Globalization and the Shift from Nation to Global Order

1. Chapter 18: From Nation to Global Order: David Held and Mary Kaldor • From the late 18th to the 19th centuries, nation-states emerged as the basic social unit of an international order • International law recognized the territorial sovereignty of states, their rights and laws • David Held believes that globalization signals the interconnectedness of societies or nation-states due to the intensity and extent of global relations since WWII • Global Economy: a new international order due to economic forms such as multinational corporations which account for the majority of world trade, foreign investment and a significant percentage of world output have greatly expanded a global economy • Global Politics: the development on Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) demonstrate the power and influence of global political groups • Global Culture: telecommunication networks give access to information and a variety of cultural forms (e.g., television, news, Internet), creating the global spread of cultural forms

2. Chapter 18: From Nation to Global Order: David Held and Mary Kaldor • Mary Kaldor suggests that a global democracy can be a meaningful social force in the world through the rise of global civic organizations • These organization, such as Amnesty International or Oxfam or Doctors without Borders, can increasingly hold national governments accountable to international legal principles • Thus they expand a global civic sphere through spreading human rights and social justice and limiting nation-states that violate minority rights, suppress dissidence and promote inequality

3. Chapter 19: Global Capitalism: Immanuel Wallerstein and Manuel Castells • Wallerstein pioneered “world-systems theory,” which argues that nation-states can only be understood as part of a network of other states and their economic processes • The capitalist world-economy is divided into 3 zones: 1. the core; 2. the periphery; and 3. the semiperiphery • Core societies are economically diverse, technologically advanced, involve high capital intensive economies of skilled, educated workers and are centers of manufacturing, commerce and finance • Core nations are rivals with one another to exploit peripheral states that are dependent on the core economically and otherwise

4. Chapter 19: Global Capitalism: Immanuel Wallerstein and Manuel Castells • Peripheral nations are economically specialized, labor intensive and technologically underdeveloped, and lack an elaborate financial, commercial and manufacturing base • Semiperiphery states share features of both core and periphery societies and serve as a buffer for the core nations • Wallerstein rips large the Marxian concept of surplus value, arguing that the core extract surplus value from the periphery and exercises social and political dominance in order to sustain economic exploitation • Like Marx, Wallerstein pins his hopes on economic cycles and trends to create the conditions for a world revolution. • He thinks world capitalism will produce global movements for a socialist world order

5. Chapter 19: Global Capitalism: Immanuel Wallerstein and Manuel Castells • Castells emphasizes global capitalism as creating conditions that undermine the power of nation-states to variable extents • Informational capitalism creates “network states” that are within the circuits of this informational economy • Network states emphasize a telecommunications infrastructure, knowledge acquisition, computerization and technological development • Network states are flexible and decentralized in organization and laborers who are “reprogrammable” become important • “Reprogrammable labor” means the continuing development of new skills in fast paced changing workplaces based in technology and innovation

6. Chapter 19: Global Capitalism: Immanuel Wallerstein and Manuel Castells • Informational capitalism benefits nations and regions where the state and capitalism are connected while also being flexible and decentralized; • The network state has benefited economies like those of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore as opposed to the US and Europe • Informational capitalism is shift away from mass production, scientific management, and big corporations which historically drove and continues to drive the economies of the US and Europe as opposed to those of Asia • Some states are left out of or marginalized from informational capitalism and these regions are called a “fourth world” or “the black hole of informational capitalism” • They are open to black market economies of trafficking in drugs, sex, women, immigrants and labor and these regions are plagued by violence, crime, genocide and tyranny

7. Chapter 20: The Return of Empire? Hardt and Negri, Harvey, Mann • In Empire (2000), Hardt and Negri argue that globalization can be seen as a new type of “sovereignty” or political and social order, which they call “empire” • In place of the old form of imperialism that used the threat of war and conquests, the global order is now based on the free flow of goods, people, money, and ideas across national borders. • Unlike global neoliberalism, they argue that the new global order is not driven only by economic forces but a new post-national network of many powers from nations to transnational corporations to media conglomerates, NGOs and organizations like the European Union and the World Bank • “Empire” is decentered and deterritorializing in their conception • It is based on managing hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies and plural exchanges through modulating networks of command • The distinct national colors of past imperial maps of the world have merged and blended in the new global order of “empire.”

8. Chapter 20: The Return of Empire? Hardt and Negri, Harvey, Mann • In The New Imperialism (2003), David Harvey underscores imperialism in the current period as involving a dual logic of political and economic dynamics • He emphasizes “flexible modes of capital accumulation” as key to both the political and economic dynamics of this new form of imperialism. • Harvey says that moving from a highly centralized, mass-production, factory-based economy to a post-Fordist one has meant decentralization, flexible production, enhanced worker autonomy, and a knowledge-driven economy • Michael Mann, in Incoherent Empire (2003),argues that since World War II, the United States has exercised economic hegemony across the industrial manufacturing, financial and telecommunication sectors of the world economy • However, the last two decades have witnessed the economic growth of Europe and Asia as increasingly economic equals to the US • With the growing trade deficit, international debt, and vast military expenditures, Mann’s theory anticipates the decline of America’s international economic dominance.