Globalization:
Study Guide for Chapter 1 of Introducing Globalization
Prepared by Matthew Sparke for students using
Introducing Globalization: Ties, Tensions, and Uneven Integration, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.

Learning objectives:
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:

1) define globalization in two distinct ways;
2) list the main types of global interdependency comprising the integrative networks of globalization;
3) describe how “globalization” also functions as a powerful discourse in politics and the media;
4) define neoliberalism, list its 10 main policy-making norms, and understand how the discourse of big “G” Globalization is used by TINA touts to argue There Is No Alternative to neoliberalization amidst Globalization;
5) reflect on why you chose to take this class on globalization, consider how it might relate to the power of the discourse of “Globalization,” and identify how it involves you in unexpected global ties, too.

Main arguments:
Many textbooks on globalization begin by explaining how they will chart a middle way between over-exaggeration and skepticism. They say that too much political debate about globalization involves hyperbole, while too many discipline-bound academics tend to be overly resistant to the idea that new forms of global integration are actually happening. In response, textbook authors often offer a third perspective that is neither hyperbolic nor skeptical, and they thereby complete a kind of “three-step” globalization waltz in their introductions: 1) “no to hyperbole”; 2) “no to skepticism”; 3) “yes to a moderate middle way.” By contrast, the introductory chapter of Introducing Globalization provides a slightly different approach. It still engages in the basic intellectual effort at making sense of intensifying global integration with interdisciplinary openness, evidence, and caution about exaggeration. But rather than avoiding the political hyperbole and skepticism, it also seeks instead to add attention to the real-world power of all the one-sided and politically biased discourses about globalization. In other words, it makes the case that one-sided representations of globalization are every bit as worth studying as the underlying integrative dynamics they variously over-exaggerate and under-estimate. And to do this, the chapter therefore outlines a double-definition of globalization.
In short, globalization is two things! First, it is used by scholars to describe increasingly consequential global interconnections. By exploring these interconnections, Chapter 1 explains it is possible to understand how globalization has created global interdependencies that link the fate of people around the planet. Second, we additionally need to understand how “Globalization” (spelled with a capital G in the book) is simultaneously put to work as an influential key-term or buzzword in political discourse, a word allied with ideas of unprecedented, unstoppable, and leveling global change, and a word, therefore, that shapes political debate and policy-making in powerful ways. In particular, Globalization has become synonymous in this way with arguments in favor of pro-market or neoliberal reform.
Another way of summing up these arguments about big “G” Globalization (the politically powerful discourse) vs. little “g” globalization (the globally integrative ties) is through comparison with other terms that do double-duty in somewhat similar ways. Take “pollution,” for example. It can be understood as taking multiple forms (air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, and so on), and it relatedly serves as a focus of study for multiple disciplines. At the same time, though, it is also term of political rhetoric that is subject to all sorts of myth-making, exaggeration, and caricature. Ideas and images of pollution pack a political punch and serve diverse ideological interests. And so just like globalization, scholars studying component aspects of pollution may also often find themselves in the thick of political debate. Similarly, “evolution” also functions at two levels with both little “e” and big “E” implications. In some ways, it is just a scientific concept, and as such a broad bracket-term for a set of processes that have become foci for biological, anthropological and geographical study. But in other moments, it too is a piece of political jargon which, along with an array of associated cognate terms and bumper sticker images – “Darwin,” “Evolve,” and walking fish car magnets – has all sorts consequential implications for everything from science-funding and education policy to “survival of the fittest” slogans, creationist sermons, and racist arguments about white supremacy. The parallels with “globalization” are not exact, but hopefully they underline by this point the importance of coming to terms with both the little “g” and big “G” forms of the g-word!

Key conclusions:
Globalization needs to be understood on two levels:

1) as a name for increasing global interdependencies;

2) as an influential key term in political speech.

Further reading:
Two distinct scholarly literatures are useful for digging deeper into the main arguments of the chapter: i) other writings on globalization as integration that address its representational politics; and ii) studies of neoliberalism that explore the ways in which it is naturalized (and/or contested) as necessary, normal and norm-setting.
i) On globalization, integration, and representation
Dani Rodrik (2011) The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy. New York: Norton.
Eric M. Cazdyn and Imre Szeman (2011) After Globalization. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Gillian Hart (2002) Disabling Globalization. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Joseph E. Stiglitz (2006) Making Globalization Work. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Manfred Steger (2009) Globalisms: The Great Ideological Struggle of the 21st Century (3rd edition). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

ii) On the (de)naturalization of neoliberalism
David Harvey (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gillian Hart (2006) “Denaturalizing dispossession,” Antipode 38: 975–1001.
Helga Leitner, Jamie Peck, and Eric Sheppard, editors (2007) Contesting Neoliberalism: Urban Frontiers. New York: Guildford.
Jamie Peck (2010) Constructions of Neoliberal Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Manfred B. Steger and Ravi K. Roy (2010) Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Naomi Klein (2007) The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt.