ASA Kellner - Theorizing Globalization
ASA Kellner - Theorizing Globalization
ASA Kellner - Theorizing Globalization
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Theorizing Globalization*
DOUGLASKELLNER
University of California Los Angeles
Globalization appears to be the buzzword of the 1990s, the primary attractor of books,
articles, and heated debate, just as postmodernism was the most fashionable and debated
topic of the 1980s. A wide and diverse range of social theorists are arguing that today's
world is organized by accelerating globalization, which is strengthening the dominance of
a world capitalist economic system, supplanting the primacy of the nation-state with trans-
national corporations and organizations, and eroding local cultures and traditions through
a global culture.' Marxists, world-systems theorists, functionalists, Weberians, and other
contemporary theorists are converging on the position that globalization is a distinguishing
trend of the present moment.
Moreover, advocates of a postmodern break in history argue that developments in trans-
national capitalism are producing a new global historical configuration of post-Fordism, or
postmodernism, as an emergent cultural logic of capitalism (Harvey 1989; Soja 1989;
Jameson 1991; Gottdiener 1995). Others define the emergent global economy and culture
as a "network society" grounded in new communications and information technology
(Castells 1996, 1997, 1998). For others, globalization marks the triumph of capitalism and
its market economy.2 Some theorists see the emergence of a new transnational ruling elite
and the universalization of consumerism (Sklair 2001), while others stress global fragmen-
tation of "the clash of civilizations" (Huntington 1996). Driving "post" discourses into
*Address correspondence to: Douglas Kellner, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies,
Moore Hall, Mailbox 951521, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1521; e-mail:
[email protected] expert editing and editorial queries, I would like to thank Liza Wirtz.
Attempts to chart the globalization of capital, decline of the nation-state, and rise of a new global culture
include the essays in Featherstone(1990), Giddens (1990), Robertson (1991), King (1991), Bird et al. (1993),
Gilroy (1993), Arrighi (1994), Lash and Urry (1994), Grewal and Kaplan (1994), Wark (1994), Featherstone,
Lash, and Robertson (1995), Axford (1995), Held (1995), Waters(1995), Hirst and Thompson (1996), Axtmann
(1998), Albrow (1996), Cvetkovich and Kellner (1997), Kellner (1998), Friedman (1999), Held et al. (1999),
Hardtand Negri (2000), Lechner and Bali (2000), Steger (2002), and Stiglitz (2002).
2See apologists such as Fukuyama(1992) and Friedman(1999), who perceive this process as positive, while
others, such as Manderand Goldsmith (1996), Eisenstein (1998), and Robins and Webster(1999) portray it as
negative.
novel realms of theory and politics, Michael Hardtand Antonio Negri (2000) present the
emergence of "Empire"as producing fresh forms of sovereignty, economy, culture, and
political struggle that open the new millennium to an unforeseeable and unpredictable
flow of novelties, surprises,and upheavals.
Indeed, globalization is one of the most hotly debated issues of the present era. For
some, it is a cover concept for global capitalism and imperialismand is accordingly con-
demned as anotherform of the imposition of the logic of capital and the marketon ever
more regions of the world and spheres of life. For others, it is the continuationof modern-
ization and a force of progress, increasedwealth, freedom, democracy,and happiness. Its
defenders present globalization as beneficial, generating fresh economic opportunities,
political democratization,culturaldiversity, and the opening to an exciting new world. Its
critics see globalization as harmful,bringing about increased domination and control by
the wealthieroverdevelopednations over the poor underdevelopedcountries,thus increas-
ing the hegemony of the "haves" over the "have-nots."In addition, supplementing the
negative view, globalization critics assert that globalization produces an underminingof
democracy,a culturalhomogenization,and increaseddestructionof naturalspecies and the
environment.3 Some imagine the globalization project-whether viewed positively or
negatively-as inevitable and beyond human control and intervention, whereas others
view it generatingnew conflicts and new spaces for struggle,distinguishingbetween glob-
alization from above and globalization from below (Brecher,Costello, and Smith 2000).
In this study, I sketch aspects of a critical theory of globalization that will discuss the
fundamentaltransformationsin the world economy, politics, and culture in a dialectical
frameworkthat distinguishes between progressive and emancipatoryfeatures and oppres-
sive and negative attributes.This requiresarticulationsof the contradictionsand ambigu-
ities of globalization and the ways that globalization both is imposed from above and yet
can be contested and reconfiguredfrom below. I arguethat the key to understandingglob-
alization is theorizing it as at once a product of technological revolution and the global
restructuringof capitalism in which economic, technological, political, and cultural fea-
tures are intertwined. From this perspective, one should avoid both technological and
economic determinism and all one-sided optics of globalization in favor of a view that
theorizes globalization as a highly complex, contradictory,and thus ambiguous set of
institutions and social relations, as well as one involving flows of goods, services, ideas,
technologies, culturalforms, and people (see Appadurai1996).
