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Globalization in
the 21st Century
Manfred B. Steger
University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

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For Paul James,
friend, intellectual partner, model scholar
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments vii

List of Figures and Tables xi
PART I: HISTORIES AND THEORIES 1

1: A Genealogy of “Globalization” 3
2: Four Ages of Globalization 23
3: A Critical Appraisal of Globalization Theory 55
PART II: IDEOLOGIES AND MOVEMENTS 75

4: Contending Globalisms 77
5: The Challenge of Antiglobalist Populism 97
PART III: ISSUES AND PROBLEMS 117

6: The Rise of Global Studies in Higher Education 119
7: Digital Globalization in the COVID-19 Era 141
8: Globalization in 2040 163
Notes 183
Index 209
About the Author 217
v
Preface and Acknowledgments
The fate of globalization in the twenty-first century hangs in the balance.

Although recent data show that most global integration dynamics have been
on the rebound after the devastating impacts of the 2008–2009 global finan-
cial meltdown and the 2020–2023 COVID-19 pandemic, public views on
globalization remain gloomy and subdued. Even some neoliberal pundits who
once framed globalization as “worldwide market integration that benefits
everyone” now concede that their turbocapitalist juggernaut may be running
out of steam. By contrast, national-populist visions of deglobalization, topped
with sprinkles of nostalgic “localism,” exert significant mass appeal.
Today’s ostensible globalization backlash scenario seems to be con-
firmed by soaring inflation rates, recurring bank failures, global supply
chain disruptions, anti-immigration backlash, accelerating climate change
and ecological deterioration, lagging transitions to greener forms of energy,
escalating political violence, and rising geopolitical competition among
the “great powers, especially the United States–China rivalry and the pro-
tracted Russian-Ukrainian war. As UN Secretary General António Guterres
reports, the world is enduring its highest number of conflicts since the end of
World War II, with 2 billion people living in conflict-affected countries and
the highest number of refugees on record seeking new homelands. The UN
Secretary General rightly speaks of multiple cascading and intersecting crises
that feed a global uncertainty complex never seen before in human history.
After all, six of seven people worldwide feel insecure, a twenty-first-century
trend that has been intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath.
These people are plagued by a nagging sense that whatever control they had
over their lives is slipping away. With social norms and institutions crum-
bling under the onslaught of social media–fanned political polarization, this
growing sense of anomie is reflected in the depressing fact that fewer than
30 percent of people worldwide think that most of their fellow humans can be
trusted, the lowest value on record. Some public observers of our era of the
vii
viii Preface and Acknowledgments
Great Unsettling have even gone so far as to suggest that we might be in for
a rerun of the Cold-War specter of total nuclear annihilation.
On the flipside, however, such doomsday scenarios reinforce the fact that
most of today’s problems are global in nature. Although they cannot be sepa-
rated from their concrete local, national, and regional settings, these threaten-
ing issues require a synchronized global response in the form of innovative
ideas and public policies directed at the transformation of our unsustainable
socioecological system. This necessary search for comprehensive solutions
can hardly afford to indulge the reactionary reflex of glorifying an imagined
national greatness of a mythical golden past. Instead, we need to find inspira-
tion from uplifting global success stories such as progress in the worldwide
reduction of absolute poverty and new international climate change accords.
Although modest and often unenforceable, these agreements suggest that
solutions to our global problems lie in more and better, not less, globalization.
For academics, the hard work of envisioning an alternative project of ethi-
cal reglobalization begins with a hard-nosed assessment of the current state of
globalization. Planning for a better planetary future requires taking stock of
the global present. This book, along with my published work on the subject
over the last twenty-five years, represents the culmination of my own small
contribution to assembling a big picture of twenty-first-century globalization
that supports practical efforts of setting the globe on a more equitable and
sustainable path.
The vision for this book project originated with Susan McEachern and
Michael Kerns at Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. For some years now,
these engaged senior editors have encouraged me to bring together in a single
volume my appraisal of globalization in the twenty-first century. Following
Susan’s well-deserved retirement, it has been both a privilege and a pleasure
to work closely with Michael Kerns and his assistant, Elizabeth Von Buhr, to
bring this long-in-the-making project to completion.
I owe a significant intellectual debt to my colleagues and students at
the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Nothing is more important in higher
education than stimulating discussions with fellow academic travelers, no
matter at which stage of their professional careers they find themselves. I
especially appreciate my regular conversations with my doctoral student,
Margie Walkover, whose knowledge of complexity theory has expanded my
own understanding of this vital subject and its links to globalization research.
I am extremely grateful for the steady stream of innovative ideas and
feedback provided by Professor Paul James, a dear friend and leading
globalization scholar at Western Sydney University, to whom this book is
dedicated. Parts of earlier versions of some chapters appearing in this study
were co-authored with Paul, who generously allowed me to draw on select
passages. I also appreciate Dr. Tommaso Durante’s competent academic
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
assistance in designing some illustrations that appear in this book. Tommaso’s

pioneering “Visual Archive Project of the Global Imaginary” can be found at
http://www.the-visual-archiveproject-of-the-global-imaginary.com.
I have been fortunate to have received steady feedback on my globalization
scholarship from many other academic colleagues, including nine anonymous
external reviewers of the book proposal and manuscript. For many years,
numerous readers, reviewers, and audiences around the world have offered
insightful comments in response to my public lectures and publications
on globalization. I am deeply indebted to them for helping me to hone my
arguments.
Most importantly, a deep gasshō goes to my soulmate, Perle Besserman, in
recognition and appreciation of her love, understanding, generosity, support,
patience, intellectual advice, and expert editorial assistance.
As indicated below, most chapters draw on previous essays published
between 2002 and 2021. As I wrote them, it became increasingly clear
that they were converging on a common theme: the appraisal of unfolding
globalization dynamics in the early twenty-first century. However, the per-
tinent essays have been significantly revised, supplemented with new ideas,
expanded with fresh insights, and woven together in the chapters of this book.
I want to thank the following copyright holders for permission to incorpo-
rate previously published materials in both original and revised form:
Brill Publishers: Manfred B. Steger, “Mapping Antiglobalist
Populism: Bringing Ideology Back In,” Populism 2 (2019), pp. 110–36.
The University of California Press: Manfred B. Steger, “Two Limitations
of Globalization Theory,” Global Perspectives 2.1 (2021): DOI: https://doi
.org/10.1525/gp.2021.30035.
Taylor and Francis: Paul James and Manfred B. Steger, “On
Living in an Already-Unsettled World: COVID as an Expression of
Larger Transformations,” Globalizations 19.3 (2022), pp. 426–38;
DOI: 10.1080/14747731.2021.1961460, https://www.tandfonline.com; and
Manfred B. Steger and Paul James, “A Genealogy of ‘Globalization’: The
Career of a Concept,” Globalizations 11.4 (September 2014), pp. 417–34;
DOI: 10.1080/14747731.2014.951186, https://www.tandfonline.com.
Oxford University Press: Manfred B. Steger, “What Is Global Studies?” in
Mark Juergensmeyer, Saskia Sassen, and Manfred B. Steger, eds., The Oxford
Handbook of Global Studies (2019), pp. 3–20.
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers: Manfred B. Steger, Globalisms: Facing
the Populist Challenge (2020).
Many people have contributed to improving the quality of this book; its
remaining flaws are my own responsibility.
List of Figures and Tables
FIGURES
1.1. The Use of “Globalization” (1930–2010)

1.2. Four Dimensions of Neoliberalism
2.1. The Global Journey of Homo Sapiens
3.1. David Held’s Typology of Globalization
4.1. Globalisms in the Twenty-First Century
6.1. International Relations, International Studies, Area Studies, or Global
Studies?
7.1. Disjunctive Globalization: Velocity
7.2. Disjunctive Globalization: Extensity
TABLES
5.1. Examples of Donald Trump’s Neoliberal Executive Orders (2017–2019)

8.1. The World’s Top Ten Carbon Dioxide Emitters (2020)
xi
PART I
Histories and Theories
1
1
A Genealogy of “Globalization”
The sudden discursive explosion of “globalization” in the 1990s represents

an extraordinary phenomenon, especially since the term did not enter gen-
eral dictionaries until the 1961 Merriam-Webster Third New International
Dictionary. More than half a century later, substantial dictionaries and ency-
clopedias of globalization as well as multivolume anthologies on the subject
had been published that explore the phenomenon in all its complexities.1 In
addition, thousands of books and articles on the subject were written to cover
primarily the objective dimensions of globalization such as transnational eco-
nomic flows, cross-cultural interactions, and the proliferation of worldwide
digital networks.
We can track the burgeoning globalization literature through such big
data mechanisms as the Google search engine Ngram, a mammoth data-
base collated from more than 5 million digitized books available free to the
public for online searches.2 The exceptionally rich Factiva database lists
355,838 publications referencing the term. The Expanded Academic ASAP
database produced 7,737 results with “globalization” in the title, including
5,976 journal articles going back to 1986, 1,404 magazine articles starting in
1984, and 355 news items reaching back to 1987. The ISI Web of Knowledge
shows a total of 8,970 references with “globalization” in the title going
back to 1968. The EBSCO Host Database yields 17,188 results starting in
1975. Finally, the Proquest Newspaper Database lists 25,856 articles going
back to 1971.
Since the early 2000s, there has been a proliferation of projects seeking
to measure objective globalization processes with composite indices such
as the A. T. Kearney Foreign Policy Globalization Index, the KOF Index
of Globalization, and the DHL Global Connectedness Index.3 The latter, for
example, gauges the depth and breadth of a country’s integration with the
rest of the world, as manifested by its participation in transnational flows of
products and services (trade flows), capital (investment flows), information
(electronic data flows), and people (tourism, student, and migrant flows).
3
4 Chapter 1
Depth refers to the size of international flows as compared to a relevant

measure of the size of all interactions of that type, both transnational and
domestic. It reflects how important or pervasive interactions across national
borders are in the context of business or life. Breadth measures how closely
each country’s distribution of international flows across its partner countries
matches the global distribution of the same flows in the opposite direction.
The breadth of a country’s merchandise exports, for example, is measured
based on the difference between the distribution of its exports across des-
tination countries versus the rest of the world’s distribution of merchandise
imports. These country-level results are aggregated using the overall flows as
weights to determine the overall level of depth and breadth of globalization.
Moreover, the DHL Global Connectedness Index is built primarily from
internationally comparable data from multi-country sources, with additional
data drawn from national statistics. Worldwide depth ratios are calculated
using published estimates for the world, rather than being aggregated from
individual countries’ reported data. Worldwide breadth estimates are calcu-
lated using reporting country data on interactions with all partners. In cases
where adequate data are not available from a reporting country, but sufficient
coverage can be achieved by using flows in the opposite direction as reported
by partners, this method is used to calculate breadth. Finally, overall depth
and breadth scores are computed using sophisticated weighting schemes.4
While quantitative measurements of the material aspects of globalization
are certainly important, this opening chapter starts laying the foundation of
our assessment of globalization in the twenty-first century by investigating
the construction of subjective meanings associated with our keyword. This
genealogical inquiry proceeds along the lines of three main guiding ques-
tions. When and how, exactly, did the concept “globalization” emerge in
people’s consciousness? What sorts of meanings were associated with it?
Why did some of these meanings drop out over time or become relegated to
a secondary status while others leapt to the top? Who were some of the key
thinkers who shaped these understandings in various ways? Accepting the
genealogical challenge implied in these probing questions, this chapter con-
tributes to the historical and theoretical foundation for our assessment of
globalization in the twenty-first century. Directing our analytic spotlight on
the conceptual evolution of “globalization,” it covers the formative period of
the keyword from the 1920s to the 1990s, which constitutes the basis of its
ongoing meaning evolution in the new century. The chapter offers a careful
genealogical mapping of the concept as an indispensable preliminary attempt
to expand our understanding of why and how it came to matter so much by
the turn of the twenty-first century.
A Genealogy of “Globalization” 5
While paying close attention to continuity in meaning formation, this

chapter resists the impulse to construct linear narratives that connect “glo-
balization” to fixed points of a single origin or a straight timeline of meaning
accumulation. Rather, it settles for the more manageable goal of presenting
readers with some significant “snapshots” of multiple genealogical trajecto-
ries that contribute to a better understanding of why certain meanings became
dominant at the turn of the twenty-first century and how intellectuals came to
use certain keywords as they grappled with the challenges of an increasingly
interconnected world. Ultimately, the chapter presents an episodic sketch of
continuities, crucial junctures, notable tipping points, and multiple pathways
that were involved in the meaning evolution of “globalization.”
As the intellectual historian Reinhart Koselleck notes, popular concepts
such as “globalization” do not simply depict objective processes but also
underpin and inform distinct modes of being and acting in the world.5 Ideas
and material interests continuously interact with each other and are, therefore,
interrelated and mutually constitutive. Moreover, influential ideas intermingle
with the objective structures of the “real world” into which they are inscribed
and thus shape concrete sociopolitical practices. This power of ideas to shape
realities on the ground is particularly significant during periods of transition
and crisis as reflected in our current era of the Great Unsettling. Echoing
Koselleck’s insights, the Marxist cultural theorist Raymond Williams refers
to pivotal terms and concepts as “keywords,” which serve as potent catalysts
for the formation of entire vocabularies and narratives of a given historical
era.6 By the turn of the twenty-first century, “globalization” had risen from
linguistic obscurity to the status of a keyword, which, for better or worse, had
taken the world by storm.
THE FOUR MEANING BRANCHES OF THE

FAMILY TREE CALLED “GLOBALIZATION”
While the meanings of seminal keywords such as “economics,” “culture,”

or “modernity” evolved rather slowly and built upon a relatively continuous
meaning base, “globalization” has had a rather short and discontinuous his-
tory, which involves a multiplicity of intellectual entry points and influences.
Perhaps most surprisingly, this complex evolution goes back to meaning con-
stellations and discursive orbits that did not always endure on the long road to
academic and public prominence. Like the emergence of Homo sapiens as a
species where, over many millennia, different kinds of hominids thrived side
by side for some time before nearly all of them became extinct, some global-
ization strains turned out to be evolutionary dead-ends while others thrived.
Indeed, the meaning formation of “globalization” was many branched. These
6 Chapter 1
Figure 1.1. The Use of “Globalization” (1930–2010) Source: https://books.google.com

