Chapter by chapter resources - Chapter 8
Review Questions
- Is globalization a phenomenon unique to the present epoch?
- What features of contemporary globalization are unique?
- What elements of contemporary global political economy are a continuation of past trends and tendencies?
- How did increased capital mobility impact on industrial relations?
- To what extent have transnational corporations assumed the dimensions and the power of nation states?
- Does globalization represent the deepening of capitalist relations, the geographic expansion of capitalist relations or the implosion of these relations?
- According to Wallerstein, what are the limits to global capitalist expansion?
- What fit is there between the concept of globalization and the ideal of linear development?
- What does the concept of the annihilation of space through time suggest?
- Assess Robertson’s and Hoogvelt’s views that reflexivity is one of the defining characteristics of contemporary globalization.
- Has globalization produced greater equality?
- Has globalization led to a growing convergence of cultures?
- Is globalization a euphemism for Americanization?
- In what sense has globalization been part of the ‘civilising process’?
- Has globalization rendered methodological territorialism redundant?
- How much power and authority has the nation-state lost under the regime of globalization?
- Has globalization promoted a ‘democratic deficit’?
- How does Robinson’s global capitalism thesis differ from earlier forms of political economy?
- According to Robinson, what functions does the neoliberal state perform in the process of transnational capital accumulation?
- How much force is there in Francis’ view that globalization has ‘acquired too many meanings, and too much emotional force, to be useful’?
- Following Comeliau, are the positive and negative changes brought about by globalization ‘separable from each other’ or are they ‘two sides of a single tendency’?
- What axes can be employed to map positions in the globalization debate?
Further Reading
Dicken, P. (2003), Global Shift: Transforming the World Economy, London, Paul Chapman Publishing.
Holton, R. (1998), Globalization and the Nation State, Houndmills, Macmillan.
Hoogvelt, A. (1997) Globalisation and the Postcolonial World, Houndmills, Macmillan.
Norberg, J. (2003), In Defense of Global Capitalism, Washington DC, CATO Institute.
Wade, R. (2004), ‘Is Globalisation Reducing Poverty and Inequality?’, World Development, 32 (4).
Websites
The Globalisation Guide provides answers to some of the issues raised in Chapter 8:http://www.globalisationguide.org/
A more radical set of answers can found at the ‘The Global Site’: http://www.theglobalsite.ac.uk/globalization
The US journal Monthly Review has a page devoted to globalization; http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrglobal.htm
A set of useful resources can be found at ‘The Globalization Website’:http://www.emory.edu/SOC/globalization/about.html
The international human rights organization Global Exchange also has a useful website:www.globalexchange.org/
The International Labour Organisation’s website containing their publication, A Fair Globalization: http://www.ilo.org/
An Australian-based site providing up-to-date news on relevant issues and access to a range of viewpoints:www.worldgrowth.org
For a discussion on the impact of mass protest movements against the Iraq war, see Murray Goot’s article which employs the concept of democratic deficit:http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-May-2003/goot.html
