Globalization (POLI3510)
Globalization: The Essentials
Chapter 1: Conceptualization, Origins and History
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Globalization: Planetary process/es involving increasing liquidity and growing
multidirectional flows, as well as the structures they encounter and create.
Globalization does not necessarily entail greater integration. It can both enhance
and reduce the level of integration (the latter, when structures that block flows
are created). Ex: increasing global flows led to Brexit, which was a rejection of
greater integration in the form of the European Union.
Transnationalism vs Transnationality
o Transnationalism: Processes that interconnect individuals and social
groups across specific geopolitical borders.
o Transnationality: The rise of new communities and formation of new
social identities and relations that cannot be defined through the
traditional reference point of nation-states.
Transnationalism is a more delimited process than globalization. It refers to
interconnections that cross geopolitical borders. But it could refer to only a few
nation-states, unlike globalization.
o Example of baseball to differentiate transnationalism and globalization.
Baseball has not reached a sufficient number of countries to be
considered global, so it is rather transnational. However, soccer could be
considered a global sport. Other examples of globalization in the sports
world include the Olympics.
Globalization and transnationalism can occur simultaneously, they can coexist.
Conceptualizing globalization
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Globality: Omnipresence of the process of globalization.
Metaphor: Solids as time before globalization, reality after globalization
considered liquid.
From Solids to Liquids
- Solidity: People, things, information, and places “harden” over time and
therefore have limited mobility.
- Solidity was a key characteristic of people, information, places. Things remained
the same. People did not go far, they had relationships with those near them.
Objects were used where they were produced. Information did not travel far due
to the solidity of the media in which it was contained (stone tablets,
newspapers...). As people did not move far, neither did information. There were
also solid natural and artificial barriers that prevented flow.
- The nation-state contributed to the creation of barriers to keep things in and out
of their borders. Ex: erection of the Berlin Wall.
- The solid reality is nowadays melting.
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Fluidity presents both opportunities and dangers.
Liquidity (Bauman): The increasing ease of movement of people, things,
information, and places in the global age.
That which is liquid does not hold its form for a very long time.
Time in a liquid world is more important than space. Liquid phenomena move
easily and are difficult to stop from moving.
That which is liquid melts what is in its path.
Liquidity leads to reactions that involve the creation of new solid forms or
barriers, which attempt to control it.
Flows
- Flows: The movement of people, things, information, and places due in part to
the increasing porosity of global barriers.
- Ex: Flows in terms of food that has become popular all over the world (like sushi).
Flows in terms of migration. Flow of information, images and ideas, which is
easier due to its immateriality.
Heavy and Light
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Food Chapter 1: Unpacking the World Food Economy
Mental and physical distance between consumers and food.
Fast and cheap distribution of food, global reach. But also entails ecological and
social consequences. Ecological: biodiversity loss and exposure to toxins due to
the use of pesticides.
- Triple burden of malnutrition: chronic undernutrition, overnutrition and
micronutrient deficiency.
- The book aims to contribute to a fuller understanding of some of the key forces
that influence and shape the current global food system.
o Focus on the international political and economic dimensions of the
system.
- Global food markets were given a push by industrialized countries.
- Middle spaces of activity.
- Growing distance as food is being treated like any other commodity.
Characterized by asymmetry and volatility.
Going Global
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How did we get here?
- Four key forces:
o State-Led industrialization and Global Market Expansion
o Agricultural Trade Liberalization
o Corporate Concentration
o Financialization
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T1: DEFINITIONS
Globalization Initial Definitions
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“Globalization is a planetary process or set of processes involving increasing
liquidity and the growing multidirectional flows of people, objects, places and
information as well as the structures they encounter and create that are barriers
to, or expedite, those flows.”—Ritzer
“Globalization as a concept refers both to the compression of the world and the
intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole.”—Robertson
“A social process in which the constraints of geography on social and cultural
arrangements recede and in which people become increasingly aware that they
are receding.”—Waters
“Globalization is the extension, acceleration, and intensification of consequential
worldwide interconnections.”—Sparke, p. 3
4 major structural components: economic, social, cultural, political.
Global capitalist system: global trade, technology driving force behind that.
Technologies of transportation, communication, etc.
How does that interact with systems of political powers?
There is only political economy, not economics. How does the global political
economy of capitalism work?
o Some argue that the dynamics of migrating global capitalism means that
states are powerless. Other argue that is not the case.
To what extent do politics affect global capitalism, and vice versa.
How do the processes of globalization affect social structures and culture?
Interdependency implies mutual dependency but not equality of influence.
Definitions
o Ritzer (book), sociologist. Flows and impediments to flows.
Multidirectional flows. Set of processes, not a thing. They can change,
they can be reversed. Solidity is still present. Solidity can hamper flows or
facilitate them.
o Robertson, sociologist. Consciousness, people are aware of it. It can lead
to the acceptance of being citizens of the world or to the rejection of it,
cultural backlash against it. Resurgence of nationalism.
o Waters
o Sparke
Analytical Aspects of Definitions
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Non-evaluative, descriptive.
Inclusive
Emphasize processes and trends
Issue of consciousness
Nature of Globalization
 These definitions of globalization may or may not be viewed as linear. That is,
they do not necessarily imply that globalization is a one-directional process.
 They do not necessarily imply an all-encompassing process, as if everyone is
affected (equally?) by globalization.
Metaphors of Globalization
- Solidity: def p.4 “People, things, information, and places “harden” over time and
therefore have limited mobility.”
o Ex: physical structures, barriers. Border regimes.
o Lack of mobility, people are born in social classes and usually stay there.
o The vast majority of people do not leave their country of origin. People
who live outside their country of origin: 380m.