/ngrams/graph?content=globalization&year_start=1930&year_end=2014&corpus=15
&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cglobalization%3B%2Cc0
shoots were sometimes fractious and withered. Buffeted by ferocious winds

of rapid social change in the twentieth century, they encountered unantici-
pated twists and reversals.
As social theorist Philippe Bourbeau observes, the historical evolution of
major concepts and issues can best be characterized as “a disparity and diver-
sity of meanings; some interpretations are forgotten, set aside, or defeated,
while others become integrated into the construction of the dominant narra-
tive.”7 This emergent narrative can be broad, meaning two positions at the top
of key genealogical lines might be quite distant from each other. Embracing
Bourbeau’s pluralistic spirit, let us adopt the popular “family tree” metaphor
for our genealogical examination. However, we should do so with the afore-
mentioned proviso that we envisioned this tree as sprouting diffuse roots and
many branches in exceedingly complex patterns.
The early decades of the twentieth century witnessed a clear shift in
people’s perception of the global as the modern media and communications
industries were becoming acutely aware of their own transnational networks
serving mass audiences. A number of newspapers around the world, particu-
larly in Britain, the United States, and Canada, were using “globe” in their
titles, such as the Boston Globe, The Globe (London), and the Globe and
Mail (Toronto). From the 1920s forward, some newly constituted commercial
airlines featured globes in their advertising projections. Founded in 1927, Pan
American World Airways flew under a blue globe logo until its economic col-
lapse during a very different period of global competition in the 1990s. The
Daily News—later the inspiration for the Daily Planet of Superman fame—
proudly displayed a gigantic rotating globe in the massive lobby of its New
York headquarters at its opening in 1930.
Already in the 1910s, many Hollywood movie studios had seized upon
globes as a vital component of their corporate image. From 1912–1919,
the first logo for Universal Films incorporated a stylized Earth with a
Saturn-like ring. It was called the Trans-Atlantic Globe or Saturn Globe. In
the 1920s, its revised logo was planet Earth floating in space with a biplane
flying around it and leaving in its wake a trail of white vapor. Built in 1926,
Paramount Picture’s New York headquarters was topped by an illuminated
glass globe, which was later blackened in response to anticipated perils linked
to World War II. In the immediate aftermath of the war—and in the spirit of
celebrating the global reach of the communications industry—the Hollywood
Foreign Correspondents Association initiated a series of media presentations
and receptions they called the Golden Globe Awards.
It was in the critical historical period from the Roaring Twenties to the
Revolutionary Sixties that the linguistic shift from “globe” and “global” to
the explicit use of “globalization” evolved. The genealogical findings in this
chapter reveal the existence of at least four major trajectories in the explicit
meaning formation of the concept from the late 1920s to the 1990s. The first
meaning branch of the family tree called “globalization” is associated with
the academic fields of education and psychology, the second with sociology
and cultural studies, the third in politics and international relations (IR), and
the fourth in economics and business.
Education and Psychology

The pedagogical-psychological meaning branch appears to be the oldest of
the four trajectories and relates primarily to notions of universalization and
integration of knowledge acquisition. Its beginnings date back to late 1920s,
when a first snapshot shows William Boyd employing the concept throughout
his immensely influential work. The Scottish educator associated “globaliza-
tion” with an innovative “holistic” approach to education: “Wholeness . . .
integration, globalization . . . would seem to be the keywords of the new
education view of mind: suggesting negatively, antagonism to any concep-
tion of human experience which overemphasizes the constituent atoms, parts,
elements.”8 In Boyd’s usage, globalization had hardly anything to do with
the world imagined as interdependent planetary space. Rather, he simply
articulated a universal learning process, moving from the global whole to the
local particular. It seems Boyd acquired the term by translating the French
8 Chapter 1
word globalisation as used by Jean-Ovide Decroly. The Belgian educational

psychologist had employed the concept in the 1920s in reference to what he
called the “globalization function stage” in early childhood development.
Within a few years, “globalization” became a more established concept in
Decroly’s “new education” movement. It was based on a holistic pedagogi-
cal method designed to teach children to read and learn—la méthode globale
(“whole language teaching”).
However, over the ensuing decades, this educational and psychological
meaning branch of “globalization” declined and withered save for one nota-
ble exception. In 1953, C. W. de Kiewiet, president of Rochester University,
published a short article that called for the creation of a “globalized curricu-
lum” reflecting the “realities of world conditions.”9 But the author’s fervent
appeal to “globalize” American universities used the concept only in its verb
form, not as a noun. Still, one is struck by the topicality of Kiewiet’s demand
to globalize the curriculum, especially in light of its sudden reappearance in
the 1980s and 1990s. These later initiatives eventually took root in the chang-
ing higher education environment of the 1990s and led to significant aca-
demic innovations, including the establishment of the transdisciplinary field
of global studies.10 Thus, it would be fair to say that this early pedagogical-
psychological branch of meaning formation thinned out and sputtered before
mutating into its contemporary discursive field of the “globalization of edu-
cation.” This topical phrase signifies in the contemporary context the study
of various objective globalization dynamics such as the transnationalization
and rejuvenation of educational systems worldwide. Moreover, “globaliza-
tion” has also become an important term in the growing pedagogical litera-
ture dedicated to the exploration of the dramatic changes that impact higher
education as a result of new forms of digital technology, global rankings, and
swelling international student flows.11
Culture and Sociology

Organized around cultural and sociological meanings, the second branch of
the family tree called “globalization” made its appearance in the 1940s. An
initial snapshot captures an example remarkable for its isolated occurrence,
unusual context, and the mode in which it was delivered. In 1944, Lucius
Harper, an African American editor, journalist, and early civil rights leader,
published an article that quoted from a World War II letter written by an
African American soldier based in Australia. The soldier conveyed his pes-
simistic impressions of the global dissemination of some racist American
views about “Negroes”:
The American Negro and his problem are taking on a global significance. The
world has begun to measure America by what she does to us [the American
Negro]. But—and this is the point—we stand in danger . . . of losing the
otherwise beneficial aspects of globalization of our problems by allowing the
“Bilbos in uniform” with and without brass hats to spread their version of us
everywhere.12
“Bilbos in uniform” was a snappy reference to Theodore G. Bilbo

(1877–1947), a mid-century governor and US senator from Mississippi, who
was an avid advocate of segregation and an openly racist member of the Ku
Klux Klan. Bilbo brazenly echoed Adolf Hitler’s sentiments expressed in
Mein Kampf by asserting that merely “one drop of Negro blood placed in
the veins of the purest Caucasian destroys the inventive genius of his mind
and strikes palsied his creative faculties.”13 At the time, Bilbo and other
nationally elected representatives of the segregated South had successfully
blocked a series of legislative attempts to clamp down on lynching. These
racist Southern politicians sought to complement their obstructionist legisla-
tive efforts by spreading anti-Semitic rumors about an “international Jewish
conspiracy,” aiding what they saw as aggressive Northern interference in
Southern political affairs.
By quoting the globalization letter from a Black African American soldier
serving his country in the Pacific theater, Harper’s article allowed for political
mediation that increased the verisimilitude of the passage. Despite Australia’s
nationally closed and race-based, White-only immigration policy, Black
American soldiers in World War II were often greeted abroad with a relative
openness that confronted their defensive sensibilities formed in the United
States. Harper’s article appeared in the Chicago Defender, a Chicago-based
newspaper primarily for African American readers. At the time, the periodical
was probably the most influential newspaper of its kind in the United States,
with an estimated readership of one hundred thousand.14 Overall, though, it
appears that the impact of Harper’s use of “globalization” on the American
press in general and the African American community in particular must have
been negligible since virtually no English-language magazines picked up the
term for decades after the 1940s.
A second important snapshot corresponding to this sociocultural genea-
logical branch of the globalization family tree occurred in an academic
context that corresponded to the rise of modernization theory and structural-
functionalist social systems. These rather abstract approaches in the social
sciences were spearheaded by the American sociologists Talcott Parsons and
Robert K. Merton. In 1951, Paul Meadows, a notable American sociologist
who seems to have been influenced by the rising sociological paradigm, con-
tributed an extraordinary piece of writing to the prominent academic journal,
10 Chapter 1
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Although

Meadows rarely received mention in the pantheon of globalization pioneers,
his article stands out for reasons that will become quickly apparent:
The culture of any society is always unique, a fact which is dramatically

described in Sumner’s concept of ethos: “the sum of the characteristic usages,
ideas, standards and codes by which a group is differentiated and individual-
ized in character from other groups.” With the advent of industrial technology,
however, this tendency toward cultural localization has been counteracted by a
stronger tendency toward cultural universalization. With industrialism, a new
cultural system has evolved in one national society after another; its global
spread is incipient and cuts across every local ethos. Replacing the central
mythos of the medieval Church, this new culture pattern is in a process of “glo-
balization,” after a period of formation and formulation covering some three or
four hundred years of westernization.15
This passage is worth quoting at length because it uses the concept in a

more contemporary sense. Meadows’s interpretation puts “globalization”
in a conductive relationship with other pivotal terms of the time such as
“industrialism” and “westernization.” Moreover, his act of putting “global-
ization” in inverted commas suggests that Meadows was either uncertain or
rather self-conscious about using this new term to illuminate changing social
relations. Still, the synergy he formed between such crucial spatial signifiers
as “globalization” and “localization” was extended by later globalization
researchers like Roland Robertson and Saskia Sassen and suggests that the
American sociologist was far ahead of his time.16
Another remarkable achievement of Meadows’s article lies in its uncanny
recognition of the strong nexus connecting “globalization” with “ideology”
and “industrial technology” that will be discussed in more detail in the ensu-
ing chapters of this book. As the author points out at the end of his article’s
introductory section, “The rest of this paper will be devoted to a discussion
of the technological, organizational, and ideological systems which comprise
this new universalistic culture.”17 Thus, Meadows was one of the first schol-
ars to use “globalization” in a way that would become an enduring meaning
a generation later. Still, his pioneering efforts to engage “globalization” in
a cultural-sociological mode remained largely dormant until the 1970s and
1980s when other social thinkers started to pick up the term to refer to the
“growing interdependence of all humanity” and “the globalization of human
culture.”18
Politics and International Relations

The third genealogical branch of the globalization family tree is rooted
in meaning clusters related to politics and international relations (IR). A
1952 snapshot reveals the use of the concept to support the worldwide
expansion of the activities of newly established international organizations.
Acting as a representative of the United Nations, the international law scholar
Sigmund Timberg called for the establishment of a so-called international
govcorps, which he envisioned as mediating institutions between the foreign
policy strategies of national governments and increasingly globally operating
corporations. Evidently, Timberg saw great potential in the development of
cooperative structures among nations, which would transform what he called
“happenstance globalization” into a deliberate, rational planning process
rooted in cutting-edge management techniques. In short, a planned policy
form of globalization would not only help to prevent international conflict
among nations by means of increasing transborder political and economic
activities, but it would also improve the efficiency and productivity of profes-
sional bureaucrats working in foreign ministries around the world.19
Similarly reflecting on the positive effects of the intensification of inter-
national relations, the American political scientist Inis Claude published a
widely read article in 1965 on the future of the United Nations. Equating
“universalization” with “globalization,” the international organizations expert
argued, “The United Nations has tended to reflect the steady globalization of
international relations.”20 In other words, rather than envisioning the creation
of new organizational structures and institutions along the lines of Timberg’s
international govcorps, Claude considered the United Nations as a whole as
the most appropriate model for a rationally planned globalization of interna-
tional cooperation. Aurelio Peccei, an Italian industrialist, philanthropist, and
cofounder of the Club of Rome, picked up on Claude’s “movement toward
universality” by forging an innovative link between globalization as “men-
tality” and globalization as “social structure.” Thus, Peccei connected the
political and sociocultural meaning branches. As he put it, “The important
thing, however, in my opinion is that this process of progressive globalization
or planetization has itself the germ and appeal of an idée-force, because its
foundations are cast in the triumphant realities of this age.”21
Around the same time, and with no reference to Claude or Peccei, an
extraordinary article appeared that had the potential of changing the entire
field of IR. Penned by the Polish American political scientist George
Modelski, the 1968 essay discussed the connection between “globalization”
to “world politics” in a comprehensive way:
12 Chapter 1
A condition for the emergence of a multiple-autonomy form of world politics

arguably is the development of a global layer of interaction substantial enough
to support continuous and diversified institutionalization. We may define this
process as globalization; it is the result of the increasing size, complexity and
sophistication of world society. Growth and consolidation of global interdepen-
dence and the emergent necessities of devising ways and means of handling the
problems arising therefrom support an increasingly elaborate network of orga-
nizations. World order in such a system would be the product of the interplay of
these organizations, and world politics an effort to regulate these interactions.22
In the same year his article appeared, Modelski led a team of social sci-
ence researchers at the University of Washington in drafting a grant applica-
tion to the US National Science Foundation, which, for the first time, used
“globalization” in the title of a comprehensive research project: “The Study
of Globalization: A Preliminary Exploration.” Unfortunately, this highly
innovative project was soundly rejected, thereby halting Modelski’s research
efforts in this area for two decades. Remarkably, Modelski’s sophisticated
rendition of the complex process of space-time compression had surprisingly
little academic impact, even though the author defined “globalization” in a
way that prefigured the heated discussions on its political dimensions during
the 1990s.
At the same time, however, Modelski’s conceptualization of world order
and world politics as “globalization” foreshadowed later challenges to the
canonical status of the “international” in IR launched in the 1970s and 1980s
by influential political scientists such as James Rosenau, Robert Keohane,
and Joseph Nye.23 These scholars initially employed terms and phrases like
“complex interdependence” and “transnationalism” to emphasize the chang-
ing dynamics of the international system and the roles played by reconfig-
ured states and a growing variety of non-state actors. Recognizing the rapid
transformation of the power and authority of national governments under
globalizing conditions, Keohane and Nye eventually argued for a revision of
IR’s key concept of national sovereignty from a territorially bounded space
to a bargaining resource for politics characterized by transnational globaliza-
tion networks.24
Economics and Business

The fourth genealogical branch of the globalization family tree projects eco-
nomic and business meanings. Here, too, the keyword had a rather tenuous
start and was used rarely and intermittently. A snapshot from the early 1960s
features the use of “globalization” by François Perroux. A prominent French
critic of capitalist financial and economic policies toward the Third World,
Perroux used the concept in a context clearly more akin to its contemporary
dominant meaning related to the formation of integrated economic markets
on a planetary scale. He referred explicitly to what he called the “mondialisa-
tion de certains marches” (“globalization of certain markets”).25 Once estab-
lished, this semantic nexus linking “globalization” to “markets” managed
not only to stay alive over the next few decades but began to pick up steam.
For example, Michael Haider, CEO of the Standard Oil Company of New
Jersey in the late 1960s, argued that there was “no limit to the globalization
of American business,” which was increasingly “stretching out to developing
markets in Africa, Latin America and the Far East.”26
THE NEOLIBERAL REVOLUTION AND THE

