Globalization in International Relations:

Perspectives,

Myths and Contradictions

he decentering of ‘global capitalism’ in the 20th century

has produced a series of crisis for the globe at large.

While market has moved faster, in economic space, to social

space and ultimately to neo-liberal panopticism, the positivist

epistemology has failed to live up to empirical challenges.

Political dominance has been superseded by economic dominance of

the market, and the territorial space reserved for the

marginalized and subalterns, has been repudiated by the grand

logic of capital accumulation. Appropriated by the grammar of

knowledge, power, in deed, has assumed structural and textual

character. The ontological foundations of international theory

are repudiated by the logic of the ‘global’ against the earlier

statist foundational lineage. ‘Globe’, became the nucleus and

object of inquiry and anything, which constitutes ‘global’, in

economic, political and cultural sense, enhances our knowledge

of globalization and its praxis (Bartelson, 2000).

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The concept of globalization goes beyond the concept of

capitalist ideology; it is a consequence of modernity, a matter

of structure as well as a matter of agency. It is fast becoming

a “scapegoat for a wide-range of ecological, economical,

psychological, medical, political, social and cultural problems”

(Robertson and Khondker, 1998).

I

Cultural and Historical Perspectives of

Globalization:To Pierre Bourdieu, the concept of globalization has the

effect of submerging the effects of imperialism in cultural

ecumenism or economic fatalism, and of making transnational

relationship of power appears as a ‘neutral necessity’. To

Immanuel Wallerstein, globalization is a ‘misleading concept’.

Globalization has been initiated 500 years back, and not in

post-90’s termination of cold war; the long history of

antisystematic movements and their structure failures led to a

decline in the legitimacy of state structures and the spirit of

so-called Eurocentric modernity. The Modern World system seized

with this structural crisis caused a systematic bifurcation and

transition to a new structural disposition, which is mythical,

uncertain and undetermined, but nevertheless open to human

intervention and creativity (Wallerstein, 2000). While Anthony

Giddens (1990) locates a world market for capital, commodities,

labour and communications, fanning up race for nuclear arms and

sophisticated surveillance technologies, which are perfectly

global. Globalization invades local contexts, new forms of local

contexts of action, but does not destroy them (Giddens, 1996): on

the contrary, new forms of local cultural autonomy, the demand

for identity, and detraditionalization, and social reflexivity

are constituted into the environment of action, it narrates.

Beck carefully distinguishes between ‘Globality’, ‘Globalism’ and

Globalization. While globality implies the living together in a

world society, globalism is the panorama of world market, which

is powerful enough to supersede national or local political

action. To him ‘globalization’ is a blanket term to narrate the

process through which national states are supplanted by

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transnational actors, with varying prospects of power,

orientations, identity and networks. To Beck, industrial

modernism spells out an era of destructive legacy; the risks of

global ecological disaster, global warming, acid rain have

inflicted immense damage on both the rich and the poor;

ecological damage has both a local and global impact. The drive

for insatiable profit maximization has not only expanded the

trading relationships, but stretched outward ‘global

consciousness’ – permeated with the mission of extending

European Cultural Systems, justice, government and worship in

the embryonic network of international relations (Beck, 2000).

Lash and Urry see post-Fordist ‘disorganized capital’

characterizing globalization, replacing the Fordist ‘organized

capital’. Waters characterizes the globalization process as

social process in which territoriality would disappear as an

organizing principle of social and cultural life, without

borders or spatial boundaries. He asserts that the contemporary

globalization implies increasing speed and volume, shrinking

space and generalization of time. It operates on the basis of

messages, images and symbols, free from spatial constraints and

‘distanciated networks’ of interdependence, permeable borders

reflexivity, risk and trust. Globalization is impacting everyone

in the planet in such a way that it is hard to escape its

influence. As locals or cosmopolitans, selves are fractured in

various dimensions; local businesses increasingly participate in

globe markets displaying their imagination, artistry and craft;

governments operate globally to contain terrorism beyond

borders, aiding to participate in global markets; the

transnationalization of labour, the spreading of human rights,

greater measure of democratization and decentralization,

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managing environmental issues – all these demand a measure of

discursive reflexes and thinking globally (Waters, 1995).

Ronald Robertson argues that the contemporary globalization

implies a process of resurgence in regional, local and

nationalist pride. He stresses that contemporary globalization

as a phenomenon pre-dates modernity and the rise of capitalism;

contemporary globalization can be identified in five phases:

Phase-I (1400-1750) is the germinal phase of globalization with

the rise of Roman Catholic Church and the widespread adoption of

the Gregorian Calendar; the nation-states arose and the

crystallization of national communities was complete. Phase-II

(1750-1875) was marked by the rise of internationalism. Phase-

III (1875-1925) saw the invention in communicational advances

and increase in transportation and economic connections along

with the rise of culture and sporting linkages. Phase-IV (1925-

1969) witnessed the invention of atom, as well as the

establishment of United Nations and League of Nations, with

global networks. Phase-V (1969-92) saw the termination of the

cold war, landing on the moon and planetary exploration, the

emergence of global institutions and mass relation and worldwide

debates about human rights, race, sexuality, gender and

ethnicity. The sixth phase is the stage of global uncertainty

(Robertson, 1992). With the advent of new diseases, like AIDS,

the resurrection of old epidemics, like tuberculosis, small

poxes, global environmental hazards, the polluting effect of

media, increasing multi-culturalism and the growth of Islamic

fundamentalism and ethnic resurgence, global uncertainty has

immensely multiplied. However, across the world, globalization

as a concept has aroused consciousness of independence, it

refers both to the comparison of the world and the

intensification of the world as a whole. To him, globalization

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is driven by a two-way process, viz., the ‘universalization of

particularism’, and ‘the particularization of universalism’.

