Critical Sociology 263

REVIEW ESSAY

GLOBALIZATION AND THE FAILURE OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

A REVIEW ESSAY1

Jason MacleanDepartment of Sociology University of Toronto

But what are concepts save formulations and creations of thought which insteadof giving us the true forms of objects show us rather the forms of thought itself

mdash Ernst Cassirer Language and Myth 2

During the past decade the examination of globalization broadlyconceived has assumed a central position in the agenda of social sci-ence research and political commentary As a keyword a designator ofa pivotal concept in contemporary discourse globalization is howevera relatively recent innovation ldquoGlobalizationrdquo as one account has itldquois the buzzword of the late twentieth centuryrdquo and is set to becomeldquothe biggest political issue of the next centuryrdquo3 In the preface to TheCultures of Globalization Fredric Jameson writes ldquoGlobalizationmdasheven theterm itself has been hotly contestedmdash is the modern or postmod-ern version of the proverbial elephant described by its blind observersin so many diverse ways Yet one can still posit the existence of the ele-phant in the absence of a single persuasive and dominant theory rdquoJameson adds that ldquothe concept of globalization re ects the sense of animmense enlargement of world communication as well as the horizonof a world market Roland Robertson has formulated the dyna-mics of globalization as the lsquotwofold process of the particularization of the universal and the universalization of the particularrsquordquo Jamesonagrees but still emphasizes as do the works reviewed here the antag-onism and tension that obtains between these two poles4

Coming to terms with globalization means that we must rst andcontinually come to grips with ldquoglobalizationrdquo for the latter from theviewpoint of cultural history aVords a window unto far-reaching devel-opments in the former or more precisely economy and society5 Recallfor instance Tocquevillersquos almost apologetic acknowledgement in Democracy

330 review essay

in America that he could not do justice to his subject without coiningthe strange new term ldquoindividualismrdquo (1990 [1840]) or take the caseof Raymond Williams who discovered in writing Culture and Society anintriguing interdependence in the relationship between concurrent changesin discourse and society Williamsrsquo initial task was to analyze the trans-formation of culture coincident with the emergence and developmentof industrial capitalism in Britain Williams discovered however thatthe word culture itself as with other keywords for example class indus-try and democracy had assumed new meanings in response to the verychanges he originally intended to explicate It was not simply that themeaning of the word culture had been in uenced by those changes (ofcourse it had) but rather the new meaning of culture was by turnsentangled with generated by and supportive of those changes In orderto apprehend the meanings of globalization as an historical develop-ment and ldquoglobalizationrdquo as an historical marker in addition to its var-ious corollaries such as the nation-state culture technology marketand democracy we do well to bear this recursive process in mind

The works reviewed here each deploy ldquoglobalizationrdquo with a tacitview to accomplishing this ambitious analytic task and no less with aview to advancing its own distinctive political project of critique whichcannot and should not be uncoupled from its otherwise ostensibly dis-interested discourse on the causes and consequences of globalization IoVer here a critical review of some recent in uential arguments at oncescholarly and political with a view of my own toward a more sophisti-cated understanding of ldquoglobalizationrdquo versus globalization on the onehand and the broader failure of the sociological imagination on theother

In False Dawn The Delusions of Global Capitalism John Gray claims thatin every country of the world a new and increasingly volatile strain ofglobal capitalism is transforming economic political and social life

Behind all ldquomeaningsrdquo of globalization is a single underlying idea whichcan be called de-localization the uprooting of activities and relationships fromlocal origins and cultures It means the displacement of activities that untilrecently were local into networks of relationships whose reach is distantand worldwide Globalization means lifting social activities out of localknowledge and placing them in networks in which they are conditionedby and condition worldwide events (FD p 57 emphasis in original)

The principal positive contribution False Dawn makes to our under-standing of globalization in addition to the de nition oVered above isits historical refutation of the natural status of the so-called free mar-

review essay 331

ket The ldquofree marketrdquo rather is a social and political construction ofcentralized state power ldquoFree markets are creatures of strong govern-ment and cannot exist without themrdquo This is the rst argument of FalseDawn (FD p 213 emphasis in original) Gray makes this point con-vincingly through an historical accounting of the rise and fall of nine-teenth century laissez-faire in Victorian England That the ldquomarketrdquo isa social construction a discursive phenomenon that serves particularvested interests is a useful and timely antidote to an increasingly Darwinistand essentialist understanding of the institutions and practices of globalcapitalism 6

This however is precisely where Grayrsquos argument goes awry Grayrsquosassertion that the free market was and remains sui generis Anglo-Saxondoes not deter him from positing however unoriginally the growth ofa global free-market economy ldquoA global free market economy will be-come a reality [elsewhere in the book Gray describes it as our presentreality and in still other places Gray is ready to write global capital-ism oV as variously an anachronism a badly formed idea an un-realizable utopia and self-destructive] The manifold economic culturesand systems that the world has always contained will be redundantThey will be merged into a single universal free marketrdquo (FD p 2)Chief among those cultures and systems is the much-maligned nation-state which Gray eulogizes thus ldquoThe leverage of national governmentsover their economies is much weaker [than that of the nineteenth cen-tury English state] If social markets are to survive or be rebuilt theywill need to be embodied in new and more exible institutionsrdquo (FD p 16 my emphasis)7

Grayrsquos claims on this score are pregnant with both contradiction andirony If the free market is the result of a strong centralized statewhence originates the global free market which inter alia serves toweaken if not rend entirely redundant states themselves Grayrsquos ownhistorical treatment of the English free market demonstrates the uselesspedantry of adjudicating between the reality or arti ciality of a ldquofreemarketrdquo SuYce it to conclude for both nineteenth century Englandand our present global society the ldquofree marketrdquo is real in its conse-quences Gray also rules out multinational corporations as the engineof globalism concluding instead that ldquoThe reality of the late twentieth-century world market is that it is ungovernable by either sovereign statesor multinational corporationsrdquo (FD p 70) This simply begs the ques-tion of agency and causality to which I return below More egregiousstill is the claim that if social markets are to endure as they arguablydo in both Germany and Japan8 that new and exible institutions will

332 review essay

need to be established Novelty and not least exibility are key tropesin the discourse of laissez-faire global capitalism typically invoked not toweaken the state but to transform its policies and practices vis-agrave-vis eco-nomic actors and institutions which include both the corporations andstate actors themselves

The new reality we face today is one in which the dichotomies ofstatecorporation governmentbusiness even publicprivate are dan-gerously false and misleading antinomies Globalization and ldquoglobaliza-tionrdquo are transforming the very meanings and lived realities of ldquostaterdquoldquocitizenshiprdquo and ldquodemocracyrdquo Gray argues that the free-market anddemocracy are in reality foes not the friends they are assumed to bein the new global vulgate issued daily from New York City and Wash-ington Gray writes

Nor evidently does a world economy that is organized as a global freemarket meet the universal human need for security The raison drsquoecirctre ofgovernments everywhere is their ability to protect citizens from insecurityA regime of global laissez-faire that prevents governments from discharg-ing this protective role is creating the conditions for still greater politicaland economic instability (FD p 21 emphases in original)

Bracketing Grayrsquos tenuous characterization of the statersquos raison drsquoecirctreeven the most cursory examination of contemporary state policies andpractices makes palpable the radical reordering of state ideals and func-tions each of which is now cast in the discourse of eYcient productionand service The same can be observed for the meaning and practiceof contemporary citizenship and by extension democracy each of whichis similarly cast in terms of consumption Weak citizenship ie weakcivil society and attenuated democracy serves to stabilize nay strengthenboth the state and the capitalist class not vice versa As Gray himselfargues ldquoTransnational organizations [ like the WTO] can get away withthis [the spread of free markets] only insofar as they are immune fromthe pressures of democratic public liferdquo (FD p 18) But this banal obser-vation is moot in light of the semantic transformation of state citizen-ship and democracy each of which is now subsumed under the aegisof consumer capitalism Consumer democracy is to global capitalismneither friend nor foe the former is the progeny of the latter

Grayrsquos failure to unpack the semantic shifts bound-up with ldquoglobal-izationrdquo stems from a still larger failure to escape two common prob-lems in macrohistorical theory rei cation and its consequent teleologyReturning to the question of agency posed above Gray leaves unex-plained the historical causes or if you prefer the crucial preconditions of

review essay 333

the emergence of a volatile strain of capitalism the consequences ofwhich he enumerates thoroughly and by and large unproblematicallyIf neither nation-states nor multinational corporations are in charge(Gray argues that both institutional forms have been hollowed-out) justwho is responsible for this mess The question for Gray however seemsrather more like ldquowhat is responsiblerdquo Consider the following exam-ples selected more or less at random

Laissez-faire thinking was supplanted by the ldquoNew Liberalrdquo thinkers suchas Hobhouse Hobson Bosanquet Green and Keynes who were ready toharness the powers of the state to moderate the eVects of market forces (FD p 15 emphasis mine)

This statement is all the more telling for its immanent juxtapositionof the actions of actual people and a collection thereof to wit the stateon the one hand and the nebula of ldquomarket forcesrdquo on the other Whoit must always be asked and answered are the individuals and institu-tions that create ldquomarket forcesrdquo And what actions do such ldquoforcesrdquoentail Again Gray

However the dislocations of social and economic life today are not causedsolely by free markets Ultimately they arise from the banalization of tech-nology Technological innovations made in advanced western countries aresoon copied everywhere Even without free-market policies the managedeconomies of the post-war period could not have survivedmdashtechnologicaladvance would have made them unsustainable (FD pp 19ndash20 emphasis mine)9

Here we encounter two further rei cations First the ldquofree marketrdquothe entity responsible one presumes for ldquomarket forcesrdquo Nowhere doesGray de ne a market be it free or regulated And at no time doesGray delineate the sets of overlapping and embedded economic polit-ical and social relations that constitute a market much less couch hisanalysis of globalization in the matrix of these relations We must bearin mind that ldquoglobalizationrdquo is as much a rei cation as ldquothe marketrdquothat they are in fact synonymous To subsume willy-nilly under thesingular undiVerentiated rubric of the ldquomarketrdquo or ldquoglobalizationrdquo mys-ti es rather than illuminates our present condition

Next is ldquotechnologyrdquo here dressed in its familiar hazardous garbWhen invoked as an active verb technology otherwise a singular if farfrom semantically transparent noun becomes an autonomous agentcapable of creating eVects in the world This use of ldquotechnologyrdquo servesonly to obscure the relations and practices that constitute technologyand to further remove us from the empirical world for which we arein need of grounded explanations involving the actions of individuals

334 review essay

and groups Consider the following passage which is instructive inso-far as it unites these heretofore disparate images

The world-historical movement we call globalization has momentum that isinexorable We are not the masters of the technologies that drive the global economythey condition us in many ways we have not begun to understand (FD p 206emphasis mine)

So long as we continue to employ this form of causal imagery wewill never fully appreciate globalization Worse still we will never bein a position to resist and reform it for the most pernicious conse-quence of rei cation is the tendency to jettison causality for teleologywhich like rei cation discourages political action10 Gray is silent onthe speci c initiatives that might constitute eYcacious resistance to andreform of the global economy This of course is the predictable resultof an analysis that relies on the rei cation of social relations which inturn relieves the reformer of her task According to Gray

