Globalization Comes Home, 1
Globalization Comes Home Conference Abstracts
VOLUME I: POLITICS AND LAW
Alfred C. Aman Jr., Professor, Indiana University School of Law
Globalization and the Democracy Deficit
One by-product of neo-liberalism’s dominance in the institutions and practices associated with
globalization has been a redirecting of citizen participation from representational politics to markets, as
consumers. In the name of market freedom, deregulation and privatization have eliminated timely citizen
input into important issues, rendering some democratic institutions and regulatory processes little more
than rubber stamps. At the same time, prevailing models of law assume that markets provide an escape
from state power. But markets, especially on a global scale, are not necessarily democratic and may even
work counter to democratic ideals. This paper considers the domestic democracy deficit attendant on such
circumstances. My exploration of administrative and contract law doctrines and of approaches to domestic
regulatory issues highlights how understanding globalization as a domestic political process is both a more
accurate historical reading of “global” institutions than the neo-liberal view and a more productive starting
point for addressing democracy deficit issues.
Kenneth A. Bamberger, Assistant Professor, Boalt Hall School of Law
Global Challenges to American Governance: Administrative Accountability, Private Actors and
Institutional Design
The modern Administrative State relies on a robust set of doctrines, procedures and institutional
relationships to make administrative decision-making accountable. By structuring decision making
processes and allocating roles among various governmental actors, administrative law seeks to promote
decisions that are both effective, and comport with independent values about the ways in which public
goals should be pursued, specifically: rationality, responsiveness to legislatively-determined norms, and
reviewability by others. Concern over these elements of accountability is particularly pronounced when
non-state actors take a role in policymaking, and scholars and judges struggle to derive appropriate
safeguards against capture of public policy for private ends.
At the same time, the need to develop ways to regulate matters extending beyond national boundaries has
prompted the rise of new governance institutions. In particular, prominent International Relations scholars
herald the development of transnational networks of public and private actors – individual national
regulators, private firms, non-state organizations of market actors – as an means for regulating crossboundary problems.
This paper considers the challenge posed by policymaking by extra-national networks for norms of
administrative accountability. It explores the structure of decision making in these networks, and the
particular ways in which such decision making can both elude established doctrinal safeguards and –
equally importantly – alter the existing allocation of decision making roles and authority among domestic
government actors. It then explores ways in which domestic law might develop to incorporate
accountability measures into evolving transnational institutions.
Anupam Chander, Professor of Law, University of California, Davis
Globalization through Digitization
Digitization has become an engine of globalization-speeding the globalization of goods, ideas, services,
capital, and even people. Digitization makes it possible to order goods from retailers around the world,
dispensing with retail intermediaries. Ideas can spread from Brazil to Bangladesh, or vice versa, through
the web. Service providers in the developing world can now hope to compete with service providers in the
developed world via electronic networks. Capitalists can more readily identify potential investments
around the world, using the World Wide Web and electronic payment networks. Using the Web, people
can create transnational alliances focused on shared interests, perhaps even developing a cosmopolitan
attitude in the process. But this quickening of globalization in these various arenas creates pressures on
law. With respect to information, digitization leads to fears of widespread copying, leading in turn to
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global compacts on intellectual property. More generally, globalization through digitization creates
increasing opportunities for regulatory evasion and regulatory competition-evasion and competition that
might at times be virtuous and at other times corrosive.
I will argue that globalization through digitization holds much promise for the United States. I will suggest
that the United States has the means to ameliorate the potential adverse consequences resulting from such a
dynamic.
Edward S. Cohen, Associate Professor of Political Science, Westminster College
Arguing Over Sovereignty: The Impact of Globalization on the Structure of Political Conflict in the United
States.
Globalization developed as part of a solution to conflicts over political and economic power within the
United States, but has had many unanticipated effects on American politics. The emergence of
“sovereignty” as a focal point of political conflict is among the most striking and important. The
contemporary politics of sovereignty in the U.S. plays out simultaneously on two levels of political action.
First, there are the conflicts over the legal and policy changes which globalization has wrought on the ways
in which the state defines and regulates the borders between domestic society and the international sphere.
These conflicts span the political agenda, including such areas as trade, immigration, cultural change, and
terrorism. Second, there is the emergence of “sovereignty” as a contested concept in political argument and
rhetoric. This chapter will explore both dimensions of the politics of sovereignty, but will focus on the
second. The rhetorical and ideological conflict over sovereignty, I argue, is a product of the ways in which
globalization has transformed the relationship between citizens, the state, and the economy. The problem
of “sovereignty” provides a crucial window into the impact of globalization on political life in the United
States.