- Liquidity: def p.6 “The increasing ease of movement of people, things,
information, and places in the global age.”
o Ex: information of the internet, transportation, food, money.
o Qualities: water erodes solid structure/overcomes solid obstacles, fits any
shape, they always find a way around the obstacles in their way.
- Flows p.7 “The movement of people, things, information, and places due, in part,
to the increasing porosity of global barriers.”- Heavy, light and weightless pp 8-9
o Heavy: factories.
o The Bible can be all three (weightless through the internet).
o Is the internet really weightless? Servers, huge installations. Somewhere,
the Internet is heavy.
- Heavy structures that expedite or block /channel flows in various ways.
- Perspective and level of analysis: solidity, liquidity and flows
o Some things that from one perspective or level of analysis seem solid and
from other can seem liquid.
o North Atlantic Ocean: pretty solid. Currents, main current goes in one
direction, but smaller currents go in every direction.
Interdependencies, hierarchies and subtler barriers
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Socio-economic characteristics of capitalism as a system of production and
distribution.
o Capitalism demand growth to maintain itself in the long term.
o It requires profits to survive.
o It requires new markets to expand as old markets become saturated.
These markets can be found overseas or marketizing new spheres of
social life.
o It seeks cheaper inputs to lower the cost of production, in terms of
materials and labor.
o The goal of capital in capitalism is to produce more capital. It is not the
production of socially necessary products, the production of jobs, the
preservation of the environment.
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o Capitalism used land and labor as commodities. Real state agencies,
selling of land. Work contracts, we sell our ability to work for a time
period.
Interdependencies of Commodities: Global Commodity Chains
o Commodity: Anything produced to be bought or sold on the market.
Of workers: the global division of labor (class, race and gender).
Of Law: what kins of law? From trade to human rights
o You can’t have global trade without law. Laws have to guide trade.
o Laws in whose favor?
o WTO
Of Governance: States, Intergovernmental Institutions and Anarchy
Of Space: Control, integration and path dependency
o To what extent does globalization affect forms of special control and
integration?
Of technology and information: neutrality, control, knowledge, propaganda
o Who controls technology and what are the implications of this?
Interdependent Global Chickpeas
“IMARC’s latest study “Chickpeas Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth,
Opportunity and Forecast 2018-2023” has segmented the market on the basis of key
regions. Currently, India represents the largest producer of chickpeas accounting for
around 70% of the global production. India is followed by Australia, Pakistan, Myanmar,
Ethiopia, Turkey, Iran, Mexico, Canada and Russia. Among the top exporting countries,
Australia represents the biggest exporter of chickpeas accounting for more than onethird of the total global export volumes. Australia is followed by Russia, India, Mexico,
Canada, the United States, Ethiopia, Argentina, Tanzania and Iran. At present, India
represents the biggest importer of chickpeas accounting for around one-fifth of the total
global import volumes. India is followed by Bangladesh, Egypt, the United States, Algeria,
Pakistan, Spain, United Kingdom and Turkey.
Food Miles: Distance in the food system
Globalization with a Capital G
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Globalization as an analytical term: the processes that we can see taking place,
that we can analyze. (small g) what exists out there
Globalization as a political term (capital G) what you want to exist
For proponents/critics of neoliberalism (set of policies that are reflective of a
laissez faire open economy capitalism).
o Use both uses of the term globalization, the second referring to what they
want to exist.
Sparke definition: not just describing what is but what you think you want it to
be.
“A set of terms and arguments about the nature of reality that are tied together
in a narrative that systematically shapes the reality it purports to describe.”—
Matthew Sparke, Introducing Globalization, p. 29
Major schools of thought on globalization
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Hyperglobalization Thesis: globalization is new and has a logical end point.
o International trade and finance drive the process, G as a primarily
economic phenomenon that has follow on effects on other areas. It will
lead to a completely integrated economic system.
o Neoliberal variant
 Pro free market, minimal interference.
 The consolidation of global capitalism in the free markets is good
as it will allow people to develop their full potential.
Concentration of resources in the hand of people not
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governments, meritocracy. People with resources will want more
and between resources.
o Neo-Marxist Variant
 The consolidation of global capitalism will generalize the
inequality and division that exists in all states and will lead to the
exploitation by those in powers.
Skeptical Thesis:
o Globalization is nothing new and will likely lead to greater
fractionalization.
o The world is no more interconnected now than it was in the past. The
nature and extent of economic interconnections is still controlled by
states, still the most important players in the international system.
o Globalization will not lead to cooperation between sates and cultures but
lead to more conflicts. The more pressure comes from the outside the
more people will fall back on what they know.
Transformationalist Thesis:
o Globalization is changing the world, but the outcome is uncertain and
subject to change due to the agency of states, institutions, and people.
 Globalization is changing the world, but it does not have a clear
endpoint. It is subject to change depending on what people do.
o Not everything is dependent on the economy. Separate effects on
different spheres of society.
o G is not uniform, complex patterns of winners and losers.
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Geographic spread vs functional integration (production processes).
How new is new?
“ The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over
the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish
connections everywhere.”
–Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
The 13th Century World System
Global trade, 1914
Global food system (Clapp)
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Distance: not just physical but mental as well.
Power differentials in the food system
Environmental impact
Corporate power
Nutritional consequences
Food security issues
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Change in the 80s, move towards neoliberalism, open markets.
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What are they exporting: grain, corn, soy. Changes on diets, on what we
consume. Dependence on imports/exports to feed the population.
Middle spaces of the food system
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o The relationship used to be more direct between producers and
consumers.
o Traders, processors, retailors as intermediaries. Obtain the large majority
of profits.
Increasing importance of global financial and speculation in the food system
Evolution of the Global Food System
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State-Led Industrialization and the Global Market Expansion
Agricultural Trade Liberalization
o Through the WTO mainly. Adoption on the agreement on agriculture.