The free market cannot last in an age in which economic security for themajority of people is being reduced by the world economy The regimeof laissez-faire is bound to trigger counter-movements which reject its con-straints (FD p 20 emphasis mine)

Later however Gray acknowledges that

A vital condition of reform of the international economy is that it be sup-ported by the worldrsquos single most important power Without active andcontinuing American endorsement there can be no workable institutionsof global governance But so long as the United States remains commit-ted to a global free market it will veto any such reform So long asAmerican policy is based on the laissez-faire ideology that informs theWashington consensus there is no prospect of reforming the world econ-omy (FD p 200)11

Which may appear not a little bit pessimistic until that is it is morewidely recognized that

The Washington consensus will not last forever It will undoubtedly beshaken by economic shocks and geopolitical shifts (FD p 205 emphasismine)

The question of economic and political reform then goes the wayof historical agency and causality

Lukacsrsquo lucid de nition of rei cation is instructive here Rei cationoccurs when ldquoa relation between people takes on the character of athing and thus acquires a lsquophantom-objectivityrsquo an autonomy that seems

review essay 335

so strictly rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of itsfundamental nature the relation between peoplerdquo (Lukacs 1971 pp83ndash87) The problem of rei cation it turns out plagues all of the worksunder review here and most of the discourse analytic and political alikeregarding globalization Throughout this review I try to theorize thismisapprehension of ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollary rei cations as theresult of ideological predilections and otherwise untenable methodolog-ical choices each of which can ultimately be largely explained as con-sequences of the actions and events bound-up in globalization itself

Rei cation rears its ugly head too in Anthony Giddensrsquo RunawayWorld How Globalization is Reshaping Our Livesmdashthe title itself suggests as much Giddens is however an eminently more agile social theoristthan Gray indeed more agile than most Originally given as the 1999Reith lectures broadcast globally by the BBC via both radio and theInternet Giddens oVers the following salvo regarding the character ofglobalization

Globalisation is political technological and cultural as well as economicIt has been in uenced above all by development in systems of communi-cations dating back only to the late 1960s The changes [encompassedby globalization] are being propelled by a range of factors some struc-tural others more speci c and historical Economic in uences are certainlyamong the driving forces especially the global nancial system Yet theyarenrsquot forces of nature They have been shaped by technology and cul-tural diVusion as well as by the decisions of governments to liberalise andderegulate their national economies (RW p 8)

Globalization it seems aVects everything and everything in turnaVects globalization Here the absence of clarity in the de nition ofglobalization manifests itself in a corresponding lack of clarity govern-ing its explanation Giddensrsquo argument is much like the above de nitionit tries to be all things to all people Case in point is Giddensrsquo ambiva-lence regarding the role of the state vis-agrave-vis globalization On the onehand Giddens acknowledges the decisions made by the state This issure to please sociologists who argue for the analytic importance of stateactions and not least those critical of the statersquos strategic retreat frompublic life Giddens is cognizant too of the way in which the nature ofthe state has been transformed Giddens however subtly elides the next(specious I think) question namely has the state reconciled itself to itsnew role or is the state a hapless victim powerless in the face of trans-national forces A theorist as agile as Giddens would doubtless argueif forced ldquobothrdquo but the spirit of his presentation suggests if somewhat

336 review essay

equivocally that the statersquos autonomy has been and continues to bewhittled away by the myriad ldquoforcesrdquo at work in the world today

Giddens goes on to rehearse familiar topics and arguments concern-ing the relationship between globalization (however one takes it) andrisk tradition and fundamentalism the family and feminism and nallythe prospects for democracy Democracy argues Giddens is good andas such worth ghting for Overall this captures the tenor of Giddensrsquoslim little book12 Giddens asks ldquoIs globalisation a force promoting thegeneral goodrdquo (RW p 10) That question in addition to whether wecan gain more control over our ldquorunaway worldrdquo is important ldquoForglobalisation is not incidental to our lives today It is a shift in our verylife circumstances It is the way we now liverdquo (RW pp 11ndash12) Giddensraises few compelling questions and still fewer answers The rapid pub-lication of these BBC lectures with virtually no modi cation or expansionarguably has more to say about the power and force of ldquoglobalizationrdquothan does Giddens

ldquoCulture follows money we will be the Romans in the next gen-erations as the English are nowrdquo wrote F Scott Fitzgerald with con-siderable prescience in 1921 while sojourning in France13 Sixty yearslater and culture still seemed to follow capital In 1982 French culturaloYcials warned of ldquoAmerican cultural imperialismrdquo Soon after a car-toon appeared portraying the noble European continent defended bythe likes of drsquoArtagnan Don Quixote and Shakespeare against anAmerican attack from the skies lead by Mickey Mouse anked by ETMarilyn Monroe and a hamburger14 Walter LaFeberrsquos Michael Jordanand the New Global Capitalism can be read as an elaboration of Fitzgeraldrsquosprediction and Francersquos nay the worldrsquos predicament Namely global-ization as the apotheosis of American popular culture

LaFeber begins his thin historical account in the 1890s the timeperiod in which the American economy rose to preeminence and thegame of basketball was invented For LaFeber ldquoThe history of basket-ball especially in the era of Michael Jordan helps us understand thisera known as lsquothe American Centuryrsquordquo (NGC p 22) The 1890s werealso witness to the rise of the rst multinational corporations includ-ing Standard Oil Eastman Kodak Singer and McCormick Accordingto LaFeber these companies diVer from their late-twentieth centurycounterparts in at least four respects (1) 1890s rms largely employedAmerican workers whereas 1990s rms rely on cheap foreign labor (2)While late-nineteenth century concerns traded in natural resources andindustrial goods corporations nowadays increasingly produce ldquoknowl-edgerdquo and ldquoinformationrdquo Here LaFeber like Barber (1992) signals his

review essay 337

move away from the analysis of hard political power toward soft eco-nomic and symbolic power (3) Todayrsquos transnationals unlike their an-cestors increasingly depend upon ldquoworld marketsrdquo for their pro ts (eg in 1996 four out of every ve bottles of coke were sold outside ofthe United States) and (4) Consequently late-twentieth century trans-nationals depend for their continued success on massive global adver-tising campaigns ldquoto make people want their productsrdquo (NGC p 56) Theadvertising employed by transnationals like Nike is argued to be ldquorev-olutionaryrdquo because it can be seen on as many as thirty to ve hun-dred television channels in many countries thanks to the new technologyof communication satellites and ber-optic cable For LaFeber the med-ium and the message collude to make the products of transnationalsirresistible to the denizens of the new global village Consider LaFeberrsquostake on the fall of Communism

During these decades [1970ndash1990] such new global technologies as com-puters communication satellites and ber optics transformed the globersquoseconomy It should be pointed out that this new era in world history begannot with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold Warin 1989ndash1991 but with the appearance of the post-industrial technologynearly a generation earlier For this technology changed the lives of peo-ples around the world and in so doing brought down the Communistsystem which could not adjust to this revolution (NGC p 58)

In addition to the problem of the rei cation of technology LaFebersimilarly rei es ldquothe world marketrdquo on which transnationals depend butover which the same transnationals wield considerable in uence via theirmarketing campaigns By presuming the perlocutionary power of mediamessages and indeed of the media themselves LaFeber eVectively rendsinvisible the relations between foreign consumers and the popular cul-ture and other fare produced by transnational corporations What doNike shoes or the images of Michael Jordan do for people in and outof America How are American products and symbols experienced insitu15 LaFeber like most globalization theorists emphasizes global pushfactors at the expense of the local pull factors felt articulated andinstantiated by real people in real places who constitute the real powerof ldquoworld marketsrdquo The result is a top-down externalist perspectivebereft of the global consumerrsquos Lebenswelt Consumption is explainedaway as a passive act of reception rather than an inde nite series ofmicroscopic acts of appropriation of the social world In this way LaFeberreproduces indeed globalizes the causal assumptions of the FrankfurtSchoolrsquos critique of mass culture The positive moment of consumerism

338 review essay

insofar as it is de ned as such by variously situated individuals is leftutterly untheorized Methodologically a hermeneutic reconstruction ofthe consumerrsquos point of view is attainable only through ethnographicengagement across a number of cultural sites16 Sociologically the ldquoarm-chairrdquo approach employed by LaFeber and the other authors under re-view here is methodologically and theoretically untenable Ideologicallyhowever it is quite useful insofar as it allows for a political critique thatassigns culpability to only the global cultural ldquopushersrdquo and eVectivelyabsolves the rest of the world of any responsibility whatsoever render-ing them so many dupes under the sway of expensive irresistible imagesIronically the rei cation of powerful world markets has the eVect ofstripping the consumers embedded within them of any potential foragency much less in uence For LaFeber then culture does in fact fol-low the money

The foregoing should not however be read as an aYrmation of theintellectualist romance with and tendentious presumption of subalternresistance commonplace as it is in the discipline of cultural studies Itis after all no more tenable to assume ldquoordinary peoplerdquo to be preter-naturally counter-hegemonic in their quotidien lives than it is to dis-miss them as cultural dopes Recalling Grayrsquos call for ldquonewrdquo and ldquomore exiblerdquo institutions to rescue social markets cultural critics must re exivelyaccount for their own role in the larger eld of cultural production AsThomas Frank (1999 p 84) perspicuously notes many cultural criticsmiss entirely the fatal irony of an academic radicalism that is increas-ingly coterminous with much management theory at precisely the samemoment when capitalist consultants and managers have decided to brandthemselves as radicals equating democracy and dissent with consumerismThe point rather is a simple one An understanding of globalizationas a eld of relations encompassing both power and resistance is impos-sible absent ethnographic engagement in this eld with all the variouslysituated actors involved (eg managers politicians citizens consumersworkers sub-proletariat intellectuals)

An ethnographic case makes the point American anthropologist LilaAbu-Lughod (1990) demonstrates in her ethnographic analysis of Bedouinwomen the intersection of power and resistance in global perspectiveBedouin women it turns out are avid consumers of Western pop musicTheir consumptive behavior has little to do however with the billionsspent annually on advertising by American rms Bedouin women activelyuse the lyrics of Western pop songs particularly romantic ones to sub-vert the regime of patriarchy they confront in their own local culturewherein the oral poetics of love and romance are severely restricted soas to reproduce male privilege Western music then oVers a partial

review essay 339

escape from and critical commentary on patriarchal Bedouin cultureAt the same time Bedouin culture is brought into the web of powerrelations involving the Egyptian nation-state and the larger internationalpolitical economy This instance of resistance exempli es Bourdieursquospoint about relations of power ldquoResistance can be alienating and sub-mission can be liberating Such is the paradox of the dominated andthere is no way out of itrdquo17 The chief limitation of New Global Capitalismis its exaggeration of the power of the dominant and its wholesale in-attention to the agency of the dominated18

