Critique Of Globalization Research Articles

A Newer, Truer, and More Moral Realism?

Fire on the Rim: The Cultural Dynamics of East/West Power Politics. By William H. Thornton. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. 240 pp., $72.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-7425-1706-3), $26.95 paper (ISBN: 0-7425-1707-1). William H. Thornton's Fire on the Rim: The Cultural Dynamics of East/West Power Politics is a sustained, eloquent, and combative critique of realism, neorealism, reactionary modernization, and neoliberal globalization. It is also a bold effort to construct a framework of moral realism through the systematic incorporation of culture into international relations theory. Thornton's new moral geopolitics represents a cultural realism of the Left (p. 22), but more than anything else, Fire on the Rim convincingly demonstrates that it is quite possible to theorize about global politics from places other than Europe and North America. Fire on the Rim will no doubt make its mark on the debates about cultural and civilizational conflicts that are bound to increase and deepen as globalization continues. In the first chapter Thornton sets the stage for his in-depth analysis of Asian countries with a general critique of the theories and models used to understand the dynamics of Asia's integration into a global system dominated by Western values and ideas. He derides the sterility of the idealist–realist debates in international relations theory, but follows up with attacks on postmodernism and postcolonialism as well. Postmodernism is criticized for its alleged antipolitics; postcolonialism for its anti-Westernism and supposed fetish for difference. Asian theories and models also come under Thornton's scrutiny. The Chinese model of development, namely authoritarian developmentalism, is the subject of a spirited critique; but Taiwan and Korea are highly praised for balancing development and democracy. In Thornton's view, Japan falls somewhere in between. The South Korean political-economic model is painted as radical (unlike Singapore's growth-first strategy), but also as the one approach that might lead other Asian countries to prosperity combined with …

Critiques of the globalization process: The examples of Russia and Serbia

The paper is devoted to outlining the research topic to be dealt with by the author in the incoming period within the project of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory. Starting from "globalization" as the keyword of current debates on political, economic and cultural destiny of contemporary world, the author delineates the subject matter of his research as the critiques of the globalization process formulated in Russia and Serbia. In terms of contents, the research will be devoted to analyzing and interpreting different philosophical-theoretical, political and ideological arguments used by the critics of the globalization process in political and cultural life of Russia and Serbia. The proposed comparative approach ought to provide an insight into the influence exerted by Russian opponents of globalization on domestic critics of the process, as well as to help understand the differences in resisting globalization that stem from different political, economic, military, cultural and international positions of the two countries in today's world. The basic aim of the research is to asses theoretical-argumentative and practical-political potentials of the critiques of globalization in these two post-communist countries.

Revisiting the subaltern in the new empire

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ was published in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture in 1988. With the female subaltern as its principle concern, the essay moves between the seemingly disparate realms of intellectual production, institutional spaces, colonial archives, Hindu scripture and economic infrastructures (among others) to pose a central problematic in relation to voice, subjectivity, representation and the practice of writing history. In the intervening years since its publication, Spivak’s framing of this problematic – which foregrounds the discontinuities between these concepts in scholarship – has been hotly debated in terms of its implications for intellectual work and activism alike. In the move from Bhubaneswari to her great grandniece, Spivak’s own revision of this essay in her recent book A Critique of Postcolonial Reason draws our attention to the emerging subaltern of the New Empire: once caught and silenced in the relay between colonialism and national liberation struggles, she now disappears in the ‘violent shuttling’ between multinational capital and culturalism. This paper on Spivak’s work responds to what we see as its continued challenge to humanities scholars and activists to fashion an ethics of alterity that is not reducible to identity politics where the gendered subaltern occupies a particularly telling place as part of a comprehensive critique of globalization.

