Department of Sociology

Module Handbook Autumn Term 2012

Third Year

L4042
Globalisation 1: History, Theories, Culture


global a. world-wide; pertaining to or embracing
the whole of a group of items etc; total; hence ~ly
adv.

Convenor: Luke Martell

e-mail [email protected]
 01273 (67)8729
Friston 261

2012-13

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Globalization 1: History, Theories, Culture
Autumn 2012

Aims and Objectives

We live in a fast-moving world where companies and trade are often international and
money can be globally mobile in an instant. Media images and cultural products are
transported internationally and tourism and migration are important parts of everyday social
experience. Politics is often carried out at supranational levels, whether through
international organisations or global social movements. Processes such as these make
distance over space less important and interdependency across the globe affects all
societies. They raise questions to do with cultural identity, power, inequality and conflict.
The two globalisation modules in the sociology department investigate the causes, nature
and consequences of globalisation. One focuses on 'history, theories, culture' and the other
on 'migration, economy, politics'.

'History, Theories, Culture' looks at different meanings or concepts of globalisation. It

analyses the history of globalisation and the extent to which it is a premodern, modern or
postmodern phenomenon. The module examines perspectives on globalisation, such as
those from globalist, transformationalist and sceptical approaches. It examines theories of
globalisation from key sociologists. The module goes on to look at technological
developments in media and the way they have led to the globalisation of culture, and
whether culture has been made more homogeneous or hybrid. It examines the way
processes of globalisation have intersected in global cities.

Structure of the modules

There are two globalisation modules. The first in the autumn looks at concepts, history and
perspectives on globalisation, cultural globalisation and global cities.

The second in the spring looks at migration, the economy, inequality, politics and the future
of globalization.

Students can take just one part of the module. Some of you will be taking both parts.

Autumn 2012: History, Theories, Culture

Topic 1 – Concepts: definitions of globalisation

Topic 2 – History: premodern globalisation

Topic 3 – History: modern and postmodern globalisation

Topic 4 – Critical Perspectives on Globalisation: sceptical, transformationalist and

discourse theories

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Topic 5 – Sociologists on Globalisation: Ulrich Beck

Topic 6 – Sociologists on Globalisation: Zygmunt Bauman

Topic 7 – Culture: technological change, media and cultural globalisation

Topic 8 – Culture: forms of cultural globalisation – homogenisation or hybridity?

Topic 9 – Global Cities

Topic 10 – Sociologists on Globalisation: Pierre Bourdieu

There will also be two weeks where we focus on study skills and essay supervision

Spring 2013: Migration, Economy, Politics

Not all of you will be taking this module.

Topic 1 – Migration: causes and patterns of migration

Topic 2 – Migration: effects of migration – problem or solution?

Topic 3 – Economy: global corporations and global finance

Topic 4 – Economy and Inequality: can globalisation solve poverty?

Topic 5 – Inequality: gender and globalisation

Topic 6 – Politics: the decline of the nation-state and national social democracy?

Topic 7 – Politics: global politics and cosmopolitan democracy

Topic 8 – Global protest and social movements

Topic 9 – The decline of American power and the rise of China?

Topic 10 – War and globalisation

There will be two weeks on study skills and essay supervision.

Module evaluation

There will be an anonymous online evaluation questionnaire at the end of term for you to
assess the module and teaching. Tutors take the feedback very seriously. There may also

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be a mid-term feedback session. Your feedback, suggestions or criticism are welcome at
any point in the term.

Lectures and Seminars

There will be a one hour lecture every week. There will then be a two hour seminar every
week on the same topic.

There will be a study skills week when we look at writing the essays. There will also be a
week devoted to essay tutorials when you can discuss your essay with your tutor.

Under each topic there are a list of questions to help with guiding your reading and seminar
discussion. Think about how you would answer the questions when you are doing the
reading and come along to the seminar with your own answers to as many of the questions
as you can.

Reading

Substantial reading every week is necessary to get a good understanding of the module.
The seminars will assume you have read that week. You should read two or three article or
chapter length pieces for each topic week. (A note, especially for V & E students, - you
don’t need to read all of the reading listed each week. More than is necessary is listed to
help with availability, choice and essay writing).

Some weeks the reading is divided into main and further reading. Where this is not the
case it is listed in rough order of priority.

Most of the weeks the reading is available online so everyone should be able to access it.
This module and the Spring module will both be on Study Direct. On SyD there will be links
and electronic readings. If the main reading is not available on SyD we’ll let you know of
other arrangements for accessing it.

Unfortunately neither the library nor the department have the resources at present to check
whether all books listed in module documents are stocked in the library. However we have
checked that the main ones are and if you notice any others that aren’t please do let us
know so we can order them.

These are some core books that are relevant to a number of the topics. You can see what
these are below. They are also good introductions to the whole area if you wanted to read
something before the module.

Jan Aart Scholte, Globalization, 2000 and later edition in 2005, very accessible overview on
globalisation. Defines globalisation as ‘deterritorialisation’ and sees it as something mostly
quite recent. 2005 edn. is substantially revised and expanded.

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David Held and Anthony McGrew, The Global Transformations Reader, an edited reader of
extracts from lots of relevant work on globalisation, editions published in 2000 and 2003.
NB, this reading list refers mostly to the 2003 edn. which has slightly different contents and
chapter numbering to the 2000 edn.

David Held et al, Global Transformations, 1999, quite a big dense book and a bit old now
but very useful for the module. Held et al argue for a ‘transformationalist’ view against
‘hyperglobalists’ and ‘sceptics’.

Larry Ray, Globalization and Everyday Life, 2007, brief, accessible sociology of
globalisation.

Charles Lemert et al eds, Globalization: a Reader, 2009

Frank Lechner, Globalization: The Making of World Society, 2009, recent but a bit basic.

Andrew Jones, Globalization: Key Thinkers, 2010, overview of some of the key thinkers on
globalisation. Chapters 1-7, 12-13 especially useful.

Robert Holton, Globalization and the Nation-State, 1998, and Making Globalization, 2005,
both succinct, accessible, balanced overviews.

Malcolm Waters, Globalization, 1995 and 2000 editions, short readable book on
globalisation. Stresses globalisation as cultural.

Frank Lechner and John Boli, The Globalization Reader, 2000, collection of many short
extracts relevant to a number of the topics

George Ritzer and Zeynep Atalay, Readings in Globalization, 2010, Part I of the reader on
political economy relevant to the Spring module and Part II of the reader on culture relevant
to the Autumn module

Manfred B. Steger, Globalization: a very short introduction, 2003, as it says, this is a very
short introduction!

John Beynon and David Dunkerley, Globalization: the reader, 2000, collection of short
extracts with a bias towards cultural issues.

Richard Appelbaum and William Robinson eds, Critical Globalization Studies, 2005.

Saskia Sassen, A Sociology of Globalization, 2007, looks at the relation between local and
national spaces and globalisation, quite theoretical, more relevant to the Spring module
than this Autumn one.

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Robin Cohen and Paul Kennedy, Global Sociology, 2000, more relevant to a first year than
third year level, but useful as a good basic introduction.

You’ll see that there are millions of books and articles on globalisation! So the reading list
below is based on those we think you’ll find the most useful (or that we like best!). But there
are many more. So feel free to go beyond the reading on this list if you find other things you
think look good and interesting.

Journals and Electronic Journals

Journals that are useful throughout the module include:

Global Networks
Globalizations
Review of International Political Economy
Journal of World Systems Research
Millennium
International Studies Review
But there are also many others that will be useful.

Don’t forget to use online journals in the electronic library. In the electronic library there are
ways that you can search journal article titles by keywords – especially useful when trying
to find further reading for essays.

Assessment

The credits for all modules are in the BA syllabus which will be available on the Sussex
Academic Office website. The assessment weightings of modules (ie how much of your
degree they are worth) match the credit weighting, and then are weighted so that the
second year is worth 40% of your degree and the third year 60%.

Globalization 1: history, theories, culture in the autumn is worth 30 credits. (Part II in the
Spring is also worth 30 credits).

For this Autumn Term module, 70% of the assessment is a 4500 word essay that you hand
in during the assessment break after Christmas. 30% of the assessment is a 1500 word
policy briefing paper for a non-academic audience that you hand in at the end of the
autumn term. Please check your sussex direct for submission dates, times and place.

There will be a study skills week where the focus will be on essay writing. In another week
there will be tutorials on writing your essays.

There are essay titles on the module document for the 4500 word essay. If you want to
change any of these or make up your own that’s fine. If a title is too broad feel free to pick a
more specific angle within it. You can also adapt something from the list of seminar

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questions for each week. But in all of these cases check with your tutor first.

Titles and advice for the 1500 word policy briefing will be circulated separately.

Assessment Guidance

During the module please feel free to ask at any time about any ideas you have for the
essays or any advice you would like.

See below a ‘Guide to Essay Assessment’ and ‘Criteria for Essay Classification’. You
should use these when writing your essays as a guide to the sort of things tutors are
looking for when marking.

There is good study skills advice at this link: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/s3/ - this is for first
years but is useful for all stages of your degree.

It is essential you read the handbook for candidates for rules and regulations on
assessment.

Plagiarism

You should read the section on plagiarism in the ‘Handbook for Candidates’.

Plagiarism is the use, without acknowledgement, of the intellectual work of other people,
and the act of representing the ideas or discoveries of another as one’s own in written work
submitted for assessment. To copy sentences, phrases or even striking expressions
without acknowledgement of the source (either by inadequate citation or failure to indicate
verbatim quotations), is plagiarism; to paraphrase without acknowledgement is likewise
plagiarism. Where such copying or paraphrase has occurred the mere mention of the
source in the bibliography shall not be deemed sufficient acknowledgement; each such
instance must be referred specifically to its source. Verbatim quotations must be either in
inverted commas, or indented, and directly acknowledged.

Note:
- accidental as well as intentional plagiarism is penalised
- plagiarism includes failure to use quotation marks around quotes
- it includes internet plagiarism
- you should reference in the text as well as in the bibliography
- you should give page numbers for the part of the source you used, where relevant
- you should give references for paraphrases as well as quotes
- plagiarism includes using essays written by other people
- you should be careful to avoid ‘collusion’ which is also defined in the exams handbook
- plagiarism is penalised, even if unintentional.