Douglas A. Kysar & Ya-Wei Li, Cornell Law School
Regulating from Nowhere: Domestic Environmental Law and the Nation-State Subject
This chapter examines challenges posed by global dimensions of sociolegal and biophysical systems for
U.S. domestic environmental law and policy. As will be seen, the deep interconnectivity of such systems
suggests that significant determinants of environmental sustainability will always remain outside the
predictive and protective capacities of U.S. regulators, even with respect to matters that conventionally
have been regarded as purely domestic environmental problems. This irreducible stochasticity in turn
suggests an underappreciated shortcoming of the risk-assessment/cost-benefit analysis paradigm that
currently dominates the United States environmental policymaking discussion: By presuming that the
normativity of national environmental policy can be fully determined by empirical assessment of individual
welfare consequences, such a paradigm fails to promote an ethos of national subjectivity, in which nationstates such as the United States recognize themselves as responsible actors on the global stage, standing in
relations of moral and political obligation with other sovereigns, other generations, and other communities
of life.
Karina Pallagst, Shrinking Cities Project Coordinator, University of California, Berkeley
Globalization and urban development: the shrinking cities phenomenon in the US
A shrinking city is characterized by economic decline and – as an effect – urban areas in transformation.
Moreover, the loss of a certain type of employment opportunity is setting off partial out-migration.
Worldwide, globalization is the common denominator of the shrinking cities phenomenon. In the US
shrinkage can either be part of post-industrial transformations related with a long-term industrial
transformation process due to the decline of the manufacturing industry, or be triggered by economic
changes in the so called “post industrial transformations of a second generation” concerning the high tech
industry (e.g. dot-com hype).
The paper focuses on land use development in cities or city regions that can be characterized as “shrinking”
in terms of certain types of economies and the related population during a certain period of time. Unlike as
in Europe, the shrinking cities debate is a rather new research sphere in the US planning realm. Here, urban
planning often concentrates on either managing urban growth, or tackling redevelopment in a fragmented
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(not a regional) way - this despite the fact that shrinkage often occurs throughout an entire metropolitan
region. The current discourse in urban and regional planning in the US still shows a high affinity to growth
tendencies. Despite the revitalization approach, planning is usually focused on city centers, and there is no
active discussion of shrinking cities.
How will the United States respond to a global pandemic? What responsibility does the federal government
have to the fifty American states? What responsibility does the United States have to the global
community? What is the significance of the US policy response for domestic and international health? This
paper will try to answer these questions. Further, it will critically examine the Administration’s pandemic
strategy to determine if the United States is heightening international coordination and cooperation to
effectively combat the potential pandemic or if the unilateral approach that characterizes contemporary US
foreign policy is dominating the public health strategy.
Phil Weiser, Professor, University of Colorado Law School
Standard Setting, Globalization, and Competition Policy
Standard setting bodies represent a quintessential form of global governance. On matters ranging from
broadband wireless to standards for assessing water quality, governments, companies, and individuals
participate in international standard setting efforts. Often, these efforts produce valuable outcomes for
consumers, such as facilitating new products, spurring competition within product markets, and enabling
governments to achieve regulatory goals more effectively. In other cases, however, standard setting can
facilitate collusion and actually harm consumer welfare (or be counterproductive to achieving regulatory
policy goals).
Because of its often uncertain impact, standard setting remains a puzzle to competition authorities. By its
nature, standard setting requires cooperation--often in ways that limit the dimensions of viable competitionthat it is potentially at odds with traditional competition policy goals. Of late, competition policy
authorities have reached an uneasy truce with standard setting bodies, often tolerating their efforts in
recognition of their pro-competitive outcomes (i.e., facilitating new technologies such as the WiMAX
standard for wireless broadband). Nonetheless, competition authorities remain suspicious of such efforts
and are justified in their concern that standard setting efforts can become a ruse for cartel-like behavior.
Over the next several years, standard setting bodies are likely to increase in importance, both as a tool for
facilitating product development (and managing intellectual property rights) as well as achieving regulatory
policy goals. In the face of their increasingly importance as a tool for transnational coordination, it is
essential that competition authorities develop a more careful and consistent strategy for how to view
standard setting bodies. This chapter will outline some basic elements of this strategy, including the role of
competition law on (1) rules governing intellectual property rights within standards, (2) standards
contemplated for use by governmental regulation; and (3) standards that prevent or substitute for market
rivalry.