Global capital is linked to worldwide universalistic and

particularistic demands, integrating culture and economy in the

“tailoring of products to increasingly specialized regional,

societal, ethnic, class and gender markets – of so-called micro-

marketing”. Time-space compression implies that people are

living in a shrinking world of ‘reflexive inter-locutors’. The

Robertson model emphasizes that ‘cultural globalization, is

based on centralization and decentralization (Robertson, 1992).

The objective globalization is simultaneously, subjective

globalization, yielding newer identities in the face of

multiculturalism, diasporas and the post-colonial spaces.

Globalization “involves pressure on societies, civilization and

representatives of traditions, including both ‘hidden’ and

‘invented’ traditions to sift the global-cultural scene for

ideas and symbols considered to be relevant to their own

identities” (Robertson, 1992). The main danger is that there is

an emergent form of globe-wide “political correctness” – that

cultures and identities are being obliterated by homogenization

(Robertson and Khondker, 1998). Instead of obliteration

globalization inspires the promotion or ‘invention’ of

differences and variety. For David Held, contemporary cultural

globalization is the latent manifestation of a set of historical

processes. The pre-historic and historic migration of people,

the global spread of world religions, the influence of Western

States and modern nationalism, the transnational flows of

capitalism and incorporation of ideas like, science,

rationalism, feminism and the hegemony of English as a global

meta-language, the development of telegraph and cable

communications contributed to global transformations on a wider

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scale. To Held, globalization occurred at different periods –

the pre-modern, before 1500, when it was based on political and

military empires and the movement of peoples into uncultivated

areas; the early modern (1500-1800) was marked by the rise of

the west and the movement of Europeans into the Americas and

Oceania. Christianity and Judaism, both exerted their cultural

influences which were spread over global area. The next phase

was modern globalization (1850-1945), which inaugurated the

acceleration of global networks and cultural flows, dominated by

the Europeans, mainly British and the migration of Europeans to

other parts of the world. The industrial revolution set in rapid

systems of transit and communication, accelerated connections

with the help of telegraph, radio, railways and shipping over

large areas. Post-1945’s was the period of contemporary

globalization, which was marked by huge migration and population

movements, thereby degrading the environment. The emergence of

new nation-states, the global form of regulation and governance

made the situations asymmetric – being less dominated by USA and

Europe (Held, 1999); the distinction was no longer limited to

core-periphery syndrome; a new geography of power and privilege

helped to reconfigure established international and

transnational hierarchies of social power and wealth. The global

economy became more open, fluid and volatile, economies became

less protected and international markets reacted sharply to

changing political and economic signals. Finance and industrial

capital enjoy exit options from political communities, altering

the context of national labour markets. The deregulation of

capital, however, did not occur without the permission of the

state; States, far from declining, became central in initiating

new kinds of transnational collaboration – ranging from military

alliances to anti-terrorist coalition and advancement of human

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rights. Globalization did not spell the doomsday of the state,

or sovereignty was not in decline; it fundamentally assumed a

more activist state, stimulating range of government and

governance strategy (Held, 2000).

David Harvey traced the development of modernism as a

response to the crisis-experience after 1848 in the changed

relationship between time and space; the gradual growth of

globalisation; and the speeding up of capital circulation. He

asserted that internationalism and nationalism, globalism and

particularistic ethnocentrism, are always part of the historical

geography of modernism (Forte, 1998). I. Wallerstein, in identical

tones, also argued that the tensions between nationalism and

internationalism and between universality and particularity are

“a constant feature of the political and intellectual landscape

of capitalist development”. Harvey argued that market forces are

always at the heart of the problem. Indeed, the old

enlightenment certainty of “absolute space and place”, collapsed

in the face of insecurity of ‘relative space and place’, and in

which events in one place impacted on several others. The

invention of new technologies of communication, transportation,

new system of credit and corporate organization and investment,

the advances in science like, X-ray, the imperial conquest and

reterritorialization, all these helped to shrink space, and

brought about a superficial homogeneity grafted on underlying

diversity. Artists abandoned homogeneous space and linear

perspectives and a radically different perspective emerged on

the scene. Since money and commodities are themselves the

primary bearers of cultural codes, “it follows logically that

cultural forms are deeply embedded in the daily reproduction

process of capital”. The improved system of communication and

information flow, coupled with rationalization in the techniques

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of distribution made possible the circulation of commodities

through the market system in faster speed (Harvey, 1989).

Jean Baudrillard attempted to locate the linkages between

globalization and post-modernism. To him, consumption has

important role to play in defining people’s identities and

consciousness, because the style of consumption has superseded

the old class-consciousness. He stressed on a compelling theory

of commodity culture in which the world is constructed out of

Simulacra, which have no foundation in any reality except their

own. A ‘media-generated hyper-reality’ has resulted in a

“decomposition of cultural meanings”. Image, television and

Disney Land, all these encapsulate false, idealized reality and

project a bunch of hyper-reality, within a framework of signs

and symbolism. A multiplicity of constantly shifting cultural

codes coalesces, and there is no fixed meta-code, which could

explode the mythical illusions. Globalization has introduced a

new sense of place and culture and “the global territories are

venues for social, political, economic and cultural

‘creolization’”…the concrete reality gradually being repudiated

by tangible, imaginary flow of networks of informational

circulation. It is opening up ‘neo-worlds’ and ‘techno regions’,

and ‘cyberspace’. They are “simulations of territory, models for

behaviour, circuit of operationalization that frame thought and

action globally” (Baudrillard, 1988). The use of new

communicational technologies in international financial

transactions created a hyperspace of fast capitalism as the

global flow of capital, energy, goods and people and create a

blend of images, simulations and symbols. Essentially post-

historical in character, it develops new agendas, interests and

values beyond, behind and beneath the nations-state.

