Globalization as ‘Globaloney’

A small and rapidly decreasing number of scholars contend that existing accounts of
globalization are incorrect, imprecise, or exaggerated. They note that just about everything that can be
linked to some transnational process is cited as evidence for globalization and its growing influence.
Hence, they suspect that such general observations often amount to little more than ‘globaloney’ (Held
and McGrew, 2007; Rosenberg, 2000; Veseth, 2010). The arguments of these globalization critics fall
into three broad categories. Representatives of the first group dispute the usefulness of globalization as
a sufficiently precise analytical concept. Members of the second group point to the limited nature of
globalizing processes, emphasizing that the world is not nearly as integrated as many globalization
proponents believe. In their view, the term ‘globalization’ does not constitute an accurate label for the
actual state of affairs. The third group of critics disputes the novelty of the process while acknowledging
the existence of moderate globalizing tendencies. They argue that those who refer to globalization as a
recent process miss the bigger picture and fall prey to their narrow historical framework. Let us examine
the respective arguments of these three groups in more detail.

Rejectionists

Scholars who dismiss the utility of globalization as an analytical concept typically advance their
arguments from within a larger criticism of similarly vague words employed in academic discourse.
Besides globalization, another often-cited example for such analytically impoverished concepts is the
complex and ambiguous phenomenon of nationalism. Craig Calhoun (1993), for example, argues that
nationalism and its corollary terms ‘have proved notoriously hard concepts to define’ because
‘nationalisms are extremely varied phenomena’, and ‘any definition will legitimate some claims and
delegitimate others’. Writing in the same critical vein, Susan Strange (1996) considers globalization a
prime example of such a vacuous term, suggesting that it has been used in academic discourse to refer
to ‘anything from the Internet to a hamburger’. See also Clark (1999: 34– 40). Similarly, Linda Weiss
(1998) objects to the term as ‘a big idea resting on slim foundations’.

Scholarly suggestions for improvement point in two different directions. The first is to challenge
the academic community to provide additional examples of how the term ‘globalization’ obscures more
than it enlightens. Such empirically based accounts would serve as a warning to extreme globalization
proponents. Ultimately, the task of more careful researchers should be to break the concept of
globalization into smaller, more manageable parts that contain a higher analytical value because they
can be more easily associated with empirical processes. This rationale underlies Robert Holton's (1998)
suggestion to abandon all general theoretical analyses in favour of middle-range approaches that seek
to provide specific explanations of particulars.

The second avenue for improvement involves my own suggestion to complement the social-
scientific enterprise of exploring globalization as an objective process with more interpretive studies of
the ideological project of globalism. Following this argument, the central task for scholars working in the
emerging field of globalization studies would be to identify and evaluate the ideological manoeuvres of
prominent proponents and opponents who have filled the term with values and meanings that bolster
their respective political agendas.