can play it from the cloud. We can carry that music with us anywhere in the world and we can exchange music over the Internet with people around the globe.

To take another example, in the past, if we needed to consult with a medical specialist in Switzerland, we would have had to fly there and take our x-rays and MRI images with us, or else had them snail-mailed. Now, both can be digitized and sent via the Internet; x-ray and MRI results have become weightless. Our Swiss physician can view them on her computer screen. We do not even need to go to Switzerland at all (in a sense we have become weight- less, as well). We (or our local physician) can confer with our Swiss physician by phone, e-mail, or a video hook-up (e.g. Skype) via the Internet. It is information, rather than things, that is increasingly important in the contemporary world. Information, especially when it is translated into digital, computerized codes (that’s what happens to our x-rays and MRI images), is weightless and can be sent around the globe instantly.

Of course, there are still many heavy things in our increasingly weightless world. Factories, offices, buildings, large and cumbersome machines (including MRI machines), newspapers, hardback books, and even some people (made “heavy” by, for example,

Global Liquids, Flows, and Structures10

minority status, poverty, a lack of education) continue to exist. All, of course, are nevertheless being globalized to some degree in one way or another, but their weightiness makes that process more cumbersome and difficult for them. For example, the global parcel delivery systems (e.g. FedEx, DHL) have become very efficient, but they still need to transport a physical product over great distances. Clearly, that process is still quite weighty, in compari- son to, say, the downloading of weightless movies from Netflix (a website that began by allowing members to receive heavier DVDs via snail-mail) or viewing them on-demand. In fact, of course, it is increasingly the case that that which is weightless (e.g. iTunes and downloadable music in general, downloadable movies, blogs) is destroying that which is comparatively heavy (e.g. the CD, the DVD, newspapers).

The ideas of increasing liquidity and weightlessness being employed here do not require that the world be “flat” or be considered as such (see Chapter 4) (Friedman 2007, 2012). Fluids can seep through all sorts of tall and wide structures and, in the case of a flood, those structures can even be washed away (as was the Berlin Wall, for example, and more metaphorically, the Iron Curtain), at least temporarily. Further, that which is weightless can waft over and between the tallest and widest structures. Thus, the world today is increasingly characterized by liquidity and weightlessness, but it is not necessar- ily any flatter than it ever was.16 Those tall, wide structures continue to be important, especially in impeding (or attempting to), the movement of that which is solid and heavy. It is less clear how successful these structures will be in impeding that which is liquid, light, or weightless.

The most obvious of such structures are the borders (Crack 2007; Rumford 2007a) between nation-states and the fact that in recent years we have witnessed the strengthen- ing (heightening, lengthening, etc.) of many of those borders. Similarly, the Chinese gov- ernment has sought to restrict the access of its citizens to at least some aspects of the Internet that the government feels is dangerous to its continued rule. The electronic bar- rier that the government has constructed is known as the “Great Firewall” (French 2008: A1, A6). (A firewall is a barrier on the Internet; the idea of the “Great Firewall” plays off China’s Great Wall.)

The huge “digital divide” in the world today (Ayanso et al. 2014), especially between developed and developing countries (or the North and South), is another example of a barrier. The relative absence in developing countries of computers and the supporting infrastructure (telephone and broadband connections) needed for a computerized world creates an enormous barrier between these groups. In terms of computerization, the world may be increasingly flat (although certainly not totally flat) among and between developed countries in the North, but it has many hills in the developing countries and huge and seemingly insurmountable mountain ranges continue to separate the North from the South.

The history of the social world and social thought and research leads us to the conclusion that people, as well as their representatives in the areas in which they live, have always sought to erect structural barriers to protect and advance themselves, and to adversely affect others, and it seems highly likely that they will continue to do so. Thus, we may live in a more liquefied, more weightless, world, but we do not live in a flat world and are not likely to live in one any time soon, if ever. Even a successful capitalist, George Soros, acknowledges this, using yet another metaphor, in his analysis of economic globalization when he argues: “The global capitalist system has produced a very uneven playing field” (Soros 2000: xix, italics added).