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Arjun Appadurai emphasizes that cultural globalization does

not imply that “the world is culturally homogeneous – indeed, it

is still hugely unsettled with complex movement of peoples,

ideas, images, finance, technology, labour and culture”, since

all these operate globally. He locates five flows –

‘ethnoscapes’, ‘technoscapes’, ‘financescapes’, ‘mediascapes’

and ‘ideoscapes’ and a six one ‘sacriscapes’ (Appadurai, 1990).

Ethnoscapes refer to the movement of people, whether immigrants,

refugees, tourists or job seekers. The unprecedented movement of

people all over the globe, for jobs or survival, has created a

chaotic situation. The ideas, goods and culture also move

simultaneously and the holistic concepts of citizenship,

nationhood, criteria of representations are being disrupted

constantly. Technoscapes imply the movement of messages and

ideas through Internet, press, and TV. Geographical boundaries

and the political space of the nation state are being constantly

questioned by complex relationships arising from money flows,

political possibility and the availability of high-skilled cheap

labour. Financescapes denotes the sheer scale of currency

transfer and the huge volume of capital flows. The global grid

of capital transfer has led to insignificance the GNP of a

country. Currency rackets, stock exchanges, commodity

speculators and worldwide banking system, through the internet

and MasterCard/Visa card, have generated the highest rate of

return along with the transfer of fiscal crime and illegal money

laundering and transfer. Medicascapes, to Appadurai, means that

there are ‘image-centred narrative-based accounts of strips and

bits of reality’, interconnected repertories of prints,

celluloid and electronic screens. While global media can enhance

the horizons of hope, transparent and emancipatory, helping to

generate a healthy spirit of progressive thinking and promote

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the subaltern voice to the global stage, it can only inflict

immense damage in the form of message and symbols, associated

with particular religion or cliches, or a motivated campaign by

transnational or multinational corporations, or the slogans of

terrorism, cybercrimes and disrupt the healthy global

transformation. Corollary to mediascapes, is ideoscapes – which

are filled up with big ideas, ideologies and counter-ideologies.

Ideoscapes may be composed of rational and scientific ethos,

equality of opportunity, democracy, freedom, human rights,

secularism, welfare state, sovereignty and patriotism. To

Appadurai, since capital, labour, finance, technology and

cultural artifacts operate globally, there are also elements of

disjuncture and differences. The global media may seek to blur

the distinction between ‘fictional’ world and realistic world.

We just do not live in ‘imagined communities’, we live in an

imagined world also. The enticing forms of global ‘imagined

industry’ may subvert the imagined worlds of the official mind.

The television, media may foster a hypothesized frame of mind,

which is dissociated from a real prism of possible lives.

Appadurai describes this de-territorialization as ‘money,

commodities and persons ceaselessly chasing each other around

the world (Appadurai, 1990). Transnational Diasporas are

generating hybridized cultures and identities, and globalization

has generated ethnic pluralism. Ethnicity no longer resides in

the local community, but is spread in variant forms: ethnic

fashion, cuisine, ethnic music and holidays. There is an

increasing tendency of indigenization, and rejection of Western

and European modernity. The future global culture would appear

as culturally more diverse, than the past; objects and images

are cleansed of their meaning and references, and is subject to

retranslation and interpretation. However, this short of

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cultural hybridization would not necessarily weaken the existing

relations of power or challenge western cultural hegemony. As

Margaret Archer saw this, “cultural disintegration”, and

reintegration, operates both at the state and international

levels. From the perspective of cultural hybridization, a

dialectical relationship exists between local and global, out of

which may born ‘a new global melange’, reauthenticating local

identities in a global context. Cultural synchronization may, in

reality, produce increased variety of cultural experience.

Hannerz, however, rebutted the position of so-called cultural

homogenization, by saying that openness to foreign cultural

influences need not result in a impoverishment of local and

national culture.

Centuries of South-North cultural osmosis have produced

inter-continental crossover culture. This is ‘creolisation’ of

global culture – a mixture of Caribbean and North American,

African and European. It is pitted against nineteenth-century

racism and the accompanying denigration of mestissage as

miscegenation. Creolisation implies a Caribbean window on the

world. The ‘creolisation’, mestizaje, orientalization – exposes

different windows on the global melange (Pieterse, 1994). To Ulf

Hannerz, cultural forms assume a hybridized, syncretic, mixed

and creolized forms, because the elements are drawn from wide

variety of sources. Global cultural perceptions are born out of

territorial views. The shifting remains of globalization as

homogenization to globalization as diversification unleashes

nostalgia politics and mobilization drives. The tide of

globalization reduces manipulation by nation state, while

international institutions, transnational transactions, regional

cooperation, sub-national primordialism flourish, impacting on

the global power and economic relations. We are released from

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pent up reflections and engagement of the boundaries of nation

state, community, ethnicity or class, to as post-modernist

dichotomy, which marks a rupture with the past vocabulary. The

growth of civil society, and the dynamics of international

political economy “represent an ongoing project of civil society

to reconstruct, reimagine, or remap global polity” (Lipschutz,

1992). The double standards and the texture of contexts,

prevalent in global politics, demand a radical shift – from

imperialism to globalization (Tomlinson, 1991). While the idea of

globalization is much broader, inequality and domination have

been more pervasive, more heterogeneous and less orchestrated.