Corporate concentration.
Financialization.
T2: THE CHANGING GEO-ECONOMIC MAP OF THE WORLD
Violent Borders Chapter 5; Maps, Hedges and Fences: Enclosing the Commons and
Bounding the Seas
Enclosing resources
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Territoriality: attempting to influence or control people, phenomena or
relationships by delimiting and asserting control over a geographical area.
Private Property and the Midlands Revolt
- At core, questions about access to land and the right to control it.
The Peace of Westphalia
Geography, Movement and Control: The Political Economy of Place
State, Borders and Movement
- At the beginning of 19th century, “three-quarters of all people alive were trapped
in bondage against their will either in some form of slavery or serfdom.”—Jones,
p. 74
- Direct slavery and servitude in West replaced by other forms of restriction of
movement.
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o Debt peonage: working to pay off a debt. Still the most common form of
modern-day slavery.
o Vagrancy Laws
o Europe and the US (after Civil War)
o Prisoner-based labor markets
One of the state’s prime functions has always been to control territory, resources
and movement.
o The Law of the Sea Convention
The Caspian Sea: Is it a Sea, or is it a Lake? And who cares?
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2018 agreement: It is neither a sea or a lake
Surface is treated as sea
Beds are treated through bilateral agreements of littoral states
Oil and gas under it
State, borders and movement
- The State as accountant
- Legibility and vision
o Done through the institution of citizenship itself. New category of
belonging, prior to the 19th century the concept didn’t exist.
- For people: citizenship was the key mechanism.
- The state as institution of surveillance.
The Age of the Document
- Documents are ubiquitous in our age.
- Prior to 20th century the right to move was primarily based upon characteristics
of either race or class.
- From the beginning of the 20th century on, the right to move became increasingly
based on documentary status.
- Codified through legislation:
o Passport
o Fingerprints
o Censuses
o Birth certificates
o Biometrics
Global Border Regime
- Prior to 1800, the focus of control over movement was primarily within states.
- Between 1800 and approximately 1880, there was a migration window.
- From 1880 onwards, the focus of control has been primarily among states.
Borders and the Poor
- Over the course of the modern globalization period, concentration of wealth has
increased.
- Wealthy states, technological change, and the right to movement.
Enclosing resources
- The Midlands revolt of 1607
- The establishment of territoriality
- “Prior to the modern era, much of the land in the world lay outside the exclusive
control of emergent states.”—Jones, p. 93 Jones on bounded spaces
- Bounded spaces:
o “Today, by contrast, from the moment an individual is born to the
moment they die, they live in a multitude of overlapping bounded spaces
that affect every aspect of their existence. These lines include
international borders, state boundaries, county boundaries, city
boundaries, city council districts, police precincts, fire-station districts,
school districts, electricity grids, trash-collection areas, neighborhood
boards, gated communities, and private properties. The list goes on.
Although many of these lines are invisible and permeable, they affect
quality of life in terms of the availability of public education,
infrastructure, government benefits like health care of Social Security, the
right to free speech, and access to economic opportunities.”-p. 93
Mapping the world
- From enclosure to the realm of private property
- In terms of land and water, mapping became key
- Europe exported mapping
- Accumulation by Dispossession: centralization of wealth and power in the hand
of a few by dispossessing the private and public entities of their wealth or land.
Always look for the geography behind the data
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Increasing rights for women
On population Growth
“So much for notions that the world is ‘flat’ or ‘flattening’: these projections may prove
to be faulty, but they confirm that the poor will form an ever-larger majority in an
increasingly unequal world”-p. 80
European Population
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Aging population: taxes issues, social infrastructure issues. Declining labor force,
raise retirement age.
Fertility rate 2020
Fertility rate correlates with levels of poverty. The poor will form an ever-larger
majority in ...
Urbanization
- All continents will be over 50% urban by 2050, huge change specially for asia and
Africa.
- Demographic changes will lead to political and economic and geostatistical and
military ones.
Core and Periphery
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Roulette of birth: opportunities based on where you happen to be born.
“This means that geography and place still exert formidable power over the huge
majority of the world’s people, whose mobility remains constrained, their cultural
baggage commonly unadaptable, their resources limited, their health imperiled, their
hopes dimmed. More than a billion of these people are the poorest of the world’s poor,
the sickest of the sick. Another billion live on the edge of penury. At a time of reviving
ideological (this time religious) extremism and dissemination of weapons of mass
destruction, this is a ticket to catastrophe. Proclamations of a flat or flattening world
may cheer the literati in the core, but not many beyond the barricades.”-p. 89
Population Density
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Population causes environmental stress.
Light pollution
Global Shift in GPD, 1700-2008
Core/Periphery Production Model
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The model suggests that they represent patterns of production, noy geographical
countries. Ex: India is a semi peripheral country, but in certain fields it is nearly
core (pharmaceuticals, data).
Most trade takes place within the core.
Major exports by country
Global Trade Patterns, 2021-2031
Global Trade Patterns Growth Rates, 2021-2023 estimates
Industrial Production, 2019
Service Production, 2018
Cereal Production, 2018
How do TNCs establish themselves in other states?
Foreign Direct investment (FDI): direct purchases of existing companies in
another country, or the investment of capital to build your own industries. Main
way transnational corporations expand their operations.
o Purchase of existing companies: Mergers and acquisitions.
o Green field investment: building your own factories in other countries,
involves purchasing land.
o Portfolio Investment: the purchase of shares in existing domestic firms in
other countries.
- Most FDI and Portfolio Investment comes from Western TNCs.
o Historically, most FDI and Portfolio Investment takes place in other
developed countries.
o These patterns ARE changing, but slowly.