Finally, I will raise the question of whether debates centered aroundthe "post" (e.g.,
postmodernism,postindustrialism,post-Fordism,and so on) do or do not help elucidate
the phenomenonof globalization.I arguein the affirmative,claiming thatdiscourses of the
"post"dramatizewhat is new, original, and differentin our currentsituation,but that such
discourses can be and are easily misused. For the discourse of postmodernity,for example,
to have any force, it must be groundedin analysis of scientific and technological revolu-
tion and the global restructuringof capital, or it is just an empty buzzword (see Best and
Kellner 1997, 2001). Thus, to properlytheorize postmodernityone must articulate glob-
alization and the roles of technoscience and new technologies in its construction.In turn,
understandinghow scientific and technological revolution and the global restructuringof
capitalismare creatinguniquehistoricalconfigurationsof globalizationhelps one perceive
the urgency and force of the discourse of the "post."
3What
appearedat the first stage of academic and populardiscourses of globalization in the 1990s tended to be
dichotomized into celebratoryglobophilia and dismissive globophobia. See Best and Kellner (2001). There was
also a tendency on the partof some theoriststo exaggeratethe novelties of globalization,and on the partof others
to dismiss these claims by arguingthatglobalizationhas been going on for centuriesand not that much is new and
different. For an excellent delineation and critique of academic discourses on globalization, see Steger (2002).
THEORIZINGGLOBALIZATION 287
GLOBALIZATION,TECHNOLOGICALREVOLUTION,
AND THE RESTRUCTURINGOF CAPITALISM
For critical social theory, globalization involves both capitalist marketsand sets of social
relations and flows of commodities, capital, technology, ideas, forms of culture, and peo-
ple across national boundaries via a global networked society (see Castells 1996, 1997,
1998; Held et al. 1999). The transmutationsof technology and capital work together to
create a new globalized and interconnectedworld. A technological revolution involving
the creationof a computerizednetworkof communication,transportation,and exchange is
the presuppositionof a globalized economy, along with the extension of a world capitalist
marketsystem that is absorbingever more areas of the world and spheres of production,
exchange, and consumptioninto its orbit.The technological revolutionpresupposesglobal
computerizednetworks and the free movement of goods, information,and peoples across
national boundaries. Hence, the Internet and global computer networks make possible
globalization by producing a technological infrastructurefor the global economy. Com-
puterizednetworks, satellite-communicationsystems, and the software and hardwarethat
link together and facilitate the global economy depend on breakthroughsin microphysics.
Technoscience has generated transistors, increasingly powerful and sophisticated com-
puter chips, integrated circuits, high-tech communication systems, and a technological
revolution that provides an infrastructurefor the global economy and society (see Gilder
1989, 2000; Kaku 1997; Best and Kellner 2001).
From this perspective, globalization cannot be understoodwithout comprehendingthe
scientific and technological revolutions and global restructuringof capital that are the
motor and matrixof globalization. Many theorists of globalization, however, either fail to
observe the fundamental importance of scientific and technological revolution and the
new technologies that help spawn globalization or interpretthe process in a technological
determinist framework that occludes the economic dimensions of the imperatives and
institutionsof capitalism. Such one-sided optics fail to grasp the co-evolution of science,
technology, and capitalismand the complex and highly ambiguoussystem of globalization
that combines capitalism and democracy,technological mutations,and a turbulentmixture
of costs and benefits, gains and losses.
In order to theorize the global network economy, one therefore needs to avoid the
extremes of technological and economic determinism. Technological determinists fre-
quentlyuse the discourse of postindustrialor postmodernsociety to describe currentdevel-
opments.This discourse often producesan ideal-type distinctionbetween a previous mode
of industrialproduction,characterizedby heavy industry,mass productionand consump-
tion, bureaucraticorganization, and social conformity, and a new postindustrialsociety,
characterizedby "flexible production"or post-Fordism,in which new technologies serve
as the demiurge to a new postmodernity(Harvey 1981).