Ditto for Zygmunt Baumanrsquos Globalization The Human ConsequencesBaumanrsquos point of departure into the global is Foucaultrsquos instrumentalmetaphor of the Panopticon In the modern exercise of power the spec-tacle was replaced by surveillance In pre-modern times power wasimpressed upon the public via displays of wealth splendor and notleast violence Modern power concentrated in the nation-state by con-trast preferred instead to linger in the shadows closely but discreetlymonitoring its subjects A case of the few regarding the many WhatFoucault overlooked however was the parallel modern development ofnew techniques of power consisting in contradistinction to surveillanceof the various mass media especially television A case of the manywatching the few19

The Panopticon even when universal in application was essentiallya local institution The Synopticon ie the mass media is increasinglyglobal The nature of the power each wields is diVerent too While thePanopticon forced people into the position where they could be watchedthe Synopticon requires little in the way of coercion By contrast theSynopticon seduces people into watching (THC p 52 emphasis in orig-inal) The many now watch the few And the few who are watched arethe celebrities No matter whence they originate all celebrities put ondisplay the world of celebrities a world whose distinctive feature is pre-cisely the quality of being watched by the many in all corners of theworld Whatever they speak about when on air they convey the mes-sage of a total way of life ldquoTheir life their way of liferdquo (THC p 52emphasis in original) To question the impact of that message on themany who watch is to Bauman

less like asking about preconceived fears and hopes and more like askingabout the ldquoeVectsrdquo of Christianity on onersquos view of the world ormdashas theChinese had askedmdashof Confucianism on public morality20

For Bauman as for LaFeber the world watches the fare producedby the globals ie the multinational corporations and the rest is his-tory The billions expended (for LaFeber) and the lofty other-worldly

340 review essay

character (for Bauman) of the globals renders otherwise legitimate naypressing questions of reception and interpretation entirely irrelevant

For all the power contained in the messages and presumably con-ferred upon the messengers Bauman much like Gray and Giddens isstill not entirely sure just who is in charge

To put it in a nutshell no one seems now to be in control Worse still it isnot clear what ldquobeing in controlrdquo could under the circumstances be like The deepest meaning conveyed by the idea of globalization is that ofthe indeterminate unruly and self-propelled character of world aVairs the absenceof a centre of a controlling desk of a board of directors of a manager-ial oYce Globalization is Jowittrsquos ldquonew world disorderrdquo under anothername (THC pp 58ndash59 rst emphasis in original second emphasis mine)

Note the now familiar tell-tale signs of rei cation the obfuscation ofsocial relations and human agency tightly coupled with the attributionof telos to ldquoworld aVairsrdquo The world may be disorderly but for Baumanat least one thing is for sure Wherever the new seat of power residesif it resides anywhere if it even exists at all it is certainly not withinthe nation-state

In the words of GH von Wright the ldquonation-state it seems is erodingor perhaps lsquowithering awayrsquo The eroding forces are transnationalrdquo Since nation-states remain the sole frame for book-balancing and the sole sources ofeVective political initiative the lsquotransnationalityrsquo or eroding forces putsthem outside the realm of deliberate purposeful and potentially rationalaction As everything that elides such action such forces their shapes andactions are blurred in the mist of mystery they are objects of guessesrather than reliable analysis (THC pp 56ndash57 rst emphasis mine secondemphasis in original)

Having thus ruled out both nations and transnationals as the sourceof the ldquoeroding forcesrdquo at work in the world Bauman asks

How has it come about that this vast expanse of man-made wilderness (notthe ldquonaturalrdquo wilderness which modernity set out to conquer and tamebut to paraphrase Anthony Giddensrsquo felicitous phrase a ldquomanufactured jun-glerdquomdashthe post-domestication wilderness one that emerged after the con-quest and as a result) has sprung into vision And why did it acquire theformidable power of obstinacy and resilience which since Durkheim istaken to be the de ning mark of ldquohard realityrdquo (THC p 69 rst empha-sis mine second emphasis in original)

This indeed is the question that should orient our analyses of ldquoglob-alizationrdquo21 As an analytic tool however it is instructive only inasmuchas we apply it equally to the putative ldquocausesrdquo of ldquoglobalizationrdquo for

review essay 341

example the withering away of the nation-state at the hands of thosepunitive and unforgiving ldquo nancial marketsrdquo (THC p 69) each of whichhas assumed of late the marks of ldquohard realityrdquo Bauman poses the ini-tial question but fails to similarly question the ontological reality of whatare actually epistemological heuristics The use of terms such as ldquomar-ketsrdquo and ldquo nancesrdquo and ldquotechnological forcesrdquo are potentially usefulwhen they serve as a kind of analytic shorthand for sets of social rela-tions that have already been enumerated and explicated explicitly andexhaustively When however they substitute for explanations when theystand in as explanations in and of themselves they serve not only tocomplicate our thinking but more egregious still to insidiously repro-duce those discourses and practices of domination against which criti-cal scholars are aligned Bauman himself anticipates this problem whenhe acknowledges with an approving nod to Cornelius Castoriadis that

the trouble with the contemporary condition of modern civilization isthat it stopped questioning itself Not asking certain questions is pregnantwith more dangers than failing to answer the questions already on theoYcial agenda while asking the wrong kind of questions all too often helpsto avert eyes from the truly important issues The price of silence is paidin the hard currency of human suVering Asking the right questions makesafter all all the diVerence between fate and destination drifting and trav-elling Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way oflife is arguably the most urgent of the services we owe our fellow humansand ourselves (THC p 5)

Like Gray and LaFeber Bauman oVers us an impassioned threnodydevoted to the deleterious eVects borne by globalization but in so doingunwittingly disarms us intellectually and consequently renders us inca-pable of intervention and resistance much less understanding We shouldtherefore welcome Pierre Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance Against the Tyrannyof the Market for Bourdieu perhaps more than any other living scholarand public intellectual deftly combines scholarly and political analysis

Bourdieursquos approach is to read ldquoglobalizationrdquo as a neo-liberal dis-course a mythology that poses as reality

Irsquove used the word ldquoglobalizationrdquo It is a myth in the strong sense of theword a powerful discourse and ideacutee force an idea which has social forcewhich obtains belief It is the main weapon in the battles against the gainsof the welfare state (AOR p 34)

Bourdieu goes on to dissect this discourse pointing out the way itevokes and rati es the ldquoso-called law of the marketrdquo (AOR p 35) Byso impugning the natural and inevitable ontological character of ldquoglobal-

342 review essay

izationrdquo and the ldquosupposed iron laws of the nancial marketsrdquo Bourdieuis poised to make the theoretical contribution Gray irted with but failedto realize to wit an analysis of the social construction of the globaleconomy (AOR pp 26ndash27) Yet Bourdieu soon after does an about-face on this issue writing

While globalization is above all a justi catory myth there is one case whereit is quite real that of the nancial markets Thanks to the removal of a num-ber of legal restrictions and the development of electronic communicationswhich lead to lower communication costs we are moving towards a uniednancial market (AOR p 38 emphasis mine)

Bourdieursquos account is rife with contradictions and illogical unsub-stantiated assertions of fact Particularly disabling is his myopia regard-ing the role of the nation-state While ldquoglobalizationrdquo is a myth (wellyes it is) the power of the ldquo nancial marketsrdquo and the ldquointernationalcapital marketrdquo is quite real indeed22 The latter according to Bourdieuprevents individual nation-states from manipulating their exchange andinterest rates which in turn are increasingly determined by a powerconcentrated in the hands of a small number of countries whose iden-tities are never revealed and although one presumes that Bourdieu hasin mind the United States it is not at all clear which other nationsmight be controlling the rest of the worldrsquos nances (Germanyrsquos socialmarket Japanrsquos Certainly neither the French nor the English registerhere) So nations are powerless a familiar refrain Unless that is theyare a part of the small exclusive cabal of nations that rules the worldin which case they have considerable power after all

Bourdieu calls for the creation of a class of collective intellectualswho can among other things analyze the production and circulationof neo-liberal discourse to expose the ideological work of journalistsmanagers and not least the cunning reason of intellectuals23 Thisanalysis is to be carried out presumably in a manner consistent withhis project of re exive sociology24 That would mean mapping the full eld of cultural production and symbolic power that now obtains on aglobal level specifying the key actors and the objective structure of theirrelationships and analyzing the habitus of the agents that nds its tra-jectory within the speci c eld(s) in question25 That Bourdieu fails toattempt much less accomplish this admittedly bold project is a majorshortcoming of Acts of Resistance which amounts to little more than asteady stream of breathless bromides forever interrupted by conceptualand logical inconsistencies

Worse still is the manner in which Bourdieumdashlike Gray Giddens

review essay 343

and Baumanmdashunwittingly buttresses the discourse of neo-liberalism byutterly ignoring the active role played by the state in ushering in anostensible new world disorder in which the state appears as a shadowof its former self at best a hapless and unwilling conspirator accordedlittle responsibility Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance as with the other titlesunder review here quickly establishes its liberal credentials through itslament for a safer more secure and certain world (sicherheit) in whichthe state and the citizen and one suspects the progressive intellectualeach mattered Those nominal credentials however mask and insidi-ously support the state in its new corporatist guise26 Take for instancethe manifesto co-authored by prime ministers Tony Blair and GerhardSchroeder entitled ldquoThe Third WayDie Neue Mitterdquo27 Therein the min-isters declare

In a world of ever more rapid globalization and scienti c changes we needto create the conditions in which existing businesses can prosper and adaptand new businesses can be set up and grow Our aim is to modern-ize the welfare state not dismantle it Flexible markets must be combinedwith a newly dened role for an active state The state must become an activeagent for employment not merely the passive recipient of the casualties ofeconomic failure (emphasis mine)28

If ldquoglobalizationrdquo did not exist the state would have invented itOr consider to choose another recent example the passing of a new

bill in Britain which rede nes terrorism as ldquoThe use of serious violenceagainst persons or property or the threat to use such violence to intim-idate or coerce a government the public or any section of the publicfor political religious or ideological endsrdquo29 Borrowed verbatim fromthe American FBI this new bill was passed in British parliament inMarch 2000 by 210 votes to one Among other purposes the bill willserve as a deterrent to activists who would campaign publicly againstglobalization and multinational corporations as thousands recently didon ldquoMay Dayrdquo in Britain According to a British GM food activistldquoThe government is creating a private security service for transnationalcorporationsrdquo 30 To Bourdieu et al this is simply another example ofthe puppet that is the new nation-state orchestrated from above andafar by those indomitable nancial markets

To the sociologist Saskia Sassen however it is a case in point of thestatersquos active and voluntary complicity in the construction and not leaststrategic invocation of ldquoglobalizationrdquo Sassen contends that far frombeing passive and merely reactive under the sway of globalizationldquonational rms and national institutions have participated in the processrdquo

344 review essay

Sassen moreover rejects the notion that the global economy is ldquosome-how lsquoout therersquordquo forcing a nation and its corporations to change theirpractices Rather Sassen argues forcefully that the global economy hasbeen created by national industries with the assistance of their ownnationrsquos legislative and regulatory bodies In so doing Sassen pushes thede nition of the global economy beyond the production distributionand consumption of goods and services to encompass a worldwide sys-tem of governance and power within a ldquonew frontier zonerdquo which

is not merely a dividing line between the national economy and theglobal economy It is a zone of politico-economic interactions that pro-duce new institutional forms and alter some of the old ones Nor is this encounterbetween the global and the national just a matter of reducing regulations or the role ofgovernment generally simply to posit as is so often done that economic glob-alization has brought with it declining signi cance of the national state toutcourt misses some of the ner points of this transformation (emphasis mine)31

