Globalization: Captors and captive

Abstract

Globalization studies are not really global. Rather, globalization research mainly centres on, and emanates from, the OECD countries. To begin to change the balance, it is important to pose a set of pertinent and penetrating research questions. Animated by theoretical and empirical research undertaken largely in southeast Asia, these questions call for painstaking analyses of dominant moral codes, various actors' attempts to turn the globalization scenario to advantage, cultural and political struggles to assert some control over market forces, and tensions within a framework based on neoliberal values and policies. The act of capturing establishes a hierarchy between the captor and the captive. This hierarchy is not a dichotomy, but an ordering of power and a division of labour. The captors of course seek to remain on top, and the captured attempt to ascend from the bottom of the heap. Such structural and dynamic relationships must be contextualized and, today, are integral to the epochal transformation known as globalization.