The lexus and the olive tree summary sparknotes

THINKING GLOBALLY

THINKING GLOBALLY A Global Studies Reader

EDITED BY

Mark Juergensmeyer

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

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Thinking globally : a global studies reader / edited by Mark Juergensmeyer.

pages cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-520-27844-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) eISBN 9780520958012 1. Globalization—Textbooks. I. Juergensmeyer, Mark.

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CONTENTS

Preface: A Friendly Introduction to Global Studies

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1. Thinking Globally What is globalization and how do we make sense of it?

Manfred Steger, “Globalization: A Contested Concept” from Globalization: A Very Short Introduction

Thomas Friedman, “The World Is Ten Years Old” from The Lexus and the Olive Tree

Paul James, “Approaches to Globalization” from The Encyclopedia of Global Studies

Steven Weber, “How Globalization Went Bad” from Foreign Policy

Further Reading

2. Globalization over Time Globalization has a history: the current global era is prefaced by periods of economic interaction, social expansion, and intense cultural encounters

William McNeill, “Globalization: Long Term Process or New Era in Human Affairs?” from New Global Studies

Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, “Imperial Trajectories” from Empires in World History

Immanuel Wallerstein, “On the Study of Social Change” from The Modern World System

Dominic Sachsenmaier, “Movements and Patterns: Environments of Global History” from Global Perspectives on Global History

Further Reading

PART II: THE MARCH OF GLOBALIZATION, BY REGION

3. Africa: The Rise of Ethnic Politics in a Global World The impact of the slave trade and colonialization on Africa, influence of African culture on the Americas, and African aspects of the global rise of ethnic politics

Nayan Chanda, “The Hidden Story of a Journey” from Bound Together

Dilip Hiro, “Slavery” from The Encyclopedia of Global Studies

Jeffrey Haynes, “African Diaspora Religions” from The Encyclopedia of Global Studies

Jacob K. Olupona, “Thinking Globally about African Religion” from The Oxford Handbook of Global Religions

Okwudiba Nnoli, “The Cycle of ‘State-Ethnicity-State’ in African Politics” from MOST Ethno-Net Africa

Further Reading

4. The Middle East: Religious Politics and Antiglobalization The rise of global religious cultures from the Middle East, and current religious politics as part of a global challenge to secularism

Mohammed Bamyeh, “The Ideology of the Horizons” from The Social Origins of Islam

Said Amir Arjomand, “Thinking Globally about Islam” from The Oxford Handbook of Global Religions

Jonathan Fox, “Are Middle East Conflicts More Religious?” from Middle East Quarterly

Barah Mikaïl, “Religion and Politics in Arab Transitions” from FRIDE policy brief

Further Reading

5. South and Central Asia: Global Labor and Asian Culture The spread of Asian cultures from India and Central Asia via trade routes; the role of South Asia in global trade and information technology

Richard Foltz, “Religions of the Silk Road” from Religions of the Silk Road

Morris Rossabi, “The Early Mongols” from Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times

Vasudha Narayanan, “Hinduism” from The Encyclopedia of Global Studies

Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, “Revolt, the Modern State, and Colonized Subjects, 1848–1885” from A Concise History of India

Carol Upadhya and A.R. Vasavi, “Outposts of the Global Information Economy” from In an Outpost of the Global Economy: Work and Workers in India’s Technology Industry

Further Reading

6. East Asia: Global Economic Empires The role of East Asia in global economic history, and the rise of new economies in China, Japan, and South Korea based on global trade

Kenneth Pomeranz, “The Great Divergence” from The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy

Andre Gunder Frank, “The 21st Century Will Be Asian” from The Nikkei Weekly

Steven Radelat, Jeffrey Sachs, and Jong-Wha Lee, “Economic Growth in Asia” from Emerging Asia

Ho-Fung Hung, “Is the Rise of China Sustainable?” from China and the Transformation of Global Capitalism

Further Reading

7. Southeast Asia and the Pacific: The Edges of Globalization The emergence of Southeast Asia from colonial control; the rise of Australia and New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands on the edges of globalization

Georges Coedès, “The Indianized States of Southeast Asia” from The Indianized States of Southeast Asia

Benedict Anderson, “Imagined Communities” from Imagined Communities

Sucheng Chan, “Vietnam, 1945–2000: The Global Dimensions of Decolonization, War, Revolution, and Refugee Outflows”