Pace Sassen and others who argue convincingly for the need to ldquobringthe state back inrdquo32 to our analyses the failure to recognize the trans-formation of the nonetheless active role of the nation-state is a symp-tom of a much broader failure of the sociological imagination bear inmind that the works discussed above are by some of the eldrsquos mostprominent gures Despite their admirably meliorist intentions theseworks each serve to invest ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollaries ie mar-ket and technological ldquoforcesrdquo with a ldquothingnessrdquo and an eYcacy itdoes not cannot possess This tendency stems I think from the nolonger tenable theoretical assumption that modernity consists of the compartmentalization of reality into three distinct domains (1) Market(economy) (2) State (polity) and (3) Civil Society (culturepublic sphere)It is arguable whether this tripartite heuristic was ever analytically use-ful but the problem it poses for sociologists now is a diVerent one forthis heuristic has assumed the status of a dead metaphor that of hardreality According to Wallerstein this theorem of separateness and mutualexclusivity a mere two hundred years old is now so deeply rooted inour consciousness and linguistic tools that we nd it almost impossibleto formulate sentences much less cogent analytic arguments free of thisthreefold monster33 Thus rei ed these epistemologic tools no longerserve us They instead predispose us to see each sphere in terms onlyof expansion (as in the case of the market) or retraction (as in the rolesof the state and the public sphere) rather than the simultaneous seman-tic and ontological transformation of all three34 Returning to Cassirer

review essay 345

But this problem itself appears spurious as soon as we realize that the dis-tinctions which here are taken for granted the analysis of reality in termsof things and processes permanent and transitory aspects objects andactions do not precede language as a substratum of given fact but thatlanguage itself is what initiates such articulations and develops them inits own sphere35

As Wallerstein adroitly notes these unconscious rei cations obscuremuch of reality from the scholars who unre exively deploy them36 Thereis however still more at work than this For all the attention I havedevoted to disentangling the discourse of ldquoglobalizationrdquo we must notlose sight of the many decisions actions and consequences intentionalor not that loosely comprise the ever-shifting reality of globalizationwithin which our analytic discourse is developed and deployed Chiefamong these in this context are the sense and the reality of profounddislocation displacement and disengagement that aVect sociologists asmuch as anyone else37 Our theories and methods bear the indelibleimprint of the world we seek to comprehend

A renovated sociological imagination of globalization must steer clearof the grand theorizing rehearsed by the works reviewed here withoutsimultaneously lapsing into the abstracted empiricism that infects mostof the technical work on globalization38 To avoid these twin pitfalls wewill need to develop an entirely new vocabulary grounded in directempirical engagement with our new globalizing reality Examples ofthis new approach are already under way They include so far Marcusrsquocall for multi-sited ethnography Sassenrsquos work toward cultivating anethnographic approach to studying the way the global is instantiatedwithin local urban spaces and Duneierrsquos ldquoextended place methodrdquo39

The considerable potential of these approaches notwithstanding the soci-ological apprehension of globalization will require rst and foremost acollective eVort on the part of variously situated scholars to wit a globalnetwork consisting of several local nodes in which substantive con ictand cooperation may freely occur What the late Bill Readings calleda community of ldquodissensusrdquo40 Absent these eVorts our meliorist inten-tions have little chance of ever becoming eYcacious interventions

Notes

1 Thanks to Denis Wall for editorial assistance and to Julie Custeau for her ever-astute guidance and unfailing support of everything that I do The works reviewed hereinclude Bauman Zygmunt 1998 Globalization the human consequences (New York ColumbiaUniversity Press) hereafter THC Bourdieu Pierre 1998 Acts of resistance against the tyranny

346 review essay

of the market (New York The New Press) hereafter AOR Gray John 1998 False dawnthe delusions of global capitalism (London Granta Books) hereafter FD Giddens Anthony2000 Runaway World (New York Routledge) hereafter RW and LaFeber Walter 1999Michael Jordan and the new global capitalism (New York W W Norton amp Company) here-after NGC

2 1946 p 73 See Cassidy (1997) The recent highly organized public protests in Davos Seattle

and Washington lend support to this prediction4 For an historical perspective on the semantic polyvalence if not polysemy of

ldquoglobalizationrdquo over the Longue Dureacutee see Moore (1997)5 As Giddens puts it ldquoThe global spread of the term [globalization] is evidence of

the very developments to which it refersrdquo (RW p 3)6 See Bourdieursquos AOR p 427 Gray later asserts however that ldquoThe leverage of sovereign states over business

may actually be greater in some respects today than it has been in the pastrdquo (FD p 67) In which respects Gray does not say Nor does he oVer any evidence to but-tress what must be classi ed as like so many of the statements comprising FD purespeculation (or what might be euphemized as ldquoarm-chair economicsrdquo)

8 See the intriguing if tentative results of an international project comparing thefuture of nationally embedded capitalism in the global economy in Streeck and Yamamura(2000)

9 For an illuminating historical treatment of the rei cation of technology see Marx(1997)

10 Gray argues further that the eVects of these forces are irrevocable and irreversibleThe regrettable and wrong-headed policy choices made by the Thatcher administrationnow constitute the ineluctable reality of the Blair government Gray goes on to arguethe same for the neo-liberal turn taken by New Zealand Grayrsquos argument is contra-dicted however by rst the palpably intentional adoption of neo-liberal tenets on thepart of the Blair government (not least its elimination of Article Four hitherto the cor-nerstone of Labour politics) and second by the recent election of a Labour governmentin New Zealand whose popularity in the polls in 1990 was just 2 percent a Labourgovernment that is moreover authentically committed to rebuilding and underwritingits social institutions See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 11 Even the Economistadmitted no doubt plaintively that ldquoglobalization is not irreversiblerdquo (see Smith andMoran [2000 p 70])

11 Gray is confused about the power of the American model Of ldquohyperglobaliza-tion a corporate utopiardquo Gray writes ldquoIt represents an historical transformation thathas no end-state and which is subverting American capitalism as well as its rivals as aprocess leading to the universal acceptance of American free marketsrdquo (FD p 67)

12 In contradistinction to Giddensrsquo slim but instructive A Brief but Critical Introductionto Sociology

13 Fitzgerald made this prediction in a personal letter to the novelist and criticEdmund (Bunny) Wilson

14 de Medici and de Medici (1986 pp 17ndash20)15 For an empirically rich and theoretically supple analysis of the local experience

of McDonaldrsquos throughout east Asia refer to Watson et al (1997) This volume of ethno-graphic accounts makes particularly plain the ways in which McDonaldrsquos as a transna-tional corporation has allowed itself via a local ownership structure to adapt to theexigencies and idiosyncrasies of local cultures Even while McDonaldrsquos market share reclinedin the United States during the 1990s it continued to grow in foreign markets includ-ing but not limited to east Asia

16 See Marcus (1995) on the advantages of conducting multi-site ethnography inofthe world system

17 Bourdieu (1987 p 184)

review essay 347

18 One nal word of warning regarding NGC the strength and weakness of thisbook are one in the same NGC is unique in that it tries to marry the history of bas-ketball with the history of the American economy A short book it suYciently coversneither task Basketball fans in particular should look elsewhere for a treatment of boththe NBA and the career of Michael Jordan See instead the eminently readable andinformative Halberstam (1999) and in keeping with the line of argument pursued aboveJordan (1998)

19 This is what Mathiesen (1997) aptly coined the Synopticon20 Gerbner and Gross (1976) quoted in THC p 5321 This question if broadened in scope is arguably the most important question

sociologists can pose Period Substitute ldquosocietyrdquo for ldquoglobalizationrdquo and the analyticpotential of the question comes into bold relief

22 Compare the putative reality of the nancial market with the following breath-less declaration ldquoIn short against all the prophets of misery who want to convince youthat your destiny is in the hands of transcendent independent indiVerent powers suchas the lsquo nancial marketsrsquo or the mechanisms if lsquoglobalizationrsquo I want to declare withthe hope of convincing you that the future your future which is also our future thatof all Europeans depends a great deal on you as Germans and trade unionistsrdquo (AORp 69)

23 For his own analysis cum criticism of the ldquojournalistic eldrdquo see Bourdieu (1998)for Bourdieursquos take on the role of intellectuals in diVusing the new global vulgate seeBourdieu and Wacquant (1999a 1999b)

24 I say presumably because Bourdieu at no point in AOR elaborates this programFor an original and compelling criticism of Bourdieursquos sociological theory and methodsee Griller (1996)

25 See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992 pp 104ndash5) Whether or not the global eldis coterminous with what Bourdieu calls the eld of power (a kind of meta- eld) is aninteresting question

26 If I am harder on Bourdieu than the other authors under review (which is arguable)it is due rst to the inconsistency that obtains between his previous scholarly work andhis present political critique and second and most important because his ostensibly lib-eral critique unwittingly and insidiously reproduces the neo-liberal discourse he seeks tosubvert

27 Not coincidentally the so-called ldquothird wayrdquo also advocated by Bill Clinton islargely inspired by Anthony Giddensrsquo book of the same name Space does not permitan analysis of Giddensrsquo contribution to practical politics here Blair and Schroederrsquos man-ifesto is reprinted in the spring 2000 edition of Dissent pp 51ndash65

28 Small wonder Gray who makes the same recommendation demonizes the Thatcheradministration on the one (left) hand while he serves as an apologist for the presentBlair government on the other (right) hand

29 See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 2030 Ibid31 See Sassen (2000 pp 164ndash65)32 For example the entire corpus of Theda Skocpal33 Wallerstein (2000 p 307)34 An apt example of the compartmentalist way of thinking about the state is Daniel

Bellrsquos famous remark that the nation-state is at once too small and too large to ade-quately address most of the problems it faces

35 1946 p 1236 Which in the case of Bourdieu in particular is all the more ironic for its theo-

retical inconsistency with his overall sociological-epistemological project37 Why after all is ldquoglobalizationrdquo now on everyonersquos lips in academe Might it

have something to do as a colleague of mine astutely theorizes because the educatedand professional middle-classes including university professors of Western nations are

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

330 review essay

in America that he could not do justice to his subject without coiningthe strange new term ldquoindividualismrdquo (1990 [1840]) or take the caseof Raymond Williams who discovered in writing Culture and Society anintriguing interdependence in the relationship between concurrent changesin discourse and society Williamsrsquo initial task was to analyze the trans-formation of culture coincident with the emergence and developmentof industrial capitalism in Britain Williams discovered however thatthe word culture itself as with other keywords for example class indus-try and democracy had assumed new meanings in response to the verychanges he originally intended to explicate It was not simply that themeaning of the word culture had been in uenced by those changes (ofcourse it had) but rather the new meaning of culture was by turnsentangled with generated by and supportive of those changes In orderto apprehend the meanings of globalization as an historical develop-ment and ldquoglobalizationrdquo as an historical marker in addition to its var-ious corollaries such as the nation-state culture technology marketand democracy we do well to bear this recursive process in mind