Empire and Utopia: A Psychoanalytic Critique of Totality

Post-11 September Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire (2000) has found mass popularity. In this article I discuss the text's relationship to postmodern capitalism, attempt to understand its appeal after the attacks on New York and Washington, and consider its political message. To this end, the first part of the paper aims to situate Empire against the background of the global economy and the 11 September attacks. Beyond this formal critique of Hardt and Negri's book, the second part of the article undertakes a psychoanalytic critique of the text itself. The role of this section is to show how the formal situation ofEmpire is written into the fabric of the book. The conclusion of the article assesses Hardt and Negri's political position in relation to Derrida's critique of globalization in Specters of Marx (1994).

“Disreputable Magicians,” the Dark Destroyer, and the Trickster Lord: Reflections on Semai Religion and a Possible Common Religious Base in South and Southeast Asia

Recent studies of globalization tend to stress its novelties, especially new patterns of consumption and mediated communication (e.g., Appadurai 1996). But the view from the margins and from the lowest social strata of globalizing states seems less novel. This paper explores the ways in which the impact of anciently emergent slaveholding despotisms and their colonies seems refracted in the cosmology of southeast Asian peoples as a stupid terrorist storm god, whose literally bestial power is available to humans who can surrender to it in an almost erotic ecstasy of yearning and desire. These cosmologies, the paper suggests, constitute a still relevant, nuanced critique of world-conquering globalization. We see them only as eccentrics or as survivors…locked into a religiose fantasy-world; they are quaint historical fossils…But where social or political assumptions or enquiries into value are at issue, then the answer must be very much more complex. The danger is that we should confuse the reputability of beliefs, and the reputability of those who professed them, with depth or shallowness. (Thompson 1993:107, 108) Hinduism was thus a religious accumulation derived from all periods of India's history; primitive cults of fertility, hero reverence, and sun worship were…overlaid with an elaborate system of philosophical speculation. Hinduism countenanced almost every level of religious belief from crude animism to metaphysical monism. Hinduism could be transferred, therefore, only in a selective way…During the development of Hinduism in India, Siva worship absorbed a large number of pre-Aryan spirit cults. It did the same in Southeast Asia…(Cady 1964:36–37)

Toward a Feminist Political Economics

Feminist critiques of globalization have received insufficient attention in public discourse.Spike Peterson's RVP framework integrates feminist scholarship in a way that adds punch to such critiques. Its main contribution consists in bringing into view women's labor in the 'reproductive' economy. A shortcoming is that it retains the opposition between production and reproduction. The RVP framework is built on a constructivist ontology that allows for the integration of discursive and institutionalist approaches and provides grounds for further theoretical elaboration.

Trade, harmonization, and domestic autonomy in environmental policy

This article evaluates the environmental criticisms of free trade that have been such an important part of the critique of globalization. The first section briefly surveys the range of criticisms environmentalists have brought against the new economic order. The second section examines the available literature on the “race to the bottom,” one of the key concerns. The third section analyzes the World Trade Organization trade rules and how they have been interpreted by dispute resolution panels involving environmental issues. The fourth section turns to the specific rules of the North American Free Trade Agreement and examines several case studies of environmental issues in that region. The final section provides a summary evaluation of the environmental criticisms. The article argues that the environmental criticisms are exaggerated. Trade agreements leave far more room for domestic environmental measures than is frequently argued. The political globalization of the environmental movement has helped counter the threat to environmental policy created by the economic and trade aspects of globalization. Environmentalists do need to be careful about how they advance this critique of globalization, however, because their arguments risk becoming a self‐fulfilling prophecy.

Political Economy Discourses of Globalization and Feminist Politics

here seems to be general agreement that global capitalism is here to * stay. The rapid integration of the world into one economic space through Ithe internationalization of goods, capital, and money markets is more often than not represented as an inevitable and irreversible phase of capitalist development. The globalization of production and consumption by transnational corporations (with the assistance of intergovernmental organizations such as the World Bank and World Trade Organization [WTO]) is characterized as a force that shapes and transforms all of the economic, political, and cultural forms it encounters. Triumphalist accounts that celebrate the victory of the market over all other economic forms produce such descriptions of the so-called reality of globalization. But so, too, do globalization's critics, who tend to emphasize the dark side of the new world order.