John Yoo, Professor, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California
Co-author Julian Ku, Professor, Hofstra University Law School
Globalization and the Separation of Powers
Events today appear to parallel those of almost a century ago, when the United States underwent
nationalization of its markets and society. In response to the Great Depression, itself the manifestation of a
nationalized economy, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democratic Party swept into office and
began the enactment of a recovery program. The New Deal put into place the foundations of the national
regulatory state: broad federal power to manage the national economy and independent agencies removed
from politics to more precisely and accurately regulate that economy.
Globalization has launched a similar transformation, with the same chance of constitutional confrontation
and breakdown, as the one that occurred almost a century ago. Just as nationalization created a demand for
regulation of the economy at the national level, whether that took the form of suppression of state barriers
to trade or uniform rules for manufacturing, so too globalization has increased the need for regulation an
the international level. The needs for global regulation parallel those that have arisen in the United States
under the administrative state.
This paper suggests that at this stage in the development of international law and institutions, the growing
trend toward global governance how it raises questions for constitutional law similar to those brought forth
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by nationalization in the United States over the last century. It is the task of foreign relations law scholars
to develop an approach that will harmonize these new methods of international cooperation--"the new
sovereignty," in the words of Abram and Antonia Chayes--with the forms and structures demanded by the
Constitution.
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VOLUME II: BUSINESS AND THE ECONOMY
Abbas Ali, Professor, Eberly College of Business and Information Technology, Indiana University of
Pennsylvania,
Changing Nature and Role of the American Firm in a Global Economy
The paper addresses the nature and role of U.S.-based firms in a globalized economy. The role of the firm
is examined in the context of various forms of American capitalism. The paper begins with an examination
of the reason for the existence of the firm with a focus on the evolutionary aspects of business organization
and historical conditions that led to the rise of particular market orientations. In acknowledging the
evolutionary aspects of the firm, the paper underscores the fact that there are a number of factors, including
the market, which shape and determine organizational goals.
The paper briefly reviews theories of the firm and their validity in the context of changing American sociopolitical and economic structures. That is, the firm is viewed as a history-contingent phenomenon. This
evolutionary approach to the firm constitutes an important perspective that may shed light on the nature of
the firm and its function in the context of various forms of market capitalism. That is, the firm has specific
functions to perform in the market. The nature of these functions, however, is contingent on the interplay
of complex forces.
Berch Berberoglu, Professor, University of Nevada, Reno
Globalization of U.S. Capital and Its Impact on the U.S. Economy and Society
For more than half a century, over the course of its ascendance in the global economy in the postwar
period, U.S. capital has expanded beyond its borders with increasing speed and intensity. Thus the
globalization of U.S. capital during the past several decades has had a great impact on the U.S. economy,
transforming its internal structure in line with changes in the international division of labor that is a direct
result of the internationalization of U.S. capital on a global scale.
This paper examines the dynamics and contradictions of this process and its impact on the U.S. economy
and society, highlighting the nature and depth of the crisis on the home front, with its social, economic, and
political consequences for the United States that are characteristic of this stage of the globalization process.
Providing a powerful critique of neo-liberal capitalist globalization and its impact on the U.S. domestic
economy and society, the paper shows how U.S. global capitalist expansion has led to national economic
decline, decline in the standard of living and social welfare of the working people, and an overall decline of
the United States as a global superpower in the early twenty-first century.
Benton E. Gup, Professor, University of Nevada, Reno
Foreign Banking in the United States: An Overview from Large Banks to Underground Banking
Large foreign owned banks have made significant inroads in the United States. HSBC (formerly The
Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) from the United Kingdom, Taunus Corporation owned
byDeutsche Bank in Germany, Citizens Financial Group owned by the RoyalBank of Scotland, and ABN
Amro from The Netherlands are among the top twelve bank holding companies in the U.S. In addition,
UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland) provides asset management and investment banking services throughout
the United States.
At the other end of the size spectrum, many immigrants make extensive use of “underground banks” or
“hawalas” to remit funds to their families abroad. These systems have been in use for thousands of years
and bypass regulated financial institutions. Equally important, drug traffickers use the “Black Market Peso
Exchange,” a form of underground banking, to exchange to finance their illegal operations.
Jeffrey Hart, Professor, Indiana University
Globalization's Impact on High Tech Industries in the United States
This paper is about how globalization in high tech industries has affected US firms and workers. It will
include descriptions of what has been happening in information technology, including semiconductors,
telecommunications equipment and services, software, consumer electronics, digital television, and
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biotechnology. It will provide some perspectives on how and why US firms responded to globalization and
what the role of government policies has been.
