Abstract:If the post movements-postmodernity, poststructuralism, postFordism, post-Marxism-dominated social analyses in the 1970s and 1980s, this decade's buzzword is globalization. The ubiquitous use and vapi...If the post movements-postmodernity, poststructuralism, postFordism, post-Marxism-dominated social analyses in the 1970s and 1980s, this decade's buzzword is globalization. The ubiquitous use and vapid abuse of the concept suffuse the mass media, academia, the corporate and public sectors, and, increasingly, the left. Globalization is too often little more than an ideological incantation to the triumphalism surrounding capitalist expansion on a world scale-a neoliberal apology by another name. However, if properly framed, the concept of globalization points to authentic and important changes in global structure, consciousness, and identity, and it can sharpen our understanding of contemporary capitalism (see, in this regard, several articles in Monthly Review, November 1997 and January 1998). How are we to account for the attraction of globalization as an approach to understanding contemporary social change, and how are we to understand the inclusion of ideologically disparate social analysts in the ranks of its advocates? Significant changes in informational, communicative, and transportation processes that contribute to a compression of time and space (Harvey, 1989) across the world are certainly pivotal in explaining the concept's popularity. The instantaneous and heightened density of the global transmission of signs and symbols (and a shift in consciousness regarding these changes) characterizes contemporary society. More broadly, the globalization of culture-whether understood as a homogenizing process of Westernization, cultural imperialism, and mass consumerism or as the integration (if not the unification) of its components-entails a continuous [global] flow of ideas, information, commitment, values and tastes (Waters, 1995: 125-126). More significant, however, are changes in the spatial and organizational nature of internationally mobile capitalist production, commerce, and finance (Gill, 1997). The spreading transnationalization of production reflects the significant deindustrialization of the advanced capitalist countries and the dramatic increase in the manufacturing activities of aRead More
Publication Year: 1998
Publication Date: 1998-11-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 4
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