For postmoderntheorists such as Jean Baudrillard(1993), technologies of information
and social reproduction (e.g., simulation) have permeated every aspect of society and
created a new social environment. In the movement toward postmodernity,Baudrillard
claims that humanityhas left behind reality and modernconceptions, as well as the world
of modernity.This postmodernadventureis markedby an implosion of technology and the
human, which is generating a new posthumanspecies and postmodernworld.4 For other
less extravaganttheorists of the technological revolution, the human species is evolving
into a novel, postindustrialtechnosociety, culture, and condition in which technology,
knowledge, and informationare the axial or organizingprinciples (Bell 1976).
There are positive and negative models of technological determinism.A positive dis-
course envisages new technologies as producinga new economy interpretedaffirmatively
as fabricatinga fresh wealth of nations. On this affirmativeview, globalization provides
opportunitiesfor small business and individual entrepreneurs,empowering excluded per-
sons and social groups. Technophiles claim that new technologies also make possible
increased democratization,communication, education, culture, entertainment,and other
social benefits, thus generatinga utopia of social progress.
Few legitimating theories of the information and technological revolution, however,
contextualize the structuring,implementation,marketing,and use of new technologies in
the context of the vicissitudes of contemporarycapitalism.The ideologues of the informa-
tion society act as if technology were an autonomousforce and either neglect to theorize
the co-evolution of capital and technology or use the advancementsof technology to legit-
imate marketcapitalism(i.e., Gilder 1989, 2000; Gates 1995, 1999; Friedman1999). Theo-
rists such as Kevin Kelly, the executive editor of Wired,think that humanityhas entered a
postcapitalistsociety that constitutes an original and innovative stage of history and econ-
omy at which previous categories do not apply.5Or, like Bill Gates (1995, 1999), defend-
ers of the "new economy" imagine computer and informationtechnologies producing a
"friction-freecapitalism,"perceivedas a highly creativeformof capitalismthatgoes beyond
its previous contradictions,forms, and limitations.
By contrast, a negative version of technological determinismportrays the new world
system as constitutedby a monolithic or homogenizing technological system of domina-
tion. Germanphilosopher and Nazi supporterMartin Heidegger talked of the "complete
Europeanisationof the earth and man" (Heidegger 1971:15), claiming that Western sci-
ence and technology were creating a new organization or framework, which he called
Gestell (or "enframing"),that was encompassing ever more realms of experience. French
theorist Jacques Ellul (1964) depicted a totalitarianexpansion of technology-what he
called la technique-imposing its logic on ever more domains of life and humanpractices.
More recently, a large numberof technophobiccritics have arguedthat new technologies
and global cyberspaceconstitute a realm of alienationand reification in which humansare
alienated from our bodies, other people, nature,tradition,and lived communities (Borg-
mann 1994, 1999; Slouka 1995; Stoll 1995; Shenk 1997; Virilio 1998).
In additionto technologically deterministand reductivepostindustrialaccounts of glob-
alization, there are economic deterministdiscourses that view it primarilyas the continua-
tionof capitalism,ratherthanits restructuringthroughtechnologicalrevolution.A largenumber
of theorists conceive globalization simply as a process of the imposition of the logic of
capital and neoliberalismon variouspartsof the world, ratherthan seeing the restructuring
process and the enormous changes and transformationsthat scientific and technological
revolution are producing in the networked economy and society. Capital-logic theorists,
for instance, portrayglobalizationprimarilyas the imposition of the logic of capital on the
world economy, polity, and culture, often engaging in economic determinism,ratherthan
seeing the complex new configurationsof economy, technology, polity, and cultureand the
attendantforces of domination and resistance. In the same vein, some critical theorists
depict globalization as the triumphof a globalized hegemony of marketcapitalism, where
capitalcreatesa homogeneousworldcultureof commercialization,commodification,admin-
istration,surveillance, and domination (Robins and Webster 1999).
Fromthese economistic perspectives,globalizationis merely a continuationof previous
social tendencies-that is, the logic of capital and dominationby corporateand commer-
cial interests of the world economy and culture. Defenders of capitalism, by contrast,
5See Kelly (1994, 1998) and the critique in Best and Kellner (1999).
THEORIZINGGLOBALIZATION 289
71 am not able, in the frameworkof this paper,to theorize the alarmingexpansion of war and militarismin the
post-September 11 environment.For my theorizing of war and militarism, see Kellner (2002, forthcoming).