“GLOBALIZATION OF MARKETS”
So far, our critical investigation has suggested that, across the middle quarters
of the twentieth century, “globalization” generally figured as little more than
a “loose descriptor with little analytical shape.”27 It was initially deployed
with a surprising variety of meanings and in different social contexts.
However, as the popular and academic discourses on the subject converged
in the 1980s, “globalization” began to function as a powerful condensation
symbol, capable of compressing a whole coterie of economistic ideas and
notions into a single keyword. The keyword stimulated a whole host of evalu-
ations, cognitions, and feelings about what people increasingly perceived as a
shrinking world powered by free markets and new technologies.
Thus “globalization” became linked to “neoliberalism,” a term closely
associated with the economic paradigm of Nobel Prize–winners Friedrich von
Hayek and Milton Friedman who sought to revive the classical liberal ideal
of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, early British advocates of minimal state
interference in the capitalist economy. Personified by Anglo-American politi-
cians like Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton, and Tony Blair,
neoliberalism reached its heyday during the 1980s and 1990s. Known as the
“Washington Consensus” and enforced by international economic institutions
like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, neoliberalism con-
fronted poor countries in the global south with harsh rules and conditions for
their economic development. Showing itself to be a remarkably versatile and
adaptable doctrine, neoliberalism ate its way into the heart of the Communist
world. It managed to charm not only post-Maoist Chinese leaders like Deng
Xiaoping but also appealed to the Soviet reformer Mikhail Gorbachev who
adopted some tenets under their deceptive slogans “socialism with Chinese
characteristics” and “perestroika.” Although few political leaders publicly
embraced the term “neoliberalism,” they all adopted “globalization” as an
14 Chapter 1
appealing label for their neoliberal policies of deregulating national econo-

mies, liberalizing international trade, privatizing state-owned enterprises,
downsizing government, and cutting income and corporate taxes. Aiming at
nothing less than overthrowing the dominant postwar paradigm of Keynesian
regulated capitalism, the neoliberal revolution proved to be an important cata-
lyst that helped make the economic and business branch of the family tree the
dominant meaning structure associated with “globalization.”
The closing decade of the twentieth century represented a pivotal period
marked by the discursive convergence of “globalization-as-markets” talk. Up
to this point, the use of the concept had occurred largely within the narrow
parameters of the two distinct academic and popular discursive environments.
But with the fall of Soviet-style communism and the rise of Anglo-American
neoliberal economics, “globalization” was leaping into the public limelight
quite suddenly and forcefully, traversing various social fields populated by
academics, journalists, editors, and librarians. For example, the prominent
global studies scholar Mark Juergensmeyer recalled, “A lot of talk about
‘globalization’ in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
So that would put my first encounter with the concept sometime around
1989 or 1990.” Such recognition of the convergence of academic and public
discourses on the subject also characterizes the memory of the globalization
expert Arjun Appadurai. He remembered encountering the concept, “In the
very late 1980s—most likely sometime between 1989 and 1991. I would say
it was after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The context? Most likely, I read about
‘globalization’ in the press, rather than encountering the term through an
academic route.” Similarly, anthropologist Jonathan Friedman recalled, “The
media were starting to use ‘globalization’ and business got into the act as
well. And I remember a lot of talk about the ‘end of the nation-state,’ which
Figure 1.2. Four Dimensions of Neoliberalism

was very much linked to this new buzzword ‘globalization.’”28 Increasingly

understood as an American-led process of “worldwide market integration”
following the triumph of deregulated capitalism over socialist planned econo-
mies, “globalization” became the cornerstone of the emerging ideological
constellation of “market globalism” examined in chapter 4.
The most influential early articulation of the neoliberal globalization-as-
market narrative appeared as early as 1983 in a Harvard Business Review
article penned by Theodore Levitt. The Harvard Business School dean
imbued the concept with neoliberal meanings that soon escaped their aca-
demic business school context and infiltrated the public discourse for good.
The description of what Levitt considered “indisputable empirical trends”
was inseparable from his neoliberal ideological prescriptions. For example,
he insisted that multinational companies had no choice but to transform them-
selves into global corporations capable of operating in a more cost-effective
way by standardizing their products across national markets. Most impor-
tantly, the necessary elimination of costly adjustments to various national
markets depended on their swift adoption of a “global approach.” What
Levitt had in mind was the willingness of CEOs to think and act “as if the
world were one large market—ignoring superficial regional and national dif-
ferences. . . . It [the global corporation] sells the same things in the same way
everywhere.”29
Levitt’s stated imperative of economic homogenization along the lines
of the Anglo-American neoliberal model inspired dozens of similar pieces
in high-circulation business magazines and journals. Its authors followed
Levitt’s lead in seeking to convince large companies to “go global.” The
advertising industry, in particular, set about creating what they called “global
brands” by means of worldwide marketing campaigns. Hence, it seems hardly
surprising that the founder of the advertising giant Saatchi and Saatchi was
one of Levitt’s most fervent disciples.
Levitt’s article also had a strong impact on the popular depiction of glo-
balization as an “inevitable” or “inexorable” economic process. Mediated by
new digital technologies, globally integrated markets were destined to deliver
standardized consumer products on a previously unimagined scale. Among
the chief popularizers of Levitt’s neoliberal interpretation of “globalization”
a decade later, New York Times syndicated columnist Thomas L. Friedman
stood out. The enormous impact of the journalist’s writings was magnified
by his personal relationships with political and economic elites on all five
continents. Friedman managed to speak to millions of readers in easily digest-
ible sound bites that brought some order to what was often perceived as the
threatening complexity and unevenness of the post–Cold War world.
Friedman presented his views on “globalization” in The Lexus and the
Olive Tree, an international 1999 best-seller lionized by scores of reviewers
16 Chapter 1
as the “official narrative of globalization.” He argued that the “real character”

of what US president George H. W. Bush referred to as the post-1989 “new
world order” boiled down to “the one big thing: globalization.” He defines
the concept as the “inexorable integration of markets, nation-states, and
technologies to a degree never witnessed before—in a way that is enabling
individuals, corporations and nations-states to reach around the world farther,
faster, deeper, and cheaper than ever before, and in a way that is enabling the
world to reach into individuals, corporations, and nation-states farther, faster,
deeper, and cheaper than ever before.30
Friedman’s frequent use of the adjective “inexorable” added conceptual
weight to his neoliberal interpretation of globalization by suggesting that the
liberalization and global integration of markets was an inevitable and perhaps
even irreversible process. Indeed, he advocated the restructuring of public
enterprises and the privatization of key industrial sectors, including energy,
transportation, utilities, and communication: “Globalization means the spread
of free-market capitalism to virtually every country in the world. Therefore,
globalization also has its own set of economic rules—rules that evolve around
opening, deregulating and privatizing your economy, in order to make it
more competitive and attractive to foreign investment.”31 Indeed, “market”
represents the core concept in Friedman’s economistic meaning formation of
“globalization.” He left no doubt as to what he had in mind: “But the relevant
market today is the planet Earth and the global integration of technology,
finance, trade, and information in a way that is influencing wages, interest
rates, living standards, culture, job opportunities, wars and weather patterns
all over the world.”32
For Friedman, such neoliberal globalization was not only destined to gen-
erate prosperity and build wealth around the world but also spread American
democratic principles that provide for greater political stability in the world.
The promotion of liberal democracy through globalization represented a cen-
tral theme in The Lexus and the Olive Tree. The author linked his explanation
for the transformation of the Cold War order to democratizing tendencies that
allegedly inhere in new technologies like the Internet and the demise of the
Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s. He spoke of “three democratiza-
tions”—technology, finance, and information—as powerful battering rams
breaking down the walls around which the citizens of the old nation-states
system communicate, invest, and learn about each other. Enabling the
“world to come together as a single, integrated, open plain,” these dynamics
were depicted as ultimately forcing all nations to integrate into a single global
system dominated by the United States.33
In short, Friedman saw trade liberalization and global integration of mar-
kets inextricably intertwined with the global diffusion of American values,
consumer goods, and lifestyles. Thus, The Lexus and the Olive Tree closed
fittingly with an unapologetic paean to America and its unique role in the
globalizing world: “And that’s why America, at its best, is not just a country.
It’s a spiritual value and role model. . . . And that’s why I believe so strongly
that for globalization to be sustainable America must be at its best—today,
tomorrow, all the time. It not only can be, it must be, a beacon for the whole
world.”34 Friedman suggested that, culturally speaking, “globalization” was
actually “Americanization,” that is, the global diffusion of American values,
consumer goods, and lifestyles. This American-centered perspective gained
steam throughout the 1990s and sparked the proliferation of neologisms such
as “McDonaldization” or “McWorldization.”35 Global power brokers eagerly
disseminated Levitt’s and Friedman’s neoliberal ideological perspective of
American-led “globalization” as a beneficial economic process driven by
the new digital technologies that was destined to lift millions out of poverty
while furthering the spread of democracy and freedom around the globe.
These elites anchored the term in a conceptual framework that provided the
ammunition for the expansion of their free-market oriented political programs
and agendas. As genealogical snapshots in this chapter demonstrate, these
neoliberal understandings of globalization proliferated in the academic field
of economics and business studies.
As advocated in this chapter, critical genealogical investigations of key-
words are indispensable for dispelling potent myths of the single-point ori-
gins of globalization that are not only historically inaccurate but also serve
as ideological tools designed to (re)produce hegemonic neoliberal meanings.
Let us consider a final snapshot. In 2006, the New York Times featured an
article headed, “Theodore Levitt, 81, who coined the term ‘globalization,’ is
dead.”36 The generous obituary that followed was organized around this sin-
gular, yet false, origin claim. As demonstrated in this chapter, several global-
ization concepts had been in use in the English language in various senses at
least as early as the 1920s and possibly even longer. Forced to admit to their
error a few days later, the New York Times ran a correction that still natural-
ized the economistic meaning of the concept:
An obituary and headline on Friday about Theodore Levitt, a marketing scholar

at the Harvard Business School, referred incorrectly to the origin of the word
“globalization.” While Mr. Levitt’s work was closely associated with the idea
of globalization in economics, and while he published a respected paper in
1983 popularizing the term, he did not coin the word. (It was in use at least as
early as 1944 in other senses and was used by others in discussing economics
at least as early as 1981.)37
Built on such an uncritical linear narrative of single origins, this New York
Times snapshot also reflects a reflexive reinforcement of personality cults.
18 Chapter 1
After all, naming the person who first conceived of a significant word or
thing has been a crucial feature in the evolution of modern Western pub-
lic consciousness. At least since the beginning of the European industrial
revolution more than two centuries ago, intellectual innovators and techno-
logical inventors have been singled out and showered with praise for their
Promethean efforts. Over the last century, in fact, this practice has become
ever more individualized—as if something as socially and technologically
complex as electricity or the computer could be the sudden and single-handed
invention of a single genius. Hence, it should not surprise us that this potent
individualizing drive to name the “originator” has also been busily in the
dominant narrative of the emergence of recent keywords such as “globaliza-
tion.” In fact, this practice has become such a widespread phenomenon that
the French sociologist Stéphane Dufoix aptly refers to it as “the religion of
the first occurrence.”38
Conversely, the critical genealogical mapping of “globalization” offered
in this chapter excavates the processes indicating how multiple meanings
initially emerged and how these diverse understandings developed or faded
away. Such efforts are predicated upon the renunciation of the religion of
the first occurrence. Metanarratives of a single fixed starting point tend to
reduce the real-world dynamism of untidy conceptual developments and
meaning-making practices to the singularity of frozen positions in space and
time. As we noted, Theodore Levitt played an important role in the 1980s by
acting as an influential codifier who imbued globalization with economistic
meanings centered on the neoliberal signifier “free market.” However, he
neither invented the term ex nihilo nor can its multiple origins be confined
to a single meaning cluster associated with the academic fields of economics
and business.
Dispelling this influential, yet spurious, New York Times story debunks the
efforts of neoliberal power to produce truth claims that serve clear political
purposes by naturalizing the origins of “globalization” in free market rela-
tions. Challenging such claims requires researchers to advance genealogical
inquiries in the mode of what Michel Foucault calls “critical analyses of our
own condition.” Accordingly, the French social thinker describes genealogy
as a “method of critique” bearing a strong affinity with histories of knowledge
that aim to uncover how the “truth” of a present idea or situation has become
established through a series of power moves enveloped in historical contin-
gencies and accidents.39 In this manner, this chapter tracked the twists and
turns in the multiple discourses on “globalization” to underscore how present
economistic understandings of “globalization” actually represent a tempo-
rary, and rather unstable, victory over a host of other possible meanings.
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS ON THE MEANING