Celeste Lipow MacLeod, “Asian Connections” from Multiethnic Australia: Its History and Future

Joel Robbins, “Pacific Islands Religious Communities” from The Oxford Handbook of Global Religions

Further Reading

8. Europe and Russia: Nationalism and Transnationalism The role of Europe in creating the concept of the nation, transnational politics in the Soviet Union, and the rise of the European Union

Peter Stearns, “The 1850s as Turning Point: The Birth of Globalization?” from Globalization in World History

Eric Hobsbawm, “The Nation” from The Nation as Novelty

Seyla Benhabib, “Citizens, Residents, and Aliens in a Changing World” from The Postnational Self

Odd Arne Westad, “Soviet Ideology and Foreign Interventions in the Global Cold War” from The Global Cold War

Jürgen Habermas, “Citizenship and National Identity” from Praxis International

Further Reading

9. The Americas: Development Strategies The European conquest of the Americas, the rise of new societies, and varying patterns of economic development within a global context

Charles C. Mann, “Discovering the New World Columbus Created” from 1493: Discovering the New World Columbus Created

Tzvetan Todorov, “The Reasons for the Victory” from The Conquest of America

Francis Fukuyama, “Explaining the Development Gap between Latin America and the United States” from Falling Behind

Denis Lynn Daly Heyck, “Surviving Globalization in Three Latin American Communities” from Surviving Globalization in Three Latin American Communities

Further Reading

PART III: TRANSNATIONAL GLOBAL ISSUES

10. Global Forces in the New World Order Paradigms for thinking about the new world order (or disorder) in the post– Cold War global era

Benjamin Barber, “Jihad vs. McWorld” from Jihad vs. McWorld

Samuel Huntington, “A Multipolar, Multicivilizational World” from The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, “Empire” from Empire

Saskia Sassen, “Global Cities” from The Encyclopedia of Global Studies

Further Reading

11. The Erosion of the Nation-State The fading strength of the nation-state and the rise of alternative conceptions of world order

Kenichi Ohmae, “The Cartographic Illusion” from The End of the Nation-State

Susan Strange, “The Westfailure System” from Review of International Studies

Zygmunt Bauman, “After the Nation-State—What?” from Globalization: The Human Consequences

William I. Robinson, “The Transnational State” from A Theory of Global Capitalism

Further Reading

12. Religious Politics and the New World Order The religious challenge to the secular state in new conceptions of political order

Monica Duffy Toft, Daniel Philpott, and Timothy Samuel Shah, “The Twenty-first Century as God’s Century” from God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics

Mark Juergensmeyer, “Religion in the New Global Order” from Europe: A Beautiful Idea?

Olivier Roy, “Al Qaeda and the New Terrorists” from Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah

Richard Falk, “Religion and Humane Global Governance” from Religion and Humane Global Governance

Further Reading

13. Transnational Economy and Global Labor Economic globalization: its relation to national economies, the growth of transnational corporations, and the changing role of labor

Richard Appelbaum, “Outsourcing” from The Encyclopedia of Global Studies

Nelson Lichtenstein, “Wal-Mart: Template for 21st Century Capitalism?” from New Labor Forum

Robert B. Reich, “Who Is Us?” from Harvard Business Review

Jagdish Bhagwati, “Two Critiques of Globalization” from In Defense of Globalization

Joseph Stiglitz, “Toward a Globalization with a More Human Face” from Globalization and Its Discontents

Further Reading

14. Global Finance and Financial Inequality Changes in the concept of money and international financial markets

Benjamin J. Cohen, “Money in International Affairs” from The Geography of Money

Stephen J. Kobrin, “Electronic Cash and the End of National Markets” from Foreign Policy

Glenn Firebaugh, “The Rise in Income Disparities over the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries” from The New Geography of Global Income Inequality

Dani Rodrik, “Globalization for Whom?” from Harvard Magazine

Further Reading

15. Development and the Role of Women in the Global Economy Competing views of development and the role of women in the global economy

Alvin Y. So, “Social Change and Development” from Social Change and Development

Mayra Buvinić, “Women in Poverty: A New Global Underclass” from Foreign Policy

Kum-Kum Bhavnani, John Foran, Priya A. Kurian, and Debashish Munshi, “From the Edges of Development” from On the Edges of Development: Cultural Interventions

Further Reading

16. The Hidden Global Economy of Sex and Drugs Illegal trafficking in people and drugs, and the global attempts to control them