Cynthia Kroll, Senior Regional Economist, Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics, UC
Berkeley
Globalization of Services Sectors and Occupations: Implications for Firms, Employment and Wages
Technological change has made possible the delivery of certain types of services irregardless of distance.
This has transformed possibilities for where services are provided and by whom. The growing
phenomenon of the offshoring of white-collar jobs from the US to less costly locales has been widely
discussed, while services providers in the US also explore opportunities for extending sales to other parts of
the world. This paper describes how the globalization process occurs in services industries and occupations
and the dynamics by which gains and losses may occur within the US. From available data, there is little
aggregate evidence of measurable effects on employment or wages. A closer look at selected industrial
sectors and occupations through interviews and disaggregated data illustrates the ways in which services
firms participate in globalization and how employment and wages may respond to competition and
opportunities from globalization. Some key findings include i) the "local presence" requirement for many
of the services for which the US maintains a competitive advantage, suggesting that foreign direct
investment will complicate export opportunities in services; ii) many of the occupations affected by
offshoring are also changing due to automation (consider mail order sales), iii) wages do not necessarily
track employment changes--occupation groups may shed low end jobs to offshoring or automation while
retaining high value added jobs, iv) job churn may be increasing in services, leading to increased demand
for transition services, at a higher rate than overall changes in unemployment numbers might suggest.
Anaïs Loizillon, Ph. D. Candidate, Ecole des Hautes Etudes de Sciences Sociales
The Myth of the Second Generation: How are Children of Immigrants Really Faring?
The children of recent immigrants to the United States are poised to enter a labor market that is radically
different than the one which welcomed European immigrants in the early 20th century. The structural
changes in the labor market, as viewed by the growth and polarization of employment in the service sector,
the fall in real wage growth and increasing labor market inequality, present a significant challenge for new
entrants.
Past research on the US population indicates that the quality of the early labor market experience may be a
predictor of adult labor market outcomes. Indeed, school to work transition patterns are complex and
determined by educational and socio-economic factors, such as school attainment, high school attrition
rates, gender, race, family status and delinquency. Being the child of foreign-born parents adds another
layer of complexity, especially given the heterogeneity of immigrant assimilation patterns.
This chapter explores how young immigrants are faring as they begin to enter the US labor market. The
Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey (CILS) managed by the Center for Migration and
Development (Princeton University) provides us with the largest survey to date of the early adulthood
experiences of this segment of the U.S. population. By examining their first employment patterns and
experiences alongside their demographic characteristics, we can begin to elucidate the immigrant-specific
challenges to long-term labor market success.
Dan Meckstroth, Chief Economist, Manufacturer’s Alliance
Globalization Has Kept U.S. Multinationals Competitive
The status of multinational corporations in the U.S. economy is examined. An analysis of employment and
value-added metrics for both domestic and foreign-owned multinational corporations show that a relatively
few large multinational firms dominate manufacturing activity in the United States. Multinational
corporations also have a significant, but less commanding, presence in the nonmanufacturing sector. It is
often stated that multinationals are leading the way in offshoring jobs and business activity. Contrary to the
popular belief that multinationals are abandoning the United States in favor of overseas business activity,
the data show that multinationals continued to participate in the U.S. economy to a slightly greater extent
over the last 17 years.
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This paper delves into four main reasons why U.S. multinational corporations choose to expand abroad.
One reason is market access. U.S. multinationals invest in businesses abroad to gain access to larger
markets for their products and services. An analysis of foreign affiliate sales by destination and
employment growth finds that low wages and fast economic growth does not necessarily attract foreign
direct investment. A second reason for internationalizing is for cost reduction. The most frequently
expressed fear is that multinational corporations will shift production from the relatively high-wage United
States to lower wage countries abroad for the purpose of reducing labor costs. One of the fallacies of the
labor arbitrage motive is that low wages abroad do not necessarily mean that there are low overall costs
abroad. In spring 2006, Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI engaged The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) to
conduct a survey on the location decision of multinationals, which is discussed in the report. The third
reason for international expansion is that the rate-of-return on foreign direct investments is greater than that
available in the domestic market. And, the fourth major reason is to optimize production and minimize risk
through globalization.
The central issue is whether U.S. multinationals’ foreign direct investment and their business interaction
with affiliates abroad is a compliment to domestic economic activity or a substitute. The paper cites
several academic studies that find foreign investment and a more globally integrated business operation by
U.S. multinational manufacturing corporations add to U.S. employment and growth. In general, the U.S.
economy benefits from having large U.S. multinationals headquarter in the country even through these
firms operate worldwide enterprises.
