The Dialectics of Globalization: Whose Globalization Is It Anyway?

Abstract

The term has recently become quite fashionable in international relations. Despite this attraction, however, the term lacks clarity. Against this backdrop, Takashi Inoguchi's Global Change represents an ambitious attempt to elucidate the dimensions of the globalization process (and the backlash to it) in systematic and comprehensive way. Inoguchi's argument, based implicitly on the Hegelian account of social change, develops conceptualization of the globalization process that he calls dialectics. This account draws uniquely convincing map of contemporary world affairs. Unfortunately, Inoguchi does not successfully avoid the defects inherent in what is basically structuralist theoretical approach. In previous article, Inoguchi (1989) outlined four possible scenarios for Japan's future: (1) resurgence of U.S. hegemony-Pax Americana (2) tight relationship between Japan and the United States that he called bigemony, (3) Pax Consortis in which no single state can dominate and control the rest, and (4) an emergence ofJapan as the dominant economic power-Pax Nipponica. Based on such as the neutralization of the nuclear arsenals, technological dynamism, and the historical debt of World War II, Inoguchi concluded that the first scenario (Pax Americana II) was the most likely in the short or middle term but that the third scenario (Pax Consortis) was the most probable in the long term. In Global Change, despite the significant changes that have occurred in the international system since 1989, Inoguchi argues that this conclusion remains valid (p. 41). Global Change, therefore, is complementary exposition intended to go beyond his earlier focus on Japan. In short, Inoguchi seeks to provide systematic explanation of current world affairs, including contemporary issues of national security, world economy, and state sovereignty. In particular, he seeks to analyze the so-called globalization process. Throughout the book, Inoguchi bases his analysis on what he calls account of world affairs, that is, an account that runs contrary to Newtonian linear dynamics. According to Inoguchi, dialectics means a viewpoint which brings light to the reciprocal relation of immanently conflictive factors (p. 36) in the globalization process. His dialectical approach pays exclusive attention to the immanent contradictions that social phenomena contain. Through this dialectic lens, many ongoing processes in the contemporary world that have been inappropriately named as ends (for example, the end of the Cold War, the end of geography, and the end of history) become transformed. These ends are no longer seen literally as end states. Instead, they are seen as states within ongoing, indeed endless,