Martin, Ron. 2004. “Geography: making a difference in a globalizing world”. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers . 29: 147-150.
As the quarter continues we will periodically return to this article but for the first exam I wish you to review and consider the following points from the article.
- How is the latest phase of in the development of globalization quintessentially different from previous eras?
- Even though distance may have been annihilated what are the consequences of the fact that geographical differences remain paramount?
The remaining questions we will return to later in the course after we complete our discussion of Held’s schools of globalization.
First, the following are open ended questions that Martin raises that can be answered in different ways based upon the school of globalization from David Weld that one chooses. How would you answer these?
• Is it really a new phenomenon, or the lateststage of a much longer historical process?
• How far is globalization eroding and underminingthe sovereignty of nation-states and nationalinstitutions, and reducing their autonomy inpolicymaking?
Next, which of David Held’s three schools of thought regarding globalization would the following statement best fit with and why?
If by globalization we mean increasing transborderinterdependence, integration and interaction,in the realms of trade, economic and socialrelations, finance, knowledge, ideas, culture andpolitics, then the process is certainly not new, but
arguably has been underway for the past three orfour centuries, if not longer. The nineteenthcentury is argued by some to have witnesseda major step in the historical development ofglobalization: the spread of capitalism, the greatwave of imperialism, the expansion of tradeand finance this engendered, the invention ofinternational telegraphic communication and theadoption of the international gold standard,among other things, all served to promote an unprecedented
extension and intensification of economicinterdependence across the globe. For some, then,what we are currently experiencing is but the lateststage in this evolving history. Claims about novelty,new eras and ‘breaks with the past’ should thus beplayed down.
Finally, what about this statement?
For others, however, both the paceand nature of contemporary global integrationand interdependence are emphatically differentfrom what has gone before, and sufficiently distinctiveand dramatic as to signal the advent of aqualitatively new phase of capitalism and a whollydifferent geo-political economic condition, a radicalrestructuring of the world’s economy and politicsas profound as anything since the Industrial Revolution(Hutton and Giddens 2000). According to thisgroup of observers, two key features in particularmake this latest phase in the development ofglobalization quintessentially different from previouseras: the new information and communications technologies,and the dominating power of transnational
and multinational corporations.
Lastly, when, where, and why did the following type of organizations originate?
Globalization is itself a multi-scalar setof processes and developments, emanating from awhole variety of spatial levels. While many of thedynamics of globalization derive from explicitlyglobal institutions and processes, such as the WTO,
the IMF, the OECD, global financial markets,the War Crimes Tribunal and the like, many otherprocesses do not necessarily scale at the globallevel, but are just as integral to globalization. Someof these processes are national in scale; others take
place deep inside national territories and institutionaldomains.