Globalization Again Considered

     I'm currently immersed in "The Globalization Reader"  (Edited by Frank J & Lechner and John Boli; Blackwell Publishing) which is turning out to be a very fruitful read. This on top of another book on globalization called "Implicating Empire: Globalization and Resistance in the 21st Century Order." (Edited by Stanley Aronowitz & Heather Gautney who also both contribute as authors).

    As might be gleamed from the titles these are two pretty different kind of books though the topic is the same-globalization. I find them pretty good companion reads. As one might guess, Implicating Empire is a much more confrontational, ethically pointed look at globalization, whereas The Globalization Reader is in overall effect at least, a little more dispassionate and removed you might say. I say in effect, as each of them are a collection of many different thinkers on the question of globalization.

   A major difference between the two is that in Implicating Empire all the authors are against globalization at least in the sense that it has been practiced until now: globalizing capital. There is some interesting points about the need for true globalization as opposed to the "fake globalization" that is global capital but put it this way: every author in the book is critical of global capital.

  In The Globalization Reader there is more of a mix and many of the individual works are more analytical than directly ethically polarizing. To be sure I find both types worth the read but I like to have both and so the two books were good companions. While the ethical is often defined as "how the world should be" and ethicists place it above the "how the world is" of ontology and empiricism, I must disagree with that. I care very much about accurate description. I want to know what before getting too embroiled in ought.

  Again, there are critical voices in The Globalization Reader as well, indeed there is a piece by E.J. Hobshawm who is only mentioned on one page in Implicating Empire. The mention though was very interesting, he claimed that anarchism throughout much of the last 160 years has provided the more insightful analysis of the tendencies of globalizing capital.

  The claim of Hobshawm's cited there is that by the early 20th century Marxism was mostly an establishment social democratic reformist party. Then after the rise of Stalnism, Maoism it is further discredited. Of course here we could easily get into a food fight between anarchists and Marxists.

  Some very fruitful ideas come in The Globalization Reader; I am only through about 20% but a few things stand out. One is that it is very illuminating to read chapter 6 "A Clash of Civilizations?" by Samuel P. Huntington with-and more to the point against chapter 10, "Realism and Complex Independence." by Rober O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye.

  Huntington's piece has of course become famous with it's very broadly brushed talk of a clash of civilizations and Keohane and Nye I believe provide an important corrective. One can't read Huntington's book without being taken back to the time and vapors of the neocons at the time who were urging us that Islamic fundamentalism was a threat that had replaced the (presumed) threat of the old Soviet Union. In other words, Huntington's book had a direct progaganda function that was,it must be admitted in retrospect, very successful.

  Keohane and Nye, of course, didn't achieve anywhere near the attention at least in the non-academic mass media but they are correct that the "realist" view which assumes that (pg 77) "states as coherent units are the dominant actors in world politics" is simplistic and one-dimensonial.

   The realists also believe that force is an effective instrument of policy(indeed for many the most by far). Finally, that "the high politics of military security dominates the low politics of economic and social affairs." As they show quite ably, this assumption is quite overdrawn and one-dimensional. Military security in fact is not always above economic and social affairs, and even in the area of military security, one can great overrate the use of force.

    Often in the dealings between two countries, say the U.S. and China there are many issues between them which are handled by different cabinet levels, institutions and bureaucracies. Even if the U.S. and China come to "brinkmanship" say over Taiwan, fact is that there are so many other important relationships between the two countries, and so many different bureaucracies involved that it's doubtful this would be allowed to start any kind of military crisis. Compared with military security, economic and social affairs are not vertically lower, or not always, overall they are more horizontal.

    One more important point for now. With all the talk of fundamentalism of the last 30 years, this loaded term usually infers Islamic fundamentalism. So the Clash of Civilizations is framed as Benjamin Barber's Jihad vs. McWorld. ( Starts on pg 29 Chapter 4)

   Yet it is easy to forget that the modern Islamic fundamentalist state is itself based on modernist logic and modernist political and social structures. All modern conservatism begins from modernist logic even in trying to refute it.

   Secondly, Islam is not as anti-Modern as conventionally assumed if we recall that Islam was until the Renaissance effectively the motor of what became modernity-Greek science and mathematics. Indeed while often we hear of Judeo-Christian civilization in some ways we could more accurately call it Islamic-Christian: what the two religions share that Judaism most certainly lacks is the proselytizing, missionary spirit. Arguably this missionary spirit has transfused what we now know as the modernizing spirit.