The university has pages on plagiarism and referencing at:

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http://www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/ideas/acadmiscon/students
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/s3/?id=33
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/s3/?id=37
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/infosuss/referencing/index.shtml

GUIDE TO ESSAY ASSESSMENT

Below are key questions which guide the assessment of your essay:

Structure and Quality of Argument

Is the overall structure of the argument clear and coherent?
Is the argument developed and backed up throughout the essay?
Are the points made in a logical sequence?
Is the argument sufficiently analytical?
Is there a conclusion?
Does the conclusion address the essay question directly?
Is the conclusion adequately supported by the preceding argument?

Use of Evidence
Are the points made supported by evidence from cited sources?
Are the sources drawn on sufficient and appropriate?
If empirical evidence is used, is it described clearly and in appropriate detail?
Does the evidence presented support the conclusions reached?
Is the interpretation of the evidence presented appropriately qualified (i.e. avoiding
overgeneralisations and sweeping statements)?

Contents
Is the writer's argument adequately backed up rather than just asserted?
Are the sources used subjected to analysis and critical reflection?
Has the student researched the topic sufficiently?
Are there any important omissions?
Has the student thought about what they have read or simply reproduced material from
sources?
Is there evidence of critical thinking or an original synthesis?
Does the student have an argument?
Has the student gone beyond the essential reading?

Writing and Presentation Skills

Is the essay referenced correctly, including page numbers of passages referred to?
Are quotations and paraphrases of others' work identified and fully referenced?
Are the ideas presented fully credited?
Is there any evidence of plagiarism?
Is the essay fluent and readable?
Is the grammar and spelling adequate?

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Has the writer made an effort to use their own words?

Generic Assessment Criteria

Basis on which marks are awarded.

0-19 A mark in this range is indicative that the work is far below the standard required at
the current level of your degree course. It indicates that the work is extremely weak and
seriously inadequate. This will be because either the work is far too short, is badly jumbled
and incoherent in content, or fails to address the essay title or question asked. It will show
very little evidence of knowledge or understanding of the relevant module material and may
exhibit very weak writing and/or analytical skills.

20-39 A mark in this range is indicative that the work is below, but at the upper end is
approaching, the standard required at the current level of your degree course. It indicates
weak work of an inadequate standard. This will be because either the work is too short, is
very poorly organized, or is poorly directed at the essay title or question asked. It will show
very limited knowledge or understanding of the relevant module material and display weak
writing and/or analytical skills. Essay work will exhibit no clear argument, may have very
weak spelling and grammar, very inadequate or absent references and/or bibliography and
may contain major factual errors. Quantitative work will contain significant errors and
incorrect conclusions.

40-49 A mark in this range is indicative that the work is of an acceptable standard at the
current level of your degree course. Work of this type will show limited knowledge and
understanding of relevant module material. It will show evidence of some reading and
comprehension, but the essay or answer may be weakly structured, cover only a limited
range of the relevant material or have a weakly developed or incomplete argument. The
work will exhibit weak essay writing or analytical skills. It may be poorly-presented without
properly laid out footnotes and/or a bibliography, or in the case of quantitative work, it may
not be possible to follow the several steps in the logic and reasoning leading to the results
obtained and the conclusions reached.

50-59 A mark in this range is indicative that the work is of a satisfactory to very satisfactory
standard at the current level of your degree course. Work of this quality will show clear
knowledge and understanding of relevant module material. It will focus on the essay title or
question posed and show evidence that relevant basic works of reference have been read
and understood. The work will exhibit sound essay writing and/or analytical skills. It will be
reasonably well structured and coherently presented. Essay work should exhibit
satisfactory use of footnotes and/or a bibliography and in more quantitative work it should
be possible to follow the logical steps leading to the answer obtained and the conclusions
reached. Arguments and issues should be discussed and illustrated by reference to
examples, but these may not fully documented or detailed.

60-69 A mark in this range is indicative of that the work is of a good to very good standard

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for the current level of your degree course. Work of this quality shows a good level of
knowledge and understanding of relevant module material. It will show evidence of reading
a wide diversity of material and of being able to use ideas gleaned from this reading to
support and develop arguments. Essay work will exhibit good writing skills with well
organized, accurate footnotes and/or a bibliography that follows the accepted ‘style’ of the
subject. Arguments and issues will be illustrated by reference to well documented, detailed
and relevant examples. There should be clear evidence of critical engagement with the
objects, issues or topics being analysed. Any quantitative work will be clearly presented,
the results should be correct and any conclusions clearly and accurately expressed.

70– 84 A mark in this range is indicative that the work is of an excellent standard for the
current level of your degree course. The work will exhibit excellent levels of knowledge and
understanding comprising all the qualities of good work stated above, with additional
elements of originality and flair. The work will demonstrate a range of critical reading that
goes well beyond that provided on reading lists. Answers or essays will be fluently-written
and include independent argument that demonstrate an awareness of the nuances and
assumptions of the question or title. Essays will make excellent use of appropriate, fully
referenced, detailed examples.

85 - 100 A mark in this range is indicative of outstanding work. Marks in this range will be
awarded for work that exhibits all the attributes of excellent work but has very substantial
elements of originality and flair. Marks at the upper end of the range will indicate that the
work is of publishable, or near publishable academic standard.

Students may be marked down by up to 10% for inadequate referencing.

Contacts

Important information about the module may be sent to you by email (eg any changes to
timetabling arrangements or information which supplements that in this handbook). You
should check your email every day.

The best ways of getting hold of tutors are in their office hours or by email. Your tutors will
have office hours every week and will tell you when they are when the module starts. If you
can’t make their office hours you can email or arrange another time to meet.

Tutor and module convenor: Luke Martell, Friston 261, phone (67)8729, email:
[email protected]

Seminar tutor: Laura Morosanu, contact details and office hours to be confirmed.

*******

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Topic 1 - Concepts: definitions of globalisation

The aim of this topic is to look at: different concepts or ideas of globalisation, ie different
ideas of what it actually means.

The objective in this first week is not to look at globalisation purely in the abstract and
theoretically without any reference to empirical reality. We will look at the concept of
globalisation in relation to what actually happens in practice. But the aim is to start to get
some understanding of what globalisation is and we can go on to develop this more in later
weeks in discussions about actual globalisation in culture, the economy and politics.

Globalisation is a much-used word but what exactly does it mean? How does it differ from
other similar sounding ideas such as internationalisation, imperialism, or world systems?

When people describe globalisation what do they mean by ideas such as

‘interdependence’, ‘compression’, ‘time-space distanciation’, and ‘deterritorialisation’? Is
globalisation the same as ‘westernisation’ or something different?

What do Held et al mean by extensity, intensity, velocity and impact in assessing

globalisation? What characteristics do processes or structures have to make them
globalisation?

Does defining globalisation matter?

Questions to guide reading and seminar discussion:

- What are examples of globalisation? What makes them globalisation?

- What makes ‘globalisation’ different from ‘internationalisation’? (Scholte)
- How is globalisation different from westernisation, liberalisation and universalisation?
(Scholte)
- What examples of globalisation meet Scholte’s definition?
- Are there any reasons to doubt Scholte’s differentiation of globalisation from these other
concepts?
- In what ways is globalisation ‘westernisation’? What reasons might there be for supporting
or rejecting the idea of globalisation as ‘westernisation’?
- When globalisation is defined as ‘deterritorialisation’ (eg Scholte) what does this mean
and how does this differ from other concepts of globalisation?
- How does globalisation involve ‘interdependence’ or ‘interconnection’? What is the
difference between these two?
- In what ways are regularity or stability important to defining globalisation?
- What role do inclusivity or distance have in deciding whether something is globalisation or
not?
- What do concepts such as ‘compression’ (eg Harvey) and ‘time-space distanciation’ (eg
Giddens) mean?
- How is globalisation different from imperialism, world systems, hegemony or empire?
- Does defining globalisation matter? If so, why? Is defining globalisation just an academic

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exercise?

In most weeks we won’t have time to discuss all the questions listed but we’ll cover some of
them and in each week there are issues we will come back to in future weeks.

Main Reading

You won’t be able to read all of these but try to read a couple of them.

Malcolm Waters, Globalization, 1995 1st edn and 2000 2nd edn. This is a short accessible
introduction to globalisation in two editions. Waters argues that globalisation is most
developed in the cultural sphere. In the 2nd edn ch 1 ‘A World of Difference’ looks at some
of the concepts, perspectives and history. In the 1st edn look at chs 1-3.

Jan Aart Scholte, Globalization: a critical introduction 2000 and 2005, a balanced
accessible introduction. Scholte argues that ‘deterritorialisation’ is the best way of defining
globalisation and that it is mostly a post-1960s phenomenon. Chs 1 and 2 are on concepts.
See extract in Part 1 of Global Transformations Reader.
See also related 2002 working paper at:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/csgr/research/workingpapers/2002/wp10902.pdf

David Held and Anthony McGrew (eds), The Global Transformations Reader, 2003, Part 1
on conceptualising globalisation which covers conceptual issues in extracts from some of
the field’s theorists; also see the introduction by Held and McGrew.

Further Reading

Robert J. Holton, Making Globalization, 2005, chapter 1, introduction, outlines some of the
concepts and perspectives. Available online at:
http://www.palgrave.com/pdfs/1403948674.pdf
Chs 3-5 also on more details of what globalisation involves.

David Held et al, Global Transformations, 1999, introduction on the different perspectives,
some conceptual issues about what globalisation is. Also in the Held and McGrew reader
ch 2. See also http://www.polity.co.uk/global/pdf/INTR.PDF

J. Osterhammel and N. P. Petersson, Globalization: a short history, 2005, chs 1 and 2,

historians who see globalisation as modern, discuss here some of the background
conceptual issues.
Chapter 1 is online here: http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s7952.html but
chapter 2 is the most useful.

A. G. Hopkins, 'Introduction' esp pages 15-17, in his edited book Globalization in World
History, 2002, brief extract but pinpoints some important issues.