Globalization, in its search for space, has altered the general

capacity of the state, in allocating ‘public goods’; it poses a

challenge to the present day concerns as “collective choice,

citizenship, national security, freedom, and the indissoluble

concept of ethical justice”, both within the nation state as

well as outside (Cerny, Philip, 1995).

II

Neo-Liberal Economic Globalization: Reality or

Myth? Why it is that Globalization and New World order became so

significant in the post 90’s? If it is true that the global

capitalism already existed from 500 years back, and globalized

structures existed at all levels – national, regional and

international, where is the point of disjuncture, of the self-

regulating market and nationally-regulated capitalism and Neo-

liberal Economic Globalization? The capitalist expansion –

starting from early colonial conquest led by mercantile

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capitalists, trading companies and slave merchants from 15th to

18th century was the earlier antecedents of globalization;

protectionism and national industry in the later part of 18th

century to the mid-19th century, led to decline of global flows.

The nationalist movements in Latin America, led by the

indigenous export elites (mine owners, land owners and

merchants), and the colonial imperial basket produced by the

imperial British rule, deepened the process of globalization.

However, the onset of first world war and the 1930’s economic

crisis – led to profound collapse in the liberal-economic

structures – unemployment, fascism, resurgent nationalism, etc.

(Petras, 1999). Similar to the global economy of the 1930’s, the

contemporary globalization witnessed points of disjuncture, with

the collapse of Bretton Woods System, and the oil crisis of

1973. World economic growth fell to 2.5%, profit rates in the

seven rich industrialized countries fell from 17% in 1965, to

11% in 1980; in manufacturing, it fell from 25% to 12%.

Globalization, in its neo-liberal sense implies “the spatial

reorganization of production, the interpenetration of industries

across borders, the spread of financial markets, the diffusion

of consumer goods to distant countries, massive transfer of

population within the South as well as from the South and the

East to the West, conflicts between migrants and indigenous

community, and an emerging worldwide preference for democracy”

(Mittleman, 1997). It is a “coalescence of varied transnational

processes and domestic structures, allowing the economy,

politics, culture and ideology of one country to penetrate

another” (Mittleman, 1997). The uniqueness of contemporary

globalization, in contrast to its past, lies in the fact that it

is “embedded in market-induced environment, and not a policy-

oriented process”. At the core of the strategy is the ethos of

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reducing wage in real terms, maximization of profits, reduction

of labour costs, transformation of the structures of

cooperatives by inducing marketable strategies, to function in a

competitive global economy, and certain of a new system of

governance. The earlier international division of labour was

dependent on a set of relationships, associated with an exchange

of goods, produced by nation states. The post 1960’s altered the

international division of labour and crafted a new pattern in

the form of export processing of manufactured goods; the big

multinationals pushed the goods along with the core

industrialized sector. BY 1970’s, the semi-periphery grew at a

faster rate than the core. Although in 60’s and 70’s, production

was labour-intensive manufactured goods for world markets. The

new techniques instrumentalized their cheap labour, and

repressive social control into rapid economic growth of NIE’s.

Foreign and direct investment multiplied and the development of

global capital markets led to globalization of finance

(Mittelman, 1997). The emerging global market for labour and

production implied huge industrial shift, the fragmentation of

manufacturing processes into multiple sectors, scientific and

technological innovations, large-scale population movements and

recruitment of women workers. An intervention of female

employment was made to squeeze the work potentiality – by

offering them low wages, over work, and restricting

possibilities for promotion. To offset the waves of competition

and indulge in huge accumulation of surplus, the restructuring

of division of labour was a impelling necessity. Capital itself

evolved its own institutionalization strategy, necessitated by

changed conditions; the multinational corporations did not do

it. It restructured the classical division of labour “between

hewers of Wood and drawers of water” – the periphery and core.

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Big firms created vast network of alliances, short and long

financial deals. But the locus of ultimate power and control

remained concentrated within the largest institutions. Harrison

described the emerging paradigm as follows: First, corporations

pursued lean production policies by downsizing in-house

operations. Second, they used computerized management and

information system, developing strategic alliances among

themselves, and across the freshers. Finally, managers attempted

to elicit active collaboration of their more expertise to

replace workers in the mission of the corporation, through

various kinds of worker’s participation (Costello, 1994). The

restructuring itself was injurious: on the one hand, it

polarized the population, and contributed to growing inequality;

on the other, the interests of the small farmers were invariably

cornered. While the corporate agenda was legitimized by

monetarism, deregulation, laissez-fare, neo-liberalism and

supply-side economies, the result was high unemployment, cutting

down of wages and public services, and the freezing of trade

union rights. The global decentralization and fragmentation in

the new global economy redefined the accumulation of capital in

relation to the nation-state. National bourgeoisies

metamorphosed into local (national) contingents of an emergent

transnational bourgeoisie. With trans-nationalization, the logic

of local and global accumulation converged. The earlier

rivalries of national capitalism were replaced by conflicts and

rivalries among oligopolist clusters in a transnational

environment. The transnationalization of production and capital

ownership are created trans-nationalized bourgeoisie that was at

the apex of the global order (Burboch and Robinson, 1999).