David Shirk, “The Drug War in Mexico” from The Drug War in Mexico: Confronting a Common Threat

Eduardo Porter, “Numbers Tell of Failure in Drug War” from the New York Times

Kevin Bales, “The New Slavery” from Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy

Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild, “Nannies, Maids, and Sex

Workers in the Global Economy” from Global Woman

Further Reading

17. Global Environmental and Health Crises The principal environmental and health problems that transcend national boundaries, and global attempts to alleviate them

Catherine Gautier, “Climate Change” from The Encyclopedia of Global Studies

Ron Fujita, “Turning the Tide” from Heal the Ocean: Solutions for Saving Our Seas

Hakan Seckinelgin, “HIV/AIDS” from The Encyclopedia of Global Studies

Further Reading

18. Global Communications and New Media The role of new media—video, internet, and social networking—in global culture and politics

Yudhishthir Raj Isar, “Global Culture and Media” from The Encyclopedia of Global Studies

Michael Curtin, “Media Capital in Chinese Film and Television” from Playing to the World’s Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV

Natana J. DeLong-Bas, “The New Social Media and the Arab Spring” from Oxford Islamic Studies Online

Pippa Norris, “The Worldwide Digital Divide” from Harvard University Kennedy School of Government

Further Reading

19. The Global Movement for Human Rights Transnational networks supporting human rights and legal protection for all

Micheline Ishay, “Globalization and Its Impact” from The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era

Alison Brysk, “Transnational Threats and Opportunities” from Globalization and Human Rights

Eve Darian-Smith, “Human Rights as an Ethics of Progress” from Laws and Societies in Global Contexts: Contemporary Approaches

David Held, “Changing Forms of Global Order” from Cosmopolitanism

Further Reading

20. The Future of Global Civil Society The emerging sense of global citizenship, and nongovernmental organizations and movements comprising a new “global civil society”: is this the global future?

Mary Kaldor, “Social Movements, NGOs, and Networks” from Global Civil Society

Jan Nederveen Pieterse, “Shaping Globalization: Why Global Futures?” from Global Futures

Giles Gunn, “Being Other-Wise: Cosmopolitanism and Its Discontents” from Ideas to Die For: Cosmopolitanism in a Global Era

Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Making Conversation” from Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

Further Reading

Acknowledgments Index

PREFACE A Friendly Introduction to Global Studies

I have a lot of friends on Facebook, and they live in all parts of the world. If I post something about global trade, I get responses from friends in China and Brazil. If I put up a link about interfaith harmony, I get appreciative “likes” from friends in Indonesia, India, and Northern Ireland. When I comment about domestic politics in the United States, I’m often politely ignored by my friends in the other part of the world, who find my local obsessions as arcane as I view their postings on Eritrean political squabbles. But when I post a link to a website that portrays nothing but pictures of bouncing cats, I receive appreciative notices from around the world. Everyone, it seems, loves bouncing cats. It is not just the bouncing cats that are global, however. It’s everything.

The very process of interaction and communication beyond national borders is a feature of our globalized world. And it is not just Facebook. Every time you go online, you go global. When you turn off the computer and go to the store, chances are you

will encounter not just your local milieu. A trip to Walmart is a journey into the global arena. And when you bring home all that stuff made not only in China but also in myriad countries around the world, you are literally bringing globalization home. Try this simple party game with your friends. Guess the country on everyone’s clothing labels, then check to see where the t-shirts and jackets and everything else you and your friends are wearing were made—Bangladesh, Trinidad, Cambodia, Yemen, or wherever. See how many countries are represented. And then imagine the journey that the clothing had to make, from cotton fields to textile factories to seaports and cargo containers to distribution centers to retail stores and eventually to the closets of you and your friends. Perhaps the most global area of your house is that closet. In some cases, you do not have to go anywhere to find examples of

globalization because they come to you. Globalization permeates the air that you breathe—including tiny particles emitted from volcanic eruptions half a world away. It affects your weather, as cycles of warming and cooling air react to global climate change. And globalization is part of the food that you eat. This is obvious if you have a taste for Chinese take-out or pad Thai noodles or Mexican burritos. But even if you are a meat-and- potatoes kind of person who likes a little tomato salad on the side, you are enjoying the effects of globalization about five hundred years ago. It was then that potatoes and tomatoes, plants originally found only in South America, were taken elsewhere by explorers to become a part of the food habits in North America, Europe, and around the world. Their dissemination was part of the extraordinary global diffusion of plants, germs, and cultures that followed European contacts with the Western Hemisphere, beginning with Columbus in 1492. So globalization is woven into the fabric of our daily lives. To study it is

to focus on the central feature of life in the twenty-first century. But how do you go about studying globalization? Is it really possible to study the whole world? Doesn’t this mean studying almost everything? And if so, where do you begin? These were the questions in the minds of a group of scholars who met in