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Justin Rosenberg, The Follies of Globalisation Theory, 2000, argues that globalisation
works as a description but not as an explanatory category and that explanations of
globalisation lie with classic social theory and capitalism. See introduction especially.
Extract in 2003 edition of Held and McGrew The Global Transformations Reader.
Chapter 1 overview and chapter 2 on Scholte are here:
http://www.theglobalsite.ac.uk/press/012rosenberg.htm

J. Beynon and D. Dunkerley (eds) , Globalization: the reader, 2000, ‘General introduction’,
overview that focuses on culture, bit basic in places.

Larry Ray, Globalization and Everyday Life, 2007, introduction and chs 1 and 2, not
specifically conceptual but introduce some key sociological themes concerning
globalisation.

Essay Questions

What criteria do features of globalisation have to meet to be globalisation?

How does how you define globalisation matter?

‘Important new insight into relatively new conditions is in fact available from a fifth type of
definition. This conceptualisation identifies globalisation as deterritorialisation – or, as I
would prefer, the growth of “supraterritorial” relations between people’. What does Scholte
mean by ‘deterritorialisation’ and how does it compare to other definitions of globalisation?

********

Topic 2 – History: premodern globalisation

The main aim of this and next week’s topic is to think about the historical location of
globalisation. When did it start? When were the bases laid for what is globalisation now?

We will be looking at: different histories of it, ie different views on its history and origins and
of when it actually started.

On the question of timing there are many arguments, sometimes differing because, relating
back to last week’s topic, people have divergent concepts of globalisation. Is globalisation
something that has been going on since the times of ancient empires and world religions?
Or since the ages of exploration and trade beyond national boundaries? Since the rise of
modernity or capitalism? Is it a post-1945 thing? Or has globalisation really only taken off
since the growth of information technology and other modern technologies of
communication and media from the 1980s onwards? Did it all start with the end of the cold
war?

Sociologists are sometimes accused or being too focused on modern and western

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perspectives which associate globalisation with the rise of industrial capitalism. On the
other hand, some argue that it was only with capitalist expansionism and industrial
technology, or maybe even only with the post-industrial information technology of the late
twentieth century, that real globalisation truly became possible.

This week we will focus on those who see globalisation as pre-modern. World systems
theory has been divided between those like Wallerstein who see capitalism as starting in
about the 16th century and those like Frank who trace capitalist and global connections
back as far as 5000 years ago.

Janet Abu-Lughod traces overlapping circles of global connections back to before the
1500s, a period identified by Wallerstein as the start of capitalism. She emphasises the
Eastern origins of global and exchange forms, to counteract the focus on globalisation as
the expansion of the West. Hopkins mentions earlier forms of archaic and proto-
globalisation. Nederveen Pieterse sees globalisation as premodern in an analysis that he,
like others, says avoids the Euro-centrism of more modern-focused views. Waters and
Scholte also identify pre-18th century globalisation. Osterhammel and Petersson are
sceptical about whether pre-modern transnational processes were really globalisation.

1. When did globalisation start? What different perspectives are there on the starting date
of globalisation and why do people disagree on when it started?
2. What examples are there of pre-modern globalisation?
3. Were pre-modern migrations and religions the earliest forms of globalisation – or not?
4. Were empires the first forms of globalisation?
5. What early forms of transnational trade were there? Were these the first forms of
globalisation?
6. What form did early global imaginings take? Do they amount to examples of
globalisation?
7. Why might sociology have a tendency to overlook non-western or pre-modern origins of
globalisation?
8. In what way might what is described as pre-modern globalisation actually not be
globalisation?
9. How can the way you define globalisation affect how early you see it first occurring?
10. Looking at the criteria for globalisation that we discussed last week – how many of
these does pre-modern globalisation meet?
11. How adequate are perspectives which criticise globalisation-as-modern views for Euro-
centrism? Are there any ways in which Euro-centric views of globalisation might be
defended?

Main Reading

Try to look at a couple of these.

J. Osterhammel and N.P. Petersson, Globalization: a short history, 2005, ch. 3, historians
who think globalisation is modern discuss here some of its possible pre-modern aspects.
See also chapter 1 of this book, online link as a reading for last week's topic.

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Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: the world system AD 1250-1350, 1989,
especially preface and introduction, argues that a non-western perspective shows circuits
of globalisation in the 13th century.

A.G. Hopkins (ed), Globalization in World History, 2002, edited book of articles on the
history of globalisation. See especially the introduction and first article by Hopkins.

Further Reading

A.G. Frank and B. Gills, eds, The World System: five hundred years or five thousand?,
1993. Sees non-western origins to the world system up to 5000 years ago.

B.K. Gills and W.R. Thompson, Globalization and Global History, 2006, edited collection of
articles on historical dimensions to globalisation.

Robert J. Holton, Making Globalization, 2005, ch 2. Brief outline of some perspectives.

Robert Holton, Globalization and the Nation-State, 1998, ch. 2, says globalisation is long-
running and not just Western.

David Held et al, Global Transformations, 1999, most of the chapters include a historical
section.

J. Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and culture: global melange, 2004, short accessible
book sees historical dimensions to cultural globalisation, esp chs 1 and 2 (ch 2 is also
available in an article form in Futures, 32, 5, 2000).

A.G. Hopkins ed., Global History: Interactions Between the Universal and the Local,
publication October 2006. Introduction is available here:
http://www.palgrave.com/pdfs/1403987939.pdf

A.G. Frank, Re-Orient; global economy in the Asian Age, 1998, tries to highlight the role of
the non-Western world in globalisation.

J. M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation, 2004, another attempt to correct
West-centric globalisation theory.

Jerry Bentley, ‘Globalizing History and Historicizing Globalization’, Globalizations, 1, 1,

2004. Focuses on how academic perspectives can have a longer term historical view and
be less Euro-centric.

Roland Robertson, Globalization, 1992 sees globalisation as pre-dating modernity, eg ch 3

especially but others also relevant.

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George Modelski, Principles of World Politics, 1972 chapter 1, one of the first books to use
the word ‘globalisation’ looks at its history

P. Hopper, Understanding Cultural Globalization, 2007, chapter 1 on the histories of

cultural globalisation.

Essay topics

Are theories of globalisation as modern or postmodern too Eurocentric?

‘Five hundred years or five thousand?’ Critically assess theories that globalisation started
before the modern period.

Does premodern globalisation meet the criteria for globalisation?

**********

Topic 3 – History – modern and postmodern globalisation

Other perspectives have tended to see globalisation as more of a modern or late (or even
post) modern thing. Osterhammel and Petersson, for instance, think that globalisation is
modern, and highlight that how you define globalisation affects when you think it started.
Those who focus on modernity tend to see capitalism, markets and industrial technology
and also the nation-state as vital to the real development of globalisation. They see all of
these as modern institutions (although as we saw last week some have viewed capitalism
and markets as older than this).

Others identify globalisation with the post 1945 growth of a global economy and
international political organisations. Some like Scholte see globalisation as primarily a post-
1960s phenomenon, with IT as crucial. Others see the unification of the world after the cold
war as the crucial stage for globalisation. Some of those who emphasise discourses and
the concept of globalisation as important (eg post-structuralist perspectives that we will
discuss in a later topic) also emphasise more recent days, as globalisation has only really
been a discourse based on that that word since the 1980s or so.

1. What have been the Eastern inputs into Western globalisation?

2. Why could globalisation be seen as a European originating phenomenon?
3. Is it too Euro-centric to identify globalisation with the expansion of the West?
4. What is meant when people link globalisation with ‘modernisation’ (eg Giddens) or
capitalism or markets? Is this when it really first started?
5. In what ways might modern technology be the key to the expansion of globalisation?
6. What developments or institutions of modernity facilitated globalisation?
How did modern globalisation spread?
7. When were there reversals in modern globalisation and why?
8. In what ways is globalisation sometimes linked to ‘postmodernisation’ or ‘postmodernism’

16
(eg Waters, Harvey, Scholte)?
9. Is globalisation really a post-1945, post-1960s or post-1980s phenomenon rather than a
product of older modernity? If so, why and in what way?
10. What phases of globalisation does Scholte identify and why does he see it as becoming
full-scale after the 1960s?
11. Globalisation as a discourse has grown since the 1980s – why is that significant in
dating globalisation? (Something we will come back to on poststructuralist perspectives).
12. What are the problems with identifying globalisation with modernity or with late/post-
modernity?

Main Reading

J. Osterhammel and N.P. Petersson, Globalization: a short history, 2005, chs 4, 5, and 6
but also 1, 2 and 7. Short book by historians who say globalisation is primarily modern.

Further Reading

Jan Aart Scholte, Globalization: a critical introduction 2000 and 2005, Scholte argues that
globalisation is mostly a post-1960s phenomenon. Ch 3 is on phases of globalisation in
history.

Robert J. Holton, Making Globalization, ch 2. Brief outline of some perspectives.

David Held et al, Global Transformations, 1999, most of the chapters include a historical
section. They say intensity, extensity, velocity and impact of globalisation have increased
recently.

K. H. O’Rourke and J.G. Williamson, Globalization and History: the evolution of a

nineteenth century Atlantic economy, 1999, economic historians use economic data to
outline pre-1914 globalisation. See also Williamson’s ‘Globalization, Convergence and
History’ in The Journal of Economic History 56, 2, 1996.

C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 2004, looks at the development of global links
between 1780-1914.

Robbie Robertson, The Three Waves of Globalization: A History of Developing

Consciousness, 2003, identifies three waves of globalisation post-1500, post-1800 and
post-1945 and raises some fears about the most recent wave.

Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, Globalization in Question, 1999 chs 1 and 2 (also in
Held and McGrew) give a sceptical perspective arguing that global integration was greater
in the belle epoque of 1890-1914 than it is now and that what exists now is not really
globalisation at all.

Bernard Porter, The Lion’s Share, a history of British imperialism, 1975, ’84 and ’96

17
editions, shows some early forms of modern global extension.

W. McNeill, The Rise of the West: a history of the human community, 1964

Robert Holton, ‘The inclusion of the non-European World in International Society, 1870s-
1920s: evidence from global networks’, Global Networks, 5, 3, 2005.

Malcolm Waters, Globalization, 2000 2nd edn, pp 21-25, very brief summary of some
modern phases of globalisation according to Waters.