Ram Mudambi, Associate Professor, Temple University
Knowledge Creation and Knowledge Sourcing by Multinational Firms
Multinational corporations (MNCs) by their very nature are network firms. They are therefore able to
leverage their networks to effectively manage dispersed knowledge assets. They do this by tapping into
multiple clusters to assimilate and integrate local knowledge. This process is intimately connected with the
process of value chain disaggregation, with the firm seeking to take advantage of local specialization. The
role of MNCs would seem to intensify inter-cluster competition as the firm is able to rationalize its
international portfolio of knowledge assets to the detriment of ‘lagging’ clusters. However, MNCs also
have the potential to serve as knowledge conduits between clusters and as sources of valuable knowledge
inflows. These conflicting views of MNC knowledge-intensive operations would appear to explain the
love-hate relationship between policymakers and MNCs. In other words, do American MNCs help or harm
US knowledge creation capabilities and competitiveness?
Two research questions are explored in this paper. First, how do MNCs take advantage of dispersed
knowledge creation? This question is addressed through the lens of the international business and
technology management literature. The answer is requires understanding the MNC as a ‘differentiated
network’ with both research and technology (upstream) linkages and marketing and logistics (downstream)
linkages.
Second, are MNCs beneficial for the knowledge clusters in which they choose to locate their activities?
This question is analyzed using the theory of the MNC and the knowledge management literature. The
answer depends on the market structure within which the firm operates, the nature of cluster itself, the local
objective of the MNC and the maturity of the firm’s local operations.
Barbara Parker, Professor, Albers School of Business and Economics, Seattle University
Pressures Without, Tensions Within: Global Organizations and the Reshaping of US Work
Sheer size and continued growth in the US economy retains businesses headquartered in the US, and it
increasingly attracts new businesses to the US. This chapter first describes the changing landscape for
global businesses in the US, then it examines how conflict between national and firm interests is manifested
in US workplace practices. Examples include insourcing and outsourcing practices; covergent worldwide
compensation; diversity and inclusion; structural alterations via mergers and acquisitions and other forms
of industry consolidation, and; organizational shifts along sectoral lines to create “business like” nonprofits
and more socially responsive for-profits. There are two underlying arguments: integration on a worldwide
scale motivates global organizations to adopt practices that serve firm and future interests more than they
serve current national interests, and the size and scope of global organizations (civil society organizations
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as well as businesses) position these giants to exert powerful pressures to reshape work practices within and
outside the US.
Alan Rugman, Professor, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University
The Economic Impact of Foreign and Domestic Multinationals in the North American Region
The topic deals with the regional nature of U.S. and Canadian multinationals and foreign multinationals
from Europe and Asia in North America. Basically, the data indicate that the world’s largest 500 firms,
mainly from these broad triad blocks, average 72% of their sales in their home regions and that very few
operate globally across all three triad markets. The critical point is that I take a triad approach and model
North America, on the basis of NAFTA, as an integrated region like the EU-led Europe, but not like Asia,
which has no formal institutional integration, despite similar degrees of high economic integration. I show
that the United States, and its large firms, is now affected by regional integration pressures, much like
Europe and Asia, i.e. intra-regional ones. The United States is not part of a ‘global’ flat earth economic
system as the world’s economic system is regional rather than global. I investigate why U.S. business,
labor and economics is affected more by regional pressures, such as NAFTA, than by the simplistic
‘global’ pressures portrayed in the media.
Michael Schulman, Professor, North Carolina State University
Globalization and Worker Displacement: Is There Life After Converse?
In collaboration with the Center for Community Action’s Jobs for the Future Project, we investigate the
consequences of globalization and restructuring in Robeson County North Carolina. Robeson County has
lost over 10,000 manufacturing jobs in the last ten years, including a large Converse athletic shoe plant that
employed several thousand workers. .
Analysis of secondary data and semi-structured interviews with workers and community informants show
that the local economy is vanishing due to plant closings. Males showed more success in finding new jobs
than females and were re-employed closer to the wages they received while working in local plants. Both
male and female displaced workers reported negative health consequences due to dust, fumes, repetitive
motion, and lack of safety equipment at their former jobs. Women workers are especially hard hit by
globalization related plant-closings. Since displacement, activism and education through a communitybased non-profit organization provide a means of repairing damage to women’s self esteem.
