“What is globalization?

“What Is Globalization? The Definitional Issue – Again”

Jan Aart Scholte

CSGR Working Paper No. 109/02 December 2002

Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation (CSGR), University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, United Kingdom. URL: http://www.csgr.org

What Is Globalization? The Definitional Issue – Again Jan Aart Scholte Department of Politics and International Studies,University of Warwick CSGR Working Paper 109/02 December 2002

Abstract:

Knowledge of globalization is substantially a function of how the concept is defined. After tracing the history of ‘global’ vocabulary, this paper suggests several principles that should inform the way globality (the condition) and globalization (the trend) are defined. On this basis four common conceptions of the termare rejected in favour of a fifth that identifies globalization as the spread of transplanetary – and in recent times more particularly supraterritorial – connections between people. Half a dozen qualifications are incorporated into this definition to distinguish it from globalist exaggerations.

Keywords: globality, globalization

Address for correspondence: Jan Aart Scholte Department ofPolitics and International Studies University of Warwick Coventry CV4 7AL United Kingdom Email: scholte@warwick.ac.uk

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There are few terms that we use so frequently but which are in fact as poorly conceptualized as globalization. Anthony Giddens1 We don’t know what globalization is, but we have to act. Veerapon Sopa2

Introduction3

Definition is not everything, but everything involvesdefinition. Knowledge of globalization is substantially a function of how the word is defined. Thus every study of globalization should include a careful and critical examination of the term itself. A muddled or misguided core concept compromises our overall comprehension of the problem. In contrast, a sharp and revealing definition promotes insightful, interesting and empowering knowledge, anunderstanding that helps us to shape our destiny in positive directions.

Notions of globalization have grabbed many an intellectual imagination over the past two decades. In academic and lay circles alike, many have pursued an intuition that this concept could provide an analytical lynchpin for understanding social change in the contemporary world. ‘Globalization’ is not the only entry point forsuch an enquiry, of course, but it has seemed a pretty good one. Yet what lies in this word? What, precisely, is ‘global’ about globalization?4 The present paper develops a definition in five main steps. The first section below traces the rise of the vocabulary of globalization in academic and lay thinking. The second section elaborates some general principles about the nature and role of definition.The third section identifies several analytical cul-de-sacs with respect to globalization, that is, definitions that generate redundant and in some respects also unhelpful knowledge. The fourth section sets out a

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‘On Globalization’, excerpts from a keynote address at the UNRISD Conference on Globalization and Citizenship, 1 December 1996 – at www.unrisd.org (under ‘viewpoints’). 2 Peasantactivist in North East Thailand, interviewed in Bangkok on 10 June 2002. 3 An earlier version of this paper was presented at a symposium of the International Political Science Association in Montreal, 24-26 October 2002. The paper revises the second chapter of Globalization: A Critical Introduction (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000), in preparation for a second edition of that book. 4 J. Maclean,‘Philosophical Roots of Globalization: Philosophical Routes to Globalization’, in R. Germain (ed.), Globalization and Its Critics: Perspectives from Political Economy (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 3-66.

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conceptualization of globalization as the spread of transplanetary and, in present times more specifically, supraterritorial social relations.

To stress that this analysis does not...