292 SOCIOLOGICALTHEORY
between capitalism and democracy and "haves"and "have-nots."Within the world econ-
omy, globalization involves the proliferationof the logic of capital, but also the spreadof
democracy in information,finance, investing, and the diffusion of technology (see Fried-
man 1999; Hardtand Negri 2000). Globalizationis thus a contradictoryamalgamof cap-
italism and democracyin which the logic of capital and the marketsystem enter ever more
arenas of global life, even as democracy spreadsand more political regions and spaces of
everyday life are being contested by democraticdemands and forces. But the overall pro-
cess is contradictory.Sometimes globalizing forces promote democracy and sometimes
they inhibit it. Thus, both equating capitalism and democracy and simply opposing them
are problematic.These tensions are especially evident, as I will argue,in the domainof the
Internet and the expansion of new realms of technologically mediated communication,
information,and politics.
The processes of globalization are highly turbulentand have generated new conflicts
throughoutthe world. Benjamin Barber(1996) describes the strife between McWorldand
Jihad,contrastingthe homogenizing, commercialized,Americanizedtendencies of the glo-
bal economy andculturewith traditionalcultures,which areoften resistantto globalization.
Thomas Friedman(1999) makes a more benign distinctionbetween whathe calls the Lexus
and the Olive Tree.The formersymbolizes modernization,affluence andluxury,andWest-
ernized consumption;the lattersymbolizes roots, tradition,place, and stable community.
Barber'smodel oversimplifies present world divisions and conflicts and does not ade-
quately present the contradictionswithin the West or the "Jihad"world, although he pos-
tulates a dialectical interpenetratingof both forces and sees both as opposed to democracy.
His book does, however, point to problemsand limitationsof globalization, noting serious
conflicts and opponents,unlike Thomas Friedman'sharmonizingduality of TheLexus and
the Olive (1999), which suggests that both poles of capitalist luxury and premodernroots
are parts of the globalization process. In an ode to globalization, Friedmanassumes the
dual victory of capitalism and democracy, a la Fukuyama, while Barber demonstrates
contradictions and tensions between capitalism and democracy within the New World
(Dis)Order,as well as the antidemocraticanimus of Jihad.
Hence, Friedman(1999) is too uncriticalof globalization, caught up in his own Lexus
high-consumption lifestyle, failing to perceive the depth of the oppressive features of
globalization and the breadthand extent of resistanceand opposition to it. In particular,he
fails to articulate contradictions between capitalism and democracy and the ways that
globalization and its economic logic underminedemocracyas well as circulatingit. Like-
wise, he does not grasp the virulence of the premodernand Jihadist tendencies that he
blithely identifies with the Olive Tree, or the reasons why many parts of the world so
strongly resist globalization and the West.
Consequently, it is importantto present globalization as a strange amalgam of both
homogenizingforces of samenessand uniformityand heterogeneity,difference,andhybrid-
ity, as well as a contradictorymixtureof democratizingand antidemocratizingtendencies.
On the one hand, globalization unfolds a process of standardizationin which a globalized
mass culturecirculatesthe globe, creatingsameness and homogeneity everywhere.On the
other hand, globalized culture makes possible unique appropriationsand developments
everywhere,thusencouraginghybridity,difference,and heterogeneityto proliferate.8Every
"Forexample, as Ritzer (1996) argues, McDonald's imposes not only a similar cuisine all over the world, but
circulates processes of what he calls "McDonaldization"that involve a production/consumptionmodel of effi-
ciency, technological rationality,calculability, predictability,and control. Yet, as Watson et al. (1997) argue,
McDonald's has various culturalmeanings in diverse local contexts, as well as different products,organization,
and effects. However, the latter source goes too far toward stressing heterogeneity, downplaying the cultural
power of McDonald's as a force of a homogenizing globalization and Westerncorporatelogic and system; see
Kellner (1999a, 2003).
THEORIZINGGLOBALIZATION 293
local context involves its own appropriationand reworking of global productsand signi-
fiers, thus encouragingdifference, otherness,diversity,and variety (Luke and Luke 2000).
Graspingthat globalization embodies these contradictorytendencies at once-that it can
be a force of both homogenization and heterogeneity-is crucial to articulatingthe con-
tradictionsof globalization and avoiding one-sided and reductive conceptions.
My intention is to present globalization as conflictual, contradictory,and open to resis-
tance and democraticinterventionand transformation,not just as a monolithicjuggernaut
of progress or domination,as in many discourses. This goal is advancedby distinguishing
between "globalizationfrom below" and the "globalizationfrom above" of corporatecap-
italism and the capitalist state, a distinctionthat should help us to get a bettersense of how
globalization does or does not promote democratization.
