Page 63 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

Politics in a Small World 49

of the core societies (Robertson, 1992 : 658). These movements are,
according to Wallerstein (1991) , principally directed toward what he
thinks of as political ends, at overthrowing or resisting state authorities.
Culture, for Wallerstein, is either national, organized around and defi ned
as such by the nation - state, or, alternatively, world culture, which would
contribute to world socialism (Wallerstein, 1991 ). He is unable to take
into account the multiple struggles over meanings which do not conform
to this binary opposition. He is also unable to give any consideration to
the exponential increase in cultural products which other Marxisant theo-

rists take to be the defining feature of contemporary globalization and
which may indicate the development of a form of global capitalism quite
different from that of any which has preceded it.
One of the most widely respected of these theorists is David Harvey.
In The Condition of Postmodernity (1989), he links globalization with
postmodernity and postmodernism, arguing that the new form of capi-
talism he calls “ fl exible postmodernity ” can nevertheless be understood
in classical Marxist terms: “ Let us go back … to Marx ’ s ‘ invariant
elements and relations ’ of a capitalist mode of production and see to
what degree they are omni - present beneath all the surface froth and
evanescence, the fragmentations and disruptions, so characteristic of
present political economy ” (Harvey, 1989 : 179). Globalization is not
new to capitalism, according to Harvey, but fl exible postmodernity

involves the intensification of the time - space compression which charac-
terizes it. Social life is speeded up to the point where space is reduced
or collapses entirely, as in the case of the instantaneous transmission and
reception of images around the world using satellite communications
(Harvey, 1989 : 241). According to Harvey, since 1970, there has been
an intensifi cation of time - space compression as a response to a crisis in
the Fordist regime of capitalist accumulation; new forms of information
technology and communications are now used to bring about a more
flexible form of capitalism. By 1970, market saturation and falling profi ts

exposed the disadvantages of a system based on Fordist techniques of
mass production and Keynesian corporatism involving agreement
between the state, capitalists, and trade unionists to guarantee high levels
of employment, investment, and consumption. Capitalists successfully
dismantled Fordism by introducing new manufacturing and information
technology, enabling small - batch, “ just - in - time ” production aimed at
specialized “ market niches, ” by gaining greater control over workers
with the division of the labor market into skilled, adaptable, and there-
fore well - paid and secure core employees, and peripheral workers who
are less skilled and frequently insecurely employed; and by deregulating