P. Hopper, Understanding Cultural Globalization, 2007, chapter 1 on the histories of

cultural globalisation.

David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1989, esp ch 17, puts forward his neo-
Marxist view of globalisation as time-space compression in a postmodern world. Also in
Held and McGrew reader.

Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 1990, links globalisation to modernity.

Like Beck he emphasises the growth of risk and reflexivity. In Held and McGrew ch 7.

A. Cameron and R. Palan, The Imagined Economies of Globalization, not explicitly about
historical dating, but raise the point about the rise of the discourse of globalization – we will
come back to this when we look at post-structuralist perspectives.

Essay Topics

Is globalisation a product of industrialisation and capitalism?

Did globalisation really take off with the information age?

Is globalisation a product of the world unifying with the end of the cold war?

‘If conceived as the growth of supraterritorial spaces, then globalisation has unfolded
mainly since the 1960s’ (Scholte 1st edn. p. 74). Critically assess Scholte’s claim about the
timing of globalisation.

‘”Globalization” implies more than just the existence of relations between distant places on
earth. The term should only be used where such relations acquire a certain degree of
regularity and stability and where they affect more than tiny numbers of people’.
Osterhammel and Petersson 2005: viii). What effect does such a definition have on the
dating of globalisation?

What effect does taking a non-Western perspective have on understanding the historical
origins of globalisation?

18
 ******************

Topic 4 – Critical perspectives on globalisation: sceptical, transformationalist and

discourse theories

This week we will look at perspectives on globalisation, ie different interpretations of its

extent, speed and impact. In particular we will focus on perspectives which question or try
to modify more globalist outlooks – sceptical, transformationalist and discourse theories.

Different perspectives have varying ideas about how far globalisation has occurred – the
division usually made is between the advocates of globalisation and sceptics about it.
Others add a middle road of people who see globalisation as having transformed things but
in a way that involves reconfigurations of old structures rather than a complete change to
global forms, and which sees the future as open rather than predetermined (eg see Held et
al on transformationalists). This sometimes matches partly with the view of waves in
globalisation theory with different perspectives (eg Hay and Marsh).

Transformationalists like Held et al (and others like Scholte who has a similar view although
does not call himself a transformationalist) tend to defend the idea of globalisation against
the sceptics but try to have a more sophisticated version than has been put forward by the
globalists. They try to set out an intermediary position between globalism and scepticism.
The question is - do they actually add so many qualifications that they are effectively not
talking about globalisation any more but something more in line with what the sceptics
outline? Or, on the other hand, do they defend globalisation against the sceptics to the
extent that they end up advocating something as simplified as the globalists?

Post-structuralist (or constructivist) perspectives put a lot of emphasis on discourse or

culturalist or ideational views of globalisation, that stress the importance of globalisation as
a discourse that people go along with as much as something that is ‘real’. They are
influenced by the work of people like Foucault who emphasises the power of discourse and
Gramsci for whom the notion of hegemony was important. From a discourse theory
perspective whether we believe globalisation is happening is more important than whether
it really is. Neo-Gramscians like Bruff try to take on the insights of discourse theory but
embed it in more materialist or economic understandings.

- What are the differences between the various waves of globalisation theories – in terms of
method, view of economy/politics/culture, view of global stratification, predictions for the
future, and political prescriptions?
- What are the differences between ‘globalist’ and ‘sceptical’ perspectives?
- How do they differ on their understandings of globalisation in the economy, state, and
culture?
- What are the differing political implications of their perspectives?
- What evidence or arguments do sceptics put against the globalists?
- How do sceptics differ from globalists on the extent of globalisation?
- How do sceptics and globalists differ on the historical periodisation of globalisation?

19
- How do sceptics characterise relations above the level of the nation?
- Are globalists and sceptics as different as they appear to be?
- What do transformationalists say? How do they differ from globalists? How do they differ
from sceptics?
- What is distinct about transformationalist views on the economy, the state, culture and
normative politics?
- What do transformationalists say about the future direction of globalisation?
- Are transformationalists really different from globalists or sceptics?
- What does it mean if you focus on globalisation in ‘ideational’ or ‘constructivist’ terms?
- What does it mean to say that globalisation is a ‘discourse’ and how does it operate as a
discourse?
- In what way do narratives, ideas or conceptions of globalisation shape the world as much
as ‘real’ processes of globalisation?
- How does globalisation involve ‘imagined economies’? (Cameron and Palan).
- How does a neo-Gramscian perspective maintain but improve post-structuralist
perspectives? (Bruff).
- What are the limits of sceptical, transformationalist and discourse theory perspectives?

Main Reading

David Held et al, Global Transformations, 1999, introduction includes discussions of

different perspectives. Excerpts on the three perspectives at
http://www.polity.co.uk/global/PDF/Intr.pdf

I. Bruff, ‘Making Sense of the Globalisation Debate when Engaging in Political Economy
Analysis’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 7, 2, 2005 discusses post-
structuralist views which he tries to re-embed in a more neo-Gramscian materialist
analysis.

Further Reading

Open Democracy (2002) Globalisation after 11 September: the argument of our time,
debate between sceptic Paul Hirst and Held advocating a more globalist/
transformationalist view.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-institutions_government/article_637.jsp

Jan Aart Scholte, Globalization: a critical introduction 2005 edn, ch. 4. Focus here on what
he says about constructivist and postmodern perspectives which are akin to the
poststructuralist discourse views we are focusing on this week. (2000 edn chapter 4 is
different).

A. Cameron and R. Palan, The Imagined Economies of Globalization, 2004, introduction

and ch. 1 discusses the ‘wave thesis’ of different waves in globalisation theory as well as
other perspectives such as Marxist, Gramscian and Culturalist. Their emphasis is on a

20
discourse or post-structuralist perspective.

Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, Globalization in Question, 1999 ch 1 (also in Held and
McGrew reader) sceptical perspective arguing that global integration was greater in the
belle epoque of 1890-1914 than it is now and that what exists now is not really globalisation
at all.

David Held and Anthony McGrew (eds), The Global Transformations Reader, 2003,
introduction, especially section I ‘Understanding Globalisation’ and conclusion.

Andrew Jones, Globalization: Key Thinkers, 2010, chapters 5 and 6 on sceptical and
transformational thinkers.

Colin Hay and David Marsh, ‘Introduction: demystifying globalisation’ in Hay and Marsh
(eds) Demystifying Globalisation. Outlines different waves of globalisation theories.

Robert Holton, Making Globalization, 2005, introduction, discusses the three perspectives.
Online at: http://www.palgrave.com/pdfs/1403948674.pdf

E. Kofman and G. Youngs, ‘Introduction: Globalisation - the second wave’ in E. Kofman

and G. Youngs, eds, Globalisation: Theory and Practice, 1996, categorise the literature in
terms of two waves rather than three.

A.G. Hopkins, ‘The History of Globalization – and the Globalization of History’ in A.G.
Hopkins ed Globalization in World History, 2002, discusses the three perspectives, esp pp
17-18.

Paul Krugman, Pop Internationalism, 1997, essays by influential US economist sceptical

about globalisation.

Justin Rosenberg, 'Globalization Theory: a post-mortem', International Politics, 2005, 42.

Sceptical analysis from a Marxist point of view. See replies to this article in a subsequent
edition of the same journal. And see also his book The Follies of Globalization Theory. Chs
1 & 2 of his book are available at: http://www.theglobalsite.ac.uk/press/012rosenberg.htm

Malcolm Waters, Globalization, 1995 1st edn and 2000 2nd edn. In the 2nd edn ch 1 ‘A
World of Difference’ looks at some other perspectives. In the 1st edn look at chs 1-3.

P. Hopper, Understanding Cultural Globalization, 2007, pp 6-10 brief overview.

Norman Fairclough and Pete Thomas, ‘Globalization: The Discourse of Globalization and
the Globalization of Discourse’, in David Grant et al, The Sage Handbook of Organizational
Discourse, 2004.

Essay Titles

21
Are sceptics about globalisation too sceptical?

What are the main flaws in sceptical theories of globalisation?

‘Central in this respect is the evidence … for the weak development of TNCs and the
continued salience of MNCs, and also the ongoing dominance of the advanced countries in
both trade and FDI. Such evidence is consistent with a continuing inter-national economy,
but much less so with a rapidly globalizing hybrid system’. (Hirst and Thompson). Discuss.

Is transformationalism a coherent alternative to globalism and scepticism, or a failed

compromise?

Is globalisation as an idea more important than globalisation as a reality?

‘We should take seriously the possibility that globalisation as a discursive construct has
real, causal effects on policy outcomes and on the process of globalisation itself …
Consequently, the assertions made by the second against the first wave are irrelevant if
globalisation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy’. (Bruff 2005: 268). Discuss.

‘From ideational perspectives, globalization has resulted from particular forms and
dynamics of consciousness’. (Scholte 131). Discuss.

Is globalisation just a discourse?

****************

Topic 5 – Sociologists on globalisation: Ulrich Beck

This week and next week we will look at a couple of prominent and recent (ish) sociological
theorists, Beck and Bauman, who have different perspectives on globalisation. There are
others we could focus on (Giddens, Urry, Castells etc) but Beck and Bauman are possibly
some of the most interesting to look at in depth and some of the others crop up in other
parts of the module. Many of the themes they discuss come up throughout discussions of
globalisation. At the end of the module we will look at another sociologist of globalisation,
Pierre Bourdieu.

Beck’s analysis follows on from his earlier works on risk, reflexivity and ecology and
focuses on both globalisation and the related area of cosmopolitanism. Beck discusses a
shift that he says has taken place from a first age to a ‘second age of modernity’, in which
‘methodological nationalism’, a ‘national outlook’ or the ‘container theory of society’ is no
longer appropriate and a cosmopolitan or more global sociology is necessary for an age of
reflexive modernisation. Beck is a critic of neoliberal globalisation and distinguishes
between globalisation, globality and globalism. He discusses the hybridity of personal life
and identity caused by globalisation. On the basis of this analysis he comes to political

22
conclusions that favour a global or cosmopolitan democracy (including ‘military humanism’),
issues which we will return to later in the Spring term topic on global cosmopolitan politics.