Tokyo in 2008. They had met the year before in Santa Barbara, California, to explore the possibility of creating a new international organization for representatives of graduate programs in global studies—a whole new academic field that had been created in various universities around the world. The first college programs to be called “global studies” were formed in the mid-1990s, and within a decade there were hundreds. Students flocked to the new programs, intuitively knowing that this was something important. By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, graduate programs had been established in dozens of universities in Asia, Europe, and North America, including Japan, South Korea, China, India, Germany, Denmark, Russia, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and the United States. The field of global studies had arrived. But what was in this new field of study? When the scholars came

together in Tokyo in 2008, their main goals were to answer this question and to define the major features of the field of global studies. They came expecting to have something of a fight. After all, each of these programs had developed independently from the others. When representatives of all these different programs came together, they did not know what they would find, thinking that the field of global studies would be defined vastly differently in Tokyo, Leipzig, and Melbourne. But as it turned out, this was not the case. Happily, there was a great deal of agreement at the outset

regarding what the field of global studies contained and how to go about studying it. The five characteristics of global studies that the scholars agreed on at

that memorable founding meeting of the international Global Studies Consortium in Tokyo are discussed below.

Transnational. The scholars in Tokyo agreed that the field of global studies focuses primarily on the analysis of events, activities, ideas, trends, processes, and phenomena that appear across national boundaries and cultural regions. These include activities such as economic distribution systems, and ideologies such as nationalism or religious beliefs. The scholars used the term cultural regions as well as nations, since these kinds of global flows of activity and ideas transcend the limitations of regions even when they are not the same as national boundaries. Historically, much of the activity that we call “transnational” might more properly be called “transregional,” since it occurred before the concept of nation was applied to states.

Interdisciplinary. Since transnational phenomena are complex, these are examined from many disciplinary points of view. In general, the field of global studies does not keep strict disciplinary divisions among, for instance, sociological, historical, political, literary, or other academic fields. Rather, it takes a problem-focused approach, looking at situations such as global warming or the rise of new religio-political ideologies as specific cases. To make sense of these problem areas requires multiple perspectives, which may be economic, political, social, cultural, religious, ideological, or environmental. Scholars involved in global studies often work in interdisciplinary teams or freely use terms and concepts across fields of study. These scholars come from all fields of the social sciences (especially from sociology, economics, political science, and anthropology). And many of the fields are also related to the humanities, including particularly the fields of history, literature, religious studies, and the arts. Some scholars have expertise in areas of science, such as environmental studies and public health.

Contemporary and Historical. We think of globalization as being primarily contemporary, something unique to our time. But it is also historical. True, the pace and intensity of globalization have increased enormously in the post–Cold War period of the twentieth century and even more so in the

twenty-first century. But transnational activities have had historical antecedents. There are moments in history—such as in the ancient Mediterranean world during the Roman and Greek Empires—when there was a great deal of transnational activity and interchange on economic, cultural, and political levels. The global reach of European colonialism from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century provides another example of a global stratum of culture, education, technology, and economic activity upon which are based many aspects of the globalization of the twenty-first century. Thus, to fully understand the patterns of globalization today, it is necessary to probe their historical precedents.

Critical and Multicultural. The American and European view of globalization is not the only one. Although many aspects of contemporary globalization are based on European colonial precedents, most global studies scholars do not accept uncritically the notion that people in the West should be the only ones to benefit from economic, political, and cultural globalization. Some global studies scholars avoid using the term globalization to describe their subject of study, since the term sometimes is interpreted to imply the promotion of a Western-dominated hegemonic project aimed at spreading the acceptance of laissez-faire liberal economics throughout the world. Other scholars describe their approach as “critical globalization studies,” implying that their examination of globalization is not intended to promote or privilege Western economic models of globalization, but rather to understand it. To understand globalization well requires viewing it from many cultural

perspectives—from African and Asian, as well as European and American, points of view. Scholars of global studies acknowledge that globalization and other global issues, activities, and trends can be viewed differently in different parts of the world and from different socio-economic levels within each locality. For that reason, scholars of global studies sometimes speak of “many globalizations” or “multiple perspectives on global studies.” This position acknowledges that there is no dominant paradigm or perspective in global studies that is valued over others.