"Globalizationfrom below" refers to the ways in which marginalizedindividuals and
social movements resist globalization and/or use its institutionsand instrumentsto further
democratizationand social justice. While on one level globalization significantly increases
the supremacyof big corporationsand big government, it can also give power to groups
and individuals who were previously left out of the democratic dialogue and terrain of
political struggle.Such potentiallypositive effects of globalizationinclude increasedaccess
to educationfor individualsexcluded from entryto cultureand knowledge and the possible
opportunityfor oppositional individuals and groups to participate in global culture and
politics throughaccess to global communicationand media networksand to circulatelocal
struggles and oppositional ideas through these media. The role of new technologies in
social movements, political struggle, and everyday life forces social movements to recon-
sider their political strategies and goals and democratictheory to appraisehow new tech-
nologies do and do not promotedemocratization(Kellner 1997, 1999b), social justice, and
otherpositive attributes.Indeed,the movementsagainstcapitalistglobalizationthatI would
endorse are those that oppose oppressive institutionsof capitalist globalization such as the
WTO, IMF, and certain transnationalcorporationsand that are for positive values such as
social justice, labor and human rights, and ecology.
In their magisterialbook Empire,Hardtand Negri (2000) presentcontradictionswithin
globalization in terms of an imperializinglogic of "Empire"and an assortmentof struggles
by the "multitude,"creatinga contradictoryand tension-filled situation.As in my concep-
tion, Hardt and Negri present globalization as a complex process that involves a multi-
dimensionalmixtureof productionand effects of the global economy and capitalistmarket
system, new technologies and media, expandedjudicial and legal modes of governance,
and emergent modes of power, sovereignty, and resistance.9Combining poststructuralism
with "autonomousMarxism,"Hardtand Negri stress political openings and possibilities of
strugglewithin Empirein an optimistic and buoyanttext thatenvisages progressivedemoc-
ratizationand self-valorization in the turbulentprocess of the restructuringof capital.
Many theorists,by contrast,have arguedthatone of the trendsof globalizationis depolit-
icization of publics, the decline of the nation-state, and the end of traditional politics
(Boggs 2000). While I would agree that globalization is promotedby tremendouslypow-
9While I find Empirean extremely impressive and massively productivetext, I am not sure what is gained by
using the word "Empire"ratherthan the concepts of global capital and political economy. While Hardtand Negri
(2000) combine categories of Marxism and critical social theory with poststructuralistdiscourse derived from
Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari,they frequentlyfavor the latter,often mystifying and obscuringthe object of
analysis. I am also not as confident as are they that the "multitude"replaces traditionalconcepts of the working
class and other moder political subjects, movements, and actors, and I find their emphasis on nomads, "New
Barbarians,"and the poor as replacementcategories problematical.Nor am I clear on exactly what forms their
poststructuralistpolitics would take. The same problem is evident, I believe, in an earlier decade's provocative
and post-Marxisttext by Laclau and Mouffe (1985), who valorized new social movements, radical democracy,
and a postsocialist politics without providing many concrete examples or proposals for struggle in the present
conjuncture.
294 SOCIOLOGICALTHEORY
I01am thus trying to mediate in this paper between those who claim that globalization simply undermines
democracyand those, such as Friedman(1999), who claim that globalization promotesdemocratization.I should
also note that in distinguishingbetween globalization from above and globalization from below, I do not want to
say that one is good and the other is bad in relationto democracy.As Friedmanshows, capitalistcorporationsand
global forces might very well promote democratizationin many arenas of the world, and globalization from
below might promote special interestsor reactionarygoals, so I criticize theorizing globalization in binaryterms
as primarily"good" or "bad."While critics of globalization simply see it as the reproductionof capitalism, its
champions,like Friedman,do not perceive how globalizationundercutsdemocracy.Likewise, Friedmandoes not
engage the role of new social movements, dissident groups, or the "have-nots"in promoting democratization.
Nor do concerns for social justice, equality, and participatorydemocracy play a role in his book.
"On resistance by labor to globalization, see Moody (1997); on resistance by environmentalistsand other
social movements, see the studies in Mander and Goldsmith (1996). I provide examples below from several
domains.
'2Friedman(1999:267ff) notes that George Soros was the star of Davos in 1995, when the triumphof global
capital was being celebrated,but that the next year Russian CommunistParty leader GennadiA. Zyuganov was
THEORIZINGGLOBALIZATION 295
with the proverbialgrain of salt, but they do express fissures and openings in the system
for critical discourse and intervention.