Existing FDI stocks (Inward and Outward)
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Increase in inward FDI flows; sectoral distribution, 1990-2017
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Overall volume of inward FDI stock:
o Shifting sectoral concentration in the context of a massive increase
overall.
 1990--2 trillion dollars
 2005/7 (average)—14.8 trillion dollars
 2017—30.5 trillion dollars
Distribution by sector (Value of cross-border M&A Sales)
o 1990:
 Primary products: 9.88%
 Manufacturing: 42.2%
 Services: 47.9%
 Total (millions of dollars): 98,050
o 2017:
 Primary products: 10%
 Manufacturing: 36.6%
 Services: 53.4%
 Total (millions of dollars): 398,899
FDI is very cyclical.
Concentration of FDI in 2019
Developed and Developing Countries: CIA and IMF Definitions
- Developed: those with more than 15k per capita income
- 34 developed countries and 126 developing
• “Developed” countries are those with per capita incomes greater than $15,000
(excludes 8 OPEC countries with per capita incomes in excess of $20,000).
• There are 34 “developed” countries on the CIA and IMF lists, though 4 of them
are different on the two lists
• Approximately 15% of the world population lives in DCs
• There are 126 “developing countries” (those with incomes less than $15,000 per
capita)
• There are 44 “least developed countries” (those with per capita incomes less
than $1000)
• Approximately 85% of the world’s population lives in “developing countries”—
LDCs, LLDCs, and SIDS.
• On a per capita basis, in terms of FDI that means: $566/per person in the
Developed Countries, and $130/per person in the Less Developed Countries
Impact of FDI on economies—dependence and crisis
T3: GLOBAL COMMODITY/VALUE CHAINS
A simplified analytical framework of the global economy
Major governance institutions in the global economy
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Top: international organizations: UN, World Bank, IMF, WTO
Next: regional organizations: G20, G7, EU, ASEAN, APEC; NAFTA...
UN System
- UN Security Council
- Mandates: what is the mandate of a particular org, what do the member states
allow this organizations to do.
Global Value Chains
- Definition p.87-88
“[Global value chains] highlight the relative value of those economic activities
that are required to bring a good or service from conception, through the
different phases of production (involving a combination of physical
transformation and the input of various producer services), delivery to final
consumers, and final disposal after use.”—pp. 87-88
- Materials, semi-finished goods and final products flow in one direction.
- Information and money flow in the other direction.
What is a commodity?
- Something that is produced to be exchanged through the market.
o Produced explicitly so it can be bought and sold for money in the market.
- Commodification: turning something into a product that can be bought and sold
- Commodities = both “goods” and “services”
- Trade balance = exported goods minus imported goods & services
- Commodity fetishism: focusing on just the product and ignoring how and where
it’s made. Value in of it itself, ignoring the value of labor involved.
- Examples of commodity fetichism all around us
o Head of a lettuce: you don’t know where it comes from, or who great it,
but we give value to it and turn it into a commodity.
- Capitalism treats labor and land as commodities.
The classic capitalist commodity chain
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Capital buys labor and materials to engage in commodity production which are
then sold and disposed of.
Inside the complexity of the contemporary commodity/value chain
Not New, but global commodity/value chains have changed
- 19th century: Raw materials and finished goods–periphery and core
- 20th century: vertical integration and national economies
- 1970s onward: increasing horizontal integration: geographic extensity.
- Cost of transport: drop around 1960
What are the net effects of today’s global commodity/value chains?
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The shrinkage of distance- “time-space compression”
o Illusion that geography no longer exists, ability to get things and get to
places in little time. Ex: Amazon Prime.
o It becomes an expectation, not a luxury.
Increasing demands for free trade:
o More oppositions to free trade as force in favor of free trade increase
Creation of increasingly global markets
Creation of global networks, but
o There is a triangular concentration of global trade
o EU, NAFTA...
o Increasing global movements of components.
o Increasing amount of global trade is intra-corporate.
 About sourcing efficiency but also about using global
interconnections to minimize taxation and maximize profit.
Financialization
 The shareholder value revolution beginning in the 1980s shifted power in
corporate governance from managers to shareholders. . . This resulted in a
change in corporate strategy from the . . . concern with firm growth, through
retaining profits and reinvesting them, to an emphasis on shareholder value and
short-run return on investment through downsizing the firm and distributing a
greater share of profits back to shareholders. . .
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Turn to a more short-term perspective on maximizing shareholder profit rather
than on increasing and expanding the company.
Pressure to get profit to shareholders goes up.
Global Value Chains as arenas of contested relationships
The nature and role of TNC in GVCs
o Companies that have the power to control and coordinate processes and
transaction of a company in more than one country.
o Size and resources allow them to take advantage of geographical
differences in production and in state policies?
o Geographical flexibility, switch operations at the international and global
level.
o States are regulators of GVCs
 Capital can’t simply move all the time at the drop of a hat.
 TNCs can move, but only from one state to another, limitations.
o CSOs, Labor, and Consumers in relation to GVCs
Nature’s Evil- Commodities and Politics
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Structure of the argument in the book
o What becomes a natural resource is determined by humans.
o What impact do the inherent characteristics of the raw material have on
the particular the commodity?
o The method of processing the NR is important to understand because it
defines the nature of the labor process.
o Institutions that organize the labor and derive the income from the raw
material.
o Political features of states and how...
Sugar and Spice and All things nice
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Salt
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We can’t survive without salt, we can consume a limited amount of salt, our
body knows when to stop. Sugar is consumed in unlimited quantities. Addictive
commodity. The more it is produced, the more it is demanded.
Addiction becomes societal, imitation.
Salt and Sugar supply and demand.
o Increasing demands of salt come with increasing population.
o Sugar: supply drives demand.
Commodities addictive and toxic. Tea, coffee, opium, oil.