Globally Responsible. Scholars who work in global studies often advance an additional criterion for what they do: to help make the world a better place in which to live. By focusing on global problems, scholars imply that they want to help solve those problems. They also hope to foster a sense of global citizenship among their students. They like to think that they are helping to create “global literacy”—the ability to function in an increasingly

globalized world—by understanding both the specific aspects of diverse cultures and traditions and the commonly experienced global trends and patterns. Other teachers assert that they are providing training in “global leadership,” giving potential leaders of transnational organizations and movements the understanding and skills that will help them to solve problems and deal with issues on a global scale.

In this book we will embrace all of these aspects of global studies. In Part 2, we will move around the world from region to region—from Africa, the Middle East, South and Central Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia and the Pacific area to Europe and bicontinental Russia and the Americas. We explore readings that show how globalization is viewed from the perspective of each region, both historically and today. We will consider how global factors have affected each region and how each region has contributed to the larger currents of globalization during different historical periods. In Part 3, we will look at major transnational issues today, including the

decline of the nation-state, the rise of new religious politics, and several economic issues—such as finance, currency, and labor in the global economy; problems of development and the role of women in the world’s workforce; and the hidden economy involving trade in sex and illicit drugs. We will also explore global environmental problems, including climate change, transnational diseases and other global health issues, and global communications and new media, and end with a section on the role of civil society in the global future. In choosing the readings to explore these issues, I have tried to achieve a balance among disciplinary and cultural perspectives. And I hope for my readers to not only understand the nature of global problems, but also to consider some of the possibilities in solving them. So when you enter the field of global studies, you are encountering

some of the most significant aspects of our contemporary world. You are engaging with the transnational issues that have shaped the regions of the world from ancient times to the present and that are among the most pressing issues of our contemporary era. Like the Internet, global studies draws you into this wider world. But global studies, at its best, does more than that. As these readings will show, the scholars engaged in these studies have honed their analytic skills to make critical assessments and reasoned judgments about the character of the global transformations that are occurring around us. This does not make these scholars infallible; in fact, they frequently disagree with one another. But their insights do make them friends—not only to be liked, but also to be challenged by, to be

emulated, and to be known.

PART I

INTRODUCTION

1 THINKING GLOBALLY

Your friends may have peeked over your shoulders at this book and asked why you are interested in global studies. And they might have added, just what is that, anyway? So what do you tell them? You could say that you are studying what goes on in the world that knits us all together—but that sounds sort of soft and squishy. Or you could tell them that you are studying the economic and technological networks that interact on a global plane. But that’s only part of the story. The honest truth is that “global studies” can mean a lot of different

things, both the hard and the squishy. It is usually defined as the analysis of events, activities, ideas, processes, and flows that are transnational or that can affect all areas of the world. These global activities can be studied as one part of the established disciplines of sociology, economics, political science, history, religious studies, and the like. Or global studies can be a separate course or part of a whole new program or department. As an academic field, global studies is fairly new. It blossomed largely

after the turn of the twenty-first century. But the intellectual roots of the field lie in the pioneering work of the many different scholars who have thought globally over many decades. These thinkers have attempted to understand how things are related and have explored the connections among societies, polities, economies, and cultural systems throughout the world. One could argue that the first global studies scholars were among the

founders of the social sciences. Over a hundred years ago the pioneering German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) wrote a series of works on the religions of India, China, Judaism, and Protestant Christianity. Weber was interested in finding what was distinctive about each of them, and what was similar among all of them. Weber also attempted to discern

universal elements in the development of all societies. He showed, for example, that a certain kind of rational and legal authority and its associated bureaucratization was a globalizing process. Though his intellectual interests were Europocentric, his curiosity spanned the globe. Other early social scientists were also global thinkers. The French

sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) focused first on something very local: case studies of tribal societies. What he found, however, was something he regarded as quite global: the rise of organic solidarity based on functional interdependence. The German philosopher and social critic Karl Marx (1818–1883) likewise assumed that his theories were universal. Marx showed that capitalism was a globalizing force, one that would cause both production systems and markets to expand to encompass the entire world. Ideas in Europe, North America, and the rest of the Westernized world