Obviously we won't have time to discuss all the questions below! But use these as a guide
to your reading and we'll pick out some to focus on in the seminar.

1. Who are the ‘Virtual Taxpayers’, why does he call them this and what does Beck have to
say about them? What does he have to say about the roles of labour and the state
alongside the virtual taxpayers? (pp1-8)
2. What does Beck mean by ‘globalism’, ‘globality’ and ‘globalisation’? What are the
differences between these three concepts and why does Beck distinguish between them?
(8-13. Also 87-8). How adequate do you find his concepts of these three?
3. What is methodological nationalism? Why does Beck criticise it? Why does he call it a
‘container theory’ (23)? How adequate is his criticism? What is the evidence for and against
his criticism of methodological nationalism?
4. What are the differences between the First and Second ages of modernity? When did
one end and the other start? How convincing do you find the distinction?
5. What does Beck mean when he says ‘Africa is not a continent but a concept’? (27-8)
6. What does Beck have to say about ‘American Mexicans and Mexican Americans’? What
does what he says tell us about globalisation? (28-30)
7. What does Beck say about the concept of ‘capitalist world system’ (31-4)? Is he right?
What are monocausal explanations of globalisation and what alternative does Beck have to
these? How does his perspective stand up to those that stress capitalism as an
explanation?
8. What is ‘polycentric’ politics and how is it different from international and hegemonic
politics? What does it mean when it is said that sovereignty has become divided? (34-8)
9. What is World Risk Society? What sorts of threats does it involve? How does it change
consciousness? What does the concept of reflexivity mean here and how does it fit into the
concept of World Risk Society? Why does Beck talk of unintended side-effects and
involuntary politicisation here? (38-42) How adequate is his view of a common global risk
consciousness?
10. What does Beck have to say about the McDonaldisation thesis? What does he say it
involves and what is his interpretation? (42-7)
11. What is significant about Robertson’s view of globalisation? (47-52) What is important
about awareness and what does glocalisation mean?
12. What does Beck mean when he says ‘both-and’ perspectives are better than ‘either-or’
distinctions? What sort of phenomena might these be applied to? How adequate is his
preference for a ‘both-and’ perspective?
13. What criticism of Bauman does Beck make and what alternative interpretation does he
have? (54-9 and 67). (We will come back to Bauman next week).
14. What two concepts of culture does Beck put forward? What does he say about these
and the relationship between them? (66-7).
15. What does Beck say about Macro- and micro-regionalisms and the relationship
between them? What do they have to do with globalisation? (67-8).
16. What does Beck say about global civil society politics? What is novel about it? What is
different about the Anti-Shell campaign he discusses? (68-72)

23
17. What does Beck say about ‘place polygamy’ and globalisation in personal life? (72-77).
What are the inner consequences of globalisation? What are ‘multilocation’ and ‘inner
mobility’ and how do these fit in here?
18. What does Beck say about inter-cultural critique and contextual universalism? What
does the latter mean? How is it different from universalism or contextualism/relativism/ And
how does it relate to inter-cultural critique? (81-6)
19. What are third cultures? (88-90). What is distinctive about the third culture view
compared to other views of cultural globalisation?
20. What does Beck have to say about cosmopolitan democracy and the transnational
state? How is the cosmopolitan view different to realist, international, hegemonic, balance
of power views of politics? What social or political basis are there for cosmopolitan
democracy (93-5, 108-113). What does he mean by a new medievalism? How does this
relate to cosmopolitan democracy?
21. In what way is Europe an example of cosmopolitanism for Beck? Is he right about this?
Are there any reasons to doubt his interpretation on this question?
22. What does Beck say about ‘capitalist world society’? What criticism of cosmopolitan
democracy does this perspective have and what argument against this criticism does Beck
give? (95-8)
23. What implications does World Risk society have for politics? Why may this lead to
cosmopolitan democracy? (98-101)
24. What would the world look like without transnational politics? (101-8)
25. What does Beck mean when he says he proposes a substitutive rather than additive
concept of globalisation?
26. How does Beck’s perspective differ from postmodern and neoliberal perspectives?
Where does he fit into the three waves of globalisation theory and what does his
perspective tell us about these theories? Are there any flaws in his theory that are typical of
any of these waves?
27. Overall what are the strengths and weaknesses of Beck’s theory of globalisation? What
contradictions are there in his theory? How good is his evidence?

Main Reading

Ulrich Beck, What is Globalization?, 2000, esp introduction and Pt I.

Further Reading

Nicholas Gane, ‘Chasing the Runaway World: the Politics of Recent Globalization Theory’,
Acta Sociologica, 44, 2001, review of books by Giddens, Beck and Bauman.

Ulrich Beck, ‘Cosmopolitan Society and its Enemies’, Theory, Culture and Society, 19, 1-2,
2002, also online at:
http://saadtazi.phpnet.org/JFriedman/IMG/pdf/UB%20The%20Cosmopolitan%20Society%2
0and%20its%20Enemies.pdf

24
Ulrich Beck, Living in the World Risk Society, LSE lecture, 15 February 2006, Economy and
Society, 35, 3, 2006. http://www.libertysecurity.org/IMG/pdf_Beck-2006.pdf

Ulrich Beck and Natan Sznaider, ‘Unpacking Cosmopolitanism for the social sciences: a
research agenda’, British Journal of Sociology, 57, 1, 2006, Argues for a shift way from
methodological nationalism in favour of a cosmopolitan outlook. Parts of this are in his
Cosmopolitan Vision book.

Ulrich Beck, ‘Towards a Critical Theory with a Cosmopolitan Intent’, Constellations, 10, 4,
2003.

Ulrich Beck, Cosmopolitan Vision, 2006, argues for a more cosmopolitan vision to replace
the ‘zombie’ theory of methodological nationalism.

Ulrich Beck, ‘The Cosmopolitan Perspective: sociology of the second age of modernity’,
British Journal of Sociology, 51, 1, 2000, argues for reflexive cosmopolitanism which has a
substitutive rather than additive concept of globalisation. Some of this is in his
Cosmopolitan Vision book and involves political issues that we will come back to next term.

Ulrich Beck, Power in the Global Age, 2005, focuses on the more political aspects of his
views on globalisation and cosmopolitanism.

British Journal of Sociology, 57, 1, 2006, special issue on cosmopolitanism. Includes piece
by Beck and Turner's article saying that classic sociology has long been quite global and
cosmopolitan is useful.

Daniel Chernilo, ‘Social Theory’s Methodological nationalism: myth and reality’, European
Journal of Social Theory, 9, 1, 5-22, includes a critique of Beck’s own criticism of
methodological nationalism.

Larry Ray, Globalization and Everyday Life, 2007, chapter 2, 'Globalization and the Social',
sociological critique of Beck and Giddens' ideas of globalisation and individualism.

Essay Topics

Is Beck right that sociology is methodologically nationalist and needs to be replaced by a

cosmopolitan sociology?

‘Globalization calls into question a basic premise of the first modernity: the conceptual
figure that A.D. Smith calls ‘methodological nationalism, according to which the contours of
society largely coincide with those of the national state’ (Beck 2000: 21). How successful is
Beck’s argument against the national ‘container theory of society’ and for a cosmopolitan
global sociology?

****************

25
Topic 6 – Sociologists on globalisation: Zygmunt Bauman

Bauman has a less benign view of globalisation than Beck, a greater stress on class and
inequality and focuses more on the ill-effects of globalisation and less on the positive
outcomes as outlined by Beck. For Bauman globalisation leads to the meaning of peoples’
lives being less locally determined and given meaning more by distant things they have
less control over. Bauman sees globalisation as leading to social exclusion, and
inequalities in the possibilities for mobility. The focus is on mobile elites who are winners,
more locally fixed losers from globalisation, or those for whom mobility is a choice and
opportunity versus others who are the unwelcome mobile, moving more because of
circumstances than choice. There is a polarisation between the free and the trapped, or
those for whom mobility is a choice and those for whom it is less so, the tourists and the
vagabonds. The implications for politics are less clearly spelled out than they are for Beck,
but Bauman’s analysis does seem to lead to different political conclusions to Beck’s.

Focus mainly on questions 1-16 and 23-31

Questions 1-16 What does Bauman have to say about the homogenisation thesis and
inequalities and mobility in a globalised world? - inequalities of mobility, meaning and
constitution of societies, isolation of elites, public spaces.

Introduction
1. In what way does globalisation not mean the same to all of us but is localising and
differentiated? (1-2)
2. In what way do local spaces lose their meaning-generating capacity and why do
fundamentalist and neo-tribal responses develop? (2-3)

Ch 1 Time and Class

3. What is different between the experiences of employees, suppliers and shareholders in
the company described by Albert J. Dunlap? Why do such differences arise? (6-9)
4. What does Bauman mean by Absentee Landlords mark II and how are they different
from Absentee Landlords Mark I? (9-11)
5. How, for Bauman, does freedom of movement affect the self-constitution of societies?
(12-18)
6. What does Bauman mean when he says distance is a social product? (12)
7. What does Bauman mean when he says that the signifiers have been set apart from the
signifieds and from their carriers and objects? (14)
8. What does Bauman mean when he says developments in the transport of information
have effects on social association/dissociation? (15)
9. What does Bauman mean when he says that cheapness of communication leads to
mutually incompatible messages? (16)
10. Why were human bodies more important in social relations than they are now? (16-17)
11. What is ‘cybernating space’ and why is it significant? (17)
12. Why do localities both lose their meaning and become something some groups become

26
trapped in? (18) What is the meaning of locality for elites and the poor respectively?
13. Why do some become trapped in meaninglessness and others gain powers of
meaning-creation? (18)
14. What form does the attempt of mobile elites to isolate and insulate themselves from
others take? (20-2). What different meanings does isolation have for elites and the poor
respectively?
15. What has happened to public spaces in the polarised world, according to Bauman? (21-
2, 24-6)
16. How does Bauman’s view on polarisation make his view of globalisation different from
Beck’s?

Questions 17-21 What happens to politics in a globalised world according to

Bauman

Ch. 3 After the Nation-State – what?