OF “GLOBALIZATION” IN THIS BOOK
Matters of meaning formation look fairly uncomplicated in the public dis-

course, which has settled on a dominant understanding of “globalization” as
early as the 1990s. Although neoliberalism has lost some of its potency in the
course of the twenty-first century, its tight association with “globalization”
has stuck in the public mind. Thus, if we asked ordinary persons on the busy
streets of New York, Vienna, Kolkata, São Paulo, or Melbourne about the
meaning of globalization, they would most likely point to economic aspects
such as free trade, unfettered investment flows, and globally integrated mar-
kets mediated by cutting-edge digital technology.
The reduction of globalization to free-market economics might work in
the dominant public discourse, but the meaning structure looks quite differ-
ent in the academic world. As is the case for most core concepts in the social
sciences and humanities, there is not a single, widely accepted meaning of
“globalization.” In spite of the remarkable proliferation of research on the
subject over the last few decades, academic experts are still quarreling over
definitional matters. Moreover, they have remained divided on the utility of
various analytical frameworks, methodological approaches, the validity of
available empirical evidence, and, of course, on the hotly debated normative
question of whether globalization should be considered a good or bad thing.
Only rarely have globalization scholars managed to strike lasting intellec-
tual accords.
Heeding the voices of discerning critics who have rightfully pointed to
these ongoing problems of definitional and conceptual murkiness, let us con-
clude this genealogical chapter with a full disclosure of the meanings attached
to our keyword in this study. For starters, the grammatical breakdown of the
keyword yields two constitutive parts: “global” and “-ization.” The former is
a spatial term, which signifies “worldwide” or “involving and affecting the
whole world.” The word is rooted in the noun “globe,” which, in turn, derives
from the Latin globus referring to a rounded object such as our planet. The
tacking on of “-ization” is a common linguistic practice reflected in similar
terms such as “modernization,” “industrialization,” or “bureaucratization.” It
signifies a process or series of actions unfolding in discernible patterns across
time and space. Thus, “globalization” refers to the dynamic manifestation of
the global in detectable configurations and patterns.
We can expand these etymological insights into a definition of “global-
ization” as a multidimensional set of processes involving the extension and
intensification of social relations and consciousness across world-space and
in world-time. We can conceptualize these globalizing dynamics along three
20 Chapter 1
intersecting qualitative variables: interconnectivity, mobility, and imagina-

tion. But we can enhance the analytical precision of our definition by consid-
ering some important qualifications.
First, globalization is a geographically uneven and highly contingent con-
figuration. This means that globalization is an incomplete set of processes.
While humans have globalized a broad range of social relations, the world is
not yet “global” as such. The depth and breadth of globalization processes is
routinely overestimated in a world where nation-states still play a significant
role. As recent empirical research shows, there are definite limits to the mag-
nitude of globalization processes.40
Second, globalization needs to be grasped in its unfolding historicity as a
specific set of social practices rather than being fixed or essentialized. This
consideration is built into our definition through the proviso that globaliza-
tion needs to be understood in terms of the world-time in which it occurs.
Crucially, different forms of globalization both reflect and are constitutive of
different historical configurations of power.
Third, while it is useful to make analytical distinctions between spatial
scales running from the local to the global, the world of lived social rela-
tions is glocal. This means that the global is always dialectically enmeshed in
the local—and vice versa—and that globalization contains homogenization
tendencies that coexist and interact with local dynamics favoring “glocal”
expressions of cultural diversification and hybridization.41 In other words,
the globalization system constitutes itself not simply through the extension
of certain particular social arrangements to all parts of the world, but also
through the concomitant particularization and heterogenization of the global
through the imposition and diffusion of the local.
Fourth, subjective aspects of globalization such as ideas, ideologies, imagi-
naries, and ontologies are just as important as its objective, material dimen-
sions reflected in globalized institutional and technological relations such as
the transnational mobility of goods, capital, information, and people. At the
same time, however, subjective global relations are always constituted in con-
nection to objective social relations.
Importantly, globalization does not always translate into hypermobility. As
discussed in more detail in chapter 7, disjunctive movements among major
globalization formations can inhibit flows and disable existing links. These
formations are embodied globalization understood as the worldwide flows
and interconnectivities of people, including tourists, refugees, and business
travelers; disembodied globalization related to worldwide flows and inter-
connectivities of ideas and information, including images and digital data;
objectified globalization reflected in worldwide flows and interconnectivities
of things, including tradable commodities, greenhouse gases, and viruses;
and institutional globalization manifested as worldwide flows and intercon-

nectivities of organizations, including transnational corporations, economic
institutions, legal institutions, sports clubs, and so on.
These four formations of globalization provide the periodization frame-
work for our historical examination of globalization in the next chapter.
2
Four Ages of Globalization
Any careful assessment of globalization in the twenty-first century must

consider pertinent historical developments. Hence, this chapter assumes the
necessary task of offering a bird’s-eye view of the evolution of objective
globalization processes up to the 1990s. As our genealogical investigation
in the previous chapter has shown, globalization as a subjective process has
been associated with multiple meanings generated over many decades. By
the end of the Cold War, the term entered the consciousness of academics,
journalists, and business elites in the global north who welded its meaning
to processes of trade liberalization and the worldwide integration of markets.
However, globalization dynamics in the “real world” have occurred long
before they were named as such by recent actors. As global studies scholar
Manuel Castells notes, “Globalization is not new: under different forms, it
appears to have happened not only in the 19th century of the common era,
but thousands of years ago.”1
Indeed, Homo sapiens became a truly global species as early as 10,000 BCE
when small nomadic bands reached the bottom tip of South America. This
crowning achievement of human mobility brought to a successful completion
a series of terrestrial walkabouts commenced by early African hominins more
than 2 million years ago.2 Since then, globalization has unfolded unevenly
across major world regions. As we discuss in this chapter, its long trajectory
impacted multiple spheres of human activity, including economics, politics,
law, culture, religion, technology, military, and the environment. Specific
historical thresholds mark important transitions to new phases of global
interconnectedness, mobility, and imagination. In general, the powerful dia-
lectic of historical continuity and change has resulted in the intensification of
globalization. But it can also lead to unanticipated slowdowns, stagnations,
and reversals.
Instances of such major globalization disruptions abound. Some of them
have to do with planetary boundary parameters of human existence that shift
independently of social systems and institutions. Consider, for example, the
23
24 Chapter 2
Figure 2.1. The Global Journey of Homo Sapiens
74,000 BCE Lake Toba supervolcano eruption on Sumatra, which triggered

a global climate catastrophe that threatened the very survival of our species.
Others result from human activities like the twelfth-century BCE collapse of
Mediterranean Bronze Age cultures brought about by the onslaught of maraud-
ing “sea peoples.” Other prominent examples include the fall of the western
Roman Empire in the fifth century CE that ushered in the so-called dark ages
in Europe; the fourteenth-century bubonic plague known as the Black Death,
which killed 75 million people, including 30 to 60 percent of Europe’s total
population; and the bleak decades from 1914 to 1945 ravaged by global wars,
genocides, and economic shocks. Most recently, of course, humanity was hit
by a devastating global pandemic. COVID-19 killed millions and brought the
fast-paced world of the twenty-first century to a screeching halt. Seen from
the bird’s-eye view of global history, however, worldwide interconnectivity
and mobility has advanced in spite of such periodic disruptions. Still, the
volatile and unpredictable historical trajectory of globalization shatters old
and engrained Enlightenment beliefs in the inevitability and irreversibility of
human progress toward the establishment of a benign world order.
PERIODIZING GLOBALIZATION: PERILOUS PITFALLS
Both the longevity and complexity of evolving global networks beg the cen-
tral question that frames this chapter: how should contemporary researchers
chart the historical development of globalization? After all, it is only through
the mapping of its shifting forms that we can identify significant patterns
Four Ages of Globalization 25
that provide the necessary basis for an informed assessment of its dynamics
and overall configuration in the twenty-first century.3 Conventional wisdom
in the historical and social sciences suggests breaking up the long and com-
plex story of globalization into more digestible chapters that correspond to
distinct “ages” or “epochs.” Designing such structured periodization schemes
has been central to organizing time and events in more transparent ways that
provide people with a better historical understanding of the big picture.
Still, any attempt to demarcate distinct ages of globalization faces formida-
ble perils and challenges. One is the pitfall of “presentism.” This term refers
to the problematic tendency of focusing too narrowly on fashionable issues
of the day and treating them as central to everything at all times. By locking
people’s attention into a “global now,” presentism accentuates current events
at the expense of past developments. As sociologist Jan Nederveen Pieterse
observes, “Because of its presentist leanings, much research treats globaliza-
tion unreflexively, may overlook structural patterns, present as novel what are
older features, and misread contemporary trends.”4
Presentism often appears in its related form of “epochalism.” This concept
applies to the intellectual fallacy of believing that the present time repre-
sents an unprecedented new era whose patterns are vastly different from
prior epochs. Western modernity has thrived on such claims of novelty by
pointing to spectacular human advances in the last two centuries mostly
related to technology and economics.5 Obviously, it makes sense to argue
that innovations like digital technology, global supply chains, or standardized
and electronically guided shipping containers have greatly enhanced webs
of interconnectivity and clusters of integration across national borders. But
the same could be said about many earlier achievements such as the inven-
tion of the alphabet, the wheel, the plow, metallurgy, horsepower, irrigation
canals, oceangoing ships, long-distance trading routes, bills of exchange,
double-entry bookkeeping, the compass, the number zero, the printing press,
paper, gun powder, firearms, fossil fuels, the steam engine, the locomotive,
the telegraph and telephones, automobiles, airplanes, radio, television, com-
puters, spacecraft, and so on.
Moreover, the dual stranglehold of presentism and epochalism feeds into
the still dominant Eurocentric narrative according to which globalization did
not start until the “rise of the West” and the Industrial Revolution, conven-
tionally dated between 1500 and 1800. Examples of such short-term perspec-
tives can be found in the claims of influential globalization popularizers
like Thomas Friedman, who we encountered in the previous chapter. These
writers argue that globalization ultimately boils down to the creation of an
American-led world order anchored in the neoliberal market model. Some
international relations experts like Michael Mandelbaum go even further by
asserting that the “ideas that conquered the world”—“peace, democracy, and
26 Chapter 2
free markets”—were “invented” in Great Britain and France in the seven-

teenth and eighteenth centuries.6 Even more discerning global studies pio-
neers like Roland Robertson, who developed an innovative historical outline
of globalization, largely remained a prisoner of linear stage models and mod-
ernization theories that overemphasize the role of Europe and North America
as both the sources and drivers of world-historical dynamics and events.7
To call such accounts “world history” is a misnomer because they ignore,
downplay, or marginalize pertinent nonwestern contributions. And they
are based on the demonstratively false assumption that superior concepts,
practices, technologies, and capacities were simply diffused from the west
to the rest of the world. Moreover, the semantic prominence of terms like
“Judeo-Christian values,” “European civilization,” and “development” in
such historical narratives has long served to rationalize, excuse, or assist impe-
rialist and colonialist practices. Such perspectives reveal their deep embed-
dedness in what historian James Blaut refers to as “the colonizer’s model of
the world.”8 Hence, periodization schemes of globalization anchored in such
limited frameworks do not match the real-world history of multicentered and
multidirectional flows of bodies, things, institutions, and ideas.
PERIODIZING GLOBALIZATION: ALTERNATIVE

MODELS
How, then, can we periodize the long history of globalization in more careful
ways that avoid the pitfalls of presentism, epochalism, and western centrism?
Big strides in this direction have already been made by social scientists such
as Robbie Robertson, Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Barry Gills, and Jeffrey Sachs,
as well as historians like A. G. Hopkins, Kenneth Pomeranz, David Northrop,
Philip Curtain, Jerry Bentley, Nayan Chanda, Dominic Sachsenmaier, Akira
Iriye, Pamela Kyle Crossley, and others.9 Reacting against the Eurocentric
bias inherent in conventional world history, their critical perspectives have
served as important catalysts for the birth of what has become known as
“global history.”
This new academic field embraces a multicentric and multidirectional
model of globalization.10 It has inspired my own efforts to develop the alter-
native periodization outline presented in this chapter, which incorporates
insights offered by global historians. Still, my model makes its own inno-
vative contribution by delineating historical periods that are linked to the
four major globalization formations introduced in chapter 1. Let us recall
that embodied globalization refers to interrelations and mobilities of bodies
across the world. Objectified globalization signifies global interconnections
and mobilities of objects. Institutional globalization corresponds to global
interactions and mobilities mediated through organizations such as empires,

states, and corporations. Disembodied globalization pertains to worldwide
interrelations and mobilities of ideas, symbols, data, and other types of
information.
Like our planet’s massive geological tectonic plates, these globaliza-
tion formations tend to move at different speeds and levels of intensity.
Hyperactive configurations have greater influence in shaping certain histori-
cal periods. For example, the earliest age of globalization involved primarily
the motion of human bodies, whereas the contemporary era is dominated
by digital information flows. Thus, hegemonic globalization formations
give specific form and color to the overall spirit of a given era. Others tend
to play lesser roles only to return to prominence in future epochs. But the
dominance of certain formations at particular times should not detract from
the significance of multiple intersections and overlaps. Indeed, the mapping
of these interplays among these globalization formations is fundamental to
expanding our understanding of their long history and their impacts on pres-
ent social patterns.11 At the same time, however, it is important to recognize
that all attempts to develop new periodization frameworks of globalization
are marred by unavoidable acts of generalization and selectivity. Naturally,
such shortcomings are magnified in brief accounts such as my own periodiza-
tion outline below. Still, I hope that my framework offers a basic mapping of
relevant historical dynamics that allows for a better assessment of globaliza-
tion processes in the twenty-first century.
My historical scheme starts with the age of embodied globalization
when nomadic foragers diverged from a single African origin to settle the
entire planet. The notion of “divergence” has played a prominent role in the
accounts of many global historians. David Northrop, for example, introduced
a minimalist periodization scheme, which divides the entirety of global his-
tory into just two mega-periods. The first, before 1000 CE, is characterized
by forces of divergence that dispersed most human life and allowed for only
minimal inter-group relations. The second, after 1000 CE, contains multiple
convergences because of increasing contacts and communications. My model
acknowledges the significance of this dual dynamic of divergence and con-
vergence but goes beyond the austerity of Northrup’s two-age framework.
The second period in my historical periodization scheme is the age of insti-
tutional globalization. It covers a long stretch of time in which various poli-
ties, states, empires, and other social institutions and organizations emerged,
proliferated, and expanded across greater distances. These scale-enlarging
institutional dynamics were aided by the intensification of the division of
labor, social integration, standardization, and legal codification.
The third period, the age of objectified globalization, saw the birth and
rapid evolution of capitalism and colonialism, which facilitated the rise of
28 Chapter 2
the world economy at the onset of the Industrial Revolution. A novel political
institution—the nation-state—and its associated cultural expressions gradu-
ally came to dominate the world. This epoch witnessed vastly enhanced flows
of tradable commodities distributed by accelerated means of transportation
to every corner of the Earth. Moreover, large numbers of European migrants
and enslaved Africans streamed into “new worlds” pried open by colonial
violence and subjected to extractive practices of western imperialist powers.12
The fourth age of disembodied globalization emerged from the eco-
nomic chaos and political shocks of the first half of the twentieth century.
Benefiting from the new postwar international order and innovative wartime
technologies, disembodied globalization accelerated rapidly and culminated
in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Revolution of the
late twentieth century that intensified even further in the new millennium.
Yet, neoliberal capitalism turbocharged by digital technology turned out to
be a mixed blessing. The flood of cheap consumer goods produced in the
low-labor cost regions of the global south and the expansion of embodied
mobility in the form of migration and travel were offset by rising levels of
inequality, financial volatility, and job insecurity. Thus, this chapter ends
with a critical reflection on the nature of global social change in the early
twenty-first century, which has led to a condition Paul James and I call the
Great Unsettling.13 Our use of the term “unsettling” has been inspired by
David Harvey and Fredric Jameson, two prominent social theorists whose
work explores the intersection of western modernity, capitalism, culture, and
globalization.14
THE AGE OF THE EMBODIED