Trade, Harmonization, and Domestic Autonomy in Environmental Policy

This article evaluates the environmental criticisms of free trade that have been such an important part of the critique of globalization. The first section briefly surveys the range of criticisms environmentalists have brought against the new economic order. The second section examines the available literature on the “race to the bottom,” one of the key concerns. The third section analyzes the World Trade Organization trade rules and how they have been interpreted by dispute resolution panels involving environmental issues. The fourth section turns to the specific rules of the North American Free Trade Agreement and examines several case studies of environmental issues in that region. The final section provides a summary evaluation of the environmental criticisms. The article argues that the environmental criticisms are exaggerated. Trade agreements leave far more room for domestic environmental measures than is frequently argued. The political globalization of the environmental movement has helped counter the threat to environmental policy created by the economic and trade aspects of globalization. Environmentalists do need to be careful about how they advance this critique of globalization, however, because their arguments risk becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Globalization in Your Face

A Future Perfect: The Challenge and write gloriously. As journalists, they have Hidden Promise of Globalization, BY learned the art of making a point vividly JOHN MICKLETHWAIT AND ADRIAN by buttressing it with an apt anecdote, a WOOLDRIDGE. New York: Crown striking interview, or a telling quote. Yet Business, 2000,386 pp. $27.50. the book's substance is what really makes it stand out. The authors neatly sketch and If you thought globalization is the fastestdefend globalization, examine its pitfalls, growing phenomenon today, think again, and analyze how to avoid them. Given Books about globalization are. A Future such an overwhelming agenda, they canPerfect is only the latest in a torrent of not hope to paint on this immense canvas writings on the subject, chief among without incurring minor blemishes them being The Lexus and the Olive Tree of detail and errors of judgment. But by Thomas Friedman. Yet it stands as judged in its entirety, with all its ambione of the rare exceptions to the law of tion and achievement, the book is a diminishing marginal utility; its many spectacular success, merits far outweigh the sense of deja vu The authors' predilection for free that afflicts most books taking yet another markets makes them skeptical of the look at globalization. many populist critiques of globalization. It is not just that Micklethwait and Yet they often manage to turn these criWooldridge (both of The Economist) tiques on their head to show the exact

Democracy, Science, and Free Trade: Risk Regulation on Trial at the World Trade Organization

Among the most common critiques of globalization is that it increasingly constrains the ability of communities to make unfettered choices about policies that affect the fundamental welfare of their citizens, including those of health and safety, the environment, and consumer protection. Traditionally, free trade rules were about constraining border measures such as tariffs and quantitative restrictions on imports. Increasingly, however, such rules include requirements and constraints addressed directly to domestic regulation. For example, a country's policies with respect to intellectual property rights or its regulatory approach to network industries, such as telecommunications, may now be fundamentally shaped by rules that are made and interpreted at the international level. One of the most visible and controversial areas where trade rules constrain regulatory diversity is that of food safety. The World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement), negotiated in the Uruguay Round and enacted in 1994, requires that countries either adopt harmonized international standards or, if they choose to maintain stricter regulations, base these on risk assessment, scientific principles, and scientific evidence. The SPS Agreement also requires that the regulations adopted be the least trade-restrictive available to achieve the desired level of protection. The above provisions apply even to nondiscriminatory regulations that would not run afoul of the Most Favored Nation and National Treatment provisions of the GATT itself. The SPS Agreement also prohibits arbitrary and unjustified distinctions in levels of protection in situations that are comparable, where these distinctions lead to discrimination or disguised restriction on trade. Such strictures appear to provide fuel for criticism that globalization suffers a democratic deficit. As two critics put it, [t]he essence

