Saskia Sassen - A sociology of globalisation (original) (raw)
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Review essay on Sassen, S (ed.): Global networks, linked cities, and Lahiri, S (ed.): Regionalism and globalization] International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies vol. 26:4 (2003), pp. 958-961. Saskia, Sassen, editor, 2002, Global Networks -Linked Cities. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 368. ISBN 0-415-93162-2 (cloth). ISBN 0-415-93613-0 (paper) Lahiri, Sajal, editor, 2001 Regionalism and Globalization. Theory and Practice. London, Routledge. 332 p. ISBN 0-415-22075-0 (cloth) The last ten years or so have witnessed the mushrooming of literature and discourse on globalization, accompanied with such topics as 'regions'/regionalism, global city regions, integration, cross-border activities, networks, all kinds of flows, governance, resistance, changing links between various spatial scales, the very constitution of these scales, etc. Perhaps more than the state of affairs condensed in the previous academic buzzword 'postmodernity', globalization as a process penetrates the economic, social and political spheres round the world. Still, it is at times difficult to say what aspects of 'globalization' are under scrutiny in academic research and what makes these specific aspects as examples of 'globalization'. Anyhow, these tendencies imply
Sociological Theory, 2002
I sketch aspects of a critical theory of globalization that will discuss the fundamental transformations in the world economy, politics, and culture in a dialectical framework that distinguishes between progressive and emancipatory features and oppressive and negative attributes. This requires articulations of the contradictions and ambiguities of globalization and the ways that globalization both is imposed from above and yet can be contested and reconfigured from below. I argue that the key to understanding globalization is theorizing it as at once a product of technological revolution and the global restructuring of capitalism in which economic, technological, political, and cultural features are intertwined. From this perspective, one should avoid both technological and economic determinism and all one-sided optics of globalization in favor of a view that theorizes globalization as a highly complex, contradictory, and thus ambiguous set of institutions and social relations, as well as one involving flows of goods, services, ideas, technologies, cultural forms, and people.
The Becoming of a Global World: Technology / Networks / Power / Life
2007
The Becoming of a Global World / 31 Actualization means contingency. Actualization, that is, what happens does not follow a plan of progress. Our history 'has neither departure nor arrival, origin nor destination' (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 293). As such, globalization may be understood as a process without begin or end. Globalization is not a process that develops in a linear fashion, to say, from 'the West to the Rest'. 11 Gellner (1964: 12-3) remarked, more than forty years ago, that 'for two centuries it has been difficult for anyone from the West to 'think about human affairs without the image of an all embracing upward growth […]. It seemed a natural conclusion from the pattern of Western history, which was generally treated as the history of humanity. Western history seems to have a certain continuity and a certain persistent upward swing […]. Emerging from the river valleys of the Middle East, the story of civilization seems one of continuous upward growth, only occasionally interrupted by plateaus or even retrogressions: history seemed to creep gently around the shores of the Mediterranean and then up to the Atlantic coast, things getting better and better. Oriental Empires, the Greeks, the Romans, Christianity, the dark ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, industrialization […] all this is extremely familiar and still forms the background image of history for most of us.' History is not progressive; it does not develop like a ready-made plan. Rather than defining globalization as originating from a certain point, as notions like Westernization (or Americanization) imply, we have to acknowledge that 'human history did not follow a straight line […] on the contrary, at each bifurcation alternative stable states were possible, and once actualized, they coexisted and interacted with one another' (De Landa, 1997: 16). As such, it would be better to speak of becomings instead of Becoming. Becoming stresses the contingent nature of globalization, and the multiple actualizations that the de-and reterritorialization of flows bring forward. Just as human history is not marked by stages, or a plan of progress, human geography is not marked by bounded territories, but rather made of a multiplicity flows and the destratifications and restratifications they undergo (De Landa, 1997: 268). There is no original territory of globalization, no 'primordial totality that once existed, or a final one, that awaits us at some future date' (Deleuze and Guattari, 1977: 42). By withdrawing from usually modern national state centric definitions of territory we can see how de-and reterritorialization forces constitute particular time-spaces: local, national, regional and global
A Big History of Globalization The Emergence of a Global World System (Springer 2019)
This series seeks to promote understanding of large-scale and long-term processes of social change, in particular the many facets and implications of globalization. It critically explores the factors that affect the historical formation and current evolution of social systems, on both the regional and global level. Processes and factors that are examined include economies, technologies, geopolitics, institutions, conflicts, demographic trends, climate change, global culture, social movements, global inequalities, etc.
Critical Sociology 26,3 REVIEW ESSAY GLOBALIZATION AND THE FAILURE OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION
2016
But what are concepts save formulations and creations of thought, which, instead of giving us the true forms of objects, show us rather the forms of thought itself? — Ernst Cassirer, Language and Myth 2 During the past decade, the examination of globalization, broadly conceived, has assumed a central position in the agenda of social sci-ence research and political commentary. As a keyword, a designator of a pivotal concept in contemporary discourse, globalization is however a relatively recent innovation. “Globalization, ” as one account has it, “is the buzzword of the late twentieth century ” and is set to become “the biggest political issue of the next century.”3 In the preface to The Cultures of Globalization, Fredric Jameson writes “Globalization—even the term itself has been hotly contested—... is the modern or postmod-ern version of the proverbial elephant, described by its blind observers in so many diverse ways. Yet one can still posit the existence of the ele-phant in the a...