Economic globalization:

Growing economic

linkages at the global

level.

Global Liquids, Flows, and Structures 11

heaVY StrUCtUreS that eXpeDIte FLOWS

The liquefaction of the social world, as well as its increasing weightlessness, is only part of the story of globalization. As pointed out already, another major part is the fact that many heavy, material, objective structures continue to exist and to be created in the globalized world.17 Some are holdovers from the pre-global world, but others are actually produced, intentionally or unintentionally, by global forces. In studying globalization we must look at both all of that which flows (or “wafts”) with increasing ease, as well as all of the structures18 that impede or block those flows (see below for more on these), as well as that serve to expedite and channel those flows. To put it another way, we must look at both that which is light and weightless as well as that which is solid and heavy and that greatly affects their flow in both a positive and a negative sense. This is in line with the view of Inda and Rosaldo (2008a: 29):

we will examine the materiality of the global. This refers to the material practices – infrastruc- ture, institutions, regulatory mechanisms, governmental strategies, and so forth – that both produce and preclude movement. The objective here is to suggest that global flows are patently structured and regulated, such that while certain objects and subjects are permitted to travel, others are not. Immobility and exclusion are thus as much a part of globalization as movement.

For example, there are various “routes” or “paths” that can be seen as structures that serve to both expedite flows along their length (see Figure 1.1 for major global transportation routes), as well as to limit flows that occur outside their confines.

• Intercontinental airlines generally fly a limited number of well-defined routes19 (say between New Delhi and London) rather than flying whatever route the pilots wish and thereby greatly increasing the possibility of mid-air collisions (see Figure 1.2 for some of the major global airline routes).

• Undocumented immigrants from Mexico have, at least until recently, generally followed a relatively small number of well-worn paths into the US. Indeed, they often need to pay smugglers large sums of money and the smugglers generally follow the routes that have worked for them (and others) in the past.

• Goods of all sorts are generally involved in rather well-defined “global value chains” (see Chapter 7 for a discussion of this concept) as they are exported from some countries and imported into others.

• Illegal products – e.g. counterfeit drugs – follow oft-trod paths en route from their point of manufacture (often China), through loosely controlled free-trade zones (e.g. in Dubai), through several intermediate countries, to their ultimate destination, often the US, where they are frequently obtained over the Internet (Bogdanich 2007: A1, A6).

Then there are an increasing number of formal and informal “bridges” (Anner and Evans 2004) which have been created throughout the globe that expedite the flow of all sorts of things. This idea applies perhaps best to the passage of documented people across borders through the process of migration (Sassen 2007a). It is clear that in the not-too-distant past there were many structural barriers to the flow of people. There are even a few places in the world today where this remains true – e.g. between the US and Cuba. However, with the

Global Liquids, Flows, and Structures12

Hay Point

Strait of Gibraltar

PANAMA CANAL

Strait of Magellan

Bosporus

SUEZ CANAL

NORTH POLE

E U R O P E

A F R I C A

E U R O P E

A S I A

S O U T H A M E R I C A

A U S T R A L I A

ATLANTIC OCEAN

PACIFIC OCEAN

ARCTIC OCEAN

INDIAN OCEAN

PACIFIC OCEAN

Corpus Christi Houston

Beaumont South Louisiana

New Orleans

New York- New Jersey

Itaqui

Tubarão

Santos

Strait of Hormuz

Strait of Malacca

Singapore

Dampier

Port Headland

Port Kelang

N O R T H A M E R I C A

Dubai

Richards Bay

Tokyo Chiba Yokohama Nagoya Kobe Osaka Kitakyushu Busan Ulsan Gwangyang Incheon Shanghai Ningbo

Kaohsiung Guangzhou Shenzhen Hong Kong

Newcastle

Qingdao Dalian

Qinhuangdao Tianjin

Gladstone

Vancouver

Huntington Long Beach

Algeciras Marseille

Hamburg Grimsby & Immingham

Amsterdam Rotterdam

Antwerp Le Harve

Passenger rail High-speed passenger rail Limited-access highway Other road Ocean shipping route Large port