GLOBALIZATION (10,000 BCE–3000 BCE)
The earliest phase of globalization is exemplified by the dispersion of

our species from a single origin in the east African savannahs to all major
world regions. Blessed with extraordinary communication capacities that had
reached current levels at around 40,000 BCE, Paleolithic hunter-gatherers
succeeded in colonizing the entire planet. For some time, they coexisted
with our closest relatives, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, who died out
not long after foraging groups of Homo sapiens made their appearance in
Eurasia. “Divergence” is a particularly fitting term to characterize the move-
ment of the 5 to 10 million humans who traversed the planetary landscape
in search for food and shelter. Hence, global historians like Peter Stearns
rightly emphasize the “decisive quality of dispersion and differentiation of
the world’s human population on the eve of agriculture.”15
The human colonization of world space involved primarily physical forms

of mobility. Hence, embodied movement represented the dominant globaliza-
tion formation during this long period. Our nomadic ancestors carried with
them only limited supplies of tools and weapons alongside scores of parasitic
micro-organisms. Except for domesticated dogs, there were no pack animals
that helped ease their burdens or speed up their journey into the unknown.
Thus, the movement of things, institutions, and ideas remained at a very
basic level.
Social interrelations among these traveling bands were severely restricted
and often occurred just by chance. Forms of technology capable of establish-
ing and maintaining durable intertribal connections across long distances
were virtually nonexistent. Aside from hunting and foraging, nomadic tribes
spent most of their time in seasonally shifting campsites organized around a
central campfire.16 Each clan comprised fifty to eighty members and required
a territory of up to 200 square miles to sustain itself. Some scholars have
speculated that occasional intergroup encounters elicited at times innate
forms of warlike aggression. But such belligerent human behavior directed
primarily against out-groups seems to have been balanced by high levels of
in-group cooperation and egalitarian forms of solidarity.
Over time, nomadic bands expanded thanks to more efficient food-sharing
habits and evolving hunting technologies such as bows and arrows, fish-
hooks, nets, and sophisticated traps. Modest population increases put extra
pressure on limited resources and eventually forced some members to split
off and search for new territories. Out-migrations usually involved only short
distances but could accumulate to thousands of miles over longer periods
of time. Local environmental degradation because of human overuse also
compelled tribal collectivities to move on. There is ample historical evidence
that hunter-gatherers arriving in virgin regions were responsible for the disap-
pearance of many large land animals such as mammoths, mastodons, ground
sloths, various kinds of horses, flightless birds, and sabertoothed cats. Most
scholars agree that these human-induced megafauna extinctions occurred on
all continents and were mainly due to the overextension of hunting practices
for short-term gains. Such wasteful techniques included, for example, setting
bushlands on fire to drive escaping animal herds over steep cliffs.17
The age of embodied globalization was devoid of permanent settlements.
Citing low levels of interconnectedness and integration, some scholars argue
that this early period of human planetary colonization should not count as
part of globalization.18 However, the rationales offered in such arguments
are faulty in at least two respects. First, they assume that for globalization
to occur, interconnectivities must be fully global. This assumption presup-
poses a condition of globality, rather than focusing the process of globaliza-
tion through which globality comes about. As Jan Nederveen Pieterse notes,
30 Chapter 2
globalization must not be a global condition in the literal sense because it sig-
nifies a processual unfolding toward this condition.19 This analytic confusion
between globalization as a process and globality as a condition is a common
mistake made by many scholars.
Second, the claim globalization is not a long-term process exposed an
underlying Eurocentric framework, which links the onset of globalization
exclusively to western modes of modernity such as the abstract distancing
of space and time, the development of critical reflexivity, and the rise of
a globally networked civil society.20 As noted in our previous definition of
globalization, however, interconnectivity represents only one of its principal
qualities. The other, transworld mobility, was on full display even in the ini-
tial age of embodied globalization and irrespective of the slow rate of speed
at which human bodies moved across world space.
Starting at around 8000 BCE, the dominant nomadic paradigm was chal-
lenged by the Neolithic Revolution. Over the next four millennia, agricultural
practices spread from west Asia to north Africa, central Asia, and India.
Northern European regions were historical latecomers while the transition
to agriculture in the Americas occurred independently as early as eleven
thousand years ago. Many factors such as swelling population sizes and the
ensuing thickening of social interrelations facilitated the transformation of
foraging hunters into sedentary farmers. Another crucial influence over which
humans had no control was the warming of the planet that followed the end
of the Ice Age, which was the result of changing orbital and tilt relationships
between the Earth and the Sun. As the global historian Dipesh Chakrabarty
emphasizes, without this extraordinary fluke of nature in the history of our
planet, the agricultural and industrial life of our species would not have been
possible.21
The annual yield of early agricultural crops such as wheat, barley, peas,
lentils, and chickpeas was boosted by alluvial modes of farming pioneered
in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and the Yellow and Yangtze river
regions where the rich soils of the river basin was replenished by seasonal
flooding. The domestication of sheep, goats, pigs, cattle, and poultry allowed
for the dietary addition of nutritious milk, cheese, eggs, and pork. Geographic
regions located on or near the vast Eurasian landmass were especially blessed
with the natural occurrence of plants and animals suitable for domestication.
Hence, global historians emphasize the distinctive role of these temperate
east-west zones as catalysts for the intensification and acceleration of glo-
balization processes. These so-called lucky latitudes constituted 28 percent
of the Eurasian land mass but became home to more than 60 percent of the
total human population. Within these auspicious regions, crucial techno-
logical innovations such as Arabic oceangoing ships equipped with lateen
(triangular) sails and the metallurgic breakthroughs of copper, bronze, and
iron were made and diffused in multiple directions along enduring transport
routes. These technological and infrastructure advances outstripped pertinent
developments in the Americas, Oceania, and sub-Saharan Africa and gave
Eurasians and north Africans a global competitive edge that they never lost.22
The steady expansion of agricultural food supply sustained growing
populations, which, in turn, facilitated the multiplication and enlargement of
social connectivity. On the surface, it seemed that agricultural interdepen-
dence came at the expense of embodied nomadic mobility. After all, the new
sedentary modes of existence required the establishment of fortified villages
and permanent settlements housing several hundred residents. Looking more
closely, however, scholars found that farming sparked social and technologi-
cal practices that were exported on land and extended waterways across sig-
nificant geographic distances.
Starting around 4000 BCE, the domestication of beasts of burden like
donkeys, camels, and oxen also contributed to increasing flows of people,
ideas, objects, and institutions. The most consequential case of animal
domestication involved the taming of the Eurasian wild horse at around
3500 BCE. This feat was accomplished by farmer-herders pushing north from
Mesopotamia into the steppes near the Black Sea and the northern Caucasus.
As Jeffrey Sachs points out, “Only the horse offered the speed, durability,
power, and intelligence to enable deep breakthroughs in every sector of the
economy: farming, animal husbandry, mining, manufacturing, transport,
communications, warfare, and governance.”23 In contrast, native American
nomads hunted their immense wild horse herds to extinction, which meant
these regions fell behind Eurasia and North Africa, whose inhabitants made
this unique animal an indispensable part of their daily lives. Finally, the culti-
vation of this crucial human-horse relation might have sparked the invention
of the wheel at around 3000 BCE in Southwest Asia. The combination of
domesticated horses and wheeled carriages of all sorts—including lumber-
ing carts carrying humans and trade objects and speedy chariots made for
organized warfare—provided a significant jolt to the expanding networks of
social interrelations, mobility, and imagination.
THE AGE OF INSTITUTIONAL

GLOBALIZATION (3000 BCE–1600 CE)
It took several millennia for the widely dispersed agricultural communities

within favorable geographic regions around the world to develop multiple
and enduring interconnections necessary for the formation of populous states.
Decentralized and egalitarian hunter-gatherer bands slowly gave way to
centralized, highly stratified, and patriarchal “temple-palace conglomerates”
32 Chapter 2
headed by nobles and priests.24 These ruling groups exempted themselves