`New Music' between Search for Identity and Autopoiesis

The so-called New Music in Europe after the Second World War was based on the idea of progress, similar to technological progress and related to it, and aimed at a complete rationalization of composing. The ideal of music as autopoiesis, which appeared in the 1950s, became inherent to this development. It supposed a kind of communication on music as a reified object, which opposed music making and listening as communication between partners. Separated from the life-world and conceived as a self-referential system, New Music should represent not only the logical achievement of the historical development of European music, but also the superiority of Western musical thought in the more developed countries (like the USA, France, West Germany) over the music cultures of the world. Therefore, the integral serialism, which should rule the musical composition, became a form of symbolic power within the musical field, in correspondence with similar forms of domination within the economic, political and technological fields. However, some European composers rejected this trend and tried to find an alternative to aestheticism by means of political engagement. For instance, the Italian composer Luigi Nono (1924-90) explores the dialectic between subject and object, technological development and critique of technology, avant-garde and critique of progress, globalization and anti-imperialistic resistance. In his strategy, in which Gramsci's and Walter Benjamin's thought played an important role, aesthetics became inseparable from politics. His search for identity as a composer transforms the tragedy of listening into an allegory of human condition.

Contesting the hegemony of market ideology: Gramsci's 'good sense' and Polanyi's 'double movement'

This article argues that the most fundamental challenge of globalization (both as a concept and as a sociopolitical process) lies in our need to reassess its bearing on the meaning and potential of democratic praxis. My purpose then is first to offer a critique of neoliberal globalization from the vantage point of democratic theory, exposing how this form of market ideology is inherently antithetical to democratic principles. The second part of the article shows how two central themes in the thought of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi may be usefully combined to produce a forceful counter-hegemonic model to contest the depoliticization, atomization and commodification endemic to neoliberal globalization. Whereas Polanyi demonstrated the repercussions of such domination in the economic lives of people, Gramsci was concerned to show the political domination that necessarily precipitated it. I argue that Polanyi's critique of the selfregulating market and his discernment of society's 'double movement', when bridged to Gramsci's theory of ideological hegemony and his notion of 'good sense', supply vital components of a critical theorization of globalization as well as practical strategies of resistance to the anti-politics of market ideology. Ultimately, I submit that this critical integration of Polanyi and Gramsci into the globalization debates produces a much needed analytic strategy which maintains a primacy on political agency, critically specifies the national-international distinction, and makes a methodological virtue of radical democratic theory.

Global Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary.

This groundbreaking collection focuses on what may be, for cultural studies, the most intriguing aspect of contemporary globalization—the ways in which the postnational restructuring of the world in an era of transnational capitalism has altered how we must think about cultural production. Mapping a world space that is simultaneously more globalized and localized than before, these essays examine the dynamic between the movement of capital, images, and technologies without regard to national borders and the tendency toward fragmentation of the world into increasingly contentious enclaves of difference, ethnicity, and resistance. Ranging across issues involving film, literature, and theory, as well as history, politics, economics, sociology, and anthropology, these deeply interdisciplinary essays explore the interwoven forces of globalism and localism in a variety of cultural settings, with a particular emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region. Powerful readings of the new image culture, transnational film genre, and the politics of spectacle are offered as is a critique of globalization as the latest guise of colonization. Articles that unravel the complex links between the global and local in terms of the unfolding narrative of capital are joined by work that illuminates phenomena as diverse as yellow cab interracial sex in Japan, machinic desire in Robocop movies, and the Pacific Rim city. An interview with Fredric Jameson by Paik Nak-Chung on globalization and Pacific Rim responses is also featured, as is a critical afterword by Paul Bove. Positioned at the crossroads of an altered global terrain, this volume, the first of its kind, analyzes the evolving transnational imaginary—the full scope of contemporary cultural production by which national identities of political allegiance and economic regulation are being undone, and in which imagined communities are being reshaped at both the global and local levels of everyday existence.