Indeed, by 1999, the theme of the annual Davos conference centered around making
globalization work for poor countriesand minimizing the differences between the "haves"
and the "have-nots."The growing divisions between rich and poor were worrying some
globalizers, as was the wave of crises in Asian, Latin American, and other developing
countries.In James Flanigan'sreportin the Los Angeles Times(Flanigan 1999), the "main
theme" is to "spread the wealth. In a world frightened by glaring imbalances and the
weakness of economies from Indonesia to Russia, the talk is no longer of a new world
economy getting strongerbut of ways to 'keep the engine going' " (p. A13). In particular,
the globalizers were attemptingto keep economies growing in the more developed coun-
tries and capital flowing to developing nations. U.S. Vice PresidentAl Gore called on all
countriesto spureconomic growth, and he proposed a new U.S.-led initiative to eliminate
the debt burdensof developing countries. South African PresidentNelson Mandelaasked:
"Is globalization only for the powerful? Does it offer nothing to the men, women and
children who are ravaged by the violence of poverty?" (ibid.).
global and the local and promoteone or the other side of the equationas the solution to the
world'sproblems.For globalists, globalizationis the solution and underdevelopment,back-
wardness, and provincialism are the problems. For localists, globalization is the problem
and localization is the solution. Less simplistically,however, it is the mix that matters,and
whetherglobal or local solutions are most fitting depends on the conditions in the distinc-
tive context that one is addressingand the specific solutions and policies being proposed.
For instance, the Internetcan be used to promote capitalist globalization or struggles
against it. One of the more instructiveexamples of the use of the Internetto foster move-
ments against the excesses of corporatecapitalism occurredin the protests in Seattle and
throughoutthe world against the WorldTradeOrganization(WTO) meeting in December
1999. Behind these actions lay a global protest movement, using the Internetto organize
resistance to the WTO and capitalist globalization while championing democratization.
Many Web sites contained anti-WTOmaterial,and numerousmailing lists used the Inter-
net to distributecritical materialand to organize the protest. This resulted in the mobili-
zation of caravansfrom all over the United States to take protestors,many of whom had
never met and had been recruitedthroughthe Internet,to Seattle. There were also signif-
icant numbersof internationalparticipantsin Seattle, which exhibited labor,environmen-
talist, feminist, anticapitalist,animalrights,anarchist,andothergroupsorganizedto protest
aspects of globalization and form new alliances and solidarities for future struggles. In
addition,protestsoccurredthroughoutthe world, and a proliferationof materialagainstthe
extremely secret WTO spreadthroughoutthe Internet.'4
Furthermore,the Internetprovidedcritical coverage of the event, documentationof the
various groups' protests, and debate over the WTO and globalization. Whereas the main-
stream media presented the protests as "antitrade,"featuring the incidents of anarchist
violence against property while minimizing police violence against demonstrators,the
Internet provided pictures, eyewitness accounts, and reports of police brutality and the
generally peaceful and nonviolent nature of the protests. While the mainstreammedia
framedthe protestsnegatively and privileged suspect spokespeople such as PatrickBucha-
nan as critics of globalization, the Internetprovided multiple representationsof the dem-
onstrations,advancedreflective discussion of the WTO and globalization, and presenteda
diversity of critical perspectives.
The Seattle protests had some immediate consequences. The day after the demonstra-
tors made good on their promise to shut down the WTO negotiations, Bill Clinton gave a
speech endorsing the concept of labor rights enforceable by trade sanctions, thus effec-
tively making impossible any agreement and consensus during the Seattle meetings. In
addition,at the WorldEconomic Forumin Davos a monthlater,therewas much discussion
of how concessions on labor and the environmentwere necessary if consensus over glob-
alization and free tradewere to be possible. Importantly,the issue of overcoming divisions
between the information-richand poor and improving the lot of the disenfranchisedand
oppressed-bringing the benefits of globalization to these groups-were also seriously
discussed at the meeting and in the media.
14As a December 1 ABC News story titled "NetworkedProtests"put it, "Disparategroups from the Direct
Action Network to the AFL-CIO to various environmentaland human rights groups have organized rallies and
protests online, allowing for a global reach that would have been unthinkablejust five years ago." As early as
March,activists were hitting the news groups and list-serves-strings of e-mail messages people use as a kind of
long-term chat-to organize protests and rallies.
In addition, while the organizersdemandedthat the protestersagree not to engage in violent action, one Web
site urgedWTO protestersto help tie up the WTO's Web servers, and anothergroup producedan anti-WTOWeb
site that replicatedthe look of the official site (see RTMark'sWeb site, http://gatt.org/;the same group produced
a replica of George W. Bush's site with satiricaland critical material,winning the wrathof the Bush campaign).