Internationalization and the Third World:

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The onset of capitalist relations of production and

increase in the inter-dependence of the world economic system,

led to deterioration in the third world, and a striking

transformation in the flow of trade, investment, capital and

finance. The third world countries might have rid themselves out

of closed, static predicament, in which they were plunged, but

the impact of globalization has not been consistent. According

to the WDR, 1991, China with 40% of the regions population had a

per capita growth rate of 5.7% between 65-84%, while India had

1.81% and Pakistan had 2.5% during that period. Latin America’s

share of world exports fell from 12.4% in 1950 to 5.5% in 1980,

and 3.9% in 1990's. For Asia, it was 13.1% in 1950, rose to

17.8% in 1980 and got stable in 1990, with 14%. Africa, of

course, was the hardest hit countries, in 1950, it was 5.2%, in

1980, it was 4.7%, in 1990’s, it was only 1.4% (WDR, 1991). The

expansion of global trade led to Tran nationalization, in a

meaningful sense; it expanded capital flows, but restricted

trade, on account of trade blocs, protectionism and economic

regulation. The Tran snationalization process was overtly based

in favour of industrialized countries. Total world merchandized

trade surged from about 23% in 1960, to 39% in 1999. By 1996,

the global FDI stock was valued at $3.2 trillion; by 1995, some

280,000 …of transnational corporations produced goods and

services estimated at $7 trillion, which represents some 25% of

the total output; in 1997, the world output was $24 trillion

(Asian Development Outlook, 2001). As earlier in the era of

national capital, the bulk of FDI outflows, about 85% continued

to originate from the core or developed countries of the world,

while 90% of them came from European Union, Japan and the United

States. However, the trend towards concentration was more

pronounced in the 1970’s and early 1980’s. The particular

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spatial pattern, indeed, was a natural outcome of a key aspect

of globalization; the transition from inter-nationalization to

the transnationalization of capital. The global mobility of

capital allowed vast integration of production and distribution,

the instantaneous movement of values, and an extensive degree of

centralization and concentration of worldwide economic

management and control by the transnational capital. The shift

of FDI to non-core countries was a gradual outcome of the

alternative atmosphere created in the developing countries in

the post-cold war period. The dismantling of the Soviet Union,

the structural Adjustment Programmes dictated by World Bank, IMF

and international agencies, the growing courtship of People’s

Republic of China with international investors, contributed to

the shift in the new perspective of globalized economic

transformation. The process of trans-nationalized class

formation and the emergence of a national bourgeoisie, sensitive

and responsive to global accumulation, abetted this tendency. A

revealing example was the role of third world companies, joining

the rank of 100 transnational corporations. The top 50

transnational corporations of the third world increased their

foreign assets by 280% between 1993 and 1995, while those of the

top 100 corporations based in the core countries increased by

only 30% (Daewoo of South Korea and Petroleos de Venezuela

joined the ranks of top 100 corporations) [Burboch, 1999]. This

increase in international transaction in world markets is

mirrored through the huge global trading in foreign countries.

Although the 1995 Mexican crisis, and East Asian financial

crisis, 1997 shifted much of the capital out of the region, it

did not go bankrupt; instead it aided in restructuring of many

of the region’s major corporations; the national bourgeoisie was

also thrown open to transnational corporations in other parts of

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the world. The transnational finance capital constituted the

hegemonic fraction on a global scale and played a significant

role in the globalization process. The recent Asian experience,

however, proved that globalization also could be a source of

macro-economic volatility, reducing economic welfare. As markets

become more globalized, economics started to be sensitive to

contagious spillovers from national, regional and international

financial shocks. Evidence is, prior to the financial crisis in

July 1997, capital inflows into Korea, Indonesia, Thailand and

Philippines totaled $86.8 billion; in the subsequent six

quarters, there was an outflow of $77.4 billion (FEER, 2000).

The change in the accumulation and circulation mechanism

is tied to alternative models of changes, in the structures of

production, labour markets, political conditions and nature of

domestic business. In the midst of crisis accentuation, wages

were undermined, a large-scale retrenchment of labour occurred,

the allocative efficiency of economy declined, and there was a

decline in the provision of welfare services. The privatization

of entrepreneur took off many of the urgently required services

like healthcare, access to drinking water, maintenance of

environment, road, transport and basic infrastructural services.

Global economies started showing new variations, specialization

and asymmetries that cut across nations and regions (Heidrich,

2001). Global capitalism is organized in a set of institutional

framework – the transnational corporations, institutional

financial agencies, the states of the North, and their junior

counterparts in the South, and the formal/informal transnational

elite forums, such as G-8, the Trilateral Commission, and World

Economic Forum, which are developing strategies for the

maintenance and reproduction of the system. The decline of US

hegemony and the creation of supranational structures as

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hegemonic forces led both to stringent economic regulations, as

well as political centralization. While the proponents of

globalization acclaim that it is a shift from “statism to

pluralism”, the actuality is that the transnational capital

wielded exclusive structural power over popular classes

worldwide thereby legitimizing poverty, and marginalizing the

subordinate classes (Hirst and Thomson, 1997). The resistance of

popular classes by building up platforms through dissemination

of transnational movements or ideologies against the role of

capital is not phenomenal, because the national bourgeoisie,

posing as transnational hegemonies, still controls most of the

financial resources. The paradox is, most of the populist

movements – like Feminist movement, worker’s group,

Environmentalists or indigenous groups – are themselves embedded

in specific class strata, and power relations, situated within a

given context (Mittelman, 1994).

Francis Fukuyama’s sweeping contention that there is an end of

history – with the collapse of socialist economies, stands

challenged today in the context of techno financial system of

global integration. The neo-liberal mindset failed to conquer

the minds of most of the people of the globe – which identified

contradictions in economic globalization. The resurgence of

ethnic and sectarian movements, the new spate of local wars, and

an emergence of new ‘class-consciousness’ – go against the

integrative framework of globalization. The gradual emergence of

social democratic forces, both from the right and the left, is

challenging globalization, from below and from bottom up.