The works reviewed here each deploy ldquoglobalizationrdquo with a tacitview to accomplishing this ambitious analytic task and no less with aview to advancing its own distinctive political project of critique whichcannot and should not be uncoupled from its otherwise ostensibly dis-interested discourse on the causes and consequences of globalization IoVer here a critical review of some recent in uential arguments at oncescholarly and political with a view of my own toward a more sophisti-cated understanding of ldquoglobalizationrdquo versus globalization on the onehand and the broader failure of the sociological imagination on theother

In False Dawn The Delusions of Global Capitalism John Gray claims thatin every country of the world a new and increasingly volatile strain ofglobal capitalism is transforming economic political and social life

Behind all ldquomeaningsrdquo of globalization is a single underlying idea whichcan be called de-localization the uprooting of activities and relationships fromlocal origins and cultures It means the displacement of activities that untilrecently were local into networks of relationships whose reach is distantand worldwide Globalization means lifting social activities out of localknowledge and placing them in networks in which they are conditionedby and condition worldwide events (FD p 57 emphasis in original)

The principal positive contribution False Dawn makes to our under-standing of globalization in addition to the de nition oVered above isits historical refutation of the natural status of the so-called free mar-

review essay 331

ket The ldquofree marketrdquo rather is a social and political construction ofcentralized state power ldquoFree markets are creatures of strong govern-ment and cannot exist without themrdquo This is the rst argument of FalseDawn (FD p 213 emphasis in original) Gray makes this point con-vincingly through an historical accounting of the rise and fall of nine-teenth century laissez-faire in Victorian England That the ldquomarketrdquo isa social construction a discursive phenomenon that serves particularvested interests is a useful and timely antidote to an increasingly Darwinistand essentialist understanding of the institutions and practices of globalcapitalism 6

This however is precisely where Grayrsquos argument goes awry Grayrsquosassertion that the free market was and remains sui generis Anglo-Saxondoes not deter him from positing however unoriginally the growth ofa global free-market economy ldquoA global free market economy will be-come a reality [elsewhere in the book Gray describes it as our presentreality and in still other places Gray is ready to write global capital-ism oV as variously an anachronism a badly formed idea an un-realizable utopia and self-destructive] The manifold economic culturesand systems that the world has always contained will be redundantThey will be merged into a single universal free marketrdquo (FD p 2)Chief among those cultures and systems is the much-maligned nation-state which Gray eulogizes thus ldquoThe leverage of national governmentsover their economies is much weaker [than that of the nineteenth cen-tury English state] If social markets are to survive or be rebuilt theywill need to be embodied in new and more exible institutionsrdquo (FD p 16 my emphasis)7

Grayrsquos claims on this score are pregnant with both contradiction andirony If the free market is the result of a strong centralized statewhence originates the global free market which inter alia serves toweaken if not rend entirely redundant states themselves Grayrsquos ownhistorical treatment of the English free market demonstrates the uselesspedantry of adjudicating between the reality or arti ciality of a ldquofreemarketrdquo SuYce it to conclude for both nineteenth century Englandand our present global society the ldquofree marketrdquo is real in its conse-quences Gray also rules out multinational corporations as the engineof globalism concluding instead that ldquoThe reality of the late twentieth-century world market is that it is ungovernable by either sovereign statesor multinational corporationsrdquo (FD p 70) This simply begs the ques-tion of agency and causality to which I return below More egregiousstill is the claim that if social markets are to endure as they arguablydo in both Germany and Japan8 that new and exible institutions will

332 review essay

need to be established Novelty and not least exibility are key tropesin the discourse of laissez-faire global capitalism typically invoked not toweaken the state but to transform its policies and practices vis-agrave-vis eco-nomic actors and institutions which include both the corporations andstate actors themselves

The new reality we face today is one in which the dichotomies ofstatecorporation governmentbusiness even publicprivate are dan-gerously false and misleading antinomies Globalization and ldquoglobaliza-tionrdquo are transforming the very meanings and lived realities of ldquostaterdquoldquocitizenshiprdquo and ldquodemocracyrdquo Gray argues that the free-market anddemocracy are in reality foes not the friends they are assumed to bein the new global vulgate issued daily from New York City and Wash-ington Gray writes

Nor evidently does a world economy that is organized as a global freemarket meet the universal human need for security The raison drsquoecirctre ofgovernments everywhere is their ability to protect citizens from insecurityA regime of global laissez-faire that prevents governments from discharg-ing this protective role is creating the conditions for still greater politicaland economic instability (FD p 21 emphases in original)

Bracketing Grayrsquos tenuous characterization of the statersquos raison drsquoecirctreeven the most cursory examination of contemporary state policies andpractices makes palpable the radical reordering of state ideals and func-tions each of which is now cast in the discourse of eYcient productionand service The same can be observed for the meaning and practiceof contemporary citizenship and by extension democracy each of whichis similarly cast in terms of consumption Weak citizenship ie weakcivil society and attenuated democracy serves to stabilize nay strengthenboth the state and the capitalist class not vice versa As Gray himselfargues ldquoTransnational organizations [ like the WTO] can get away withthis [the spread of free markets] only insofar as they are immune fromthe pressures of democratic public liferdquo (FD p 18) But this banal obser-vation is moot in light of the semantic transformation of state citizen-ship and democracy each of which is now subsumed under the aegisof consumer capitalism Consumer democracy is to global capitalismneither friend nor foe the former is the progeny of the latter

Grayrsquos failure to unpack the semantic shifts bound-up with ldquoglobal-izationrdquo stems from a still larger failure to escape two common prob-lems in macrohistorical theory rei cation and its consequent teleologyReturning to the question of agency posed above Gray leaves unex-plained the historical causes or if you prefer the crucial preconditions of

review essay 333

the emergence of a volatile strain of capitalism the consequences ofwhich he enumerates thoroughly and by and large unproblematicallyIf neither nation-states nor multinational corporations are in charge(Gray argues that both institutional forms have been hollowed-out) justwho is responsible for this mess The question for Gray however seemsrather more like ldquowhat is responsiblerdquo Consider the following exam-ples selected more or less at random

Laissez-faire thinking was supplanted by the ldquoNew Liberalrdquo thinkers suchas Hobhouse Hobson Bosanquet Green and Keynes who were ready toharness the powers of the state to moderate the eVects of market forces (FD p 15 emphasis mine)

This statement is all the more telling for its immanent juxtapositionof the actions of actual people and a collection thereof to wit the stateon the one hand and the nebula of ldquomarket forcesrdquo on the other Whoit must always be asked and answered are the individuals and institu-tions that create ldquomarket forcesrdquo And what actions do such ldquoforcesrdquoentail Again Gray

However the dislocations of social and economic life today are not causedsolely by free markets Ultimately they arise from the banalization of tech-nology Technological innovations made in advanced western countries aresoon copied everywhere Even without free-market policies the managedeconomies of the post-war period could not have survivedmdashtechnologicaladvance would have made them unsustainable (FD pp 19ndash20 emphasis mine)9

Here we encounter two further rei cations First the ldquofree marketrdquothe entity responsible one presumes for ldquomarket forcesrdquo Nowhere doesGray de ne a market be it free or regulated And at no time doesGray delineate the sets of overlapping and embedded economic polit-ical and social relations that constitute a market much less couch hisanalysis of globalization in the matrix of these relations We must bearin mind that ldquoglobalizationrdquo is as much a rei cation as ldquothe marketrdquothat they are in fact synonymous To subsume willy-nilly under thesingular undiVerentiated rubric of the ldquomarketrdquo or ldquoglobalizationrdquo mys-ti es rather than illuminates our present condition

Next is ldquotechnologyrdquo here dressed in its familiar hazardous garbWhen invoked as an active verb technology otherwise a singular if farfrom semantically transparent noun becomes an autonomous agentcapable of creating eVects in the world This use of ldquotechnologyrdquo servesonly to obscure the relations and practices that constitute technologyand to further remove us from the empirical world for which we arein need of grounded explanations involving the actions of individuals

334 review essay

and groups Consider the following passage which is instructive inso-far as it unites these heretofore disparate images

The world-historical movement we call globalization has momentum that isinexorable We are not the masters of the technologies that drive the global economythey condition us in many ways we have not begun to understand (FD p 206emphasis mine)

So long as we continue to employ this form of causal imagery wewill never fully appreciate globalization Worse still we will never bein a position to resist and reform it for the most pernicious conse-quence of rei cation is the tendency to jettison causality for teleologywhich like rei cation discourages political action10 Gray is silent onthe speci c initiatives that might constitute eYcacious resistance to andreform of the global economy This of course is the predictable resultof an analysis that relies on the rei cation of social relations which inturn relieves the reformer of her task According to Gray

The free market cannot last in an age in which economic security for themajority of people is being reduced by the world economy The regimeof laissez-faire is bound to trigger counter-movements which reject its con-straints (FD p 20 emphasis mine)

Later however Gray acknowledges that

A vital condition of reform of the international economy is that it be sup-ported by the worldrsquos single most important power Without active andcontinuing American endorsement there can be no workable institutionsof global governance But so long as the United States remains commit-ted to a global free market it will veto any such reform So long asAmerican policy is based on the laissez-faire ideology that informs theWashington consensus there is no prospect of reforming the world econ-omy (FD p 200)11

Which may appear not a little bit pessimistic until that is it is morewidely recognized that

The Washington consensus will not last forever It will undoubtedly beshaken by economic shocks and geopolitical shifts (FD p 205 emphasismine)

The question of economic and political reform then goes the wayof historical agency and causality

Lukacsrsquo lucid de nition of rei cation is instructive here Rei cationoccurs when ldquoa relation between people takes on the character of athing and thus acquires a lsquophantom-objectivityrsquo an autonomy that seems

review essay 335

so strictly rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of itsfundamental nature the relation between peoplerdquo (Lukacs 1971 pp83ndash87) The problem of rei cation it turns out plagues all of the worksunder review here and most of the discourse analytic and political alikeregarding globalization Throughout this review I try to theorize thismisapprehension of ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollary rei cations as theresult of ideological predilections and otherwise untenable methodolog-ical choices each of which can ultimately be largely explained as con-sequences of the actions and events bound-up in globalization itself

Rei cation rears its ugly head too in Anthony Giddensrsquo RunawayWorld How Globalization is Reshaping Our Livesmdashthe title itself suggests as much Giddens is however an eminently more agile social theoristthan Gray indeed more agile than most Originally given as the 1999Reith lectures broadcast globally by the BBC via both radio and theInternet Giddens oVers the following salvo regarding the character ofglobalization

Globalisation is political technological and cultural as well as economicIt has been in uenced above all by development in systems of communi-cations dating back only to the late 1960s The changes [encompassedby globalization] are being propelled by a range of factors some struc-tural others more speci c and historical Economic in uences are certainlyamong the driving forces especially the global nancial system Yet theyarenrsquot forces of nature They have been shaped by technology and cul-tural diVusion as well as by the decisions of governments to liberalise andderegulate their national economies (RW p 8)