The extended partitioning problem: hardware/software mapping, scheduling, and implementation-bin selection

In system-level design, applications are represented as task graphs where tasks (called nodes) have moderate to large granularity and each node has several implementation options differing in area and execution time. We define the extended partitioning problem as the joint determination of the mapping (hardware or software), the implementation option (called implementation bin), as well as the schedule, for each node, so that the overall area allocated to nodes in hardware is minimum and a deadline constraint is met. This problem is considerably harder (and richer) than the traditional binary partitioning problem that determines just the best mapping and schedule. Both binary and extended partitioning problems are constrained optimization problems and are NP-hard. We first present an efficient(O(N 2)) heuristic, called GCLP, to solve the binary partitioning problem. The heuristic reduces the greediness associated with traditional list-scheduling algorithms by formulating a global measure, called global criticality (GC). The GC measure also permits an adaptive selection of the optimization objective at each step of the algorithm; since the optimization problem is constrained by a deadline, either area or time is optimized at a given step based on the value of GC. The selected objective is used to determine the mapping of nodes that are "normal", i.e. nodes that do not exhibit affinity for a particular mapping. To account for nodes that are not "normal", we define "extremities" and "repellers". Extremities consume disproportionate amounts of resources in hardware and software. Repellers are inherently unsuitable to either hardware or software based on certain structural properties. The mapping of extremities and repellers is determined jointly by GC and their local preference. We then present an efficient ( O(N 3 + N 2 B), for N nodes and B bins per node) heuristic for extended partitioning, called MIBS, that alternately uses GCLP and an implementation-bin selection procedure. The implementation-bin selection procedure chooses, for a node with already determined mapping, an implementation bin that maximizes the area-reduction gradient of as-yet unmapped nodes. Solutions generated by both heuristics are shown to be reasonably close to optimal. Extended partitioning generates considerably smaller overall hardware as compared to binary partitioning.

“Let Them Eat Cake”: Globalization, Postmodern Colonialism, and the Possibilities of Justice

This essay presents three accounts or narratives of globalization. Each narrative describes the triumph of a central character or institution (science, markets, law) against its challenges or enemies (ignorance, regulated or planned economies, human caprice and unreason). The stories convey moral tales about what justice might look like and how social relations might be justly organized and governed. I argue that under the dominant accounts of globalization, the dynamics of power are obscured so that social relations seem to be produced by invisible or natural forces. When the operation of power is masked, I argue, justice, and efforts to confine and regulate power, is made less probable. Law and society scholarship can contribute to a critique of globalization by continuing to identify the ways in which law and power are mutually implicated and embedded in social relations. Rather than describe current forms of international social exchange as globalization, a seemingly neutral terms, the essay urges scholars to identify the role of power by naming global social exchanges as “postmodern colonialism.”

Desegregation as a Cold War Imperative

At the height of the McCarthy era, when Congressional committees were exposing communist infiltration in many areas of American life, the Supreme Court was upholding loyalty oath requirements, and the executive branch was ferreting out alleged communists in government, the U.S. Attorney General filed a pro-civil rights brief in what would become one of the most celebrated civil rights cases in American history: Brown v. Board of Education. Although seemingly at odds with the restrictive approach to individual rights in other contexts, the U.S. government's participation in the desegregation cases during the McCarthy era was no anomaly. Rather, by the early 1950s, American leaders had come to believe that civil rights reform was crucial to the more central U.S. mission of fighting communism. Based in part on diplomatic research in State Department archives, this article demonstrates that Cold War motives influenced the U.S. government's involvement in Brown and other cases. Originally published in 1988 in the Stanford Law Review, this article was the first publication to use State Department records to examine the relationship between Cold War foreign relations and civil rights in the United States. Diplomatic records illustrate the growing concern among American diplomats and political leaders after World War II about the impact of race discrimination on the U.S. image around the world, and the global critique that the United States could not be an effective leader of the free world as long as the nation blatantly denied rights to its own peoples. This research confirmed the suspicions of Derrick Bell and others who argued before these records were opened that foreign affairs affected U.S. government civil rights policies, and it helped illuminate the world-wide impact of the civil rights movement. This research was expanded upon in Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2000), and in books and articles by other scholars. The larger body of work on race and foreign relations is an important aspect of efforts by historians to internationalize the study of American history. Thanks to the Stanford Law Review, the article is now available on SSRN so that it will be easily accessible on-line.