Homogenization of world culture, communities and consumer

preference, is subordinated to the diverse types of human

societies and their structural formations. Most important part

of the emerging chaos and uncertainty is that even human values

19

of freedom and democracy are being challenged in all quarters –

from East Timorese independence to gender rights, and minimum

educational rights of the children, and dismantling of social

security schemes in developed as well as developing countries.

West or neo-liberal hegemonies today are confronted not just

with communism – but wider spectrum of turbulence, such as

militarism, national chauvinism, ethnic convulsions, religious

fundamentalism and terrorism. The class-based identities and

movements are creating a new type of instability and disorder,

rather than an integrated global order, which could merge these

convulsions, but nevertheless maintain the semblance of

diversity. We are moving towards a contradictory global order –

separated not just by domains of competence and authority, but

by domains of consciousness – between a neo-liberal democratic

economy and a backward, violence-prone, terrorist-infested

nations, ravaged by illegal immigration flows, trafficking in

drugs, and poor economy. The human tragedies involved in

implementing neo-liberal globalized market-oriented order may

far exceed its benefits accruing in terms of speedy capital

flows, and investment, technological transfer and resource

distribution. At political level, instead of cultivation of

human rights and democracy or cultural freedom – the limits of

individual rights by economically oriented market regimes may be

far-reaching. At socio-cultural level, globalization may

engender hybridism of culture, intermeshing within itself, and

often negating the basic standards of ethical and moral life.

Globalization, in its present form may be more repressive and

counter productive (Cox, 1992).

20

III

Contradictions and Dilemmas of Globalization: While globalization and its discontents are apparent in

the spheres of economic and social life, as an ideology it

failed to counter the centrifugal tendencies, germinating within

the world society at large. Globalism and globalization are

products of specific historical circumstances of twentieth

century, and a revolt against unilinearism, and a critical

engagement with globalization process (Pie terse, 2001). But it

raises some fundamental questions about the stability of the

existing political structures and fragmentation of societies.

After all, it is obvious that the assumed superiority of the

West is declining with the emergence of new communicational

technologies; the Euro centric modernity has been substituted

and replaced by various cultural resurgence; the East Asia and

NIC’s despite its weaknesses, were strong ‘Tiger’ economics and

events in Eastern Europe had stimulating effects on Western

society in particular. The political and economic developments

also underwent a rapid change; the tendency of interdependence

through global trading and capital markets was more than

apparent; a high degree of convergence of the traditional and

modern economy was already evident. But contemporary

globalization is different from the earlier global capitalism,

in the sense “it is not reducible to a single, causal process,

but involves a complex configuration of causal logics”.

Globalization, itself, is embedded in deep-seated

contradictions, having different goals, objectives, ideas and

waves associated with it.

21

Firstly, globalization is still an incomplete process: the

post-Fordist impact on the society is severe, due to multiple

varieties of firms and production techniques. Social

polarization is rampant, both within and among the countries

(Cox, 1997 in Mittelman ed.). On one side, people who are

integrated in the global economy are highly talented people, or

managers, while relatively privileged workers in industrialized

countries are settled in reasonably stable jobs. The second

groups are mostly floating workers – an expanding category of

vast reservoir, which serves the global economic news, as a

result of ‘restructuring’ of production by post-fordism (Cox,

1997). In the third hierarchy, exists the ‘superfluous labour –

who are excluded from the global economy. Indeed, it is a pity

that a tiny segment of poor population of the developing world

is integrated with the global economy. The Peso crisis in Mexico

threw millions of poor Mexicans into awful state, but it saved

the necks of the Mexican bourgeoisie or their counterparts in

the United States and elsewhere (Burboch and Robinson, 1999).

Another visible contradiction in the globalization process

is the tendencies of fragmentation of civil society.

Fragmentation occurs at different levels – both at the level of

social forces, at the level of political leadership, and at the

economic strata. The wave of economic affluence created a group

of noveaux rich – who were alienated from the people at large.

Politicians were projected as corrupt, incompetent and serving

their own interests (Mittelman, 1997). People caught in a

democratic discourse, challenged and questioned their leaders

because they are incapable of resolving social and economic

needs. They resisted the state, because this ‘neo-class of

politicians’ is the agents of the state, and if the harmful

effect of neo-globalization persists, these agents exploit and

22

capitalize the situation. In developing countries. The recurrent

draught, famine, power failure or road/bridge construction,

demand the attention of the state, which is represented by this

section of contract bourgeoisie (Cox, 1997). People find that

these politicians indulge in widespread level of corruption,

nepotism and creating popular illusions, instead of solving the

problems at hand or finding a framework of remedying for the

ills. Communalisms, religious fundamentalism, exploitation of

Dalits or majority syndrome over minority are recurrent roots of

social decomposition of these societies. And as the idea of

globalization and swift money spread over countries and

villages, politicians invariably exploit these contradictions,

or officials engaged in disbursement of funds or managing the

disasters or in electoral process – at the local level.

Thirdly, the impact of economic globalization on the

exclusive territoriality of modern states needs to be viewed

seriously because it is states and intergovernmental

organizations, which play the most significant role in the

process of global transformation. The contemporary state is not

a ‘strategic state’ or a ‘developmental state’. It is a

‘competition state’, which has transformed itself in the search

for competitiveness in an increasingly interpenetrated world.

