Globalisation

Globalisation: Joseph Stiglitz

‘it is the closer integration of the countries and peoples

of the world which has been brought about by the
enormous reduction of costs of transportation and
communication, and the breaking down of artificial
barriers to the flows of goods, services, capital,
knowledge and (to a lesser extent) people across
borders’ (Stiglitz 2002: 9)
Stiglitz, J. (2002) Globalization and its discontents, New York, W. W. Norton & Company.
 Globalisation: Jan Aart Scholte (2005, p. 14)

Scholte J. A. (2005) Globalization: a critical introduction, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

GLOBALISATI
ON
 Scholte on Commodification

Scholte J. A. (2005) Globalization: a critical introduction, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

SCHOLTE: TRENDS IN TRADE,
FINANCE AND MULTINATIONAL
COMPANIES
SCHOLTE: EXAMPLES OF RECENT
GLOBALISATION, pp. 118-119
 CORPORATIONS AS BOTH VEHICLES AND
PASSENGERS IN GLOBALISATION
• “A new report by the McKinsey Global
Institute provides some invaluable
statistics for any future Gibbon, which
MGI calculated by crunching data from
nearly 30,000 firms across the world.
Corporate profits more than tripled in
1980-2013, rising from 7.6% of global
GDP to 10%, of which Western
companies captured more than two-
thirds. The after-tax profits of American
firms are at their highest level as a
share of national income since 1929.”
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21665073-golden-age-west
ern-corporation-may-be-coming-end-death-and-transfiguration?cid1=cu
st/ednew/n/n/n/20150917n/owned/n/n/nwl/n/n/n/email
The rise of emerging-market competitors. The share of
Fortune 500 companies based in emerging markets has
increased from 5% in 1980-2000 to 26% today. These firms
are expanding globally in much the same way as their
predecessors from Japan and South Korea did before them.
In the past decade the 50 largest emerging-world firms have
doubled the proportion of their revenues coming from
abroad, to 40%.
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21665073-golden
-age-western-corporation-may-be-coming-end-death-and-tr
ansfiguration?cid1=cust/ednew/n/n/n/20150917n/owned/n/n
/nwl/n/n/n/email
Neoliberal Globalisation: King Finance
• Prabhat Patnaik (2016), Globalization and the Impasse of Capitalism.
• Globalisation has been occurring for a long time – but since the 1970s/1980s a
new form has emerged
• 1800s – Globalisation of the colonial system
• Expansion of capitalism
• Extraction of primary resources from periphery to core
• Sale of manufactured goods from core to periphery
• 1944 – Bretton Woods system
• Establishment of international monetary system
• Nation-states preserved autonomy over finance
• Current age of globalization
• Increasing power of international finance, investors and creditors
• Decreasing autonomy of nation-state to control financial/economic policies
Prabhat Patnaik

Patnaik, P. (2016), Globalization

and the Impasse of Capitalism,
Social Scientist, 44:11/12, p. 7.
Anti-Globalisation

• Globalisation has also witnessed a lot of

opposition in various forms
• Intellectuals
• Arundhati Roy, opposing hydroelectric dam in
India supported by World Bank
• Naomi Klein, opposing dominance of
international corporations in global economy
• Protests and movements
• Zapatista uprising in Mexico against North
American Free Trade Agreement
• Seattle 1999 against the World Trade
Organisation conference
• Nationalism and religious fundamentalism
• Right wing movements (e.g. Golden Dawn in
Greece) have opposed international
connections and immigration
Group Task: Posters
• In your group, make a poster (in Google Slides so everyone in your
group can edit) explaining a different aspect of globalization:
• Group 1 - economics
• Group 2 - politics
• Group 3 - technology
• Group 4 – anti-globalization movement
• Group 5 – cultural
• Group 6 – social
Reading for Next Class
Edkins, J. (2000) Chapter 1: Pictures of Hunger. In Whose Hunger?: Concepts of Famine, Practices of Aid, pp. 1–
14, University of Minnesota Press.

Questions:
• What does Edkins mean when she says that ‘famines are a product of
modernity’?
• How has famine in Ethiopia been understood?
• How has famine in Ireland been understood?
• Does famine have natural causes or political ones?
Reading for after reading week
Sending, O. J., Øverland, I., & Hornburg, T. B. (2019) ‘Climate Change and International Relations: A Five-
Pronged Research Agenda’, Journal of International Affairs, 73(1), 183–194.

What are the five broad areas in which Sending et al think are necessary to
understand better how climate change will reshape world politics?

What are the implications of climate change on state sovereignty?

What new coalitions are likely to be made?