were influenced by thinkers such as these. At the same time, significant thinking about intercultural commonalities and global awareness was being developed in intellectual centers in other parts of the world. The tolerant ideals of the Muslim thinker Ibn Khaldun were influential in North Africa and the Middle East, and notions of universal brotherhood advocated by the Indian philosopher Rabindranath Tagore had an impact on the intellectual circles of South Asia as well as on his admirers in Western societies. All of these early thinkers, both European and non-European, focused

on two ways of thinking globally: comparison and universality. In some cases, they looked at comparative and non-Western examples to determine differences and similarities. In other studies, they adopted intellectual positions that assumed a universal applicability. Hence early European theorists such as Weber and Marx thought that the social forces that were transforming Europe in the nineteenth century would eventually have relevance globally. Current scholarship in all areas of the humanities and social sciences—including global studies—is indebted to these pioneering scholars. But the specific focus on globalization itself is fairly new. Only recently

have scholars begun to examine transnational and global networks, flows, processes, ideologies, outlooks, and systems both historically and in the contemporary world. In fact, the first explicitly global works of scholarship of this sort only emerged a few decades ago, at the end of the twentieth century. One of the pioneers of contemporary global studies was the sociologist

Immanuel Wallerstein, who helped to formulate world systems theory. He incorporated insights from political economy, sociology, and history in order

to understand global patterns of hegemonic state power. Other sociologists, including Roland Robertson, Saskia Sassen, and Manfred Steger, explicitly examined the concept of the global, as opposed to local, points of view. Perspectives from other disciplines have also contributed to global

studies. The anthropologist Arjun Appadurai broadened the understanding of global perspectives from landscape to a variety of “scapes”—culturally shaped understandings of the world. The political scientist David Held helped to formulate theories of politics in relation to globalization. William H. McNeill, Akira Iriye, and Bruce Mazlish, among other historians, helped to develop the subfields of world history and global history. Economists such as Joseph Stiglitz and Jagdish Bhagwati have analyzed economic interactions and changes in global terms. And in the field of religious studies, Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Ninian Smart moved beyond the study of particular religious traditions to the study of world theology and worldview analysis, respectively. Other scholars developed analytic approaches to describe new forms of global society: Mary Kaldor examined an emerging global civil society while Kwame Anthony Appiah and Ulrich Beck have described what they regard as a cosmopolitan strand in the new global order. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, an imposing body of

scholarly literature and a flurry of new journals, book series, and scholarly conferences and associations emerged under the label of global studies. The field had arrived. This book provides a road map to the emerging field. At the same time—to mix metaphors—it provides a sampling of the intellectual feast that the current field provides. Global studies uses the term transnational a lot. What this means is that

global studies focus not just on the activities and patterns that are international—among nation-states—but also on those that exist beyond the borders of nations and regions and stretch across the various areas of the world. This is one way of thinking of global activity—not that it is universal, found everywhere on the planet, but that it transcends the usual boundaries that separate nation from nation. Transnational relations can be confined largely within a particular area of the world (such as economic cooperation within Europe, for instance, or among the nations along the Pacific Rim) and not necessarily occur throughout the whole world. At the same time, there are phenomena that are truly global in that they

are found everywhere, such as satellite communication systems that can be accessed anywhere on the planet. These are by definition transnational, since they occur beyond the limitations of national boundaries or control. All global phenomena encompass transnational linkages, but not everything

that is transnational is global. Terms can be confusing, but it’s useful to try to be as clear as possible about what we mean. In the field of global studies, we tend not to use the term international

very often, since it implies interactions between nation-states. In common, everyday language, however, many transnational phenomena are described as international, as in the description of some environmental issues as international problems, even though the phenomena themselves—such as the pollution of the oceans and global warming—are transnational. The wording gets tricky when one considers that many of the efforts to deal with transnational problems like global climate change are international— such as the collaboration of nations in efforts to agree on limiting carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Global studies has to do with globalization, of course, but what does

that mean? Often, globalization is defined as the process of bringing the world together in more intense interaction through all of the transnational activity that we have been talking about—economic, demographic, social, cultural, technological, and so on. Scholars such as Roland Robertson began using the term globalization in the 1980s. And a book by Martin Albrow and Elizabeth King used the term globalization in its title in the early 1990s. What they meant by the term was the process of social change that involved transnational interactions in all aspects of social, economic, and technological relationships. Thus, the word globalization describes a process. The result of globalization is a more unified and interactive planet—a