The ‘commodity state’ has developed into an enterprise

association, with key civic, public and constitutional functions

being subordinated to the global market place. The globalization

of finances has divorced finance capital from the state.

Political control, stabilization, regulation and promotion and

facilitation of economic activity have become increasingly

fragmented, with subaltern forms of resistance, new “circuit of

power” emerging to contradict the autonomy and dominance of the

state. Saskia Sassen calls this process as “incipient

23

denationalization of sovereignty – the partial detachment of

sovereignty from the national state”. In an era of economic

globalization, global cities are strategic sites for the

production of these specialized functions to run and coordinate

the global economy. While globalization may leave national

territory unaltered, it has substantial impact on the exclusive

territory of the national state (Sassen: 2000). What is

significant in this context is to identify how far it tends to

establish homogeneous global economic order. Privatization and

deregulation, obviously, are important, because this helps in

interweaving the domestic economy with the global economy. This

is where the state’s arbitration and resistance to economic

pressures are relevant – adjusting terms of regulation and

intervention downward, so as not to be outwitted in competition

maneuvering, vis-à-vis states which have relaxed regulations –

in regard to mobile or transnational capital or foot-loose

corporate capital. The role of the state, in this new context of

global economy is one of crucial importance; the issue is, as

Ruggie pointed out, is not whether such transnational actors and

institutions would substitute for national states, but rather

major changes in the system of states: “global markets and Trans

nationalized corporate structures…are not in the business of

replacing states”. It is true that the imprint of global capital

on both nation state and exclusive territoriality is

considerable (Sassen, 2000). Deregulation implies not simply a

loosening of control by the state, but serves as an important

mechanism to negotiate the juxtaposition of the inter-state

consensus to pursue globalization, so that the guarantee of

property rights and contracts are effectively enforced. It is

difficult to conceive of the expansion of multinational banks

and organizations without the intervention of the state.

24

Globalization is based on the steel framework of nation state;

“the architecture of which is built on the edifice of the state

in eliminating the constraints on the welfare state. Indeed, the

scope and degree of nation-state’s intervention is such that one

author referred to as the ‘New Statism’ rather than the free

market. Making capital a ‘social capital, by its formal

subordination to the new organization of state’, power and the

decentralization of authority to the constituent committees of

production, consumption and environmental protection, there is

an effort to make capital ‘socially productive’ and the benefits

socialized by a process of redistribution and retribution.

In the context of the overall debate that that nation

state is declining pr sovereignty is in question, it is relevant

to ask whether the global economy is beyond control and

redemption and the national level processes are subordinated by

globalized structure. Is it a meta-narrative of ostracization

rather than progress? If it is, is progress under globalization

a delusion or myth?

Globalization, in true sense, is yet to widen its tentacle

since it is determined by competitive pressures (Hirst and

Thompson, 1997). The world around is already at odds with the

multiplicity of forms, and textures engendered at various

contexts. When peasants revolt against leaders in Mexico (Chiapo

rebellion), environmentalist wage a protest against

developmental myths, as was witnessed in Narmada Bachao Andolon,

workers go against employers – the community as a whole become

prey to neo-liberal globalization, of while the refugees in

Bhutan or Sub-Saharan Africa head to fertile places for

survival, jobs or settlement (McMichael, 1996) – it becomes clear

that the myth cannot be sustained for long. The fledging market

economies encounter simultaneous resistance from entrenched

25

strata and as well as large bulk of middle classes, who are

sidelined in the process of globalization. The state, being an

active and dynamics behind the movement of transnational

capital, is forced to adopt policies to adjust and downsize its

infrastructural services or allocation of public goods.

Globalization, obviously, has a self-propelling, unruly

character. It locates those anonymous forces and places,

operating in the “muddy and slushy hinterlands of the periphery

– beyond anybody’s design or capacity – to use Anthony Gidden’s

phase – ‘a manufactured jungle’ – having formidable power of

obstinacy”. The state is an agent claiming the legitimate right

to claim its autonomy, binding the affairs within a fixed

territory, while ‘globe’ is the theatre of inter-state politics.

Amidst the situation the new sovereign state must maintain a

dynamic equilibrium or perish – approximate equality between the

rhythms of the growth of consumption and the elevation of

productivity”. With its “material basis questioned, the

sovereignty and independence annulled, its ruling class effaced,

the nation state becomes the ‘simple security service’, for the

mega-companies” (Bawman, Z. 1998). The new masters do not govern

directly; they rule by the thumb of the capital. Politics in

such a situation stands disemboweled – as an effective agency,

except negotiating the shift in the distribution of social

power. The weak, quasi-states are reduced to the role of

protecting the modicum of order, required for the conduct of

business, but are not potential threats or brakes on the global

companies’ freedom (ibid. 1998).