17. Why, according to Bauman, does the world seem out of control? What was the ‘Great
Schism’ and what does its end have to do with things seeming out of control? (55-8)
18. What is the difference between universalisation and globalisation according to
Bauman? In what ways has the latter taken over and how is Bauman’s view similar here to
Beck’s? (59-65)
19. Why does the demise of state sovereignty paradoxically make statehood so popular?
(64)
20. Is Bauman right that the economy is progressively exempt from political control? (65-9).
How do his views on this issue compare with those of Beck? In what way has the state
released the brakes on its own demise? (68-9)
21. How is the extraterritoriality of economic globalisation compatible with political
fragmentation or the proliferation of new or weak states (67-9).

Questions 23-31 What is the difference between Tourists and Vagabonds and why
are they 'united' and 'differentiated'? - mobility, united, need each other, differentiated.

Ch. 4 Tourists and Vagabonds

22. What is being a consumer like, for Bauman, and how does this parallel what
globalisation is like? (79-85)
23. What is different in the experiences of the ‘high up’ and ‘low down’ in terms of mobility?
(85-89)
24. What, for Bauman, is the significance of the phasing out of entry visas alongside the
tightening of passport control? (87)
25. In what way is there a stratification by time as well as space? (88)
26. What is different in the experiences of mobility of ‘tourists’ and ‘vagabonds’? (92-3).
Why is there a green light for the tourists and a red light for the vagabonds? Why is doing
this not a problem for capital? (93)
27. Why are the tourists and the vagabonds ‘united’? Why do they share the same world
despite being so polarised? (94-8)
28. Why do vagabonds make the tourist’s problems more bearable? (98)
29. Why is the vagabond the tourist’s nightmare? (96-7)

27
30. And in what way are the tourists and vagabonds sharply differentiated in their
perceptions? (99-102)
31. Why is talk of hybridity more an act of self-definition than an ethnographic
understanding? (100). What does Bauman mean when he says postmodernism merely
articulates a caste-bound experience of the globals? (101)

Evaluation
32. What criticisms are there of Bauman? Where is agency and politics in his account? Is it
too deterministic? Does it underestimate the poor? Is globalisation different to
universalism?
33. What are the political implications of Bauman’s theory and how do they differ from
Beck’s?
34. What is Beck’s critique of Bauman? (What is Globalization? pp 54-9 and 67)
35. What do Shaw, Brigham and Gane say in criticism of Bauman?

Main Reading

Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: the human consequences, 1998, only 128 small-sized
pages, esp chs 1, 3 and 4 (chs 2 and 5 can be skipped).
Two copies of one of the chapters are in the library core Faculty collection available
from Luke Martell's box there.

Further Reading

Zygmunt Bauman, ‘On Glocalisation: Or Globalisation for Some, Localisation for Others’,
Thesis Eleven, 54, 1998. Summary of some of his views on globalisation. Also in Peter
Beilharz, The Bauman Reader.

Nicholas Gane, ‘Chasing the Runaway World: the Politics of Recent Globalization Theory’,
Acta Sociologica, 44, 2001, review of books by Giddens, Beck and Bauman.

Ulrich Beck, What is Globalization?, 2000, pp 54-63, 96-7, where Beck discusses Bauman.

Martin Shaw, ‘The Political Meaning of Global Change’, International Politics, 31, 1999.
Book review which covers Bauman briefly. Online at:
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/hafa3/meaning.htm

Linda Brigham, ‘Feeding the Global Spider’, short book review of Bauman’s book at
http://www.altx.com/EBR/reviews/rev11/r11brig.htm

Mark Davis, 'Bauman on Globalization: the human consequences of a liquid world' chapter
7 in Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Poul Poder eds The Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman, 2008.

Some other publications by Bauman that touch on issues to do with globalisation:

28
Society Under Siege, 2002, Part I, on the political aspects of globalisation

Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity, 2000, esp ch.3 'Time/Space'.

Zygmunt 'Modernity and Ambivalence', in M.Featherstone, ed., Global Culture, 1990 and in
Theory, Culture and Society, 7, 2/3, 1990.

Zygmunt Bauman, 'Searching for a Centre that Holds', in M.Featherstone et al. eds, Global
Modernities, 1995.

Essay Topic

What, for Bauman, is unequal about globalisation?

Compare and contrast Beck and Bauman's views of globalisation.

‘Tourists and Vagabonds’. Is this the right way to characterise the structure of
globalisation?

Is Bauman too pessimistic about globalisation?

***************

Topic 7 – Culture: technological change, media and globalisation

In this topic and the next one we will look at cultural globalisation. How have technological
and institutional change led to the globalisation of culture? What form does globalisation
take culturally? How does globalisation change culture? What role do the media play in the
development of globalised culture and what changes in the media have allowed this to
happen?

This week we will focus on earlier forms of cultural globalisation and on institutional and
technological changes that may have led to the globalisation of culture more recently. Next
week we will look at what shape contemporary globalised culture takes now.

What earlier forms of the globalisation of culture might there have been and on what basis
may they have happened? Many analyses of the globalisation of culture focus on the
growth of the technological means that have allowed this to happen. What have these
technological means been over the ages and how and why have they been so significant?
In what ways do they lead to a ‘global village’ and how do they change the relationship
between time and space? Is it too technologically determinist to see technology as the
cause of it all? How have structural and institutional changes in the media and culture
industries affected the globalisation of culture? Are cultural imperialism and

29
homogenisation the best way to describe the effect that recent changes in the structure of
the media have had?

1. What earlier pre-modern forms of the globalisation of culture have there been?
2. Have religions, empires or political ideologies been forms of cultural globalisation?
3. What technological developments have led to the globalisation of culture?
4. In what way have transport, cable systems, cinema and TV, radio and music, and the
internet led to the globalisation of culture?
5. What have the most globally transformative technologies been – do we need to look
back to things like the sailboat, or to mechanised transport, or to the telegraph or television
or is it the internet which is changing our economic and cultural worlds and our individual
lives?
6. What have money, transportation and electronic and photographic developments got to
do with cultural globalisation? What developments have there been in these fields and how
have they affected culture?
7. What institutional or structural changes in the media and culture industries have affected
the globalisation of culture?
8. What role have news agencies, language and communication conglomerates had in
cultural globalisation?

Reading

David Held et al, Global Transformations, 1999, ch 7 on globalisation, culture and the fate
of nations. Looks at the history of cultural globalisation and contemporary changes in the
media which affect the globalisation of culture.

John B Thompson, The Media and Modernity, 1995, ch 5, on technological and institutional
changes that have led to the globalisation of communication (extract in Held and McGrew
Global Transformations Reader).

Robert McChesney, ‘The New Global Media: It's a Small World of Big Conglomerates’, The
Nation, 29, 1999, also in Held and McGrew Global Transformations Reader, and online at
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/29/053.html

Further Reading

Thomas McPhail, Global Communication, 2006, describes the changing structure of the
global media with a perspective that emphasises US cultural imperialism and
homogenisation.

Terry Flew, Understanding Global Media, 2007, looks at the changing structure of the
global media from different perspectives and whether this leads to cultural imperialism.
Introduction here - http://www.palgrave.com/PDFs/1403920494.Pdf

Pierre Bourdieu, 'Culture is in Danger', in his Firing Back, 2003, polemical criticism of the
globalisation of media and culture by radical French sociologist.

30
Daya Kishan Thussu, editor, International Communication: A Reader, 2009 and also by
Thussu, International Communication: continuity and change, 2000

Paul Hopper, Understanding Cultural Globalization, 2007, ch. 3, recent accessible

overview.

Larry Ray, Globalization and Everyday Life, 2007, ch. 4 ‘Virtual Sociality’, on the extent to
which the internet has changed social life.

David Held and Anthony McGrew (eds), The Global Transformations Reader, 2003, Part III,
esp. pieces by Thompson and McChesney.

Robert McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: communication politics in dubious

times, 1999, esp ch. 2, ‘The Media System Goes Global’.

Robert McChesney and Edward Herman, The Global Media, 1997

J. Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and culture: global melange, 2004, mostly relevant to
next week, but gives globalised culture a historical context relevant to this week, esp in chs
1 and 2.

J. Wilma, et al eds, Global Activism, Global Media, 2005, looks at global social movements
and the media

Essay topic

In what way have technological changes have led to cultural globalisation?

How have structural and institutional changes to the media industry affected the
globalisation of culture?

Did globalisation start with the internet or the sailing ship?

Electronic colonialism. Cultural imperialism. Do these concepts give a fair picture of what
media globalisation involves?

*********************

Topic 8 – Culture: forms of cultural globalisation – homogenisation or hybridity?

Last week we looked at some of the changes in technology and media that have affected
culture in the context of globalisation. This week we will look at some of the ways in which
culture is said to have been affected by globalisation.

31
How does the globalisation of culture change our consciousness? For Robertson it leads to
greater ‘relativisation’, for others more ‘reflexivity’ in the way we think, and to some to a
new interaction between things like universality and particularity where these relate strongly
to one another when previously they were more separate. In short, globalisation, it is said,
changes the way we as individuals think.

What is meant by these interpretations of changes to culture and consciousness in the

global era? Some people argue that what is really happening is an ‘Americanisation’ of
world culture, a sort of media imperialism where McDonalds and American popular culture,
music, films and so on just enforce a homogenisation on the world (eg Ritzer, Schiller and
see McChesney from last week). Others see the effects of cultural globalisation as leading
to a more cosmopolitan world where there is actually a growth of diversity and pluralism
rather than less, and where hybrid or mixed cultures rather than uniform ones emerge (eg
Nederveen Pieterse). What do these different perspectives involve and which seem most
convincing to you?

Or are in fact neither true? Hybridisation is a seductive perspective. But are there any
reasons to doubt it as a description of what cultural globalisation involves? Is globalisation
actually leading to the defence of nationalisms and the growth of defensive
fundamentalisms that clash with globalisation or westernisation? What forms of power,
inequality and conflict are there in the globalisation of culture?

Next week we will look at global cities where global cultures are said to come together and
the following week we will look at Bourdieu’s fierce criticism of globalisation as
Americanisation. At the start of next term we will return to related issues when we look at
the way migration leads to diasporas and transnational or transcultural identity.