The Junkies of Empire: tobacco, sugar, opium, tea supported British power.
Jevon’s Paradox: increase deficiency of resource production increases
consumption of the resource.
Trade: extensive and local
Salt, monopolies of trade and political power. Venice.
The pattern of extractive industries
Heavy commodities versus Light commodities
Rubbing salt in wounds
Sugar
- Production ecology, labor and politics
o Sugar degrades land, unlike salt.
o It leads to furthering of slavery.
- Commodities and class structure
o Consumption is driving the sugar industry.
- Sugar and profit, “how sweet it was.”
- Aftertaste: sugar, revolution and innovation
Global Industrial Food Market (Food Chapter 2)
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The globalization of the food system has fundamentally changed the nature of
both what we eat and how we eat.
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Is this transformation in the food system for the better or for the worse?
Post WWII global food regime
Industrial model of agriculture
o Mercantilist policy to benefit US agricultural interest.
o Large scale agriculture production, heavy use of pesticides...
o Export of this model to the rest of the world.
o Characteristic:
 Involves heavy capital inputs, expensive. Use of hybrid seeds.
Involves monocropping, growing the same thing over huge areas
(fence-to-fence agriculture). Requires mechanized irrigation
system and more mechanization in general.
US agricultural policies, 1945-1970s
o Subsidizing farmers to make sure they stayed in business.
o CAP: Common Agricultural Policy (EU)?
The Green Revolution
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Exporting the industrial model of agriculture
Required adopting the entire package of policies and methods
Results are uneven.
o Worked well in India, Mexico.
o Provided market access to US and European transnational corporations.
Crises in the Food System
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Latest: COVID and war in Ukraine.
Massive price increases for food in 1970s
o Bad weather, bad harvest, rapid spikes in food prices.
Oil Shock of 1973
o Shipping costs increase.
o Production prices increase.
Changes in US policies after 1973
o Nixon administration, free market.
Ecological crisis: biodiversity and nutritional diversity
Effects of monocropping:
o Monocropping, fence-to-fence planting. Pest control becomes a bigger
problem.
o Higher use of water.
o Market. Susceptibility to market conditions and demand.
Market volatility and food insecurity
Meatification of diets
o CAFOs: concentrated animal feeding operations
The Clothing Industries
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Fibers, Textiles and Garments
The focus here in on the Garment industry
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Tensions between the developed and the developing countries over trade.
o General Agreement on T and Trade: predecessor to the WTO.
Nature of the labor forces.
o Differs a lot.
Changing rules and changing nature of the industry
The clothing production circuit
Characteristics of the garment industry
- Highly fragmented organizationally
- Relatively unsophisticated technologically
o Low capital and technological requirements
o Perfect for lesser developed countries
o No need of a particularly skilled labor force.
- Outsourcing is particularly prevalent.
- Labor force is overwhelmingly female and young.
- Rapidly changing market due to diverse and unpredictable consumer preferences
- Buyer-driven industry (i.e. corporate buyers).
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Relatively skilled and cheap force in Eastern Europe. Closer.
Dynamics of the Garment Industry
- The Global Shift in Clothing and the MFA
- What drives the industry?
- Labor force and working conditions.
- Technological Change, Retailer Dominance, and their implications.
- Environmental implications:
T4: RISE AND FALL AND RISE (AND FALL?) OF MNES, MNCS, TNCS
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Premodern Precursors to TNCs
Modern MNEs took off in the 1870s
o Railroads, steamships, cables.
In spite of political, military and economic challenges, continued to expand until
1930s.
Basic infrastructure to 1930
- Transportation was key early
- Primary Production
o Raw materials
- Extraction:
o Oil and related industries
- Transport companies
- Placement of cables from 1852
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o Reduced communication time from months to minutes
Transnational system built by these corporations
TNCs and the Culture of Empire
- Export of US and European managerial styles
- Export of US values of consumption and consumerism
o The colonial gaze: modernity, gender and exoticism.
 Singer Sewing Machine corporation. Look at ads.
 International Harvester
 Heinz
TNCs in the global economy today
- TNCs from the 1930-1980s
o WWII caused economic catastrophe.
o Spread of communism, process of decolonization
 Imposition of regulatory control over investment in India
 Political and economical phenomenon
o By 1970s-80s global economic systems reemerge. USSR falls, China
reenters global economy.
- Today:
o Most remain based out of the US, Europe, Japan
 92% headquartered in 6 countries.
 TNCs headquartered out of India.
o TNCs account for 2/3 of global trade
o Largest 100 control 20% of global assets.
o The relative power of states and TNCs
 Look at chart Top 100 countries/corporations
Impact of TNCs on host countries
- Widely admired and widely disliked
- All states want and compete for FDI
- Liberalization of rules governing FDI
- State policies regarding TNC operations
o Export processing?
- The Race to the Bottom argument
- The Footloose TNC argument
o Pick up and move whenever they want, not entirely true but they are very
flexible.
- Seen by some as highly efficient, productive, innovated, they provide jobs.
- Seen by others as exploitative, environmentally rapacious, uncaring about
communities they operate in. The reality is both at the same time
- Pros and Cons of TNCS for Lesser developed countries
o Pros: increased availability of capital, access to advanced theology,
management expertise, marketing ?networks
o Decrease capital for local business, what has to stay in the country and
what can leave (repatriation?), environmental problems (environmental
transference).
Agricultural TNCs
- Clapp Chapter 4
- Importance of technology historically
- Replacement of ingredients: economic and political issues
o Concern over concentration of power in the food system.
- Importance of states
o P. 102: trade rules established by states.
- Importance of international institutions
o Agreement of agriculture within the WTO
- Concentration of power in the food system
o Producers and consumers on the other end. All relationships are
channeled through then hourglass of the international food system.