Globalization it seems aVects everything and everything in turnaVects globalization Here the absence of clarity in the de nition ofglobalization manifests itself in a corresponding lack of clarity govern-ing its explanation Giddensrsquo argument is much like the above de nitionit tries to be all things to all people Case in point is Giddensrsquo ambiva-lence regarding the role of the state vis-agrave-vis globalization On the onehand Giddens acknowledges the decisions made by the state This issure to please sociologists who argue for the analytic importance of stateactions and not least those critical of the statersquos strategic retreat frompublic life Giddens is cognizant too of the way in which the nature ofthe state has been transformed Giddens however subtly elides the next(specious I think) question namely has the state reconciled itself to itsnew role or is the state a hapless victim powerless in the face of trans-national forces A theorist as agile as Giddens would doubtless argueif forced ldquobothrdquo but the spirit of his presentation suggests if somewhat

336 review essay

equivocally that the statersquos autonomy has been and continues to bewhittled away by the myriad ldquoforcesrdquo at work in the world today

Giddens goes on to rehearse familiar topics and arguments concern-ing the relationship between globalization (however one takes it) andrisk tradition and fundamentalism the family and feminism and nallythe prospects for democracy Democracy argues Giddens is good andas such worth ghting for Overall this captures the tenor of Giddensrsquoslim little book12 Giddens asks ldquoIs globalisation a force promoting thegeneral goodrdquo (RW p 10) That question in addition to whether wecan gain more control over our ldquorunaway worldrdquo is important ldquoForglobalisation is not incidental to our lives today It is a shift in our verylife circumstances It is the way we now liverdquo (RW pp 11ndash12) Giddensraises few compelling questions and still fewer answers The rapid pub-lication of these BBC lectures with virtually no modi cation or expansionarguably has more to say about the power and force of ldquoglobalizationrdquothan does Giddens

ldquoCulture follows money we will be the Romans in the next gen-erations as the English are nowrdquo wrote F Scott Fitzgerald with con-siderable prescience in 1921 while sojourning in France13 Sixty yearslater and culture still seemed to follow capital In 1982 French culturaloYcials warned of ldquoAmerican cultural imperialismrdquo Soon after a car-toon appeared portraying the noble European continent defended bythe likes of drsquoArtagnan Don Quixote and Shakespeare against anAmerican attack from the skies lead by Mickey Mouse anked by ETMarilyn Monroe and a hamburger14 Walter LaFeberrsquos Michael Jordanand the New Global Capitalism can be read as an elaboration of Fitzgeraldrsquosprediction and Francersquos nay the worldrsquos predicament Namely global-ization as the apotheosis of American popular culture

LaFeber begins his thin historical account in the 1890s the timeperiod in which the American economy rose to preeminence and thegame of basketball was invented For LaFeber ldquoThe history of basket-ball especially in the era of Michael Jordan helps us understand thisera known as lsquothe American Centuryrsquordquo (NGC p 22) The 1890s werealso witness to the rise of the rst multinational corporations includ-ing Standard Oil Eastman Kodak Singer and McCormick Accordingto LaFeber these companies diVer from their late-twentieth centurycounterparts in at least four respects (1) 1890s rms largely employedAmerican workers whereas 1990s rms rely on cheap foreign labor (2)While late-nineteenth century concerns traded in natural resources andindustrial goods corporations nowadays increasingly produce ldquoknowl-edgerdquo and ldquoinformationrdquo Here LaFeber like Barber (1992) signals his

review essay 337

move away from the analysis of hard political power toward soft eco-nomic and symbolic power (3) Todayrsquos transnationals unlike their an-cestors increasingly depend upon ldquoworld marketsrdquo for their pro ts (eg in 1996 four out of every ve bottles of coke were sold outside ofthe United States) and (4) Consequently late-twentieth century trans-nationals depend for their continued success on massive global adver-tising campaigns ldquoto make people want their productsrdquo (NGC p 56) Theadvertising employed by transnationals like Nike is argued to be ldquorev-olutionaryrdquo because it can be seen on as many as thirty to ve hun-dred television channels in many countries thanks to the new technologyof communication satellites and ber-optic cable For LaFeber the med-ium and the message collude to make the products of transnationalsirresistible to the denizens of the new global village Consider LaFeberrsquostake on the fall of Communism

During these decades [1970ndash1990] such new global technologies as com-puters communication satellites and ber optics transformed the globersquoseconomy It should be pointed out that this new era in world history begannot with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold Warin 1989ndash1991 but with the appearance of the post-industrial technologynearly a generation earlier For this technology changed the lives of peo-ples around the world and in so doing brought down the Communistsystem which could not adjust to this revolution (NGC p 58)

In addition to the problem of the rei cation of technology LaFebersimilarly rei es ldquothe world marketrdquo on which transnationals depend butover which the same transnationals wield considerable in uence via theirmarketing campaigns By presuming the perlocutionary power of mediamessages and indeed of the media themselves LaFeber eVectively rendsinvisible the relations between foreign consumers and the popular cul-ture and other fare produced by transnational corporations What doNike shoes or the images of Michael Jordan do for people in and outof America How are American products and symbols experienced insitu15 LaFeber like most globalization theorists emphasizes global pushfactors at the expense of the local pull factors felt articulated andinstantiated by real people in real places who constitute the real powerof ldquoworld marketsrdquo The result is a top-down externalist perspectivebereft of the global consumerrsquos Lebenswelt Consumption is explainedaway as a passive act of reception rather than an inde nite series ofmicroscopic acts of appropriation of the social world In this way LaFeberreproduces indeed globalizes the causal assumptions of the FrankfurtSchoolrsquos critique of mass culture The positive moment of consumerism

338 review essay

insofar as it is de ned as such by variously situated individuals is leftutterly untheorized Methodologically a hermeneutic reconstruction ofthe consumerrsquos point of view is attainable only through ethnographicengagement across a number of cultural sites16 Sociologically the ldquoarm-chairrdquo approach employed by LaFeber and the other authors under re-view here is methodologically and theoretically untenable Ideologicallyhowever it is quite useful insofar as it allows for a political critique thatassigns culpability to only the global cultural ldquopushersrdquo and eVectivelyabsolves the rest of the world of any responsibility whatsoever render-ing them so many dupes under the sway of expensive irresistible imagesIronically the rei cation of powerful world markets has the eVect ofstripping the consumers embedded within them of any potential foragency much less in uence For LaFeber then culture does in fact fol-low the money

The foregoing should not however be read as an aYrmation of theintellectualist romance with and tendentious presumption of subalternresistance commonplace as it is in the discipline of cultural studies Itis after all no more tenable to assume ldquoordinary peoplerdquo to be preter-naturally counter-hegemonic in their quotidien lives than it is to dis-miss them as cultural dopes Recalling Grayrsquos call for ldquonewrdquo and ldquomore exiblerdquo institutions to rescue social markets cultural critics must re exivelyaccount for their own role in the larger eld of cultural production AsThomas Frank (1999 p 84) perspicuously notes many cultural criticsmiss entirely the fatal irony of an academic radicalism that is increas-ingly coterminous with much management theory at precisely the samemoment when capitalist consultants and managers have decided to brandthemselves as radicals equating democracy and dissent with consumerismThe point rather is a simple one An understanding of globalizationas a eld of relations encompassing both power and resistance is impos-sible absent ethnographic engagement in this eld with all the variouslysituated actors involved (eg managers politicians citizens consumersworkers sub-proletariat intellectuals)

An ethnographic case makes the point American anthropologist LilaAbu-Lughod (1990) demonstrates in her ethnographic analysis of Bedouinwomen the intersection of power and resistance in global perspectiveBedouin women it turns out are avid consumers of Western pop musicTheir consumptive behavior has little to do however with the billionsspent annually on advertising by American rms Bedouin women activelyuse the lyrics of Western pop songs particularly romantic ones to sub-vert the regime of patriarchy they confront in their own local culturewherein the oral poetics of love and romance are severely restricted soas to reproduce male privilege Western music then oVers a partial

review essay 339

escape from and critical commentary on patriarchal Bedouin cultureAt the same time Bedouin culture is brought into the web of powerrelations involving the Egyptian nation-state and the larger internationalpolitical economy This instance of resistance exempli es Bourdieursquospoint about relations of power ldquoResistance can be alienating and sub-mission can be liberating Such is the paradox of the dominated andthere is no way out of itrdquo17 The chief limitation of New Global Capitalismis its exaggeration of the power of the dominant and its wholesale in-attention to the agency of the dominated18

Ditto for Zygmunt Baumanrsquos Globalization The Human ConsequencesBaumanrsquos point of departure into the global is Foucaultrsquos instrumentalmetaphor of the Panopticon In the modern exercise of power the spec-tacle was replaced by surveillance In pre-modern times power wasimpressed upon the public via displays of wealth splendor and notleast violence Modern power concentrated in the nation-state by con-trast preferred instead to linger in the shadows closely but discreetlymonitoring its subjects A case of the few regarding the many WhatFoucault overlooked however was the parallel modern development ofnew techniques of power consisting in contradistinction to surveillanceof the various mass media especially television A case of the manywatching the few19

The Panopticon even when universal in application was essentiallya local institution The Synopticon ie the mass media is increasinglyglobal The nature of the power each wields is diVerent too While thePanopticon forced people into the position where they could be watchedthe Synopticon requires little in the way of coercion By contrast theSynopticon seduces people into watching (THC p 52 emphasis in orig-inal) The many now watch the few And the few who are watched arethe celebrities No matter whence they originate all celebrities put ondisplay the world of celebrities a world whose distinctive feature is pre-cisely the quality of being watched by the many in all corners of theworld Whatever they speak about when on air they convey the mes-sage of a total way of life ldquoTheir life their way of liferdquo (THC p 52emphasis in original) To question the impact of that message on themany who watch is to Bauman

less like asking about preconceived fears and hopes and more like askingabout the ldquoeVectsrdquo of Christianity on onersquos view of the world ormdashas theChinese had askedmdashof Confucianism on public morality20

For Bauman as for LaFeber the world watches the fare producedby the globals ie the multinational corporations and the rest is his-tory The billions expended (for LaFeber) and the lofty other-worldly

340 review essay

character (for Bauman) of the globals renders otherwise legitimate naypressing questions of reception and interpretation entirely irrelevant

For all the power contained in the messages and presumably con-ferred upon the messengers Bauman much like Gray and Giddens isstill not entirely sure just who is in charge

To put it in a nutshell no one seems now to be in control Worse still it isnot clear what ldquobeing in controlrdquo could under the circumstances be like The deepest meaning conveyed by the idea of globalization is that ofthe indeterminate unruly and self-propelled character of world aVairs the absenceof a centre of a controlling desk of a board of directors of a manager-ial oYce Globalization is Jowittrsquos ldquonew world disorderrdquo under anothername (THC pp 58ndash59 rst emphasis in original second emphasis mine)

Note the now familiar tell-tale signs of rei cation the obfuscation ofsocial relations and human agency tightly coupled with the attributionof telos to ldquoworld aVairsrdquo The world may be disorderly but for Baumanat least one thing is for sure Wherever the new seat of power residesif it resides anywhere if it even exists at all it is certainly not withinthe nation-state

