Geography and/in/of/for/against Globalization

What Is Geography?

• Easy Definition: The study of the Earth’s surface (and the processes that shape it)

• The Questions: Where? Why? How?

• Geographers think spatially, which has three primary foci

– Materiality (i.e. what is actually, physically there)

• This means that geographic theories are not accepted unless they “touch ground” meaning that they resemble and reflect real people, places and environment

– Scale (a term borrowed from cartography)

• How detailed you look at a problem determines what you can say about it

– Relationships

• Geographers are interested in how something happening in one place is connected to what is happening somewhere else

Globalization

• Emerged as concept in 1990’s

– Fueled by business gurus, media, academics, policymakers

• Terms like “global village” emerge

• Little agreement over what the terms means, or if it is even useful

– But, because of pervasiveness must be

• Taken seriously

• Examined to see if it does explain stuff

• Primitive/basic meanings

– Scale: Planetary or world wide

– Process: Trans-state (not between state)

• Operates as if borders are not there

4 Ways Geography Relates to Globalization

• 1. Geography AND (its role in) Globalization

– Since its beginning, geography aspired to study the whole world

• Geography/cartography/exploration are all colonial sciences

– Knowledge about the world = power over the world

» Mapped and categorized landscapes for their economic/strategic value

» Mackinder’s “Heartland thesis” was a geography derived geo-political strategy

• Post WWII, geography became less global in outlook, more focused on state and below scales

– 1970’s saw a turn back due to transnational things like environment, TNC’s, and the oil/commodity/debt crises

4 Ways (cont.)

• 2. Geography (concepts) in Globalization (debates)

• Does not mean simply adding a new scale called the global to existing ones (like local, regional, state) nor prioritizing global over the others

• Geographers look at how…

• …Scales are related

• …Activities shift scale

• From state to international organization

• From locally produced to imported

• … Globalization (as we know it) is not “natural” or “inevitable”

• Produced by people, through institutions, in specific places

• Geographers argue today’s global scale is a result of capital’s response to economic stagnation of the 1970’s

IV Ways (cont.)

• Geography (concepts) in Globalization (debates) – cont.

• Geographers emphasize how globalization is connected to “time space compression” (meaning that distances which once took great time to traverse have been made to feel smaller)

• Jets, standardized cargo containers, satellites, WWW make once long journeys for information, people and goods shorter (this time to cross space is compressed)

• Communications, computer tech. most important b/c:

• Control could be centralized

• Production decentralized

• Increased advertising fueling consumption

• Maybe a new, information, network society

• Spaces of places (neighborhoods, states) replaced by spaces of flows (links, connections)

• BUT… places still material, flows have a geography

• Flows of info depend on infrastructure,

• Flows of knowledge/people intensify in global cities

4 Ways (cont.)

• 3. (Uneven) Geography of Globalization

• Primarily it is an “uneven” globalization, where geographical difference has not gone away

• Post WWII to 1980 saw exclusion where much of the globe did not participate in the cash economy much

• Post 1980 saw polarization, where the wealthy have become wealthier and poor get less so

• Occurs between states

• Between primate cities and hinterland

• Between neighborhoods within cities

• This is not an accident – despite intentions, the wealth comes from others poverty

4 Ways (cont.)

• (Uneven) Geography of Globalization (cont)

• What changed in 1980’s?

• Until then, many structures like decolonization, welfare states, and collective labor had been put into place to attempt to protect people from whims of investment/speculative capital

– This led to a debt crisis (more on this later)

• In the 1980’s, under Neo-Liberal Structural Adjustment Programs and government roll backs many of these protections disappeared (more on this later)

• States, many people immobile, locked in “place”.

• Capital saw most restrictions on it removed and was able to “flow”, as part of the new market ideology which forced places to compete

• Individual consumer replaced “the public,” as object of policy; pace of innovation accelerated

• Some prospered; many floundered

4 Ways (cont.)

4. (Changing) Geographies for & against (economic) globalization

– These new technologies and time/space compression, are not just used to further neo-liberal economics.

• Globalization has led to a multitude of political/identity/ ethnic movements (not to mention trends, fashions, etc.)

– Some are transnational, like women’s and environmental movements, trying to unite different places against common oppressions

» Many tied to NGO’s, trying to make “global civil society.”

– Others are place based like in ethnic groups in the Balkans, Nigeria

» “Local” does not always mean benign

– Some react to aspects of flows themselves, like Islamism or anti-sweatshop movements

– All have aspects both place and flow based

• Connection between states does discourage war

From A World of Difference

• This book is specifically interested in the polarization aspect of the geography of globalization

– And this edition seems particularly interested in development (and theory name dropping, yuck)

– Takes into account historical, cultural, and environmental aspects

• Especially concerned

– With the legacy of the Enlightenment’s interaction with other systems of thought

» Claim there is a counter-enlightenment, which tries to overturn perceptions of local as “backwardness” and other representational deficiencies

– Interested in origins of what came to be known as the Third World

» It was originally a political term chosen by the non-aligned countries post WWII

» Communist, Second World almost gone

Big Words

Some terms

• Abbreviations: WWII (World War Two); TNC’s (Transnational Corporations); WWW (World Wide Web

• Scale = level of analysis (global, state, regional local)

– Smaller scale = more detail

• Inert Space = Idea that space is fixed, not a dynamic player in social phenomenon

• Intensities = Specifically from Deleuze and Guattari, idea that in flows which may be global, certain spaces are more prominent, though not hierarchically so

• Geopolitics = Word used to denote close relationship between control of territory and politics