Middle controlled by traders, processor and retailers.
o Not just the fact that P and C don’t really interact, but the intermediaries
are almost entirely very large very powerful TNCS
Levels of concentration
- ADM...
Sources of corporate influence
- Price-Setting
o Big corporations can set prices.
- Slotting Fees for retailers
o Cost that companies pay to retail stores to get the product in a prime spot.
- Private standard-setting
o Big corporations who set their own standards for food. They have a lot of
power to enforce them.
- Lobbying
o Big agricultural TNC yield a lot of influence. Not a good or bad thing, just
something to be aware of.
T5: GLOBALIZATION AND CULTURE
- General arguments and questions.
o Is this a case of the spreading western hegemony of pop culture and
values more generally?
o Is globalization leading to the homogenization of culture?
 Cultures are being eradicated, homogenization on western terms
o Or are there countervailing forces that are leading in different direction,
towards regionalism, hybridity and localism?
o How strong are the forces tending toward the preservation of local and
national cultures?

Right-wing populism, backlash. Bolsonaro, Lepenn, radical Hindu
nationalism.
What is culture?
- A set of discourses, traditions, behaviors, artifacts, texts and so on
o Social construction and articulation and reception of meaning
o We are part of many cultures.
- That creates a particular identity and understanding of the world.
- Particular importance of national culture in this context
o States still have a lot of power to construct national identities within their
borders
- Culture as coercive and as empowering
-
Def
o Language shapes how we think and what we think about. Dominance of
English. It sets the terms of debate, the terrain of culture.
 Ex: Who has the power to define concepts like family?
Globalization, Political Economy and the structures and discourses of power
- Gendered nature of globalization
- Class conflict and ethnicity
o Difficult to disentangle class, ethnic and gender conflicts.
- The culture of the market and the market as culture
o Changing what is for sale. Pressure for marketization of healthcare, caring
for elderly and children, death and birth, and wedding industry.
T6: GLOBAL GOVERNANCE
- Intergovernmental organizations
- Building cooperation that goes beyond just the institution.
o Help overcome the prisoners dilemma of noncooperation.
- Embedded constituencies, people who have vested interest in the continuation
of the institution.
Political issues and governance
-
Multilateralism
North America Free Trade Agreement
Iran Nuclear Deal- IAEA
North Korea, NPT, UN sanctions
Russia: US and EU sanctions: SWIFT
UNESCO: cultural heritage and more
Paris Climate Accords
Managing the global system: IMF, WTO and World Bank
-
The IMF’s original mandate
o Modeled on the Marshall Plan
Main objective: to provide emergency loans/support for countries in crisis
o Keynesian economics: when an economy is in crises the state needs to
step in.
Record of the IMF
- Controlled effectively by Financial ministries.
o The decisions about loans made by people within financial institutions:
serving the interest of the global capital.
- Moved from Keynesian approach to neo-liberal (free market) approach in the
1980s.
o Weighted voting, weight determined by the amount of money provided
to the institution. Powerful countries can block any proposal they don’t
like.
- Joseph Stiglitz- former head of the World Bank
- The case of the Soviet Union and Russia
o First major moment 1990, still USSR, Gorvachov and Yeltsin. They went to
IMF with a plan for reform to a market economy. The IMF said no, too
socialist. Deepened the crisis. The IMF was complicit in the collapse of the
Soviet Union.
o 1993: conflict between Yeltsin government and Russian government. The
IMF supports Yeltsin. If parliament budget for reform was adopted, loans
to Russia would be cut off. Wanted Yeltsin more radical plan for
privatization.
o Valuate all assets and set up a system to change from state-owned to
private. IMF pressures Russia to move quickly. Privatization process ripe
with production and completely disorganized.
T7: GLOBALIZATION AND THE STATE
The State
- Monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force: this doesn’t mean there are no
other organizations, individuals who use violence but not in a legitimate way.
Sovereignty and Autonomy
- Thirty Years War and Treaty of Westphalia
- States have both internal and external sovereignty.
o Internal: nature of the state institutions. No one outside the state can
determine what it does within its territory, interfering in internal affairs
of nations.
o External: interstate relations, recognition in the global
o Treaties, alliances and diplomacy. Only states have the roght to be a part
of this.
o Juridical equality.
State capabilities
-
Physical attributes: size, population and geographic location
Economic resources, technology, productivity
Military capabilities
Institutional strength
Social cohesion; strength of loyalty to state: elites, population
France is a continental power; UK is an island. Problem of being invaded easily, England
need only navy. France needed to have a large standing army plus navy.
Relative Power of Actors in World Politics
-
-
-
Relative power of states vis-à-vis other states: juridical quality of states vs reality
of power (resources, capabilities).
Relative to other multinational vs transnational actors: states ability to tax, to
conscript armies vs TNCs with global value chains.
o Is it about the real power of TNCs or about the weaknesses of states?
International law and human rights conventions
o To what degree do they impose limitation to state power? No real
imposition
Subnational threats to states: interstate war has been less common that
intrastate since WWII.
Challenges to individual states vs challenges to the state system
o The Westphalia system
o After the nation state what
Globalization the state system
-
Undermines the structures and the rationale behind the entire state.
Economic globalization renders states incapable of managing economic space.
Transnational corporations have more power than states in some cases
States lose control, need for new systems of organization. Politics will eventually
follow economics.
Globalization undermines the state system by increasing the importance of
supranational and subnational identities and affiliations.
Globalization, the state and national identity.
Globalization creates multiple forms of governance
-
The state system will continue, but with diminished and/or more functionally
differentiated powers.
Globalization creates interconnections and problems that states alone cannot
address.
o More efficient/convenient to have international organizations control
certain aspects.