from hard manual labor while claiming the lion’s share of taxes and tributes
collected from domestic subordinate groups and conquered peoples outside
their territory. Agriculture-based polities spearheaded the division of labor,
which created two additional social classes that did not fully participate in
food production. One class consisted of permanent craft specialists who
directed their creative energies toward the production of tradeable goods and
innovative technologies. The other group comprised experts who safeguarded
the power of the ruling classes. Agricultural bureaucrats oversaw the precise
accounting of food surpluses necessary for the growth of the centralized state.
Military specialists were given responsibility for the raising and training of
professional armies. Commercial administrators oversaw the establishment
and maintenance of long-distance trade routes while leaving the physical
exploration of promising regions to entrepreneurial merchants and itinerant
state agents. The crucial role of state bureaucrats and professional soldiers
highlights the significance of institution-building and war-making for the
creation and expansion of global networks. Unfortunately, these pivotal inte-
grating dynamics are often neglected in the pertinent literature.25
The increasingly complex organization and stratification of expanding
human societies owed much to the rise of a disembodied force linked to
the remarkable language capacity of Homo sapiens: the written word. The
momentous invention of writing occurred between 3500 BCE and 2500 BCE
in multiple geographical locations including Mesopotamia, Egypt, and cen-
tral China. Around 1750 BCE, the first extensive written codification of law
was accomplished by court bureaucrats of the Babylonian king. In the fol-
lowing centuries and millennia, the Codex Hammurabi served a model for
numerous legal frameworks in different societies. But it was only with the
perfection of the vowel-containing Greek alphabet in 800 BCE and the clas-
sical Chinese script in 500 BCE that written information about all sorts of
things could be disseminated more easily and quickly across long distances.
This interplay between the institutional expansion of imperial states and their
enhanced communicative capacities, contributed, in turn, to swelling flows of
tradable goods and people.
The communication revolution wrought by writing also enabled budding
intellectuals in Eurasia and North Africa to provide posterity with enduring
historical accounts centered on imperial expansion and competition. Their
critical examination of cosmologies, stories, mythologies, and traditions
linked to various cultural contexts was rooted in their universalizing incli-
nations and their recognition of large cultural clusters as “civilizations.”
However, as Robbie Robertson reminds us, what made civilizations such
as classical Greece, Persia, or China integrated social wholes endowed with
enduring meaning and significance was not their imagined distinction from
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Again the impetuous wild thing, she seized one of the bags of nuts
before I had had time to stop her, and went darting off before me
along the forest track, while I was left to follow slowly in a sober
mood.
Chapter VIII
THE BIRDS FLY SOUTH
It was early in October when the mystery of the Ibandru began to
take pronounced form.
Then it was that I became aware of an undercurrent of excitement in
the village, a suppressed agitation which I could not explain, which
none would explain to me, and which I recorded as much by
subconscious perception as by direct observation. Yet there was
sufficient visible evidence. The youth of the village had apparently
lost interest in the noisy pastimes that had made the summer
evenings gay; old and young alike seemed to have grown restless
and uneasy; while occasionally I saw some man or woman scurrying
about madly for no apparent reason. And meantime all bore the
aspect of waiting, of waiting for some imminent and inevitable event
of surpassing importance. Interest in Yulada was at fever pitch; a
dozen times a day some one would point toward the stone woman
with significant gestures; and a dozen times a day I observed some
native prostrating himself in an attitude of prayer, with face always
directed toward the figure on the peak while he mumbled
incoherently to himself.
But the strangest demonstration of all occurred late one afternoon,
when a brisk wind had blown a slaty roof across the heavens, and
from far to the northeast, across the high jutting ridges of rock, a
score of swift-flying black dots became suddenly visible. In an
orderly, triangular formation they approached, gliding on an
unwavering course with the speed of an express train; and in an
incredibly brief time they had passed above us and out of sight
beyond Yulada and the southern peak. After a few minutes they
were followed by another band of migrants, and then by another, and
another still, until evening had blotted the succeeding squadrons
from view and their cries rang and echoed uncannily in the dark.
To me the surprising fact was not the flight of the feathered things;
the surprising fact was the reaction of the Ibandru. It was as if they
had never seen birds on the wing before; or as if the birds were the
most solemn of omens. On the appearance of the first flying flock,
one of the Ibandru, who chanced to observe the birds before the
others, went running about the village with cries of excitement; and
at his shouts the women and children crowded out of the cabins, and
all the men within hearing distance came dashing in from the fields.
And all stood with mouths open, gaping toward the skies as the
successive winged companies sped by; and from that time forth, until
twilight had hidden the last soaring stranger, no one seemed to have
any purpose in life except to stare at the heavens, calling out
tumultuously whenever a new band appeared.
That evening the people held a great celebration. An enormous
bonfire was lighted in an open space between the houses; and
around it gathered all the men and women of the village, lingering
until late at night by a flickering eerie illumination that made the
scene appear like a pageant staged on another planet. In the
beginning I did not know whether the public meeting had any
connection with the flight of the birds; but it was not long before this
question was answered.
In their agitation, the people had evidently overlooked me entirely.
For once, they had forgotten politeness; indeed, they scarcely
noticed me when I queried them about their behavior. And it was as
an uninvited stranger, scarcely remembered or observed, that I crept
up in the shadows behind the fire, and lay amid the grass to watch.
In the positions nearest the flames, their faces brilliant in the glow,
were two men whom I immediately recognized. One, sitting cross-
legged on the ground, his features rigid with the dignity of leadership,
was Abthar, the father of Yasma; the other, who stood speaking in
sonorous tones, was Hamul-Kammesh, the soothsayer. Because I
sat at some distance from him and was far from an adept at Pushtu,
I missed the greater part of what he said; but I did not fail to note the
tenseness with which the people followed him; and I did manage to
catch an occasional phrase which, while fragmentary, impressed me
as more than curious.
"Friends," he was saying, "we have reached the season of the great
flight.... The auguries are propitious ... we may take advantage of
them whenever the desire is upon us.... Yulada will help us, and
Yulada commands...." At this point there was much that I could not
gather, since Hamul-Kammesh spoke in lower tones, with his head
bowed as though in prayer.... "The time of yellow leaves and of cold
winds is upon us. Soon the rain will come down in showers from the
gray skies; soon the frost will snap and bite; soon all the land will be
desolate and deserted. Prepare yourselves, my people, prepare!—
for now the trees make ready for winter, now the herbs wither and
the earth grows no longer green, now the bees and butterflies and
fair flowers must depart until the spring—and now the birds fly south,
the birds fly south, the birds fly south!"
The last words were intoned fervently and with emphatic slowness,
like a chant or a poem; and it seemed to me that an answering
emotion swept through the audience. But on and on Hamul-
Kammesh went, on and on, speaking almost lyrically, and sometimes
driving up to an intense pitch of feeling. More often than not I could
not understand him, but I divined that his theme was still the same;
he still discoursed upon the advent of autumn, and the imminent and
still more portentous advent of winter....
After Hamul-Kammesh had finished, his audience threw themselves
chests downward on the ground, and remained thus for some
minutes, mumbling unintelligibly to themselves. I observed that they
all faced in one direction, the south; and I felt that this could not be
attributed merely to chance.
Then, as though at a prearranged signal, all the people
simultaneously arose, reminding me of a church-meeting breaking
up after the final prayer. Yet no one made any motion to leave; and I
had an impression that we were nearer the beginning than the end of
the ceremonies. This impression was confirmed when Hamul-
Kammesh began to wave his arms before him with a bird-like
rhythm, and when, like an orchestra in obedience to the band-
master, the audience burst into song.
I cannot say that the result pleased me, for there was in it a weird
and barbarous note; yet at the same time there was a certain wild
melody ... so that, as I listened, I came more and more under the
influence of the singing. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice
not of individuals but of a people, a people pouring forth its age-old
joys and sorrows, longings and aspirations. But how express in
words the far-away primitive quality of that singing?—It had
something of the madness and abandon of the savage exulting,
something of the loneliness and long-drawn melancholy of the wolf
howling from the midnight hilltop, something of the plaintive and
querulous tone of wild birds calling and calling on their way
southward.
After the song had culminated in one deep-voiced crescendo, it was
succeeded by a dance of equal gusto and strangeness. Singly and in
couples and in groups of three and four, the people leapt and
swayed in the wavering light; they flung their legs waist-high, they
coiled their arms snake-like about their bodies, they whirled around
like tops; they darted forward and darted back again, sped gracefully
in long curves and spirals, tripped from side to side, or reared and
vaulted like athletes; and all the while they seemed to preserve a
certain fantastic pattern, seemed to move to the beat of some
inaudible rhythm, seemed to be actors in a pageant whose nature I
could only vaguely surmise. As they flitted shadow-like in the
shadowy background or glided with radiant faces into the light and
then back into the gloom, they seemed not so much like sportive and
pirouetting humans as like dancing gods; and the sense came over
me that I was beholding not a mere ceremony of men and women,
but rather a festival of wraiths, of phantoms, of cloudy, elfin creatures
who might flash away into the mist or the firelight.
Nor did I lose this odd impression when at intervals the dance
relaxed and the dancers lay on the ground recovering from their
exertions, while one of them would stand in the blazing light chanting
some native song or ballad. If anything, it was during these
intermissions that I was most acutely aware of something uncanny. It
may, of course, have been only my imagination, for the recitations
were all of a weird nature; one poem would tell of men and maidens
that vanished in the mists about Yulada and were seen no more;
another would describe a country to which the south wind blew, and
where it was always April, while many would picture the wanderings
of migrant birds, or speak of bodiless spirits that floated along the air
like smoke, screaming from the winter gales but gently murmuring in
the breezes of spring and summer.
For some reason that I cannot explain, these legends and folk-tales
not only filled my mind with eerie fancies but made me think of one
who was quite human and real. I began to wonder about Yasma—
where was she now? What part was she taking in the celebration?
And as my thoughts turned to her, an irrational fear crept into my
mind—what if, like the maidens described in the poems, she had
taken wing? Smiling at my own imaginings, I arose quietly from my
couch of grass, and slowly and cautiously began to move about the
edge of the crowd, while scanning the nearer forms and faces. In the
pale light I could scarcely be distinguished from a native; and, being
careful to keep to the shadows, I was apparently not noticed. And I
had almost circled the clearing before I had any reason to pause.
All this time I had seen no sign of Yasma. I had almost given up
hope of finding her when my attention was attracted to a solitary little
figure hunched against a cabin wall in the dimness at the edge of the
clearing. Even in the near-dark I could not fail to recognize her; and,
heedless of the dancers surging and eddying through the open
spaces, I made toward her in a straight line.
I will admit that I had some idea of the unwisdom of speaking to her
tonight; but my impatience had gotten the better of my tongue.
"I am glad to see you here," I began, without the formality of a
greeting. "You are not taking part in the dance, Yasma."
Yasma gave a start, and looked at me like one just awakened from
deep sleep. At first her eyes showed no recognition; then it struck
me there was just a spark of anger and even of hostility in her gaze.
"No, I am not taking part in the dance," she responded, listlessly. And
then, after an interval, while I stood above her in embarrassed
silence, "But why come to me now?... Why disturb me tonight of all
nights?"
"I do not want to disturb you, Yasma," I apologized. "I just happened
to see you here, and thought—"
My sentence was never finished. Suddenly I became aware that
there was only vacancy where Yasma had been. And dimly I was
conscious of a shadow-form slipping from me into the multitude of
shadows.
In vain I attempted to follow her. She had vanished as completely as
though she had been one of the ghostly women of the poems. No
more that evening did I see her small graceful shape; but all the rest
of the night, until the bonfire had smoldered to red embers and the
crowd had dispersed, I wandered about disconsolately, myself like a
ghost as I furtively surveyed the dancing figures. A deep, sinking
uneasiness obsessed me; and my dejection darkened into despair
as it became plainer that my quest was unavailing, and that Yasma
had really turned against me.
Chapter IX
IN THE REDDENING WOODS
During the weeks before the firelight celebration, I had gradually
made friends with the various natives. This was not difficult, for the
people were as curious regarding me as I would have been
regarding a Martian. At the same time, they were kindly disposed,
and would never hesitate to do me any little favor, such as to help
me in laying up my winter's supplies, or to advise me how to make a
coat of goat's hide, or to tell me where the rarest herbs and berries
were to be found, or to bring me liberal portions of any choice viand
they chanced to be preparing.
I was particularly interested in Yasma's brothers and sisters, all of
whom I met in quick succession. They were all older than she, and
all had something of her naïvety and vivaciousness without her own
peculiar charm. Her three sisters had found husbands among the
men of the tribe, and two were already the mothers of vigorous
toddling little sons and daughters; while her brothers, Karem and
Barkodu, were tall, proud, and dignified of demeanor like their father.
With Karem, the elder, I struck up a friendship that was to prove my
closest masculine attachment in Sobul. I well remember our first
meeting; it was just after my convalescence from my long illness.
One morning, in defiance of Yasma's warning, I had slipped off by
myself into the woods, intending to go but a few hundred yards. But
the joyous green of the foliage, the chirruping birds and the warm
crystalline air had misled me; and, happy merely to be alive and free,
I wandered on and on, scarcely noticing how I was overtaxing my
strength. Then suddenly I became aware of an overwhelming
faintness; all things swam around me; and I sank down upon a
boulder, near to losing consciousness.... After a moment, I attempted
to rise; but the effort was too much; I have a recollection of
staggering like a drunken man, or reeling, of pitching toward the
rocks....
Happily, I did not complete my fall. Saving me from the shattering
stones, two strong arms clutched me about the shoulders, and
wrenched me back to a standing posture.
In a daze, I looked up ... aware of the red and blue costume of a
tribesman of Sobul ... aware of the two large black eyes that peered
down at me half in amusement, half in sympathy. Those eyes were
but the most striking features of a striking countenance; I
remembered having already seen that high, rounded forehead, that
long, slender, swarthy face with the aquiline nose, that untrimmed
luxuriant full black beard.
"Come, come, I do not like your way of walking," the man declared,
with a smile. And seeing that I was still too weak to reply, he
continued, cheerfully, with a gesture toward a thicket to our rear, "If I
had not been there gathering berries, this day might have ended
sadly for you. Shall I not take you home?"
Leaning heavily upon him while with the gentlest care he led me
along the trail, I found my way slowly back to the village.
And thus I made the acquaintance of Karem, brother of Yasma. At
the time I did not know of the relationship; but between Karem and
myself a friendship quickly developed. Even as he wound with me
along the woodland track to the village, I felt strangely drawn toward
this genial, self-possessed man; and possibly he felt a reciprocal
attraction, for he came often thereafter to inquire how I was doing;
and occasionally we had long talks, as intimate as my foreign birth
and my knowledge of Pushtu would permit. I found him not at all
unintelligent, and the possessor of knowledge that his sophisticated
brothers might have envied. He told me more than I had ever known
before about the habits of wood creatures, of wolves and squirrels,
jackals, snakes and bears; he could describe where each species of
birds had their nests, and the size and color of the eggs; he
instructed me in the lore of bees, ants and beetles, and in the ways
of the fishes in the swift-flowing streams. Later, when I had
recovered my strength, he would accompany me on day-long climbs
among the mountains, showing me the best trails and the easiest
ascents—and so supplying me with knowledge that was to prove
most valuable in time to come.
It was to Karem that I turned for an answer to the riddles of Sobul
after Yasma had failed me. But in this respect he was not very
helpful. He would smile indulgently whenever I hinted that I
suspected a mystery; and would make some jovial reply, as if
seeking to brush the matter aside with a gesture. This was especially
the case on the day after the firelight festivities, when we went on a
fishing expedition to a little lake on the further side of the valley.
Although in a rare good humor, he was cleverly evasive when I
asked anything of importance. What had been the purpose of the
celebration? It was simply an annual ceremony held by his people,
the ceremony of the autumn season. Why had Hamul-Kammesh
attached so much significance to the flight of the birds? That was
mere poetic symbolism; the birds had been taken as typical of the
time of year. Then what reason for the excitement of the people?—
and what had Yulada to do with the affair? Of course, Yulada had
nothing to do with it at all; but the people thought she had ordered
the ceremonies, and they had been swayed by a religious mania,
which Hamul-Kammesh, after the manner of soothsayers, had
encouraged for the sake of his own influence.
Such were Karem's common-sense explanations. On the surface
they were convincing; and yet, somehow, I was not convinced. For
the moment I would be persuaded; but thinking over the facts at my
leisure, I would feel sure that Karem had left much unstated.
My dissatisfaction with his replies was most acute when I touched
upon the matter closest to my heart. I described Yasma's conduct
during the celebration; confided how surprised I had been, and how
pained; and confessed my fear that I had committed the
unpardonable sin by intruding during an important rite.
To all that I said Karem listened with an attentive smile.
"Why, Prescott," he returned (I had taught him to call me by my last
name), "you surprise me! Come, come, do not be so serious! Who
can account for a woman's whims? Certainly, not I! When you are
married like me, and have little tots running about your house ready
to crawl up your knee whenever you come in, you'll know better than
to try to explain what the gods never intended to be explained by any
man!" And Karem burst into laughter, and slapped me on the back
good-naturedly, as though thus to dispose of the matter.
However, I was not to be sidetracked so easily. I did not join in
Karem's laughter; I even felt a little angry. "But this wasn't just an
ordinary whim," I argued. "There was something deeper in it. There
was some reason I don't understand, and can't get at no matter how
I try."
"Then why not save trouble, and quit trying?" suggested Karem, still
good-natured despite my sullenness. "Come, it's a splendid day; let's
enjoy it while we can!"
And he pointed ahead to a thin patch of blue, vaguely visible through
a break in the trees. "See, there's the lake already! I expect fishing
will be good today!"
If I had required further proof that my wits had surrendered to