Finally, globalization is not simply the result of

technological or information revolution. Indeed, technology does

not determine the location of investment, research or role of

the state. Here, there is some dubiousness. Politics commands

26

technology and it guides and directs the flow of capital. The

argument that world market determines the dynamics of

globalization is seriously flawed; it is the result of the

superior politico-military organizations of social classes

linked to global markets (Petras & Polychroniou, 1997). The market

is an ‘encoded version of capitalism, linked to multinational

corporations and international banks’. A powerful class of

exporters, industrialists and bankers dictates the globalization

of production and exchange in the world market. The power of

capital in subverting the basis of popular power and convert the

state into an instrument of ‘commodity transaction’ is the

possible dynamics behind globalization. Globalization, itself,

is the product of capitalist forces stealing a march over

working classes, peasantry and small businesses by enforcing

anti-welfarist politics and reinforcing hegemonism of the

market. Its pluriform is not the reflection of myriad social

forces, but is the result of underlying homogeneity and

centralization. The imperial state was the dynamics behind the

reconstructed corporate economies, providing a military

political cell (Chomsky, 1999). Multinational capital, in this

sense, is not antistatist but very much state-oriented, but one,

which subverts the modicum of welfarist state. Structural

adjustment, privatization and liberalization increase the

possibility of upward flow of income, for consumption and

repatriating back again to multinational and the domestic elites

of the higher strata. With the eclipse of trade union and

working class movements, capital is getting upper hand. Since

the state becomes the agent of structural transformation,

intervention by the state is stretched to regulation of civil

society and establish rule of discipline and order,

characterizing the Neo-liberal statism (Gill, Stephen 1995): in

27

such an ‘empowered state’, multinational and foreign companies

soak up local resources, regulates and redirects the marketable

produce; at fiscal policy level, increase in taxes over the

wage/salary earners becomes heavy, and social cuts of subsidies

injure the poor in domestic economies. The process does not end

here. Unemployment, poverty, inequality, starvation, ecological

damage continue unabated, because of pillage of natural

resources, drive of cheap labour – all for the sake of

accumulation of capital, not for the sake of nations, but for

corporations and private bankers (Kothari, 1997).

Globalization, as it is understood today, is really a

painful and agonizing process; whether in implementation of

NAFTA, or IMF’s strategic failures in East Asian debacle of

1997, engulfing Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, the result of

neo-liberal reforms, both within the state and outside the state

structure, had been devastating. It led to stagnation, and

protest movements and limited the rights of citizen by

regulation and political control. Globalization made national

economic management far more difficult to balance and

redistribute ‘public allocation of goods; but it is yet to

create a global economy. The neo-colonial pattern of centre-

periphery dependence, and of great problem, were heightened, but

without assumption of responsibility by the rich countries for

the fate of the poor (Galbraith, 2002). Even IMF was concerned of

its policy suggestions of financial liberalization, asserting,

“liberalization may result in destabilizing and inefficient

capital market speculation”.

The dilemmas of protecting democratic norms and

accountability are, perhaps, the biggest causality of the

process of globalization, in its present form (Dovetak and

Higgott, 1999). Democracy centres on the principles of equality,

28

pluralism and populism in the sense of having public influence

on government. Parties, institutions, elections are forms of

dissent and challenge the discourse from bottom to the top.

Social movement is not only a brake on differences; it helps and

merges social consensus. Indeed, the ultimate test of

democratization lies in conscious and enlightened public

opinion. In a neo-liberal globalization, since the territorial

state becomes subordinated to so-called internationalization, it

responds more to market forces. On one side, there is choice for

free democracy, participatory action and struggle for human

rights and against terrorism as individually-sponsored

aggressive violence; on the other, the increasing economic

polarization generates contradiction between the upper classes

and subordinate classes. While the state protects the interests

of the big capital, the workers are deprived in the waves of

economic restructuring and global tumbling of capital market. As

a result of this ‘great transformation’, money along with nature

and labour is converted into commodities and capital – to use

Karl Polyani’s phrase as ‘disembedding from social bonds and

local commitments’. The new democracies of Europe, or Asia are

afflicted by ailments – of corruption, lack of intra-party

democracy of the elites, failure of coalition governments to

restore civil rights, or protect environment against the

onslaught of the forest pillagers. Globalization and the

technological changes by remolding state welfaristic policies

have chilled democratic process even in rich countries, where a

kinder welfare policies are being substituted by the logic of

unfettered greed (Piven, 2001).

29

IV

Frontiers of Research:The social and political frontiers concerning the new

global order has been extensive enough because the given world

orders is subject to simultaneous interpenetration by social,

cultural and economical realms. A mere reference to abstract

structuralism, or location of the global economic disturbances

may prove to be unproductive both in theoretical and in critical

terms. What, indeed, is globalization? Is it

‘Supraterritoriality’, ‘internationalization’, ‘new capitalism’,

‘cultural hybridization’ or an ‘economic miracle’? A clear and

systematic conceptualization is yet to emerge among the

scholarly circles, because there is no academic consensus in

defining the term. History, and the transformational processes

are always in the making in social theory amidst the

“dialectical interplay of agency, structure, consciousness and

action”. The way a given process is constituted and the

knowledge of the same develops provides the real determinant or

establish the interlinkages between different analytical levels

– economic, political and socio-cultural. Each of these levels

cannot be abstracted without understanding the other. In

deciphering the contemporary issues situated in a range of

contexts, the discourse of globalization should evolve a

consistent and systematic theoretical and practical framework;

otherwise, there is potential danger in such a discourse:

a) It should respond to ontological and epistemological

issues in resurrecting the past, present and future;

30

b) An integrated consensus needs to emerge to promote and

sharpen conceptual and methodological techniques;

c) An identification of agent-structure, subject-object,

political and economic, local-national-global, theory-

practice, public-private dichotomies should precede any

analysis and problematized;

d) The earlier hypotheses regarding state-civil society,

political community, separation of historical-

political, political-economic should be abandoned in

the context of growing heterogeneity and pluriformatism

in the knowledge-structure;

e) A discourse should be linked to addressing the related

ethical questions, and not abandoning it in approaching

global problems. The existing structure of politics and

institutionalization should be studied in their social

and historical contexts;

f) A clear conceptualization of a post-hegemonic research

agenda requires systematic perspective – which is based

on both historical process and structures of state and

civil society, which is in the making and unpacking the

prejudiced part of social and economic analysis, which

are redundant and irrelevant.

31

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