-
-
o Individual states cannot lead with human trafficking. Example of
problems that need cooperation. INTERPOL, UN office of Drugs and
Crime
This crates the need for international institutions and cooperation.
o Consensus that non-state actors can deal with certain issues more
efficiently.
o Not exactly replacing the state but adding to state functionality.
o Multilayered governance. Not competing but complementary.
These are or should be complementary systems, not competing ones.
The state system is not fundamentally affected by globalization
-
-
Extensity and intensity of globalization is still fundamentally determined by
states themselves. Globalization is determined by the will of states.
States need to adopt policies that allow globalization to happen, if it doesn’t
want to do so it can. SKEPTICAL
Globalization is not the dominant factor in the lives of states or people- that is,
the effects of globalization are overrated.
People are deeply attached to national identities and does not change that, it
actually can reinforce it. The more societies feel pressures from outside, the
more likely they are to double down on what the know.
Competing arguments:
Economic side
o Capital and TNC are powerful, but they can’t tax, control flow of people,
can’t raise armies.
o Which actor is more powerful over all, it all depends (relativistic).
Multilayered governance
o Most IOs function at the behest of sates.
o Yes but still within the context of mostly multilayered institutions made
of states
States are not effective
o Depends on the state. Weak, strong, fractured...
Globalization and Democracy
-
-
Globalization undermines democracy (Hyper)
o Sovereignty compromised at a certain level. Who we elect means less
that it once did, globalization is going to dictate politics.
Globalization provides the bases for or improves the changes of democracy
(Transformationalist)
o Globalization about development and enrichment through trade.
Increase the size and power of the middle classes.
o Liberal argument (The Economist, section on global markets)
o Globalization puts limits on state power, but this is a good thing.
-
-
The effect of globalization depends on politics; there is nothing necessary about
the relationship. (skeptical)
o Its easy to blame or give globalization credit.
If globalization spreads a form of democracy, is that necessarily a good thing.
EXAM
- Global value chains include not just the physical commodity but also the capital
and finance that goes along with it. Functionally the same as global commodity
chain.
- Heavy, physically embedded in states, light
- WTO: what, goal, reason important example of IOs, created in postwar era,
helps maintain liquidity in the system.
Globalization and the Illusion of Security
The Outlaw Ocean
GLOBALIZATION, SPACE AND STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE
Should I Stay, or Can I Go?
-
Implications oof large scale urbanization in the developing world.
International movement: border regimes, immigration
Rise of global cities: resembles more other major cities than the rest of the
country its located in.
-
Speculative urbanism
o Global investors
Planet of Slums- Introduction
- Key questions raised by the book?
o What is the dynamic of urbanization? Why is this occurring?
o How does economic globalization drive economic urbanization in...
o Revisiting the question: what, if anything is the relationship between
poverty and globalization, seen through the lens of urbanization?
The history and prevalence of slums
- Slum: Descriptive term but also moral valuation to it.
- UN definition of slum is conservative and restrictive
o Overcrowding, poor or informal housing, inadequate access to water
and sanitation and
Slums by the numbers
Dynamics of slums and their evolution
- As large as the official statistics are, globally there is a systematic undercounting
by states of the numbers of urban poor
- Mega-slums: fairly rapid increases. Pressure/stress on the environment, on the
people who live there, on states, on IOs, on NGOs. Politically very difficult to
manage.
- One of the central issues is housing:
o Location
o Versus cost
o The availability of services
o The fundamental question of tenure
 Precariousness, problematic nature of tenure.
Property
- Squatters: people who occupy space that are owned by others (individuals or
government. OKUPAS
- Pirate Urbanization
o Developers coming up buying up space, land, buildings and
selling/leasing/renting to the people who want to live in this areas.
- Substandard Commercial Residential Subdivisions (SCRS)
o Planned Layouts:
o Low service levels
o Suburban Locations
o High Tenure Security
o Non-conformity with urban development plans
Slum Ecology-The environment and urban poverty
- Slums begin with bad geology
- The mathematics of slum ecology
o Risk (possibility of death, homelessness and joblessness)
Equals:
o Hazard (frequency and magnitude of natural events) x
o Assets (population and structures exposed to hazard) x
o Fragility (physical characteristics of built environment)
Natural hazards
- Floods
- Fires
- Earthquakes: most victims poor
o Cheap material get crumbled easily.
Globalization, Ecology and Class
-
The effects of natural hazards, compounded at times by state policies...
Urban development and Slum Ecology
-
Traffic: increasing accidents and pollution issues. Focus on private rather than
public transport.
Migration and Globalization
-
Migration is globalization in one sense.
Modern globalization and its effect on migration
o Economic terms
o Infrastructure:
 solidity/liquidity,
 transportation infrastructure has expedited migration
 Communication, technology.
 Documentation: identification documents
o Social and cultural terms
o Political terms
Types of migration
-
Settlers: colonial politics.
Contract workers: legal documented contract people working in other countries
for not long periods of time.
Professionals: TNCs workers. For discrete periods of time (around 5 years)
Undocumented workers
Refugees and asylum seekers
Migration in historical perspective
-
-
Migration today is not as extensive as in the past
o Peaked in the early 20th century
o Increase since the 1960s, but downturn since 2001
So why Is immigration such a hot-button issue today, particularly but not solely
in the US and Europe?
The changed context of modern globalization
-
Historical Context
Economic instability of core countries
Problem of the dual labor market
Globalization and integration
Violent Borders
-
Tension between control and movement:
o Quote p.5
History of restricted movement
o Castles, enclosures, berlin wall
The violence of borders
-
Direct Violence versus Structural Violence
o Concrete persons or actors: police, armies... against people trying to
move.
o The violence is built into the structure and shows up as unequal power
and consequently unequal life chances.
o Control over resources-Law of the Sea
o Eliding responsibility for action
Types of violence
-
-
The overt violence of border guards
The use of force or power that increases the chances of injury, death and
deprivation.
o Ex: Cutting off essential services (power, water, roadways), sanctions,
destruction of infrastructures, local environments.
o Not targeted at individuals, but rather using mechanism to increase the
risk for people.