Yasma's charms, I might have found evidence enough during the
days that followed the tribal celebration. Though smarting from her
avoidance of me, I desired nothing more fervently than to be with her
again; and I passed half my waking hours in vainly searching for her.
Day after day I would inquire for her at her father's cabin, would
haunt the paths to the dwelling, would search the fields and
vineyards in the hope of surprising her. Where had she gone, she
who had always come running to greet me? Had she flown south like
the wild birds? At this fancy I could only smile; yet always, with a
lover's irrational broodings, I was obsessed by the fear that she was
gone never to return. This dread might have risen to terror had the
villagers not always been bringing me tidings of her: either they had
just spoken with her, or had seen someone who had just spoken with
her, or had observed her tripping by toward the meadows. Yet she
was still elusive as though able to make herself invisible.
Nevertheless, after about a week my vigilance was rewarded.
Stepping out into the chill gray of a mid-October dawn, I saw a
slender little figure slipping along the edge of the village and across
the fields toward the woods. My heart gave a great thump; without
hesitation, I started in pursuit, not daring to call out lest I arouse the
village, but determined not to lose sight of that slim flitting form. She
did not glance behind, and could not have known that I was
following, yet for some reason quickened her pace, so that I had to
make an effort to match her speed.
Once out of earshot of the village, I paused to regain my breath, then
at the top of my voice shouted, "Yasma! Yasma!"
Could it be that she had not heard me? On and on she continued,
straight toward the dark fringe of the woods.
Dismayed and incredulous, I repeated my call, using my hands as a
megaphone. This time it seemed to me that she halted momentarily;
but she did not look back; and her pause could not have filled the
space between two heart beats. In amazement, I observed her
almost racing toward the woods!
But if she could run, so could I! With rising anger, yet scarcely
crediting the report of my eyes, I started across the fields at a sprint.
In a moment I should overtake Yasma—and then what excuse would
she have to offer?
But ill fortune was still with me. In my heedless haste I stumbled over
a large stone; and when, bruised and confused, I arose to my feet
with an oath, it was to behold a slender form disappearing beyond
the shadowy forest margin.
Although sure that I had again lost track of her, I continued the
pursuit in a sort of dogged rage. There was but one narrow trail amid
the densely matted undergrowth; and along this trail I dashed,
encouraged by the sight of small fresh-made footprints amid the
damp earth. But the maker of those footprints must have been in a
great hurry, for although I pressed on until my breath came hard and
my forehead was moist with perspiration, I could catch no glimpse of
her, nor even hear any stirring or rustling ahead.
At length I had lost all trace of her. The minute footprints came to an
end, as though their creator had vanished bird-like; and I stood in
bewilderment in the mournful twilight of the forest, gazing up at the
lugubrious green of pine and juniper and at the long twisted
branches of oak and ash and wild peach, red-flecked and yellow and
already half leafless.
How long I remained standing there I do not know. It was useless to
go on, equally useless to retrace my footsteps. The minutes went by,
and nothing happened. A bird chirped and twittered from some
unseen twig above; a squirrel came rustling toward me, and with big
frightened eyes hopped to the further side of a tree-trunk; now and
then an insect buzzed past, with a dismal drone that seemed the
epitome of all woe. But that was all—and of Yasma there was still no
sign.
Then, when I thought of her and remembered her loveliness, and
how she had been my playmate and comrade, I was overcome with
the sorrow of losing her, and a teardrop dampened my cheek, and I
heaved a long-drawn sigh.
And as if in response to that sigh, the bushes began to shake and
quiver. And a sob broke the stillness of the forest, and I was as if
transfixed by the sound of a familiar voice.
And out of the tangle of weeds and shrubs a slender figure arose,
with shoulders heaving spasmodically; and with a cry I started
forward and received into my arms the shuddering, speechless,
clinging form of Yasma.
It was minutes before either of us could talk. Meanwhile I held the
weeping girl closely to me, soothing her as I might have done a child.
So natural did this seem that I quite forgot the strangeness of the
situation. My mind was filled with sympathy, sympathy for her
distress, and wonder at her odd ways; and I had no desire except to
comfort her.
"Tell me just what has happened, Yasma," I said, when her sobbing
had died down to a rhythmic murmuring. "What has happened—to
make you so sad?"
To my surprise, she broke away, and stood staring at me at arm's
length. Her eyes were moist with an inexpressible melancholy; there
was something so pitiful about her that I could have taken her back
into my arms forthwith.
"Oh, my friend," she cried, with a vehemence I could not understand,
"why do you waste time over me? Have nothing to do with me! I am
not worth it!" And she turned as if to flee again into the forest; but I
seized her hand and drew her slowly back to me.
"Yasma! Yasma!" I remonstrated, peering down into those wistful
brown eyes that burned with some dark-smoldering fire. "What has
made you behave so queerly? Tell me, do you no longer care for
me? Do you not—do you not love me?"
At these words, the graceful head sagged low upon the quivering
shoulders. A crimson flush mounted the slender neck, and suffused
the soft, well rounded cheeks; the averted eyes told the story they
were meant to conceal.
Then, without further hesitation, my arms closed once more about
her. And again she clung close, this time not with the unconscious
eagerness of a child craving protection, but with all the fury and force
of her impetuous nature.
A few minutes later, a surprising change had come over her. We had
left the woods, and she was sitting at my side in a little glade by a
brooklet. The tears had been dried from her eyes, which were still
red and swollen; but in her face there was a happy glow, and I
thought she had never looked quite so beautiful before.
For a while we sat gazing in silence at the tattered and yet majestic
line of the forest, a phantom pageant whose draperies of russet and
cinnamon and fiery crimson and dusty gold were lovely almost
beyond belief. A strange enchantment had come over us; and we
were reluctant to break the charm.
Yet there were questions that kept stirring in my mind; questions to
which finally I was forced to give words.
"Tell me, Yasma," I asked, suddenly, "why have you been behaving
so queerly? Why were you running away from me? Is there
something about me that frightened you?"
It was as if my words had brought back the evil spell. Her features
contracted into a frown; the darkness returned to her eyes, which
again burned with some unspoken sorrow; a look of fear, almost like
that of a haunted creature, flitted across her face.
"Oh, you must never ask that!" she protested, in such dismay that I
pitied her even while I wondered. "You must never ask—never,
never!"
"Why not?" I questioned. "What mystery can there be to hide?"
"There is no mystery," she declared. And then, with quick
inconsistency, "But even if there were, you should not ask!"
"But why?" I demanded. "Now, Yasma, you mustn't treat me like a
five-year-old. What have I done to offend you? Tell me, what have I
done?"
"It is nothing that you have done," she mumbled, avoiding my gaze.
"Then is it something someone else has done? Come, let me know
just what is wrong!"
"I cannot tell you! I cannot!" she cried, with passion. And, rising
abruptly and turning to me with eyes aflame, "Oh, why must you
insist on knowing? Haven't I done everything to protect you from
knowing? Do you think it has been easy—easy for me to treat you
like this? But it is wrong to love you! wrong even to encourage you!
Only evil can come of it! Oh, why did you ever, ever have to come
among our tribe?"
Having delivered herself of this outburst, Yasma paced back and
forth, back and forth amid the dense grass, with fists clenched and
head upraised to the heavens, like one in an extremity of distress.
But I quickly arose and went to her, and in a moment she was again
in my arms.
Truly, as Karem had declared, the ways of women are not to be
explained! But I felt that there was more meaning than I had
discovered in her behavior; I was sure that she had not acted
altogether without reason, and, remembering all that had puzzled
me, I was determined to probe if possible to the roots of her seeming
caprice.
"You have never been the same to me since the firelight celebration,"
I said, when her emotion had spent itself and we once more sat
quietly side by side in the grass. "Maybe something happened then
to make you despise me."
"No, not to make me despise you!" she denied, emphatically. "It was
not your fault at all!"
"Then what was it?" I urged.
"Nothing. Only that Hamul—Hamul—"
In manifest confusion, she checked herself.
"Hamul-Kammesh?" I finished for her, convinced that here was a
clue.
But she refused to answer me or to mention the soothsayer again;
and, lest the too-ready tears flow once more, I had to abandon the
topic. None the less, I had not forgotten her references to Hamul-
Kammesh and his prophecies.
But I still attached no importance to the predictions—was I to be
dismayed by mere superstition? I was conscious only that I felt an
overwhelming tenderness toward Yasma, and that she was
supremely adorable; and it seemed to me that her love was the sole
thing that mattered. At her first kiss, my reason had abdicated; I was
agitated no longer by scruples, doubts or hesitancies; my former
objects in life appeared pallid and dull by contrast with this warm,
breathing, emotional girl. For her sake I would have forsworn my
chosen work, forsworn the friends I had known, forsworn name and
country—yes, even doomed myself to lasting exile in this green,
world-excluding valley!
In as few words as possible I explained the nature of my feelings. I
was able to give but pale expression to the radiance of my emotions;
but I am sure that she understood. "I do not know what it is that
holds you from me, Yasma," I finished. "Surely, you realize that you
are dearer to me than my own breath. You made me very happy a
little while ago when you came into my arms—why not make me
happy for life? You could live with me here in a cabin in Sobul, or
maybe I could take you with me to see the world I come from, and
you would then know where the clouds go, and see strange cities
with houses as tall as precipices and people many as the leaves of a
tree. What do you say, Yasma? Don't you want to make us both
happy?"
Yasma stared at me with wide-lidded eyes in which I seemed to read
infinite longing.
"You know I would!" she cried. "You know I would—if I could! But
ours is a strange people, and our ways are not your ways. There is
so much you do not understand, so much which even I do not
understand! It all makes me afraid, oh, terribly afraid!"
"Do not be afraid, Yasma dear," I murmured, slipping my arm about
her shoulders. "I will protect you."
"You cannot protect me!" she lamented, withdrawing. "You cannot
even protect yourself! There is so much, so much from which none
can protect themselves!"
Not realizing what she meant, I let this warning slip past.
"All that I know," I swore, passionately, "is that I want you with me—
want you with me always! Let happen what may, I want you—and
have never wanted anything so much before!"
"Oh, do not speak of that now!" she burst forth, in a tone almost of
command. "Do not speak of that now! First there are things you must
know—things I cannot explain!" And she sat with eyes averted,
gazing toward the scarlet and vermilion dishevelled trees, whose
branches waved like ghostly danger signals in the rising wind.
"What things must I know?"
"You will have to wait and find out. Maybe, like us, you will feel them
without being told; but maybe time alone will be your teacher. The
traditions of my tribe would stop me from telling you even if I knew
how. But do not be surprised if you learn some very, very strange
things."
"Strange or not strange," I vowed, "all I know is that I love you. All I
care to learn is when—when, Yasma, you will say to me—"
"Not until the spring," she murmured, with such finality that I felt
intuitively the uselessness of argument. "Not until the flowers come
out from their winter hiding, and the birds fly north. Then you will
know more about our tribe."
Without further explanation, she sprang impulsively from her seat of
grass. "Come," she warned me, pointing to a gray mass that was
obscuring the northern peaks. "Come, a storm is on the way! If we
don't hurry, we'll be wet through and through!"
And she flitted before me toward the village with such speed that I
could scarcely get another word with her.
Chapter X
THE IBANDRU TAKE WING
As October drifted by and November loomed within two weeks'
beckoning, a striking change came over Sobul. The very elements
seemed to feel and to solemnize that change, which was as much in
the spirit of things as in their physical aspect; and the slow-dying
autumn seemed stricken with a bitter foretaste of winter. Cold winds
began to blow, and even in the seclusion of the valley they shrieked
and wailed with demonic fury; torn and scattered clouds scudded like
great shadows over granite skies, and occasionally gave token of
their ill will in frantic outbursts of rain; ominous new white patches
were forming about the peaks, to vanish within a few hours, and
appear again and vanish once more; and daily the dead leaves
came drifting down in swarms and showers of withered brown and
saffron and mottled red, while daily the flocks of winged adventurers
went darting and screeching overhead on their way beyond the
mountains.
But the stormy days, with all the wildness and force and passionate
abandon of wind and rain, were less impressive for me than the days
of calm. Then, when the placid sky shone in unbroken blue, all
nature seemed sad with a melancholy I had never felt among my
native hills. There was something tragic about the tranquil, ragged
forest vistas, shot through as with an inner light of deep golden and
red, and standing bared in mute resignation to the stroke of doom.
But there was something more than tragic; there was something
spectral about those long waiting lines of trees, with their foliage that
at times appeared to reflect the sunset, and at times seemed like the
painted tapestries of some colossal dream pageant. More and more,
as I gazed in a charmed revery at the gaudy death-apparel of the
woods, I was obsessed with the sense of some immanent presence,
some weird presence that hovered intangibly behind the smoldering
autumn fires, some presence that I could not think of without a
shudder and that filled me with an unreasonable awe.
Certainly my feelings, uncanny as they were, were to be justified
only too fully by time. Already I had more than a suspicion that the
season of southward-flying birds was a season of mystic meaning for
the Ibandru, but little did I understand just how important it was. Only
by degrees did realization force itself upon me; and then I could only
gape, and rub my eyes, and ask if I were dreaming. Stranger than
any tale I had ever read in the Arabian Nights, stranger than any
fancy my fevered mind had ever beckoned forth, was the reality that
set the Ibandru apart from all other peoples on earth.
As the weeks went by, the agitation I had noted among the natives
was intensified rather than lessened. I was aware of a sense of
waiting which grew until the very atmosphere seemed anxious and
strained; and I observed that the men and women no longer went as
usual about their tasks, but flitted to and fro aimlessly or nervously or
excitedly, as though they had no definite place in the world and were
hesitating on the brink of some fearful decision.
And then, one day when October was a little beyond mid-career, I
thought I detected another change. At first I was not sure, and
accused my imagination of playing pranks; but it was not long before
I ceased to have any doubts. The population of Sobul was dwindling!
Not half so many children as before were romping in the open
among the houses, not half so many women could be seen bustling
about the village, or so many men roaming the fields—the entire
place wore a sudden air of desolation. And in more than one cabin,
previously the home of a riotous family, the doors swung no longer
upon their wooden hinges, but through the open window-places I
caught glimpses of bare floors and dark walls innocent of human
occupancy.
When had the people gone? And where? I had not seen anyone
leave, nor been told that anyone was to leave; and I witnessed no
ceremonies of farewell. Could the missing ones be victims of some
terror that came down "like a wolf on the fold" and snatched them
away in the night? Or were they merely visiting some other tribe in
some other secluded valley?
These problems puzzled me incessantly; but when I turned to the
Ibandru for information, their answers were tantalizing. They did not
deny that some of their tribesmen had left, and did not claim that this
had been unexpected or mystifying; but they were either unable or
unwilling to furnish any details; and I was not sure whether they felt
that I was probing impertinently into their affairs, or whether some
tribal or religious mandate sealed their lips.
I particularly remember the answers of Karem and Yasma. The
former, with his usual jovial way of avoiding the issue, advised me to
have no worries; the whole matter was really no concern of mine,
and I might be assured that the missing ones were not badly off or
unhappy. By this time I must have learned that the Ibandru had
queer ways, and I must prepare for things queerer still; but, until I
was one with the tribe at heart, I must not expect to understand.
Yasma's answer, though vague enough, was more definite.
"Our absent friends," she said, while by turns a sad and an exalted
light played across her mobile features, "have gone the way of the
birds that fly south. Yulada has beckoned them, and they have
escaped the winter's loneliness and cold, and have hastened where
the bright flowers are, and the butterflies and bees. See!"—
Ecstatically she pointed to a triangle of swift-moving dots that glided
far above through the cloudless blue.—"They are like the wild geese!
They flee from the biting gales and the frost, and will not return till
the warm days are here again and the leaves come back to the
trees. We must all go like them—all of us, all, all!"
"And I too—must I go?" I asked, never thinking of taking her words
literally.
Yasma hesitated. The light faded from her eyes; an expression of
sorrow, almost of compassion, flooded her face.
"That I cannot say," she returned, sadly. "You must feel the call within
you, feel it as the birds do, drawing you on to lands where robins
sing and the lilac blooms. No one can tell you how to feel it; it must
come from within or not at all, and you yourself must recognize it.
But oh, you cannot help recognizing it! It is so strong, so very strong!
—and it takes your whole body and soul with it, draws you like a
rainbow or a beautiful sunset; and bears you along as the wind bears
a dead leaf. You cannot resist it any more than you can resist a
terrible hunger—you must submit, or it will hurl you under!"
"I do not understand," said I, for despite the ardor of her words, I had
only the dimmest idea of the overmastering force she described.
"Perhaps," she returned, gently, "you cannot know. You may be like a
color-blind man trying to understand color. But oh, I hope not! I hope
—ever and ever so much—that you'll hear the call thundering within
you. Otherwise, you'll have to stay here by yourself the whole winter,
while the snow falls and the wolves howl, and you won't see us
again till spring!"
Her emotion seemed to be overcoming her. Fiercely she wiped a
tear from her cheek; then turned from me, to give way to her
misgivings in the seclusion of her father's cabin.
But I was not without my own misgivings. Her words had revived
haunting premonitions; it was as if some sinister shadow hovered
over me, all the more dread because formless. What unhallowed
people were these Ibandru, to go slinking away like specters in the
night? Were they a tribe of outlaws or brigands, hiding from justice in
these impenetrable fastnesses? Or were they the sole survivors of
some ancient race, endowed with qualities not given to ordinary
humans? With new interest I recalled the stories told me by the
Afghan guides before my fateful adventure: the reports that the
Ibandru were a race of devils, winged like birds and with the power
of making themselves invisible. Absurd as this tale appeared, might
there not be the ghost of an excuse for it?
As for Yasma's predictions and warnings—what meaning had there
been in them? Was it indeed possible that I might be left alone all
winter in this desolate place? And was that why Abthar had advised
me to make ready for the cold season while his own people had
apparently done nothing to prepare? But, even so, how could they
escape the winter? Was it not a mere poetic vagary to say, as Yasma
had done, that they went to lands where robins sang and the lilac
bloomed—how cross the interminable mountain reaches to the semi-
torrid valleys of India or the warm Arabian plains? Or was it that, like
the bears, they hibernated in caves? Or, like the wild geese that they
watched so excitedly, were they swayed by some old migratory
instinct, some impulse dormant or dead in most men but preserved
for them by a long succession of nomad ancestors? Although reason
scoffed at the idea, I had visions of them trekking each autumn
across four or five hundred miles of wilderness to the borders of the
Arabian Sea, surviving on provisions they had secreted along the
route, and returning with the spring to their homes in Sobul.
Unlikely as this explanation appeared, nothing more plausible
occurred to me. But as the days went by, my sense of mystery
increased. The people were fleeing almost as though Sobul were
plague-ridden—of that there could be no further doubt! Daily now I
missed some familiar face; first a child who had come to me of
evenings to run gay races in the fields; then an old woman who had
sat each morning in the sun before her cabin; then Yasma's brother,
Barkodu, whose tall sturdy form I had frequently observed in the
village. And then one evening when I inquired for Karem, I was told
that he was not to be seen; and the people's peculiar reserved
expression testified that he had gone "the way of the birds that fly
south." And, a day later, when I wished to see Abthar in the hope
that he would relieve my perplexed mind, I found no one in the cabin
except Yasma; and she murmured that her father would not be back
till spring.
But did I make no effort to solve the enigma? Did I not strive to find
out for myself where the absent ones had gone? Yes! I made many
attempts—and with bewildering results. Even today I shudder to
think of the ordeal I underwent; the remembrance of eerie midnights
and strange shadows that flickered and vanished comes back to me
after these many, many months; I feel again the cool, forest-scented
breeze upon my nostrils as I crouch among the deep weeds at the
village edge, or as I glide phantom-like beneath the trees in the cold
starlight. For it was mainly at night that I wrestled with the Unknown;
and it was at night that I received the most persuasive and soul-
disturbing proof of the weirdness of the ways of Sobul.
My plans may not have been well laid, but they were the best I could
conceive. From the fact that I had never seen any of the Ibandru
leaving, and that more than once in the morning I had missed some
face that had greeted me twelve hours before, I concluded that the
people invariably fled by night. Acting on this view, I hid one evening
in a clump of bushes on the outskirts of the village, resolved to wait if
need be until dawn. True, no one might choose tonight for the
migration; but in that case I should lie in hiding tomorrow night, and if
necessary again on the night after.
As I lay sprawled among the bushes, whose dry leaves and twigs
pricked and irritated my skin, I was prey to countless vexations. The
night was cold, and I shivered as the wind cut through my thin
garments; the night was long, and I almost groaned with impatience
while the slow constellations crawled across the heavens; the night
was dark, and fantastic fears flitted through my mind as I gazed
through the gloom toward the ghostly line of the trees and cabins.
Every now and then, when some wild creature called out querulously
from the woods, I was swept by desire to flee; and more than once
some harmless small beast, rustling a few yards off, startled me to
alarm. But in the village nothing stirred, and the aloof, shadowy huts,
scattered here and there like the monsters of a nightmare, seemed
to bristle with unspeakable menace.
Yet nothing menacing became visible as the long reaches of the
night dragged by and the constellations still swung monotonously
between the faint black line of the eastern ranges and the equally
faint black peaks to the west. At length, lulled by the sameness and
the silence, I must have forgotten myself, must have drowsed a bit,
for I have a recollection of coming to myself with a start, bewildered
and with half clouded senses.... The night was as tranquil as before,
the trees and houses as dark; but as I glanced skyward I detected
the merest touch of gray. And, at the same time, I had a singular
sense that I was no longer alone. Intently I gazed into the gloom—
still nothing visible. But all the while that same shuddery feeling
persisted, as if unseen eyes were watching me, unseen ears
listening to my every motion. Again I felt an impulse to flee; my limbs
quivered; my heart pounded; instinctively I crawled deeper into the
bushes. And, as I did so, I saw that which made me catch my breath
in horror.
From behind one of the nearer cabins, two long lithe shadows
darted, gliding noiselessly toward me through the darkness. No
ghost could have shown dimmer outlines, or walked on more silent
feet, or flooded my whole being with more uncanny sensations.
Straight toward me they strode, looming gigantic in my tortured
imagination; and as they approached I hugged the bushes more
closely, trembling lest the phantoms discover me. Then suddenly
they swerved aside, and passed at a dozen paces; and through the
stillness of the night came the dull rhythm of sandalled feet.
For a minute I watched in silence. Then, encouraged by the pale
radiance which was swallowing the feebler stars and softening the
blackness above, I choked down my fears and crept stealthily out of
the thicket. Before me the two shadows were still vaguely visible,
gliding rapidly toward the southern woods. Like a detective trailing
his prey, I stumbled among the weeds and rocks in their wake. But,
all the time, I felt that I was pursuing mere wraiths; and, though I
walked my swiftest, I found it impossible to gain upon them. They
were several hundred yards ahead, and several hundred yards
ahead they remained, while I put forth my utmost effort and they
appeared to make no effort at all. And at last, to my dismay, they
reached the shaggy boundary of the woods; merged with it; and
were blotted out.
With what poor patience I could still command, I took the only
possible course. While dawn lent gradual color to the skies, I
hovered at the forest edge; and in the first dismal twilight I began to
inspect the ground, hopeful of discovering some telltale evidence.
But no evidence was to be had. I did indeed find the footprints I was
looking for; the trouble was that I found too many footprints. Not two
persons but twenty had passed on this path, which I recognized as a
trail leading toward Yulada. But all the tracks were new-made, and
all equally obscured by the others; and it was impossible to say
which were the freshest, or to follow any in particular.
When I returned to the village, not a person was stirring among the
cabins; an unearthly stillness brooded over the place, and I could
have imagined it to be a town of the dead. Had I not been utterly
fatigued by my night in the open, I might have been struck even
more strongly by the solitude, and have paused to investigate; as it
was, I made straight for my own hut, flung myself down upon my
straw couch, and sank into a sleep from which I did not awaken until
well past noon.
After a confused and hideous dream, in which I lay chained to a
glacier while an arctic wind blew through my garments, I opened my
eyes with the impression that the nightmare had been real. A
powerful wind was blowing! I could hear it blustering and wailing
among the treetops; through my open window it flickered and sallied
with a breath that seemed straight from the Pole. Leaping to my feet,
I hastily closed the great shutters I had constructed of pine wood;
and, at the same time, I caught glimpses of gray skies with a
scudding rack of clouds, and of little white flakes driving and reeling
down.
In my surprise at this change in the weather, I was struck by
premonitions as bleak as the bleak heavens. What of Yasma? How
would she behave in the storm?—she who was apparently
unprepared for the winter! Though I tried to convince myself that
there was no cause for concern, an unreasoning something within
me insisted that there was cause indeed. It was not a minute,
therefore, before I was slipping on my goatskin coat.
But I might have spared my pains. At this instant there came a
tapping from outside, and my heart began to beat fiercely as I
shouted, "Come in!"
The log door moved upon its hinges, and a short slim figure slipped
inside.
"Yasma!" I cried, surprised and delighted, as I forced the door shut in
the face of the blast. But my surprise was swiftly to grow, and my
delight to die; at sight of her wild, sad eyes, I started back in wonder
and dismay. In part they burned with a mute resignation, and in part
with the unutterable pain of one bereaved; yet at the same time her
face was brightened with an indefinable exultation, as though
beneath that vivid countenance some secret ecstasy glowed and
smoldered.
"I have come to say good-bye," she murmured, in dreary tones. "I
have come to say good-bye."
"Good-bye!"—It was as though I had heard that word long ago in a
bitter dream. Yet how could I accept the decree? Passion took fire
within me as I seized Yasma and pressed her to me.
"Do not leave me!" I pleaded. "Oh, why must you go away? Where
must you go? Tell me, Yasma, tell me! Why must I stay here alone
the whole winter long? Why can't I go with you? Or why can't you
stay with me? Stay here, Yasma! We could be so happy together, we
two!"
Tears came into her eyes at this appeal.
"You make me sad, very sad," she sighed, as she freed herself from
my embrace. "I do not want to leave you here alone—and yet, oh
what else can I do? The cold days have come, and my people call
me, and I must go where the flowers are. Oh, you don't know how
gladly I'd have you come with us; but you don't understand the way,
and can't find it, and I can't show it to you. So I must go now, I must
go, I must! for soon the last bird will have flown south."
Again she held out her hands as for a friendly greeting, and again I
took her into my arms, this time with all the desperation of impending
loss, for I was filled with a sense of certainties against which it was
useless to struggle, and felt as if by instinct that she would leave
despite all I could do or say.
But I did not realize quite how near the moment was. Slipping from
my clasp, she flitted to the door, forcing it slightly open, so that the
moaning and howling of the gale became suddenly accentuated.
"Until the spring!" she cried, in mournful tones that seemed in accord
with the tumult of the elements. "Until the spring!"—And a smile of
boundless yearning and compassion glimmered across her face.
Then the door rattled to a close, and I stood alone in that chilly room.
Blindly, like one bereft of his senses, I plunged out of the cabin,
regardless of the gale, regardless of the snow that came wheeling
down in dizzy flurries. But Yasma was not to be seen. For a moment
I stood staring into the storm; then time after time I called out her
name, to be answered only by the wind that sneered and snorted its
derision. And at length, warmed into furious action, I set out at a
sprint for her cabin, racing along unconscious of the buffeting blast
and the beaten snow that pricked and stung my face.
All in vain! Arriving at Yasma's home, I flung open the great pine
door without ceremony—to be greeted by the emptiness within. For
many minutes I waited; but Yasma did not come, and the tempest
shrieked and chuckled more fiendishly than ever.
At last, when the early twilight was dimming the world, I threaded a
path back along the whitening ground, and among cabins with roofs
like winter. Not a living being greeted me; and through the wide-open
windows of the huts I had glimpses of naked and untenanted logs.
II
Blossom and Seed
Chapter XI
THE PRISONER
When I staggered back to my cabin through the snow-storm in the
November dusk, I could not realize the ghastliness of my misfortune.
My mind seemed powerless before the bleak reality; it was not until I
had re-entered the cabin that I began to look the terror in the face.
Then, when I had slammed the door behind me and stood silently in
that frigid place, all my dread and loneliness and foreboding became
concentrated in one point of acute agony. The shadows deepening
within that dingy hovel seemed living, evil things; the wind that
hissed and screeched without, with brief lulls and swift crescendos of
fury, was like a chorus of demons; and such desolation of spirit was
upon me that I could have rushed out into the storm, and delivered
myself up to its numbing, fatal embrace.
It was long before, conscious of the increasing chill and the coaly
darkness, I went fumbling about the room to make a light.
Fortunately, I still had a half-used box of matches, vestiges of the
world I had lost; and with their aid, I contrived to light a little wax
candle.
But as I watched the taper fitfully burning, with sputtering yellow rays
that only half revealed the bare walls of the room and left eerie
shadows to brood in the corners, I almost wished that I had
remained in darkness. How well I remembered Yasma's teaching me
to make the candle; to melt the wax; to pour it into a little wooden
mould; to insert the wick in the still viscid mass! Could it be but a
month ago when she had stood with me in this very room, so
earnestly and yet so gaily giving me instructions? Say rather that it
was years ago, eons ago!—what relation could there be between
that happy self, which had laughed with Yasma, and this forlorn self,
which stood here abandoned in the darkness and the cold?