The Robeson County case study shows that there are multiple worker paths following job displacement.
Training and re-education for new jobs is only one path. Other paths include marginal employment, early
retirement, and reliance upon family and kin based networks. We propose that local social service providers
and community-based organizations develop worker advocate networks and displaced worker councils as a
way to deal with totality of needs of displaced workers.
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VOLUME III: CULTURE AND SOCIETY
Andrew Barlow, Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Globalization, Racism and the Production of Fear in the United States
While the centrality of fear to American politics has been the subject of much discussion in recent years,
the social factors that predispose many Americans to view social problems through the lens of fear have not
been systematically explored. This paper examines the ways that contemporary dynamics of globalization
have disrupted the middle class social order and predisposed political elites to externalize social problems,
dynamics that are playing out on a historical backdrop of a specifically American liberal tradition. By
comparing the American with the Spanish and Japanese reactions to terrorist attacks, it is suggested that all
nations do not respond to the dynamics of globalization in the same manner. At its core, the paper proposes,
the centrality of fear in American politics in the global era is rooted in historical and contemporary
dynamics of racism, which have been exacerbated by the dislocations of contemporary globalization. The
paper concludes with a discussion of the ways that globalization also creates conditions for a different type
of response to social problems based on the creation of collaborative global arrangements.
Paul Cantor, Professor, University of Virginia
Un-American Gothic: The Fear of Globalization in Popular Culture
Horror stories have always reflected the deepest fears of a culture, even when they are generated by
complicated economic and political developments. Thus by the end of the twentieth century, anxieties
about globalization began to surface in American popular culture, above all, in the popular and
groundbreaking TV series, The X-Files. This show projected fears about immigration in a globalized
America ("illegal aliens") in the form of extraterrestrial aliens invading a United States that had become
seemingly borderless. In the fall of 2005, a number of new shows that were clearly X-Files clones made
their debut, including Invasion, Surface, and Threshold (notice how all these titles point to the issue of
borders). In my paper, I will explore the way globalization is "Gothicized" in these shows. For example,
they take from The X-Files the horror of alien/human hybrids--a metaphor for the fear that a homogeneous
American identity is being diluted by the impact of foreign cultures (which result in hybrid formations, like
African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Asian-Americans, etc.). The X-Files established a powerful
connection between the globalizing of America and the breakdown of the nuclear family. That motif is
developed even further in these new series, especially Invasion. At its heart, this series is a soap opera
about broken families and in particular the difficulties of children trying to cope with the divorce of their
parents.
Jack Citrin, Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Globalization and Multiculturalism in American Politics
One feature of globalization is the movement of people. International migration and ideological
developments leading to identity politics thus make the relationship between demographic and political
multiculturalism an ongoing issue in many countries. The American experience here is one of several
models and is rooted in a long history of incorporating immigrants under a particular set of prescriptions.
How multiculturalism plays out in American politics is the theme of this paper.
James Cohen, Professor, University of Paris-VIII (Saint-Denis, France)
Transnational migrant networks, citizenship rights and the future of the nation-state: the case of Latino
immigration to the U.S.
Much attention has been paid in recent years to the transnational social ties linking many immigrants in the
U.S. to their states, villages and indigenous groups of origin. Do these “transnational social fields” or
“diasporic networks” constitute a threat to the sovereignty of the nation-state? And if so, should this fact be
celebrated and adapted to strategically, or condemned and resisted in the name of the national interest?
While similar debates are occurring in western Europe (comparative perspectives will be evoked in this
article), there is a major U.S. exceptionalism to be accounted for. What sets the U.S. case apart is above all
its long land border with Mexico. This explains the intensity of the current crisis over the regulation of
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migratory flows as well as the emergence of a broad social movement of immigrants in the U.S. In the
Americas, the question of citizenship rights (civil, political and social) is starkly posed in a transnational
manner among peoples of very unequal social condition. Choices about how to manage the border are
inextricably combined with choices about how to deal with inter-regional and class inequalities; they are
also associated with questions about how culturally and linguistically inclusive the nation should be.
Can new, transnational instances of authority guarantee their civil, political and social rights for the
millions of immigrants, often undocumented, whose life horizons span national borders? Such ideas remain
well outside the U.S. political mainstream, where the notions of citizenship and nationality remain closely
linked. In the foreseeable future, however, the question of their de-linking is likely to become unavoidable.
Diane Crane, Professor Emerita, University of Pennsylvania
Cultural Globalization and American Culture: Levels of Distribution, Consumption and Impact of Foreign
Cultural Goods in the United States
The literature on cultural globalization emphasizes the hegemonic role of American culture in global media
and other forms of globally transmitted culture.