In the words of GH von Wright the ldquonation-state it seems is erodingor perhaps lsquowithering awayrsquo The eroding forces are transnationalrdquo Since nation-states remain the sole frame for book-balancing and the sole sources ofeVective political initiative the lsquotransnationalityrsquo or eroding forces putsthem outside the realm of deliberate purposeful and potentially rationalaction As everything that elides such action such forces their shapes andactions are blurred in the mist of mystery they are objects of guessesrather than reliable analysis (THC pp 56ndash57 rst emphasis mine secondemphasis in original)

Having thus ruled out both nations and transnationals as the sourceof the ldquoeroding forcesrdquo at work in the world Bauman asks

How has it come about that this vast expanse of man-made wilderness (notthe ldquonaturalrdquo wilderness which modernity set out to conquer and tamebut to paraphrase Anthony Giddensrsquo felicitous phrase a ldquomanufactured jun-glerdquomdashthe post-domestication wilderness one that emerged after the con-quest and as a result) has sprung into vision And why did it acquire theformidable power of obstinacy and resilience which since Durkheim istaken to be the de ning mark of ldquohard realityrdquo (THC p 69 rst empha-sis mine second emphasis in original)

This indeed is the question that should orient our analyses of ldquoglob-alizationrdquo21 As an analytic tool however it is instructive only inasmuchas we apply it equally to the putative ldquocausesrdquo of ldquoglobalizationrdquo for

review essay 341

example the withering away of the nation-state at the hands of thosepunitive and unforgiving ldquo nancial marketsrdquo (THC p 69) each of whichhas assumed of late the marks of ldquohard realityrdquo Bauman poses the ini-tial question but fails to similarly question the ontological reality of whatare actually epistemological heuristics The use of terms such as ldquomar-ketsrdquo and ldquo nancesrdquo and ldquotechnological forcesrdquo are potentially usefulwhen they serve as a kind of analytic shorthand for sets of social rela-tions that have already been enumerated and explicated explicitly andexhaustively When however they substitute for explanations when theystand in as explanations in and of themselves they serve not only tocomplicate our thinking but more egregious still to insidiously repro-duce those discourses and practices of domination against which criti-cal scholars are aligned Bauman himself anticipates this problem whenhe acknowledges with an approving nod to Cornelius Castoriadis that

the trouble with the contemporary condition of modern civilization isthat it stopped questioning itself Not asking certain questions is pregnantwith more dangers than failing to answer the questions already on theoYcial agenda while asking the wrong kind of questions all too often helpsto avert eyes from the truly important issues The price of silence is paidin the hard currency of human suVering Asking the right questions makesafter all all the diVerence between fate and destination drifting and trav-elling Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way oflife is arguably the most urgent of the services we owe our fellow humansand ourselves (THC p 5)

Like Gray and LaFeber Bauman oVers us an impassioned threnodydevoted to the deleterious eVects borne by globalization but in so doingunwittingly disarms us intellectually and consequently renders us inca-pable of intervention and resistance much less understanding We shouldtherefore welcome Pierre Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance Against the Tyrannyof the Market for Bourdieu perhaps more than any other living scholarand public intellectual deftly combines scholarly and political analysis

Bourdieursquos approach is to read ldquoglobalizationrdquo as a neo-liberal dis-course a mythology that poses as reality

Irsquove used the word ldquoglobalizationrdquo It is a myth in the strong sense of theword a powerful discourse and ideacutee force an idea which has social forcewhich obtains belief It is the main weapon in the battles against the gainsof the welfare state (AOR p 34)

Bourdieu goes on to dissect this discourse pointing out the way itevokes and rati es the ldquoso-called law of the marketrdquo (AOR p 35) Byso impugning the natural and inevitable ontological character of ldquoglobal-

342 review essay

izationrdquo and the ldquosupposed iron laws of the nancial marketsrdquo Bourdieuis poised to make the theoretical contribution Gray irted with but failedto realize to wit an analysis of the social construction of the globaleconomy (AOR pp 26ndash27) Yet Bourdieu soon after does an about-face on this issue writing

While globalization is above all a justi catory myth there is one case whereit is quite real that of the nancial markets Thanks to the removal of a num-ber of legal restrictions and the development of electronic communicationswhich lead to lower communication costs we are moving towards a uniednancial market (AOR p 38 emphasis mine)

Bourdieursquos account is rife with contradictions and illogical unsub-stantiated assertions of fact Particularly disabling is his myopia regard-ing the role of the nation-state While ldquoglobalizationrdquo is a myth (wellyes it is) the power of the ldquo nancial marketsrdquo and the ldquointernationalcapital marketrdquo is quite real indeed22 The latter according to Bourdieuprevents individual nation-states from manipulating their exchange andinterest rates which in turn are increasingly determined by a powerconcentrated in the hands of a small number of countries whose iden-tities are never revealed and although one presumes that Bourdieu hasin mind the United States it is not at all clear which other nationsmight be controlling the rest of the worldrsquos nances (Germanyrsquos socialmarket Japanrsquos Certainly neither the French nor the English registerhere) So nations are powerless a familiar refrain Unless that is theyare a part of the small exclusive cabal of nations that rules the worldin which case they have considerable power after all

Bourdieu calls for the creation of a class of collective intellectualswho can among other things analyze the production and circulationof neo-liberal discourse to expose the ideological work of journalistsmanagers and not least the cunning reason of intellectuals23 Thisanalysis is to be carried out presumably in a manner consistent withhis project of re exive sociology24 That would mean mapping the full eld of cultural production and symbolic power that now obtains on aglobal level specifying the key actors and the objective structure of theirrelationships and analyzing the habitus of the agents that nds its tra-jectory within the speci c eld(s) in question25 That Bourdieu fails toattempt much less accomplish this admittedly bold project is a majorshortcoming of Acts of Resistance which amounts to little more than asteady stream of breathless bromides forever interrupted by conceptualand logical inconsistencies

Worse still is the manner in which Bourdieumdashlike Gray Giddens

review essay 343

and Baumanmdashunwittingly buttresses the discourse of neo-liberalism byutterly ignoring the active role played by the state in ushering in anostensible new world disorder in which the state appears as a shadowof its former self at best a hapless and unwilling conspirator accordedlittle responsibility Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance as with the other titlesunder review here quickly establishes its liberal credentials through itslament for a safer more secure and certain world (sicherheit) in whichthe state and the citizen and one suspects the progressive intellectualeach mattered Those nominal credentials however mask and insidi-ously support the state in its new corporatist guise26 Take for instancethe manifesto co-authored by prime ministers Tony Blair and GerhardSchroeder entitled ldquoThe Third WayDie Neue Mitterdquo27 Therein the min-isters declare

In a world of ever more rapid globalization and scienti c changes we needto create the conditions in which existing businesses can prosper and adaptand new businesses can be set up and grow Our aim is to modern-ize the welfare state not dismantle it Flexible markets must be combinedwith a newly dened role for an active state The state must become an activeagent for employment not merely the passive recipient of the casualties ofeconomic failure (emphasis mine)28

If ldquoglobalizationrdquo did not exist the state would have invented itOr consider to choose another recent example the passing of a new

bill in Britain which rede nes terrorism as ldquoThe use of serious violenceagainst persons or property or the threat to use such violence to intim-idate or coerce a government the public or any section of the publicfor political religious or ideological endsrdquo29 Borrowed verbatim fromthe American FBI this new bill was passed in British parliament inMarch 2000 by 210 votes to one Among other purposes the bill willserve as a deterrent to activists who would campaign publicly againstglobalization and multinational corporations as thousands recently didon ldquoMay Dayrdquo in Britain According to a British GM food activistldquoThe government is creating a private security service for transnationalcorporationsrdquo 30 To Bourdieu et al this is simply another example ofthe puppet that is the new nation-state orchestrated from above andafar by those indomitable nancial markets

To the sociologist Saskia Sassen however it is a case in point of thestatersquos active and voluntary complicity in the construction and not leaststrategic invocation of ldquoglobalizationrdquo Sassen contends that far frombeing passive and merely reactive under the sway of globalizationldquonational rms and national institutions have participated in the processrdquo

344 review essay

Sassen moreover rejects the notion that the global economy is ldquosome-how lsquoout therersquordquo forcing a nation and its corporations to change theirpractices Rather Sassen argues forcefully that the global economy hasbeen created by national industries with the assistance of their ownnationrsquos legislative and regulatory bodies In so doing Sassen pushes thede nition of the global economy beyond the production distributionand consumption of goods and services to encompass a worldwide sys-tem of governance and power within a ldquonew frontier zonerdquo which

is not merely a dividing line between the national economy and theglobal economy It is a zone of politico-economic interactions that pro-duce new institutional forms and alter some of the old ones Nor is this encounterbetween the global and the national just a matter of reducing regulations or the role ofgovernment generally simply to posit as is so often done that economic glob-alization has brought with it declining signi cance of the national state toutcourt misses some of the ner points of this transformation (emphasis mine)31

Pace Sassen and others who argue convincingly for the need to ldquobringthe state back inrdquo32 to our analyses the failure to recognize the trans-formation of the nonetheless active role of the nation-state is a symp-tom of a much broader failure of the sociological imagination bear inmind that the works discussed above are by some of the eldrsquos mostprominent gures Despite their admirably meliorist intentions theseworks each serve to invest ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollaries ie mar-ket and technological ldquoforcesrdquo with a ldquothingnessrdquo and an eYcacy itdoes not cannot possess This tendency stems I think from the nolonger tenable theoretical assumption that modernity consists of the compartmentalization of reality into three distinct domains (1) Market(economy) (2) State (polity) and (3) Civil Society (culturepublic sphere)It is arguable whether this tripartite heuristic was ever analytically use-ful but the problem it poses for sociologists now is a diVerent one forthis heuristic has assumed the status of a dead metaphor that of hardreality According to Wallerstein this theorem of separateness and mutualexclusivity a mere two hundred years old is now so deeply rooted inour consciousness and linguistic tools that we nd it almost impossibleto formulate sentences much less cogent analytic arguments free of thisthreefold monster33 Thus rei ed these epistemologic tools no longerserve us They instead predispose us to see each sphere in terms onlyof expansion (as in the case of the market) or retraction (as in the rolesof the state and the public sphere) rather than the simultaneous seman-tic and ontological transformation of all three34 Returning to Cassirer

review essay 345

But this problem itself appears spurious as soon as we realize that the dis-tinctions which here are taken for granted the analysis of reality in termsof things and processes permanent and transitory aspects objects andactions do not precede language as a substratum of given fact but thatlanguage itself is what initiates such articulations and develops them inits own sphere35

As Wallerstein adroitly notes these unconscious rei cations obscuremuch of reality from the scholars who unre exively deploy them36 Thereis however still more at work than this For all the attention I havedevoted to disentangling the discourse of ldquoglobalizationrdquo we must notlose sight of the many decisions actions and consequences intentionalor not that loosely comprise the ever-shifting reality of globalizationwithin which our analytic discourse is developed and deployed Chiefamong these in this context are the sense and the reality of profounddislocation displacement and disengagement that aVect sociologists asmuch as anyone else37 Our theories and methods bear the indelibleimprint of the world we seek to comprehend

