INTRODUCTION

Bei Dawei

Hsuan Chuang University, Taiwan

Evangelos Voulgarakis

Independent Scholar, Taiwan

Derrick M. Nault

University of Calgary, Canada

Globalization

Centuries hence, when future historians look back upon our era, surely globalization will stand out as one of its defining trends. Technological advances have resulted in ever-accelerating levels of travel, trade and communication. Human ties (e.g., cross-border marriage and adoption) and population movements have followed, challenging various regional and cultural identities. Transnational institutions and agreements have gained new importance. Integration into global markets has brought routine contact with "foreigners," whether in the form of competition or alliance, and imitation is widespread. Elements of a common culture can be identified in our business practices, choice of languages, clothing and hairstyles, consumer products, entertainment, education, military affairs and politics, among other spheres. We may even speak of a certain "global consciousness," a reflexive awareness of our growing interconnectedness.

Scholars and public intellectuals disagree as to how far back to trace this process. Thomas Friedman (1999, 2005) focuses primarily on the end of the Cold War, and the technological and managerial developments of the 1990s. Benjamin Barber (1992) looks to the post-World War II rise of multinational corporations and international trade regimes (such as the Bretton Woods institutions and the various common markets). Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson (1996) liken this to earlier cycles of internationalization, such as the period between 1870–1914. William H. McNeill (1963) emphasizes the period of European industrialization and colonialism from 1750 to 1950. Immanuel Wallerstein (1974, 1980, 1989) begins with the great age of European exploration and the intercontinental maritime empires established in its wake. Janet Abu-Lughod (1991) and Jack Weatherford (2004) hail the contributions of the thirteenth-century pax Mongolica. Others nominate the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates (e.g., Stearns, Adas, Schwartz and Gilbert 2004), or earlier land-based Eurasian empires associated with the Silk Road. Andre Gunder Frank and Barry K. Gills (1991, 1993) suggest a figure of "five thousand years" ago, referring to trade ties between the Sumerian and Harappan civilizations. Daniel Quinn (1992) and Jared Diamond (1997) point to the development of mass agriculture some 10,000 years ago. Finally, James Harrod (2006) refers to "periods of globalization" during the lower Paleolithic, between 1.9 and 1.6 million years ago, in which Olduwan industries (and presumably also the hominins themselves) spread out from Africa across Asia via the Indian Ocean Rim.

Of course there is some merit to each of these starting points, at least within specifically defined contexts, and there have been numerous attempts at periodization (some by the same authors). Here we may usefully resort to David Held's distinction between "thick" globalization (characterized by high extensity, intensity, velocity and impact) and several earlier forms. For example, the ancient Silk Road (which combined high extensity with low intensity, velocity and impact) would be an example of "thin" globalization (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt and Perraton 1999; see also Nye 2002). At any rate, the present momentum — for better or worse, and regardless of the system's ultimate success or failure — is clearly in the direction of thickness. Less amenable to reconciliation are the questions of whether our era is unique, or part of some larger economic or historical cycle; and whether neo-liberal economic policies will, or should, prevail under the New World Order.

However periodized or conceptualized, that globalization is a contested process is demonstrated through the spectrum of "anti-globalist" figures, which extend from the far left (the "Black Bloc") to the far right (Marine le Pen), and encompasses environmentalists, labor organizers, anarchists (David Graeber and John Zerzan fill several of these roles), indigenous rights activists, conspiracy theorists (Theodore Kaczinsky, David Icke), dissident economists (Joseph Stiglitz, Susan Strange), postmodern cultural critics and miscellaneous others. Noam Chomsky himself protests the nomenclature:

The dominant propaganda systems have appropriated the term "globalization" to refer to the specific version of international economic integration that they favor, which privileges the rights of investors and lenders, those of people being incidental. In accord with this usage, those who favor a different form of international integration, which privileges the rights of human beings, become "anti-globalist." This is simply vulgar propaganda. (Cited in Matejcic 2005, par. 6)

By way of illustration, Chomsky complains that the world press routinely describes the World Social Forum — a diverse, international group with global aims — as "anti-globalist," in apparent contrast with the (far less representative) participants in the annual World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland.

It is often observed that globalization has resulted in countervailing, atomistic forces of "glocalization," regionalism, subcultural identity and individualism. Globalized cultural products have aroused a reaction among nationalists of various stripes, their eagerness made "more keen when confronted with the media assault of Western music, videos and films that satellite television now beams around the world, and which threaten to obliterate local and traditional forms of cultural expression" (Juergensmeyer 2001, 66). Such modernizing leaders as...