For compelling accounts of the anti-WTOdemonstrationsin Seattle and an acute analysis of the issues involved,
see Hawkens (2000) and Klein (2000).
THEORIZINGGLOBALIZATION 297
to increase the realm of freedom, community, and empowerment.15To some extent, the
new technologies are revolutionaryand do constitutea revolutionof everyday life, but it is
often a revolution that promotes and disseminates the capitalist consumer society and
involves new modes of fetishism, enslavement, and dominationyet to be clearly perceived
and theorized.
CONCLUDINGCOMMENTS
The Internetis thus a contested terrain,used by left, right, and center to promotetheir own
agendas and interests.The political battles of the futuremay well be fought in the streets,
factories, parliaments,and other sites of past struggle, but politics is already mediated by
broadcast,computer,and informationtechnologies and will increasinglybe so in the future.
Those interested in the politics and culture of the future should therefore be clear on the
importantrole of the new public spheres and intervene accordingly, while critical peda-
gogues have the responsibility of teaching students the skills that will enable them to
participatein the politics and struggles of the present and future.
And so, to paraphraseFoucault,whereverthereis globalizationfromabove-globalization
as the imposition of capitalistlogic-there can be resistanceand struggle.The possibilities
of globalization from below result from transnationalalliances between groups fighting
for better wages and working conditions, social and political justice, environmentalpro-
tection, and more democracy and freedom worldwide. In addition,a renewed emphasis on
local and grassroots movements has put dominant economic forces on the defensive in
their own backyards,and the broadcastingmedia and the Internethave often called atten-
tion to oppressive and destructivecorporatepolicies on the local level, puttingnationaland
even transnationalpressure for reform upon major corporations.Moreover, proliferating
media and the Internetmake possible a greatercirculationof struggles and new alliances
and solidarities that can connect resistantforces that oppose capitalist and corporate-state
elite forms of globalization from above (Dyer-Witheford1999).
In a certain sense, the phenomena of globalization replicates the history of the United
States and most so-called capitalist democracies in which tension between capitalism and
democracyhas been the defining featureof the conflicts of the past 200 years. In analyzing
the development of education in the United States, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis
(1986) and Aronowitz and Giroux (1986) have analyzed the conflicts between corporate
logic and democracy in schooling, Robert McChesney (1995 and 1997), myself (Kellner
1990, 1992, 2001, forthcoming), and others have articulatedthe contradictionsbetween
capitalism and democracy in the media and public sphere, and Joshua Cohen and Joel
Rogers (1983) and many others argue that contradictionsbetween capitalism and democ-
racy are defining features of U.S. polity and history.
On a global terrain,Hardtand Negri (2000) have stressed the openings and possibilities
for democratictransformativestruggle within globalization, or what they call "Empire."I
argue that similar argumentscan be made in which globalization is not conceived merely
as the triumphof capitalism and democracy working together, as it was in the classical
theories of Milton Friedmanor more recently in FrancisFukuyama.Nor should globaliza-
tion be depicted solely as the triumphof capital, as in many despairing antiglobalization
theories. Rather,one should see that globalization unleashes conflicts between capitalism
and democracyand, in its restructuringprocesses, creates new openings for struggle,resis-
tance, and democratictransformation.
'5On the importance of the ideas of Debord and the Situationist Internationalto make sense of the present
conjuncture,see Best and Kellner (1997: chap. 3); on the new forms of the interactiveconsumer society, see Best
and Kellner (2001).
300 SOCIOLOGICALTHEORY
I would also suggest that the model of Marx and Engels, as deployed in the "Commu-
nist Manifesto,"could be usefully employed to analyze the contradictionsof globalization
(Marx and Engels 1978:469ff). From the historicalmaterialistoptic, capitalism was inter-
pretedas the greatest, most progressive force in history for Marx and Engels, destroyinga
retrogradefeudalism, authoritarianpatriarchy,backwardnessand provincialismin favor of
a market society, global cosmopolitanism, and constant revolutionizing of the forces of
production.Yet capitalismwas also presentedin the Marxiantheory as a majordisasterfor
the humanrace, condemning a large part of the race to alienated labor and regions of the
world to colonialist exploitation and generatingconflicts between classes and nations, the
consequences of which the contemporaryera continues to suffer.