The threat of ‘Americanization’ of other cultures is perceived as serious. In this paper, I will examine the
role and impact of different types of foreign cultural goods in the U.S., specifically their availability and
their impact on American cultural goods. The goal will be to draw some conclusions about the roles of
foreign cultural goods in shaping American attitudes, perspectives, and identity. In the postwar period, the
influence of American culture on foreign cultures was probably exceptionally hegemonic due to the fact
that it was based on a set of different but complementary cultural items that constituted an entire life style,
consisting of films, TV series, music, clothes (e.g. jeans), food (e.g. McDonalds) and drinks (e.g. Coke). By
contrast, the variety of sources of foreign cultural goods in the U.S. suggests that a particular foreign
culture is less likely to have a hegemonic influence in the U.S. The American public for foreign cultural
goods is likely to be highly fragmented into a large number of ‘niche’ audiences, each of which probably
represents a relatively small proportion of the population.
Ramon Grosfoguel, Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Towards a Decolonial World: Coloniality, Transmodernity and a New Universalism
This paper discusses the cartography of power of the "modern/colonial capitalist/patriarchal world-system"
and the new forms of cultural and political resistance against it. It proposes a new form of universalism that
could help us think beyond the abstract universalism of different kinds of fundamentalisms (eurocentrism,
Islamism, afro-centrism, etc.). It uses examples from many current struggles in different parts of the world.
Gary Hytrek, Professor, California State University, Long Beach
From Henry Ford to Bill Gates: Globalization and the shifting patterns of stratification in America
An intense debate rages over globalization and how it might be connected to structural changes and
ultimately inequality in the United States. On the one hand, there is general agreement that the U.S. has
been radically transformed during the last thirty years; gone is the predictability of the fixed Fordist model;
flexibility, innovation, and risk rule the day. At the dawn of the twentieth-first century, we are more
individualized, more educated, more competitive, and more unequal than ever before. On the other hand,
the causal significance of globalization remains a matter of controversy. The originating question of this
chapter is how has globalization affected stratification in the United States since the 1970s? Of particular
concern is how the intersection of our ascribed and achieved statuses, within the context of globalization,
creates specific patterns of inequality and stratification.
I advance the argument that deindustrialization and economic restructuring that have transformed the U.S.
economy and its occupational structures are best understood as immediate causes for shifting patterns of
inequality and stratification. Globalization is the critical primary cause. By compressing time and space,
intensifying competition, converging national economic institutions, and reducing government intervention,
globalization eliminates many of the risks and other obstacles to offshore investment rendering capital
more mobile—and powerful. For the U.S., the flexible era of “Gatesism,” means greater polarization
characterized by highly paid knowledge workers at one end, and low paid care and informal workers on the
other. Who is likely to be located in either category is heavily determined by race, ethnicity, and gender.
Globalization Comes Home, 11
I organize the chapter as follows. First, I review the 1945-1980 period of growth, stagnation, and
transformation to document the interrelationships among global processes, economic change, and political
policies. Second, I link the changes originating in the crisis of the 1970s to the subsequent transformations
in the blue- and white-collar sectors. The third section analyzes the consequences of these transformations
for the life chances of Americans in different class and status locations. The conclusion assesses the
significance of globalization for changes in the institutional structure and stratification patterns in the
United States.
William Leap, Professor, American University
Globalizations comes home: US gay cultures and the consequences of flexible accumulation
Migration, diaspora, and other forms of transnational/translocal flow have many effects on cultural and
social life in the USA, but their reshaping of the national linguistic and cultural repertoire has been
especially striking. In response, conservative forces have mounted projects to confirm "English" as the
national language, to develop social policies that affirm rhetorics of patriotism, loyalty, and common voice,
and otherwise to create appearances of US cultural homogeneity and undermine expressions of pluralism
and diversity.
US-based gay cultures occupy an uneasy positioning with respect to these tensions between globalizing
presence and nationalist reaction. Certainly, gay-centered linguistic and cultural repertoires have been
reshaped by transnational/translocal flows, and by the responses directed at them by conservative forces.
These reshaping have given same-sex identified men access to a broad range of verbal and other resources
through which they can claim location, as subjects, within the social moment. As a result, “(homo) sexual
identity,” formerly a singular construction, is now deeply entwined with racial/ethnic positionings, class
distinctions, notions of style and taste, questions of religion and spiritual purity, allegiances to homeland
and national origin, and distinctions between “good” and “bad” citizen. In effect, just as is true for so many
other key locations in late capitalism, (homo) sexual identity, has also become a site of flexible
accumulation.
