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• Globalisation is taken up in this chapter as one of the most recent
domains of sociology. At the same time, it is shown to refer to
processes that have existed for hundreds of years.
• The concept of economic globalisation is assessed in relation to
the contemporary global condition and is shown to be less impor-
tant today than various kinds of cultural globalisation.
• Economic globalisation, a much more important process in the
19th century, is nevertheless related to the colonial system of
nation-states which predominate today. While transnational corp-
orations are very important, the relationship between first, second
and third world states remains of foremost importance in deter-
mining global economic realities.
• The power of the nation-state in fostering national constituencies
is undermined most visibly by forms of cultural globalisation. The
ole of migration, tourism, commodity exchange and the media,
oth old and new, is examined in relation to cultural globalisation.
• On the one hand, cultural globalisation produces an inmixing of
ethnic diversity and promotes an appreciation of difference, diver-
sity and civic pluralism. But a second kind of cultural globalisation
uns counter to the first. The globalisation of capitalist culture
itself-the fast-food chains, the shopping malls, the theme parks-
produces a standardisation and homogenisation of difference in
the name of a consumer monoculture.
408 AUSTRALIAN SOCIOLOGY
globalisation A complex
set of social, economic,
political and cultural
processes which cut
across national
oundaries, increasing
levels of interconnected-
ness such that the world is
econstituted as a single
social space.
THE MISCHIEVOUS CONCEPT
OF GLOBALISATION
Since the early 1990s the term 'globalisation' has gained widespread
cu
ency in Australia and industrially developed countries. The
discourses of globalisation appear regularly in the nightly news, on
the lips of politicians of any persuasion, and are now featuring in the
titles of the latest wave of sociology textbooks. For journalists and
politicians, 'globalisation' has become the subject of a new kind of
moral panic, according to which a 'postmodern' or post-industrial
market is said to be beyond regulation and control.
In this way, 'globalisation' as a process is often 'reified'-credited
with a kind of alien, autonomous quality-into something that is
eyond politics and agency and that is a repository of social processes
out of reach of any meaningful analysis. It is sometimes used as a
metaphor for recent sensibilities about social change, a sense of social
change that occurs at too great a rate for the modern nation-state to
cope with, and has even led some sociologists to declare the 'end of
the social' (Rose 1996; Touraine XXXXXXXXXXAs a concept, 'globalisation'
ecame stretched to absurd degrees, leading one commentator to dub
it 'the ugliest buzzword of the 1990s' (Wiseman 1995: 5). Yet, insofar
as it is 'lived' as an important force in modern life, it has very real
consequences. Globalisation gives us anxieties about national iden-
tity: everything from the new kinds of 'panic racism' displayed by the
Pauline Hanson phenomenon to cynicism towards expatriates who
have renounced their Australian citizenship, such as Rupert Murdoch
or Greg Norman. Anger over 'outsiders' who take Australian jobs,
whether these be new migrants in factories or the managing director
of the ABC (who is ridiculed for not having watched Australian tele-
vision for 23 years, before taking up his post in 2000), translates into
an overall mistrust of globalisation.
These kinds of panic and consternation have been accompanied
y heraldings of the death of the nation-state (Ohmae 1995; Martin
1997; Greider 1997; Elazar 1998), the end of history, and the triumph
of liberal capitalism (Fukuyama 1992).
Consider Herman Schwartz's States versus Markets XXXXXXXXXXwith its
contention that, after 1973, the ability of states to use the institutions
uilt during the Great Depression and World War II to shelter domes-
tic markets from the international market had eroded (see also Catley
1996). Similarly Susan Strange, in her book The Retreat of the State,
gives a classical exposition of market determinism. While she points
CHAPTER 13 GLOBALISATION 40 9
out shifts between the powers of nation-states, 'the search is on', she
argues, 'for better ways of managing society and the economy than
has so far been achieved through the unaided efforts of the individ-
ual nation states' (Strange 1996: 183).
But these kinds of trends in social and political thought are even
more acute in contemporary journalism. In mid-1999, The Age news-
paper in Melbourne ran an entire series on 'globalisation', replete with
all of the now-familiar stereotypes that first circulated in corporate
usiness thinking a decade ago. The series outlined the threat to tradi-
tional jobs (Morton 1999), regulatory problems for home markets
(Maiden 1999), the death of the nation-state (Button 1999), American
economic imperialism (Flanagan 1999), and new inequalities that are
said to result from the powerlessness of governments (Koutsoukis 1999).
