Page 60 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

46 Politics in a Small World

new information technology enables the shrinking of time and space that
is the key feature of globalization.

In this chapter, we will first consider macro - theorizations of global-
ization in section 2.1 . At the center of both sociological and more
general public interest in globalization are its economic dimensions – the
re - structuring of the world economy, and the focus on speed, communica-

tion, and adaptability that has significantly altered existing relations of
production, distribution, and consumption. As a consequence, Marxist
accounts of globalization have been important in mapping out the prob-
lems that are to be addressed in thinking sociologically about globaliza-
tion. As we saw in chapter 1 , such accounts tend to marginalize the
importance of politics. This tendency is not shared to the same extent by
theories of globalization as modernization, which see its development in
multi - causal terms and which, consequently, give a greater importance to
politics. In this section, we will also explore how both types of accounts
foreground cultural change as crucial to the restructuring of globalizing
social life, pointing beyond themselves towards the importance of cultural
politics. We also examine the account of “ world polity ” theorists, which
focuses explicitly on culture and politics, trying to explain how and why
states around the world increasingly resemble each other. Although dealing
directly with culture and politics, however, this account oddly lacks a
sense of the importance of social meanings and how they are embedded
in hierarchical structures. Tending to treat “ diffusion ” as rather a mechan-
ical process, it actually lacks any real understanding of cultural politics.
The state is not disappearing in globalization (as some early theorists
of globalization supposed [Ohmae, 1995 ; cf Hirst and Thompson, 1996 ;
see Tonkiss, 2005 ]). On the contrary, the development of global markets,
including the privatization of what was previously public, would not be
possible without detailed and extensive state regulation. The state is,
however, being transformed in global governance. In section 2.2 , we
investigate how state autonomy and sovereignty are being altered with
the disembedding of markets and state integration into Inter - Governmental
Organizations (IGOs) that attempt to “ scale up ” control over those
markets and over other processes of globalization. The state is interna-
tionalizing in these processes. We also consider debates over whether
global governance is inherently imperialist, or whether it might be steered
in a more cosmopolitan direction through the development of the legal
and moral framework of universal human rights. These debates involve
the very controversial issue of military intervention for humanitarian
reasons. Finally, in section 2.3 , we consider the possibility of global politi-
cal community in relation to global governance and global media. “ Political