1. How have transformations in culture and media gone beyond national boundaries and
national cultures?
2. What is the homogenisation or McDonaldisation thesis of the globalisation of culture?
3. What are Westernisation or cultural imperialism models of the globalisation of culture?
4. What does the clash of civilisations model say about international cultures?
5. What does the hybridisation picture of globalisation of culture say?
6. How are new forms of identity created from the globalisation of culture?
7. What are people referring to when they talk, in relation to globalised culture, about
‘hybridisation’ or ‘creolisation’. Is this what is really going on in the globalisation of culture?
What does bringing the ‘centre to the periphery’ and the ‘periphery to the centre’ mean
(Waters)?
8. What are the limits of the hybridisation thesis?
9. What might be a co-existence/indifference model of the globalisation of culture be?
10. Where does the compression of time and space (Harvey, Giddens etc) come into the
issue of the relationship between technology and culture? What conflicts and tensions may
this involve?
11. What do ‘relativisation’ (eg Robertson) and ‘reflexivity’ (eg Giddens) mean and how are
these connected with issues of culture and identity?

32
12. How does Robertson describe what the globalisation of culture involves? How does it
involve universality and particularism at the same time? The universalisation of
particularism and the particularisation of universalism! What does that mean?!
13. What does ‘glocalisation’ mean and how does that explain the globalisation of culture?
14. How does context affect the reception of cultural globalisation?
15. Has the rise of religious fundamentalism got anything to do with the globalisation of
culture and, if so, what?
16. How might cultural globalisation lead to greater nationalism or the revalidation of local
or national cultures?
17. In what ways are there differences in production, access, consumption, and reading of
globalised media and culture?
18. Is Waters right to say that culture is the most globalised sphere, more than economics
or politics?
19. What inequalities are there in cultural globalisation?

Main reading

Kevin Robins, ‘What in the World’s going on?’, in Paul du Gay (ed), Production of
Culture/Cultures of Production, also in Held and McGrew reader. On the mobility of cultural
processes and things across national boundaries and what effects this has in terms of
cultural contacts and clashes.

J. Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and culture: global melange, 2004, on hybrid cultural
globalisation with an historical angle, esp (but not only) chs 3 & 4. For other sources for chs
3 and 4 see below.

J. Nederveen Pieterse, ‘Globalization as Hybridisation’ is ch. 4 in his book Globalization

and Culture above, also in International Sociology, 9, 2, 1994, and in Mike Featherstone et
al eds, Global Modernities, 1995.

J. Nederveen Pieterse, ‘Globalization and Culture: three paradigms’, is ch. 4 in his book
Globalization and Culture above and is also online at:
http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/Pieterse-Globalization-and-Culture-3-
2003.html

Further Reading

Thomas McPhail, Global Communication, 2006, and Terry Flew, Understanding Global
Media, 2007, readings from last week look at the cultural imperialist and homogenisation
perspectives. Flew introduction here - http://www.palgrave.com/PDFs/1403920494.Pdf

Tehri Rantanen The Media and Globalization, 2005, looks at the global media from the
point of view of individuals’ and families’ experiences.

M. Kraidy, 'Hybridity in Cultural Globalization', Communication Theory, 12, 3, 2002. Critique

of hybridity perspectives.

33
See also Kraidy’s book Hybridity, 2005 extracts are here:
http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1770_reg.html

Jonathan Friedman, ‘The Hybridization of Roots and the Abhorrence of the Bush’, in M.
Featherstone and S. Lash, eds, Spaces of Culture: city-nation-world, 1999, powerful
critique of hybridisation theory as an elite class perspective.

Daya Kishan Thussu, editor, International Communication: A Reader, 2009 and also by
Thussu, International Communication: continuity and change, 2000

David Held and Anthony McGrew (eds), The Global Transformations Reader, 2003, Part III,
the fate of national culture.

John B Thompson, The Media and Modernity, 1995, ch 5, discusses symbolic distancing,
asymmetries in access to media and culture, and reception of media messages and culture
(extract in Held and McGrew Global Transformations Reader).

John Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture, 1999, says that our lived cultural experiences
are becoming separated from territorial location. This is unevenly experienced and culture
has become hybrid. See excerpt at:
http://www.polity.co.uk/global/pdf/GTReader2eTomlinson.pdf

Mike Featherstone ed., Global Culture: nationalism, globalization and modernity, 1990.
Also available as Theory, Culture and Society, 7, 2/3, 1990. For instance, see the pieces by
A.D. Smith and Appadurai but others also.

Robert Holton, Cosmopolitanisms, 2009, esp but not only chapter 5, on theories of
cosmopolitan culture

Robert Holton, Globalization and the Nation-State, 1998, ch. 7, discusses homogenisation,
polarisation and hybridisation perspectives.

Paul Hopper, Understanding Cultural Globalization, 2007, accessible overview

Arif Dirlik, Review of Frederick Buell's book National Culture and the New Global System, in
Journal of World History, 7, 2, 1996, makes some good critical points about postcolonial
views that are popular in studies of the globalisation of culture.

Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization, pages 99-102, uses Friedman to criticise the

cosmopolitan elites who advance the hybridisation thesis

Sam Pryke, Nationalism in a Global World, 2009, discusses what becomes of national
identity in a global world.

Alain Quemin, ‘Globalization and Mixing in the Visual Arts: An Empirical Survey of ‘High
Culture’ and Globalization’ International Sociology, 21, 4, July 2006, focuses on high rather

34
than popular culture and questions globalisation theses.

Ulrich Beck et al eds, Global America? the cultural consequences of globalization, 2003,
edited collection on whether cultural globalisation = Americanisation.

Stuart Hall, ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’, in Stuart Hall et al (eds) Modernity and its
Futures, 1992, especially the later sections on globalisation.

Helmut Anheier et al (eds) Global Civil Society annual books include at the rear ‘records’ on
things like tourism, trade in cultural goods, languages, media, communication, geographical
identification, and others. Fascinating data clearly presented on the extent of cultural
globalisation.

David Held et al, Global Transformations, 1999, ch 7, esp sections 7.1 and 7.5, on
concepts and impacts of cultural globalisation.

Martin Albrow, The Global Age, 1996, ch 7 ‘Configurations of the Global Age: People’.

Roland Robertson, Globalization: social theory and global culture, 1992, stresses the
relationship between universalisation and particularisation.

Frank J. Lechner and John Boli (eds), The Globalization Reader, 2000, Parts VII and VIII
on the role of the media and constructing identities.

Malcolm Waters, Globalization, 2001 2nd edn chs 6 & 7 on international cultures and
globalizing cultures. In the 1st edn it is ch 6 on cultural globalisation. Waters says it is in the
cultural or symbolic sphere that globalisation is most advanced.

John Beynon and David Dunkerley (eds), Globalization: the reader, Parts A, B and C on
culture, media and technology.

Alan Scott (ed), The Limits of Globalization, 1997, uses specific case studies to question
whether culture has become globalised.

Globalizations, 4, 1, 2007, special issue on 'Cultures of Globalization: Coherence, Hybridity

and Contestation.

Essay Questions

Is the globalisation of culture leading to homogenisation or increasing heterogeneity?

Is the globalisation of culture really just Americanisation?

Critically assess the view of cultural globalisation as hybridisation.

35
‘I discovered that a certain way of representing reality, as hybridity was not a mere
intellectual interpretation of the state of contemporary reality, but a politicized position …
this identity and interpretation is an aspect of the emergence of a new global cultural elite
or class faction that takes its particular form as particular state-class structures that pit a
cosmopolitan elite against a nationalist ‘red-neck’ and, by definition, backward-looking
working class, or remnants thereof’ (Friedman 1999: 230). Discuss.

********************

Topic 9 - Global Cities

Last week we looked at the idea of cultures being made more homogeneous or hybrid by
globalisation. And throughout this term we have been looking at globalisation in general.
Certain sorts of cities in the world are seen to be amongst the prime locations where
globalisation and hybridity are sited. Global cities are an example of local sites for global
relations. Cities usually focused on include London, New York, Paris and Tokyo but there
are others in both the rich world and poorer countries that are global cities. Here global
means not big, but the site of global processes and mobilities, so some global cities are not
the most glamorous or most powerful places, although sometimes they are. A small city
could be quite global. Similarly a big city may not necessarily be a very global one.

Saskia Sassen is one of the foremost analysts of global cities. She has looked at these in
quite a theoretical and economic way, focusing on them as command and control centres
necessary in networks of what are otherwise dispersed global economic structures.
Globalisation requires local centredness precisely because it is so globally dispersed.

But cities can be global in political, cultural or social ways as well as economically. A lot of
analyses of global cities connect their growth to a more post-modern and post-fordist
flexible world, with migration of the types Bauman discusses, cultural hybridity as outlined
last week and new forms of inequality and exclusion. Cities are seen to displace nations as
central nodes in the global system and can reinvigorate the importance of regions. And
analyses of global cities link to the popular notion of global networks. Instead of control
coming down to individuals from the state, the chief connections are seen as horizontal
ones between cities.

At the same time the story of global cities is not all of hybridity and networks. These places
are sites of exploitation, imprisonment, inequality, exclusion and conflict. In fact global cities
may be a myth. For some, linking back to an earlier topic, global cities are a discourse as
much as anything else, more something in a business plan or tourist brochure than a
reality.

- What is a global city?

- What is the difference between a big or mega city on one hand and a world or global city
on the other?
- What is ‘global’ about global cities – economically, politically, culturally, socially?
- What does globalisation have to do with global cities?

36
- What do global cities have to do with: post-fordism, post industrialism, economic
restructuring; migration; cultural hybridity; identity and community; changes in politics?
What shape do these take in global cities?
- What does Sassen say about global dispersal and centralised command being combined
in relation to global cities?
- How do global cities connect with global networks?
- What do global cities have to do with the decline of the nation-state?
- What does Sassen say about the way global cities fit in with the interaction of the local
and global, and multi-scalar organisation? How are these different to pre-globalisation
organisation?
- Does the global shape the local in global cities or does the local shape the global? (eg
Massey)
- How does the growth of global cities affect the importance of regions?
- How does globalisation help some global cities but make others worse off?
- What happens to divisions and inequalities in global cities as a result of their globality?
- Are global cities the sites of bringing people together or conflict between them?
- What does Paul Gilroy’s shift from postimperial melancholia to conviviality in postcolonial
cities involve? (See also Massey on London).
- What is ‘postmodern’ about globalising cities?
- How much is the global city shaped ‘from below’ and how much ‘from above’?
- How is London a global city? (eg Massey)
- What are global cities beyond the rich world like?
- To what extent are global cities discourses?
- Are global cities really global? Is it really globalisation that makes global cities global?