This paper uses various components of US gay men’s language use – spoken text, music, film and other
media production -- to explore these changes in the vernacular expression of (homo) sexual identity and to
reflect on the consequences of these changes. One particular consequence merits particular attention here.
Formerly, the overseas and the distant were sites of the exotic and the forbidden in US gay culture. But if
globalization has brought the overseas and the distant into the everyday accumulation that expresses gay
identity, the formerly inaccessible is no longer beyond the subject’s grasp. So what is the source of the
exotic and the forbidden in a globalizing gay culture? Here I suggest is the reason for the recent gay
mainstreaming of, e.g. leather culture, lingual intimacy, B&D , and other practices formerly embedded
within the sexual margin; as well as the gay fascination with risky-sex in the face of the AIDS pandemic, as
well as the gay attraction to such hetero-normative institutional practices as marriage, parenthood and
domestic living.
Ronnie Lipschutz, Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz
Capitalism’s Churn and Cultural Conflict: How Globalization has Fractured American Society and Why It
Will be Difficult to Put the Pieces Back Together
Capitalism has been central to U.S. development, power and expansion. As Samuel Huntington and others
have pointed out, capitalism is also integral to the “American Creed” that underpins societal solidarity.
Yet, as a dynamic system that requires constant change to survive, capitalism is also extraordinarily
corrosive of social structures and relations, fracturing communities and families and fostering conflict and
even violence. North America has not been immune to this phenomenon: over the past 400-years, periods
of destabilization, associated with capitalism’s Industrial Revolutions, have given rise to religious
movements, cultural friction, and even war. The latest phase of globalization, involving the extension and
deepening of U.S.-style capitalism throughout the world, has not only generated a domestic culture war,
fragmenting society along religious, political and economic lines but also embroiled the rest of the world.
This paper will offer both a history of this process as well as an analysis of the most recent cycle, and offer
a discussion of the prospects for reuniting the pieces.
Toby Miller, Professor, UC Riverside
Globalization Comes Home, 12
The State and the New International Division of Cultural Labor (the NICL)
We are told that US popular culture works because it successfully engages audience desires through market
dynamics. I shall argue instead that it does this via the state and the NICL. Hollywood benefits from close
to 200 publicly funded film commissions, Pentagon funding, ambassadorial services from the departments
of state and commerce, and massive use of state funds from other nations. Hollywood’s NICL operates
through a blend of comprehensive studio facilities and fetishised roles in the labor process that rely on the
disaggregation of production across space. The nicl is adapted from the idea of a new international division
of labor (nidl): developing markets for labor and sales, and the shift from the spatial sensitivities of
electrics to the spatial insensitivities of electronics, pushed businesses beyond treating third world countries
as suppliers of raw materials, to look on them as shadow-setters of the price of work, competing among
themselves and with the first world for employment. As production was split across continents, the prior
division of the globe into a small number of imecs and a majority of underdeveloped countries was
compromised. Whereas the old idl kept labor costs down through the formal and informal slavery of
colonialism (the trade in people and indentureship) and importation of cheap raw materials with value
added in the metropole, this eventually produced successful action by the working class at the centre to
redistribute income away from the bourgeoisie. The response from capital was to export production to the
third world, focusing especially on young women workers.
Tyler Stovall, Professor, University of California, Berkeley
"From Mother Africa to Blacks with Accents: Diaspora and African American Studies in the United
States"
This article will consider the development of the diasporic approach to black studies in America, focusing
on its role in black studies departments at the university level. It will consider the ways in which Diaspora
has been defined and redefined, and look at how and why it has changed from a relatively marginal
approach to the dominant theme in the field. It will consider studies of the African Diaspora as a prime
example of the internationalization of knowledge production about blacks in the contemporary United
States.
Tim Wendel, Novelist and Journalist. Johns Hopkins University
World Games: Globalization of U.S. Sports
The percentage of players from outside the U.S. continues to grow in most professional sports. At the same
time, the dream of an athletic scholarship, even playing sports professionally, has extended from the inner
city to the middle-class suburbs. What we're witnessing is the beginning of the global sports age and this
trend has already created a harsh new reality for U.S.-born players.
"In 10 or 15 years, the question won't be, 'What happened to the [American] athlete?' says Harry Edwards,
a University of California sociology professor. "The question will be, 'Who needs the [American] athlete?' "