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Globalization in the 21st Century Steger

Professor Of Global Politics University

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE

Copyright © 2025 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

Preface and Acknowledgments vii

PART I: HISTORIES AND THEORIES 1

PART II: IDEOLOGIES AND MOVEMENTS 75

PART III: ISSUES AND PROBLEMS 117

The fate of globalization in the twenty-first century hangs in the balance.

assistance in designing some illustrations that appear in this book. Tommaso’s

1.1. The Use of “Globalization” (1930–2010)

5.1. Examples of Donald Trump’s Neoliberal Executive Orders (2017–2019)

Histories and Theories

The sudden discursive explosion of “globalization” in the 1990s represents

Depth refers to the size of international flows as compared to a relevant

While paying close attention to continuity in meaning formation, this

THE FOUR MEANING BRANCHES OF THE

While the meanings of seminal keywords such as “economics,” “culture,”

Figure 1.1. The Use of “Globalization” (1930–2010) Source: https:​//​books​.google​.com​

shoots were sometimes fractious and withered. Buffeted by ferocious winds

Education and Psychology

word globalisation as used by Jean-Ovide Decroly. The Belgian educational

Culture and Sociology

“Bilbos in uniform” was a snappy reference to Theodore G. Bilbo

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Although

The culture of any society is always unique, a fact which is dramatically

This passage is worth quoting at length because it uses the concept in a

Politics and International Relations

A condition for the emergence of a multiple-autonomy form of world politics

Economics and Business

THE NEOLIBERAL REVOLUTION AND THE

appealing label for their neoliberal policies of deregulating national econo-

Figure 1.2. Four Dimensions of Neoliberalism

was very much linked to this new buzzword ‘globalization.’”28 Increasingly

as the “official narrative of globalization.” He argued that the “real character”

An obituary and headline on Friday about Theodore Levitt, a marketing scholar

CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS ON THE MEANING

Matters of meaning formation look fairly uncomplicated in the public dis-

intersecting qualitative variables: interconnectivity, mobility, and imagina-

and institutional globalization manifested as worldwide flows and intercon-

Four Ages of Globalization

Any careful assessment of globalization in the twenty-first century must

Figure 2.1. The Global Journey of Homo Sapiens

74,000 BCE Lake Toba supervolcano eruption on Sumatra, which triggered

PERIODIZING GLOBALIZATION: PERILOUS PITFALLS

free markets”—were “invented” in Great Britain and France in the seven-

PERIODIZING GLOBALIZATION: ALTERNATIVE

interactions and mobilities mediated through organizations such as empires,

THE AGE OF THE EMBODIED

The earliest phase of globalization is exemplified by the dispersion of

The human colonization of world space involved primarily physical forms

THE AGE OF INSTITUTIONAL

It took several millennia for the widely dispersed agricultural communities

headed by nobles and priests.24 These ruling groups exempted themselves

If I had required further proof that my wits had surrendered to

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Figure 1.1. The Use of “Globalization” (1930–2010) Source: https://books.google.com