An exception to these articles was one by Geoffrey Blainey, who
went some way towards demystifying the rhetoric of global determin-
ism (Blainey XXXXXXXXXXAs a term in social and political discourse, why is
it so pervasive today, Blainey asks, when in fact the conditions of
economic globalisation have become far more complex and in
many ways not so visible? He points to the 19th century, when much
of Australia's produce was exported overseas, to the global prestige
of gold, to the high prominence of overseas banks in Australia.
Curiously, Blainey, a conservative historian, echoes arguments estab-
lished by Marxist political economists Hirst and Thompson (1996),
who point out that 'tidal wave' globalisation accounts are a conve-
nient justification for governmental restructurings of finance
policy. Conversely, they are also an occasion for new kinds of social
movements, as we increasingly see reports in the media of anti-
globalisation marches and protests of various kinds (see The
Economist, January 1997; Te
anova, in Holmes XXXXXXXXXXWhen viewed
as a television spectacle the message of the protestors seems to echo
that of nationalist conservatives-that it is globalisation, as such,
that is being rejected. On reading the literature of the protestors,
however, it seems that the issue that animates them is global inequal-
ity (see
www.s11.org>).
Myths of economic globalisation
In their book Globalisation in Question, Hirst and Thompson argue
that: (i) the international economy is cu
ently in some respects less
globalised than it was between 1870 and 1914, a time when the gold
standard, pax Britannica and the intercontinental telegraph system
provided the minimum conditions for a truly globalised (as opposed
to internationalised) economic system (see Kern 1983); (ii) genuine
economic globalisation
Tho way in which the
production, cir(ulation
and consumption of
goods incroiJsingly
ecomes subject to an
international division of
labour (production) and
consumption that
influences the nature of
equality, both within and
etween nations. Modern
economic globalisation
has given rise to
sup1 nnational bodies such
as international t:conornic
agencies (World Bank,
lnterniltional Monetilry
Fund, World Trade
Organization),
transnational and
multiniltional
corporations.
410 AUSTRALIAN SOCIOLOGY
international economy
As Hirst and Thompson
(1996: 10) define it,
internationalisation can
e distinguished from
globalisation in that it
ests on an international
economy rather than a
global economy, where
'processes that are
determined at the level
of national economies
dominate and inter-
national phenomena are
outcomes that emerge
from the distinct and
differential performance
of the national
economies'.
TNCs are relatively rare as, while 'trade' is multinational, corporate
structure is centred on. a national base, far more than extreme
globalists care to represent; (iii) the third world remains largely
marginal to foreign direct investment; (iv) trade, investment and
financial flows are concentrated in the 'group of three' (G3) ofEurope,
Japan and the USA; (v) a policy coordinated G3 can substantially
steer global trends, in contradistinction to the thesis of the extreme
globalists that global markets or a 'postmodern economy' are beyond
egulation and control (Hirst & Thompson 1996: 2-3).
Hirst and Thompson distinguish between a global economy and
an international economy. In a global economy, 'distinct national
economies are subsumed and rearticulated into a global economic
system by international processes and transactions' (1996: 10). With
an international economy, 'processes that are determined at the level
of national economies dominate and international phenomena are
outcomes that emerge from the distinct and differential performance
of the national economies' (Hirst & Thompson 1996: 10). Their thesis
is that the world economy is international rather than global, and
that world relations can hardly be said to be in a tearaway manic
condition, as some maintain (see Greider 1997; Lyons et al. 1995).
Moreover, the rise of globally reaching information technology (see
Jeffrey 1999), while significant in establishing new industries, is of
elatively little consequence in the trade interdependence of nations.
It might affect the complexity that is possible within many economic
transactions, but this is generally true only of new kinds of finance
transactions such as futures exchanges. However, no amount of
information technology is going to affect how many products a
country needs to import in any given month, nor will it affect the
speed, ca
ying capacity or a
ival date of a ship that is ca
ying rice
from Australia to Japan.
Hirst and Thompson would agree with Geoffrey Blainey that the
panic su
ounding globalisation is often a feature, and is to the bene-
fit, of nation-building politicians in times of peace. Creating mischief
with the term 'globalisation' is to the great benefit of national politi-
cians in that it single-handedly justifies all kinds of political and
economic measures towards the protection of national commodities
and markets that are reflected in excise, tariffs, duties, levies and
tightly negotiated trade agreements. In Australia, globalisation
hysteria has been most pronounced in the