Marx deployed a similar dialectical and historical model in his later analyses of impe-
rialism, arguing, for instance, in his writings on British imperialism in India that British
colonialism was a greatproductiveand progressiveforce in India at the same time as it was
highly destructive(Marx and Engels 1978:653ff). A similar dialectical and critical model
can be used today that articulatesthe progressive elements of globalization in conjunction
with its more oppressive features, deploying the categories of negation and critique,while
sublating (Aufhebung) the positive features. Moreover,a dialectical and transdisciplinary
model is necessary to capture the complexity and multidimensionalityof globalization
today, one that brings together in theorizing globalization, the economy, technology, pol-
ity, society, and culture,articulatingthe interplayof these elements and avoiding any form
of determinismor reductivism.
Theorizing globalization dialectically and critically requiresthat we analyze both con-
tinuities and discontinuities with the past, specifying what is a continuationof past histo-
ries and what is new and original in the present moment. To elucidate the latter,I believe
that the discourse of the postmodernis useful in dramatizingthe changes and novelties of
the mode of globalization. The concept of the postmoderncan signal that which is fresh
and original, calling attentionto topics and phenomenathat requirenovel theorizationand
intense critical thought and inquiry.Hence, althoughManuel Castells (1996, 1997, 1998)
does the most detailed analysis of new technologies and the rise of what he calls a net-
workedsociety, by refusing to link his analyses with the problematicof the postmodern,he
cuts himself off from theoreticalresources that enable theorists to articulatethe novelties
of the presentthatare uniqueand differentfrom the previousmode of social organization.16
Consequently,althoughthere is admittedlya lot of mystification in the discourse of the
postmodern,it signals emphaticallythe shifts and rupturesin our era-the novelties and
originalities-and dramatizesthe mutationsin culture, subjectivities,and theory that Cas-
tells and other theorists of globalization or the information society gloss over. The dis-
course of the postmodernin relationto analysis of contemporarycultureand society is just
jargon, however, unless it is rooted in analysis of the global restructuringof capitalismand
analysis of the scientific-technologicalrevolutionthat is partand parcel of it (see Best and
Kellner 1997, 2001).
As I have arguedin this study,the term"globalization"is often used as a code word that
stands for a tremendousdiversity of issues and problemsand serves as a front for a variety
of theoretical and political positions. While it can function as a legitimating ideology to
cover and sanitize ugly realities, a critical globalizationtheory can inflect the discourse to
16Castellsclaims that Harvey (1989) and Lash (1990) say about as much about the postmodernas needs to be
said (Castells 1996:26ff). With due respect to their excellent work, I believe that no two theorists or books
exhaustthe problematicof the postmodern,which involves mutationsin theory,culture,society, politics, science,
philosophy, and almost every other domain of experience and is thus inexhaustible (Best and Kellner 1997,
2001). Yet one should be careful in using postmoderndiscourse to avoid the mystifying elements, a point made
in the books just noted as well as in Hardtand Negri (2000).
THEORIZINGGLOBALIZATION 301
ment and programsto assure that everyone receives the training,literacies, and tools nec-
essary to properlyfunction in a high-tech global economy and culture.'7
Hence, a critical theory of globalization presents globalization as a productof capital-
ism and democracy,as a set of forces imposed from above in conjunctionwith resistance
from below. In this optic, globalization generates new conflicts, new struggles, and new
crises, which can be seen in part as resistance to capitalist logic. In the light of the neo-
liberal projects to dismantle the welfare state, colonize the public sphere, and control
globalization, it is up to citizens and activists to create new public spheres, politics, and
pedagogies, to use the new technologies to discuss what kinds of society people today
want, and to oppose the society against which people resist and struggle. This involves,
minimally, demands for more education, health care, welfare, and benefits from the state
and a struggle to create a more democraticand egalitariansociety. But one cannot expect
that generous corporationsand a beneficent state are going to make available to citizens
the bounties and benefits of the globalized new informationeconomy. Rather,it is up to
individuals and groups to promote democratizationand progressive social change.
Thus, in opposition to the globalization from above of corporatecapitalism, I would
advocate a globalization from below, one which supportsindividualsand groups using the
new technologies to create a more multicultural,egalitarian,democratic, and ecological
world. Of course, the new technologies might exacerbateexisting inequalities in the cur-
rentclass, gender,race, and regional configurationsof power and give the majorcorporate
forces powerful new tools to advance their interests. In this situation,it is up to people of
good will to devise strategiesto use the new technologies to promotedemocratizationand
social justice. For as the new technologies become ever more central to every domain of
everyday life, developing an oppositional technopolitics in the new public spheres will
become more and more important(see Kellner 1995a, 1995b, 1997, 2000). Changes in the
economy, politics, and social life demand a constant reconceptualizationof politics and
social change in the light of globalization and the technological revolution, requiringnew
thinking as a response to ever-changinghistorical conditions.
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