Hay Point

Strait of Gibraltar

PANAMA CANAL

Strait of Magellan

Bosporus

SUEZ CANAL

NORTH POLE

E U R O P E

A F R I C A

E U R O P E

A S I A

S O U T H A M E R I C A

A U S T R A L I A

ATLANTIC OCEAN

PACIFIC OCEAN

ARCTIC OCEAN

INDIAN OCEAN

PACIFIC OCEAN

Corpus Christi Houston

Beaumont South Louisiana

New Orleans

New York- New Jersey

Itaqui

Tubarão

Santos

Strait of Hormuz

Strait of Malacca

Singapore

Dampier

Port Headland

Port Kelang

N O R T H A M E R I C A

Dubai

Richards Bay

Tokyo Chiba Yokohama Nagoya Kobe Osaka Kitakyushu Busan Ulsan Gwangyang Incheon Shanghai Ningbo

Kaohsiung Guangzhou Shenzhen Hong Kong

Newcastle

Qingdao Dalian

Qinhuangdao Tianjin

Gladstone

Vancouver

Huntington Long Beach

Algeciras Marseille

Hamburg Grimsby & Immingham

Amsterdam Rotterdam

Antwerp Le Harve

Passenger rail High-speed passenger rail Limited-access highway Other road Ocean shipping route Large port

Hay Point

Strait of Gibraltar

PANAMA CANAL

Strait of Magellan

Bosporus

SUEZ CANAL

NORTH POLE

E U R O P E

A F R I C A

E U R O P E

A S I A

S O U T H A M E R I C A

A U S T R A L I A

ATLANTIC OCEAN

PACIFIC OCEAN

ARCTIC OCEAN

INDIAN OCEAN

Corpus Christi Houston

Beaumont South Louisiana

New Orleans

New York- New Jersey

Itaqui

Tubarão

Santos

Strait of Hormuz

Strait of Malacca

Singapore

Dampier

Port Headland

Port Kelang

N O R T H A M E R I C A

Dubai

Richards Bay

Tokyo Chiba Yokohama Nagoya Kobe Osaka Kitakyushu Busan Ulsan Gwangyang Incheon Shanghai Ningbo

Kaohsiung Guangzhou Shenzhen Hong Kong

Newcastle

Qingdao Dalian

Qinhuangdao Tianjin

Gladstone

Vancouver

Huntington Long Beach

Algeciras Marseille

Hamburg Grimsby & Immingham

Amsterdam Rotterdam

Antwerp Le Havre

Passenger rail High-speed passenger rail Limited-access highway Other road Ocean shipping route Large port

Figure 1.1 transportation routes. Nearly all of the world’s freight headed for international destinations is transported via ships in standardized containers. these sealed metal containers have dramatically altered the face of international freight transport. they are designed to be easily transferred from one mode of transport to another, for instance, from a ship to a train, thereby increasing efficiency and reducing cost. as with passenger airline traffic, maritime freight traffic is concentrated. the largest ten ports, led by Singapore, rotterdam, Shanghai, hong Kong, and South Louisiana, handle more than 50% of global freight traffic. Source: de Blij, harm J., and roger Downs. 2007. College Atlas of the World. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, p. 59.

Global Liquids, Flows, and Structures 13

end of the Cold War, there are now many bridges for people (and products) to cross openly not only between the countries of the old East and West, but also among and between virtu- ally every country and region of the world. However, undocumented migrants are likely to need to be more covert in their movements. All sorts of illegal products are also less likely to move openly across such “bridges” where they would be highly visible to the authorities.