There is a very big literature on global cities, as with most of the topics of this module. So
feel free to look around for other reading.

Neil Brenner and Roger Keil, eds, The Global Cities Reader, 2006, a very useful reader.

Saskia Sassen, The Sociology of Globalization, 2006, chapter 4 ‘The Global City’.

Doreen Massey, World City, 2007, focuses on London

Saskia Sassen, The Global City, 2001

Paul L. Knox and Peter J. Taylor, World Cities in a World System, 1995

Saskia Sassen, Global Networks, Linked Cities, 2002

Saskia Sassen, Cities in a World Economy, 2006

Peter Marcuse and Ronald van Kempen eds, Globalizing Cities, 1999

Mark Abrahamson, Global Cities, 2004, patchy but brief and accessible book that aims to
connect economic and cultural aspects.

37
Peter Taylor, World City Network, 2003

Linda Krause and Patrick Petro, eds, Global Cities: cinema, architecture, and urbanism in a
digital age, 2003, focuses on arts and culture aspects.

Yeong-Hyun Kim and John R. Short, Cities and Economies, 2008

Anthony D. King, Global Cities, Post-imperialism and the internationalisation of London,

1991

Richard Grant, Globalizing City: The Urban and Economic Transformation of Accra, Ghana,
2008

Peter Taylor et al eds, Cities in Globalization: Practices, policies and theories, 2006, on
inter-city relations

Neil Brenner, Global cities, Glocal states: global city formation and state territorial
restructuring in contemporary Europe, Review of International Political Economy, 5, 1,
1998, looks at implications for state

J.H. Choi et al, Comparing world city networks: a network analysis of Internet backbone
and air transport intercity linkages, Global Networks, 6, 1, 2006, looks at network
dimension.

Diane Davis, Cities in Global Context: A Brief Intellectual History, International Journal of
Urban and Regional Research, 29, 1, 2005, historical review of the literature, more about
the literature on global cities than the cities. See other articles in the same issue.

John Friedmann, Cities in a Global Age: Critical Areas of Theory and Research, 2003
unpublished paper.

Josef Gugler, World Cities in Poor Countries: Conclusions from Case Studies of the
Principal Regional and Global Players, International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research, 27, 3, 2003, on world cities in poor countries, quite brief introduction to an edited
book.

Josef Gugler, ed, World Cities beyond the West: Globalization, Development and
Inequality, 2004/2009.

Jennifer Robinson, Global and World Cities: A View from off the Map, International Journal
of Urban and Regional Research, 26, 3, 2002

Allen Scott, Resurgent Metropolis: Economy, Society and Urbanization in an

Interconnected World, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32, 3, 2008,
on role of globalisation in urban resurgence.

38
J. V. Beaverstock et al, A Roster of World Cities, Cities, 16, 6, 1999.

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 31, 2, 2005, special issue on transnational
urbanism and migration, also relevant to migration topics next term.

Mark Amen et al eds, Relocating Global Cities: From the Center to the Margins, 2006

UN Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), Cities in a Globalizing World: Global report on
Human Settlements, 2001.

Michael Smith, Transnational Urbanism: locating globalization, 2001.

Saskia Sassen, ‘The Urban Map of Terror’ Guardian, 27 May 2009 on cities as sites of
conflict.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/27/lahore-urban-terror

Brenda Yeoh, Global/Globalizing Cities, Progress in Human Geography, 23, 4, 1999, short
but useful report on the state of the literature at that point.

John Eade (ed), Living the Global City: globalization as local process, 1996, looks at some
of the cultural dimensions

Oncu A. and Weyland, P. eds, Space, culture, and power: new identities in globalizing
cities, 1997, cultural focus

Fulong Wu, ed, Globalization and the Chinese City, 2005.

Peter Taylor et al, Diversity and Power in the World City Network, Cities, 9, 4, 2002,
empirical data on power differences between world cities.

Paul Gilroy, After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture?, 2004, sees a shift from post-
imperial melancholia in Britain to convivial culture, found especially in Britain urban areas
and postcolonial cities world-wide.

Chris Hamnett, Unequal City: London in the Global Arena, 2003

John Eade, Placing London: from Imperial City to Global City, 2001.

Useful Journals

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, eg 29, 1, 2005, but other issues too.
Urban Studies
Journal of Urban Affairs

39
Web sites

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/ - globalization and world cities website

http://www.global-cities.info/ - RMIT global cities research institute

Essay Questions

Are global cities really global?

Is London a global city?

How are global cities both global and local?

Can a poor city be a global city? Discuss in relation to an example/s.

Are global cities about hybridity and networks or about power and inequality?

*************

Topic 10 Sociologists on Globalisation: Pierre Bourdieu

Bourdieu was a radical French sociologist and his view of globalisation reflects these
aspects of his identity. He is more critical about globalisation than Beck (although Beck has
critical moments) and has more of an argument about the alternatives and political agency
than Bauman. Bourdieu expresses a very French attitude to globalisation, hostile to
neoliberalism and Americanisation and defensive towards the state and public sector. He
also has the merit of being able to tackle globalisation both at the level of economics and
neoliberalism on the one hand and of media and culture on the other. His writings on
globalisation are short, polemical, critical and angry and often argued in non-academic
contexts. Bourdieu argues that globalisation is not inevitable but is the deliberate
construction of groups who conceal their own role and take globalisation out of the arena of
politics and democratic choice. Bourdieu criticises intellectuals and social scientists for
being complicit in exploitative processes of globalisation and emphasises the role of social
movements and an alternative form of internationalism. His arguments connect both with
some of the cultural discussions we have seen in the last few weeks and with some of the
more political and economic issues some of you will be looking at next term. He also briefly
brings up the issue of immigration, something we will return to at the start of next term.

- What does Bourdieu mean when he says globalisation involves a process of ‘unite and
rule’?
- What does Bourdieu say about ‘the invisible hand of the powerful’?
- What does he say about neoliberalism and what has this got to do with globalisation?
- What does ‘the tyranny of the market’ involve?

40
- What does Bourdieu think globalisation means for institutions like the state, welfare, the
public sector, employment, and democracy?
What does he say about the ‘globalisation myth and the welfare state’? How is globalisation
a ‘myth’?
- What is happening to ‘the left hand of the state’? What does the ‘destruction of a
civilisation’ involve?
- Who/what is behind globalisation, according to Bourdieu?
- In what way does globalisation involve a ‘policy of depoliticisation’? How can this be
countered?
- What does Bourdieu mean by the ‘Abuse of Power by the Advocates of Reason’? What is
the ‘imperialism of the universal’?
- What part do Europe, the EU and social democracy play in globalisation, for Bourdieu?
- What does Bourdieu think globalisation means for media and culture?
- Why does Bourdieu think ‘culture is in danger’? What does globalisation have to do with
this?
- What does Bourdieu say about ‘the status of foreigners’? What is the significance of ‘the
train driver’s remark’?
- What is Bourdieu’s critique of the role of intellectuals in relation to globalisation?
- What sort of movements does Bourdieu see as organising against globalisation?
- What alternative form of internationalism does Bourdieu propose?

Main Reading

Pierre Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance, 1998 and Firing Back, 2001.

These are two short collections of brief pieces by Bourdieu, both with the sub-title ‘against
the tyranny of the market’. Dip into them and pick out a few short pieces to read.

Further Reading

Pierre Bourdieu, Political Interventions, 2008, especially section 12, ‘Resisting the
Neoliberal Counter-Revolution’.

Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant, ‘Neoliberal Newspeak: notes on the new planetary
vulgate’, Radical Philosophy, 108, 2001
http://loicwacquant.net/assets/Papers/NEOLIBERALNEWSPEAK.pdf
and ‘On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason’, Theory, Culture and Society, 16, 1, 1999.
http://www.loicwacquant.net/assets/Papers/CUNNINGIMPERIALISTREASON.pdf
Two similar articles criticising the Americanisation of ideas.

Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The Politics of Globalisation’ Open Democracy, 2002,

http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-vision_reflections/article_283.jsp

Max Koch, ‘Bourdieu as a sociologist of the economy and critic of globalisation’,

International Journal of Contemporary Sociology, 43, 1, 2006, photocopy in the library.

Vincent Leitch, ‘Review: Bourdieu against the evils of globalisation’, Symploke, 1-2, 2001.

41
Jason Maclean, ‘Review Essay: Globalization and the Failure of the Sociological
Imagination’, Critical Sociology, 26, 2000, discusses Bourdieu amongst others.

Ljubisa Mitrovic, ‘Bourdieu’s criticism of the neoliberal philosophy of development, the myth
of mondialization, and the new Europe’, Facta Universitatis, 4, 1, 2005,
http://facta.junis.ni.ac.rs/pas/pas2005/pas2005-05.html

Bob Lingard et al, ‘Globalising Social Policy in Education: working with Bourdieu’, Journal
of Education Policy, 20, 6, 2005. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/2505/1/2505.pdf

Anna Leander, ‘The Cunning of Imperialist Reason: using Bourdieu inspired constructivism
in IPE’, COPRI, 2002.

Anna Leander, ‘Review Essay: Pierre Bourdieu on Economics’, Review of International

Political Economy, 8, 2, 2001.

Pierre Bourdieu et al, The Weight of the World, 1999, empirical survey of ‘social suffering’.

Essay Questions

Are Bourdieu’s critics right?

How, for Bourdieu, is globalisation a matter of ‘unite and rule’? Is he right?

Is Bourdieu right that ‘culture is in danger’?

The ‘invisible hand of the powerful’. Who, for Bourdieu, is behind globalisation and what
does he think they are doing?

Globalisation is an ‘abuse of power by the advocates of reason’. What does Bourdieu

mean?

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Hope you enjoyed the module!

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