Threat of violence necessary to limit access to land or a resource.
The violence that borders do to the economic well-being of people.
The direct harm to the environment that border security systems inflict.
Lessons of EU Borders
-
From Nador to Horgos: Outsourcing violence in the EU
Expanding the Schengen Area and the militarization of border enforcement
Who is to blame?
-
The policies of European states that make crossing into Europe more difficult?
The smugglers who take advantage of the increasingly difficult routes and
methods?
Opposing rescue missions as “an unintended pull factor”
GENDER AND GLOBALIZATION
-
-
Impact of globalization on women
o South and North
o Urban and rural
o Rich and poor
o Regional particularities
Spheres of social life and the impact of globalization
Economic
Social/cultural
Political
-
Interrelations among these spheres
Globalization and women’s employment
-
Increasing percentage of women worldwide joining the labor force.
Gendered nature of global production and reproduction.
Globalizing Capital, Globalizing Labor
-
Hiring women versus feminizing jobs
The first is a quantitative measure of the number of women in the labor force,
overall and by sector.
The second is a qualitative construct on how different jobs are coded as
masculine and feminine.
Labor and patriarchy
Globalization and the relocation of work
Relocation of work continued
-
It is not just about low wages...
Tultex and Liz Claiborne in Mexico
EPZs and women’s labor
-
-
Subcontracting, offshing
Not all is unskilled low end work, but the majority is.
Extra-territorial sites: the laws that apply in the rest of the countries do not apply
inside them.
o Companies can do what they want inside these EPZs
Highly feminized labor forces.
o Young women, relatively unskilled, seen as hardworking and controllable.
Patriarchal structures preexist globalization.
Capital and patriarchy.
The path-dependency of feminized labor
Versus empowerment?
Video
-
Purchasing Power Parity
Global Reproduction Network
-
Nature of migration and womens labor
Women in the labor force, North and South
o Women in the North face a care deficit
o Elite women turn to migrant women, driving the feminization of
migration. Women of the global south go to the global north to do the
caretaking work that the women in the global north don’t want to do.
Men don’t help
Transfer of sentiments
-
Migrant women are mothers themselves:
Extended families and communities care for children
Migration and remittances
Global Economy and Gender, Race and Class
-
Interface of gender, race and class relations
The analysis of the double burden for women...
o Bias built in to think this affects more women in the global south than in
the global north.
Gender Inequality in the US
- The most persistent form of structural inequality remains in the workplace.
- Women are overrepresented in contingent, casual and nonstandard jobs as well
as the low-wage service sector.
- As with women globally, more American women are active members of the
labor force.
- Women spend on average...
Occupational segregation
-
Low wage job sectors
Occupation and gender ideology
Women’s political participation: A Global View
- Why have women succeeded in gaining political power in some places and not
others?
- Regional differences are quite marked
o Parliamentary representation
o Top leadership positions
o Laws regarding representation-debates over quotas
Important cultural factors affecting women in politics and globally
- Religion
- General cultural beliefs regarding women’s status
- These cultural factors affect both the supply side and the demand side of
politics
Gender, social structure and Politics
- The extent to which women will become involved in politics
- Series of factors to consider
o Money
o Time
Women’s Representation and Political Systems
- Democracy, Semi-authoritarianism and Authoritarianism
- Electoral systems
- Nature of political parties
- Quotas
Transnational advocacy networks
ENVIRONMENT
Climate Change numbers/scenarios
-
RCP2.6: if everyone gets behind environmental policies (left)
RCP8.5: no significant global climate policies are put in place (right)
Species survival chart
Nationally determined contributions
- Voluntary
- No consequences, no enforcement
- Problems with global governance we see in other areas
Climate change and global governance (Christoff and Akerlee?)
- Globalization and ecological disconnectedness
- Consequences of the products we consume in other parts of the world, local
environments.
- The emergence of GVCs has the potential to reduce that sense of distance and
alienation, we become dependent on the robustness of these GVCs and this will
make us think about their impact.
- Accountability crisis: at the heart of the failure of environmental global
governance.
Failures of Global Governance
- The state system and the environment
o Based on anarchy, exclusive territorial rule. International agreements
bound to consent of states.
- Effectiveness of existing environmental agreements:
-
o Not reconstructing global environmental institutions but trying to get
around limitations.
o There are a lot of agreements, they have made a difference but not that
much.
Failure to integrate economy and environment.
Environmental movements: US and Global
- Geographic range
- Trajectory from local grievance and localism to broader linkage
o From NIMBY to NOPE
o NIMBY: not in my backyard (not getting rid of pollution but getting it out
to someplace else)
o NOPE (not on planet earth)
o Increasing involvement of communities of color over time.
Grassroot environmentalism today-US
-
Growth of the movement
First the focus was on conservation, from 1960s on it becomes more activist
and grassroots oriented.
NIMBYism to NOPE in the US movement
Race, gender and environment in US movement
Specific strategies and goals
Radical environmentalism
Environment and MIC
Global environmental movements
- Environment and Development
o Korea and Taiwan
o Southeast Asia
o China
o India
Origins: local conditions and material existence
- Not guided by some overarching ideology of environmentalism
- Origins in questions of resource control
- Once begun and mobilized, connections are seen and linkages made to
regional, national, and international organizations.
- Different States: different POS issues
Women as leaders
Religion as movement catalyst
- What makes religion so important in mobilizing and framing environmental
issue?
Unconventional Protest and Mobilization
-