NORTH POLE

Beijing (PEK) Singapore

(SIN)

Hong Kong (HKG)

Bangkok (BKK)

San Francisco (SFO)

Miami (MIA)

New York-Newark (JFK)(EWR)

Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP)Houston

(IAH)

Madrid (MAD)

Las Vegas (LAS)

Denver (DEN)

Phoenix (PHX)

Amsterdam (AMS)

Paris (CDG)

Frankfurt (FRA)

Dallas- Fort Worth

(DFW)

Los Angeles (LAX)

Tokyo (HND)(NRT)

London (LHR)(LGW)

Chicago (ORD) (ATL) Atlanta

(MCO) Orlando Detroit (DTW)

A S I A

A F R I C A

S O U T H A M E R I C A E U R O P E

N O R T H A M E R I C A

Airline passenger volume among the world's busiest airports (in millions)

Greater than 2.5 1.5–2.5 1.0–1.49 0.7–0.9 0.3–0.6 Less than 0.3

(ATL) Airport code

Figure 1.2 airline passenger volume. air travel, the dominant mode of international passenger transportation, was once limited to the wealthy and those traveling for business. With increased competition, lower fares, and a growing global economy, air travel has boomed over the last 30 years. It is expected to steadily increase over the next five years, particularly in China and other parts of asia, despite economic instability in the airline industry and concerns over terrorism. air traffic is concentrated in the Northern hemisphere between europe and North america, with increasing volume to east asia. Nearly 600 million passengers pass through the doors of the world’s ten busiest airports, led by atlanta, Chicago, London, tokyo, and Los angeles. Source: de Blij, harm J., and roger Downs. 2007. College Atlas of the World. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, p. 58.

Global Liquids, Flows, and Structures14

Thus, there are also more hidden structures that permit movement of undocumented people and illegal products.

It is also the case that an increasing number of people, perhaps nearly everyone, is involved in, and affected by, global relations and flows and personally participate in global networks (Singh Grewal 2008) of one kind or another (networks of communication and information technology, interpersonal networks involving individuals and groups).20 While global networks span the globe (e.g. cables under the oceans that permit transoceanic com- munication [Yuan 2006: A1]), or at least much of it, there are other types of networks including transnational (those that pass through the boundaries of nation-states [Portes 2001b]), international (those that involve two or more nation-states), national (those that are bounded by the nation-state), and local (those that exist at the sub-national level) (Mann 2007). Networks can expedite the flow of innumerable things, but they are perhaps best-suited to the flow of information (Connell and Crawford 2005). People involved in networks can communicate all sorts of information to one another in various ways – telephone calls, snail-mail, e-mail, blogs, social networking sites, and so on. These net- works have revolutionized and greatly expanded the global flow of information. As with all other structures, such networks can be blocked in various ways (e.g. the “Great Firewall”).

All sorts of networks have been made possible by the Internet. The Internet can be seen as being of enormous importance in allowing information of various sorts to flow in innu- merable directions. One important example involves the formation of the networks that became and constitute the alter-globalization movement (see Chapter 15). It (as well as its various political actions, most notably the anti-WTO [World Trade Organization] protests in Seattle in 1999 [Smith 2001]), like much else in the world today (e.g. the popular upris- ings in Turkey and Egypt in 2013), was made possible by the Internet:

By significantly enhancing the speed, flexibility, and global reach of information flows, allowing for communication at a distance in real time, digital networks provide the technological infra- structure for the emergence of contemporary network-based social forms . . . allowing com- munities to sustain interactions across vast distances. . . . Using the Internet as technological architecture, such movements operate at local, regional, and global levels. . . . (Juris 2008: 353–4)

Finally, it is not only individuals who are increasingly involved in networks. An increas- ing number of social structures (e.g. states, cities, law) and social institutions (the family, religion, sport) are interconnected21 on a global basis and these, too, enable and enhance global flows. For example, the international banking system has an infrastructure that facil- itates the global movement of funds among a network of banks. Included in that infrastruc- ture are IBANs ([International Bank Account Numbers]), rules, norms, and procedures on how such money transfers are to occur, and a highly sophisticated technical language that allows those in the business to communicate with one another wherever they are in the world. Another example involves global (Sassen 1991, 2013) and world cities (Derudder et al. 2012) (see Chapter 13) that are increasingly interconnected with one another directly rather than through the nation-states in which they happen to exist. The financial markets of the world cities of New York, London, and Tokyo are tightly linked with the result that all sorts of financial products flow among them and at lightning speed. More generally, in this context, we can talk in terms of the “global economy’s connectedness” (Altman 2007: 255). To take another example, there are (or were) seven local, interconnected AIDS INGOs (International Non-Governmental Organizations) and they played a key role in, among