globalized world. Some scholars have called this globalized society “globality” or the era of “the global.” The attitude that people adopt in this more intensely interactive world can be said to be one of “globalism,” or “global consciousness,” or one embracing the “global imaginary.” These are all ways of thinking about the new state of global awareness in a world where transnational activity is the norm and everyone is affected by everyone else everywhere on the planet. These broad global trends seem vast, and they are. But they also are

felt on a very local level. There are pockets of globalism, for example, in neighborhoods that are multicultural and contain different immigrant communities that interact with one another. Some cities are described as “global cities,” both because of their importance as global nodes of economic and cultural networks and because their own populations are a tapestry of peoples from different parts of the world. In Los Angeles, for instance, you can find areas that are entirely Filipino, and other areas where only Vietnamese is spoken. Los Angeles contains one of the largest Mexican populations in the world and also one of the largest groups of

Iranians. In many ways, it is a social microcosm of the world, and yet all of these immigrant neighborhoods interact in a common urban locale. Roland Robertson coined the term glocal to describe these examples of

globalism in a local setting. In his description, glocalization is a logical extension of globalization. It is the way that local communities are affected by global trends. The appearance of big-box stores selling Chinese- manufactured products in sleepy rural towns of Arkansas is one example of glocalization. An Internet café that I found on a remote segment of the Inca trail near Machu Picchu in Peru is another. At the same time that global trends influence local settings, the reverse

can also happen: global patterns can be reinterpreted on a local level. The spread of the McDonald’s fast-food franchise around the world is an example. When I visit the McDonald’s in Delhi, I find that none of the hamburgers are, in fact, beef burgers; they are chicken or veggie burgers, reflecting the predominantly vegetarian eating customs of people in India. In Kyoto’s McDonald’s, you can get a Teriyaki McBurger; and in the McDonald’s restaurant in Milan, the sophisticated Italians may choose pasta rather than fries. So when globalization is glocalized, global patterns can adapt to local situations. In the readings in this section, these concepts of globalization and

globalism are explored by several influential scholars in the field of global studies. The first essay is by Manfred Steger, a native Austrian who helped to create the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Steger’s book Globalization: A Very Short Introduction is one of the most widely read books on the topic. In an excerpt from this book, Steger describes the phenomenon of globalization in the post–Cold War era—that is, since roughly 1990. He argues that globalization has increased even more since the turn of the century in 2000 and takes as his example the terrorist act on September 11, 2001. Steger shows that this incident, and the technology, media, and ideological elements related to it, exhibit the global interconnectedness of our contemporary world. The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman also agrees that the

era of globalization is relatively recent. In his calculation, however, it begins around 1989, at the end of the Cold War, when the Berlin wall tumbled and the ideological confrontation between socialist and capitalist societies was replaced by a more fluid and varied concept of world order. In Friedman’s view, the wrestling matches between two huge lumbering superpowers has been replaced by the sprints to economic success by leaner independent economies. And though previous periods of globalization in history have shrunk the world from a size “large” to a size

“medium,” the current era shrinks the world to a size “small.” Paul James, a sociologist who helped develop the global studies program

at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, tries to put this global phenomenon in order. He describes the various aspects of globalization and the different approaches to studying it. In James’s comprehensive survey of the field, he shows that the study of globalization comes from all the major disciplines of the social sciences and humanities. Globalization is a basic feature of modern life. But is it always good? In

an essay from Foreign Policy, Steven Weber, a professor of political science and director of the Institute for International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, argues that globalization often seems to have gone bad. This is especially true for those who expected America’s military and economic superiority in a post–Cold War era to give it unbridled control over the rest of the world. But Weber argues that globalization may not be such a bad thing after all. America’s security—and the world’s—depends not on just one superpower exerting its authority, but also on an interconnected set of relationships that reduces conflict through cooperation. Perhaps, Weber suggests, the best approach to dealing with a globalized world is not for one country to try to control it, but to let the political interconnectedness of the world provide for a mutual, collective security.