Global Liquids, Flows, and Structures 15

other things, improving the treatment of the disease in India (Misra 2008). The Indian NGO (Non-Governmental Organization), like others, is, in turn, “operated in a globally and nationally situated web of governmental and extra governmental agencies” (Misra 2008: 441). Once again, however, barriers are erected to limit such interconnections (e.g. the unwillingness of at least some countries to acknowledge AIDS, or at least the full extent of the disease and of its consequences).

heaVY StrUCtUreS aS BarrIerS tO FLOWS

While there is no question that the world is increasingly characterized by greater liquidity, increased flows, as well as various structures that expedite those flows, we also need to rec- ognize that there are limits and barriers to those flows. The world is not just in process, there are also many material structures (trade agreements, regulatory agencies, borders, customs barriers, standards, and so on) in existence. As Inda and Rosaldo (2008a: 31) argue: “Material infrastructures do not only promote mobility. . . . They also hinder and block it.” Any thoroughgoing account of globalization needs to look at both flows and structures and, in terms of the latter, the ways in which they both produce and enhance flows as well as alter and even block them. In other words, there is interplay between flows and structures, espe- cially between flows and the structures that are created in an attempt to inhibit or to stop them.22 As Shamir (2005: 197) puts it, globalization is an epoch of increased openness and “simultaneously an era of growing restrictions on movement.” Borders, of course, are major points at which movement is blocked. There are many examples of this including the toughening of border controls in France (and elsewhere in Europe) because of growing hostility to refugees (Fassin 2008: 212–34).

There are challenges to the idea that all there is to globalization is flows and fluidity (Tsing 2000). In examining global flows (some of which have been anticipated above), we also need to consider those agents who “carve” the channels through which things flow, those who alter those channels over time, national and regional units that create and battle over flows, and coalitions of claimants for control over channels.

A focus on the above kinds of agents and structures, rather than flows, promises a more critical orientation to globalization in terms of the structures themselves, as well as in terms of who creates the structures through which things flow as well as who does and does not control and profit from them.

The idea of flows is criticized for other reasons, as well. For example, there is a kind of timelessness to the idea of flows23 and, as a result, it implies that they are likely to continue well into the future and there is little or nothing that could be done to stop them. This implies that everyone – scientists and businesspeople who profit from flows, as well as those at the margins of those flows and perhaps even those hurt by them – are all swept up in the same processes.24 The focus on flows tends to communicate a kind of enthusiasm for them and the erroneous idea that virtually everyone benefits from flows of all types.

A similar idea is “frictions,” or the “awkward, unequal, unstable . . . interconnection across difference” (Lowenhaupt Tsing 2005: 4). The main idea is that the global flows that create interconnections do not move about smoothly; they do not move about without creating friction. Friction gets in the way of the smooth operation of global flows.25 However, fric- tion not only slows flows down, it can also serve to keep them moving and even speed them up. Highways can have this double-edged quality by both limiting where people and

Global Liquids, Flows, and Structures16

vehicles can go while at the same time making movement “easier and more efficient” (Lowenhaupt Tsing 2005: 6). More generally, “global connections [are] made, and muddied, in friction” (Lowenhaupt Tsing 2005: 272). The key point in this context is that flows them- selves produce friction that can slow or even stop global flows: “without even trying friction gets in the way of the smooth operation of global power. Difference can disrupt, causing everyday malfunctions as well as unexpected cataclysms. Friction refuses the lie that global power operates as a well-oiled machine. Furthermore, difference sometimes inspires insur- rection. Friction can be the fly in the elephant’s nose” (Lowenhaupt Tsing 2005: 6). A prime example of this today is the many frictions being produced in many parts of the world by large numbers of documented and undocumented immigrants, and the backlash against them. In 2011, Spain won approval from the EU to “keep Romanians from seeking work there, arguing that its battered economy could not absorb fresh inflow of workers” (Castle and Dempsey 2011). In 2012, Greece completed a 6.5-mile fence along its border with Turkey, which was considered the most porous entry point for undocumented immigrants entering Europe (Besant 2012).