GLOBALIZATION: A CONTESTED CONCEPT

Manfred Steger

In the autumn of 2001, I was teaching an undergraduate class on modern political and social theory. Still traumatized by the recent terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, most of my students couldn’t quite grasp the connection between the violent forces of religious fundamentalism and the more secular picture of a technologically sophisticated, rapidly globalizing world that I had sought to convey in class lectures and discussions. “I understand that ‘globalization’ is a contested concept that refers to sometimes contradictory social processes,” a bright history major at the back of the room quipped, “but how can you say that the TV image of a religious fanatic who denounces modernity and secularism from a mountain cave in Afghanistan perfectly captures the complex dynamics of globalization? Don’t these terrible acts of terrorism suggest the opposite, namely, the growth of parochial forces that undermine globalization?” Obviously, the student was referring to Saudi-

born Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, whose videotaped statement condemning the activities of “international infidels” had been broadcast worldwide on 7 October. Struck by the sense of intellectual urgency that fuelled my student’s

question, I realized that the story of globalization would remain elusive without real-life examples capable of breathing shape, colour, and sound into a vague concept that had become the buzzword of our time. Hence, before delving into necessary matters of definition and analytical clarification, we ought to approach our subject in less abstract fashion. I suggest we begin our journey with a careful examination of the aforementioned videotape. It will soon become fairly obvious why a deconstruction of those images provides important clues to the nature and dynamics of the phenomenon we have come to call “globalization.”

DECONSTRUCTING OSAMA BIN LADEN

The infamous videotape bears no date, but experts estimate that the recording was made less than two weeks before it was broadcast. The timing of its release appears to have been carefully planned so as to achieve the maximum effect on the day the United States commenced its bombing campaign against Taliban and Al Qaeda (“The Base”) forces in Afghanistan. Although Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants were then hiding in a remote region of the country, they obviously possessed the hi- tech equipment needed to record the statement. Moreover, Al Qaeda members clearly enjoyed immediate access to sophisticated information and telecommunication networks that kept them informed—in real-time—of relevant international developments. Bin Laden may have denounced the forces of modernity with great conviction, but the smooth operation of his entire organization was entirely dependent on advanced forms of technology developed in the last two decades of the 20th century. To further illustrate this apparent contradiction, consider the complex

chain of global interdependencies that must have existed in order for bin Laden’s message to be heard and seen by billions of TV viewers around the world. After making its way from the secluded mountains of eastern Afghanistan to the capital city of Kabul, the videotape was dropped off by an unknown courier outside the local office of Al-Jazeera, a Qatar-based television company. This network had been launched only five years earlier as a state-financed, Arabic-language news and current affairs channel that offered limited programming. Before the founding of Al-Jazeera, cutting- edge TV journalism—such as free-ranging public affairs interviews and talk shows with call-in audiences—simply did not exist in the Arab world. Within

only three years, however, Al-Jazeera was offering its Middle Eastern audience a dizzying array of programmes, transmitted around the clock by powerful satellites put into orbit by European rockets and American space shuttles. Indeed, the network’s market share increased even further as a result

of the dramatic reduction in the price and size of satellite dishes. Suddenly, such technologies became affordable, even for low-income consumers. By the turn of the century, Al-Jazeera broadcasts could be watched around the clock on all five continents. In 2001, the company further intensified its global reach when its chief executives signed a lucrative cooperation agreement with CNN, the leading news network owned by the giant multinational corporation AOL-Time-Warner. A few months later, when the world’s attention shifted to the war in Afghanistan, Al-Jazeera had already positioned itself as a truly global player, powerful enough to rent equipment to such prominent news providers as Reuters and ABC, sell satellite time to the Associated Press and BBC, and design an innovative Arabic-language business news channel together with its other American network partner, CNBC. Unhampered by national borders and geographical obstacles,

cooperation among these sprawling news networks had become so efficient that CNN acquired and broadcast a copy of the Osama bin Laden tape only a few hours after it had been delivered to the Al-Jazeera office in Kabul. Caught off guard by the incredible speed of today’s information exchange, the Bush administration asked the Qatari government to “rein in Al-Jazeera,” claiming that the swift airing of the bin Laden tape without prior consultation was contributing to the rise of anti-American sentiments in the Arab world and thus threatened to undermine the US war effort. However, not only was the perceived “damage” already done, but segments of the tape—including the full text of bin Laden’s statement— could be viewed online by anyone with access to a computer and a modem. The Al-Jazeera website quickly attracted an international audience as its daily hit count skyrocketed to over seven million. There can be no doubt that it was the existence of this chain of global