A renovated sociological imagination of globalization must steer clearof the grand theorizing rehearsed by the works reviewed here withoutsimultaneously lapsing into the abstracted empiricism that infects mostof the technical work on globalization38 To avoid these twin pitfalls wewill need to develop an entirely new vocabulary grounded in directempirical engagement with our new globalizing reality Examples ofthis new approach are already under way They include so far Marcusrsquocall for multi-sited ethnography Sassenrsquos work toward cultivating anethnographic approach to studying the way the global is instantiatedwithin local urban spaces and Duneierrsquos ldquoextended place methodrdquo39

The considerable potential of these approaches notwithstanding the soci-ological apprehension of globalization will require rst and foremost acollective eVort on the part of variously situated scholars to wit a globalnetwork consisting of several local nodes in which substantive con ictand cooperation may freely occur What the late Bill Readings calleda community of ldquodissensusrdquo40 Absent these eVorts our meliorist inten-tions have little chance of ever becoming eYcacious interventions

Notes

1 Thanks to Denis Wall for editorial assistance and to Julie Custeau for her ever-astute guidance and unfailing support of everything that I do The works reviewed hereinclude Bauman Zygmunt 1998 Globalization the human consequences (New York ColumbiaUniversity Press) hereafter THC Bourdieu Pierre 1998 Acts of resistance against the tyranny

346 review essay

of the market (New York The New Press) hereafter AOR Gray John 1998 False dawnthe delusions of global capitalism (London Granta Books) hereafter FD Giddens Anthony2000 Runaway World (New York Routledge) hereafter RW and LaFeber Walter 1999Michael Jordan and the new global capitalism (New York W W Norton amp Company) here-after NGC

2 1946 p 73 See Cassidy (1997) The recent highly organized public protests in Davos Seattle

and Washington lend support to this prediction4 For an historical perspective on the semantic polyvalence if not polysemy of

ldquoglobalizationrdquo over the Longue Dureacutee see Moore (1997)5 As Giddens puts it ldquoThe global spread of the term [globalization] is evidence of

the very developments to which it refersrdquo (RW p 3)6 See Bourdieursquos AOR p 427 Gray later asserts however that ldquoThe leverage of sovereign states over business

may actually be greater in some respects today than it has been in the pastrdquo (FD p 67) In which respects Gray does not say Nor does he oVer any evidence to but-tress what must be classi ed as like so many of the statements comprising FD purespeculation (or what might be euphemized as ldquoarm-chair economicsrdquo)

8 See the intriguing if tentative results of an international project comparing thefuture of nationally embedded capitalism in the global economy in Streeck and Yamamura(2000)

9 For an illuminating historical treatment of the rei cation of technology see Marx(1997)

10 Gray argues further that the eVects of these forces are irrevocable and irreversibleThe regrettable and wrong-headed policy choices made by the Thatcher administrationnow constitute the ineluctable reality of the Blair government Gray goes on to arguethe same for the neo-liberal turn taken by New Zealand Grayrsquos argument is contra-dicted however by rst the palpably intentional adoption of neo-liberal tenets on thepart of the Blair government (not least its elimination of Article Four hitherto the cor-nerstone of Labour politics) and second by the recent election of a Labour governmentin New Zealand whose popularity in the polls in 1990 was just 2 percent a Labourgovernment that is moreover authentically committed to rebuilding and underwritingits social institutions See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 11 Even the Economistadmitted no doubt plaintively that ldquoglobalization is not irreversiblerdquo (see Smith andMoran [2000 p 70])

11 Gray is confused about the power of the American model Of ldquohyperglobaliza-tion a corporate utopiardquo Gray writes ldquoIt represents an historical transformation thathas no end-state and which is subverting American capitalism as well as its rivals as aprocess leading to the universal acceptance of American free marketsrdquo (FD p 67)

12 In contradistinction to Giddensrsquo slim but instructive A Brief but Critical Introductionto Sociology

13 Fitzgerald made this prediction in a personal letter to the novelist and criticEdmund (Bunny) Wilson

14 de Medici and de Medici (1986 pp 17ndash20)15 For an empirically rich and theoretically supple analysis of the local experience

of McDonaldrsquos throughout east Asia refer to Watson et al (1997) This volume of ethno-graphic accounts makes particularly plain the ways in which McDonaldrsquos as a transna-tional corporation has allowed itself via a local ownership structure to adapt to theexigencies and idiosyncrasies of local cultures Even while McDonaldrsquos market share reclinedin the United States during the 1990s it continued to grow in foreign markets includ-ing but not limited to east Asia

16 See Marcus (1995) on the advantages of conducting multi-site ethnography inofthe world system

17 Bourdieu (1987 p 184)

review essay 347

18 One nal word of warning regarding NGC the strength and weakness of thisbook are one in the same NGC is unique in that it tries to marry the history of bas-ketball with the history of the American economy A short book it suYciently coversneither task Basketball fans in particular should look elsewhere for a treatment of boththe NBA and the career of Michael Jordan See instead the eminently readable andinformative Halberstam (1999) and in keeping with the line of argument pursued aboveJordan (1998)

19 This is what Mathiesen (1997) aptly coined the Synopticon20 Gerbner and Gross (1976) quoted in THC p 5321 This question if broadened in scope is arguably the most important question

sociologists can pose Period Substitute ldquosocietyrdquo for ldquoglobalizationrdquo and the analyticpotential of the question comes into bold relief

22 Compare the putative reality of the nancial market with the following breath-less declaration ldquoIn short against all the prophets of misery who want to convince youthat your destiny is in the hands of transcendent independent indiVerent powers suchas the lsquo nancial marketsrsquo or the mechanisms if lsquoglobalizationrsquo I want to declare withthe hope of convincing you that the future your future which is also our future thatof all Europeans depends a great deal on you as Germans and trade unionistsrdquo (AORp 69)

23 For his own analysis cum criticism of the ldquojournalistic eldrdquo see Bourdieu (1998)for Bourdieursquos take on the role of intellectuals in diVusing the new global vulgate seeBourdieu and Wacquant (1999a 1999b)

24 I say presumably because Bourdieu at no point in AOR elaborates this programFor an original and compelling criticism of Bourdieursquos sociological theory and methodsee Griller (1996)

25 See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992 pp 104ndash5) Whether or not the global eldis coterminous with what Bourdieu calls the eld of power (a kind of meta- eld) is aninteresting question

26 If I am harder on Bourdieu than the other authors under review (which is arguable)it is due rst to the inconsistency that obtains between his previous scholarly work andhis present political critique and second and most important because his ostensibly lib-eral critique unwittingly and insidiously reproduces the neo-liberal discourse he seeks tosubvert

27 Not coincidentally the so-called ldquothird wayrdquo also advocated by Bill Clinton islargely inspired by Anthony Giddensrsquo book of the same name Space does not permitan analysis of Giddensrsquo contribution to practical politics here Blair and Schroederrsquos man-ifesto is reprinted in the spring 2000 edition of Dissent pp 51ndash65

28 Small wonder Gray who makes the same recommendation demonizes the Thatcheradministration on the one (left) hand while he serves as an apologist for the presentBlair government on the other (right) hand

29 See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 2030 Ibid31 See Sassen (2000 pp 164ndash65)32 For example the entire corpus of Theda Skocpal33 Wallerstein (2000 p 307)34 An apt example of the compartmentalist way of thinking about the state is Daniel

Bellrsquos famous remark that the nation-state is at once too small and too large to ade-quately address most of the problems it faces

35 1946 p 1236 Which in the case of Bourdieu in particular is all the more ironic for its theo-

retical inconsistency with his overall sociological-epistemological project37 Why after all is ldquoglobalizationrdquo now on everyonersquos lips in academe Might it

have something to do as a colleague of mine astutely theorizes because the educatedand professional middle-classes including university professors of Western nations are

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

review essay 331

ket The ldquofree marketrdquo rather is a social and political construction ofcentralized state power ldquoFree markets are creatures of strong govern-ment and cannot exist without themrdquo This is the rst argument of FalseDawn (FD p 213 emphasis in original) Gray makes this point con-vincingly through an historical accounting of the rise and fall of nine-teenth century laissez-faire in Victorian England That the ldquomarketrdquo isa social construction a discursive phenomenon that serves particularvested interests is a useful and timely antidote to an increasingly Darwinistand essentialist understanding of the institutions and practices of globalcapitalism 6

This however is precisely where Grayrsquos argument goes awry Grayrsquosassertion that the free market was and remains sui generis Anglo-Saxondoes not deter him from positing however unoriginally the growth ofa global free-market economy ldquoA global free market economy will be-come a reality [elsewhere in the book Gray describes it as our presentreality and in still other places Gray is ready to write global capital-ism oV as variously an anachronism a badly formed idea an un-realizable utopia and self-destructive] The manifold economic culturesand systems that the world has always contained will be redundantThey will be merged into a single universal free marketrdquo (FD p 2)Chief among those cultures and systems is the much-maligned nation-state which Gray eulogizes thus ldquoThe leverage of national governmentsover their economies is much weaker [than that of the nineteenth cen-tury English state] If social markets are to survive or be rebuilt theywill need to be embodied in new and more exible institutionsrdquo (FD p 16 my emphasis)7

Grayrsquos claims on this score are pregnant with both contradiction andirony If the free market is the result of a strong centralized statewhence originates the global free market which inter alia serves toweaken if not rend entirely redundant states themselves Grayrsquos ownhistorical treatment of the English free market demonstrates the uselesspedantry of adjudicating between the reality or arti ciality of a ldquofreemarketrdquo SuYce it to conclude for both nineteenth century Englandand our present global society the ldquofree marketrdquo is real in its conse-quences Gray also rules out multinational corporations as the engineof globalism concluding instead that ldquoThe reality of the late twentieth-century world market is that it is ungovernable by either sovereign statesor multinational corporationsrdquo (FD p 70) This simply begs the ques-tion of agency and causality to which I return below More egregiousstill is the claim that if social markets are to endure as they arguablydo in both Germany and Japan8 that new and exible institutions will

332 review essay

need to be established Novelty and not least exibility are key tropesin the discourse of laissez-faire global capitalism typically invoked not toweaken the state but to transform its policies and practices vis-agrave-vis eco-nomic actors and institutions which include both the corporations andstate actors themselves

The new reality we face today is one in which the dichotomies ofstatecorporation governmentbusiness even publicprivate are dan-gerously false and misleading antinomies Globalization and ldquoglobaliza-tionrdquo are transforming the very meanings and lived realities of ldquostaterdquoldquocitizenshiprdquo and ldquodemocracyrdquo Gray argues that the free-market anddemocracy are in reality foes not the friends they are assumed to bein the new global vulgate issued daily from New York City and Wash-ington Gray writes

Nor evidently does a world economy that is organized as a global freemarket meet the universal human need for security The raison drsquoecirctre ofgovernments everywhere is their ability to protect citizens from insecurityA regime of global laissez-faire that prevents governments from discharg-ing this protective role is creating the conditions for still greater politicaland economic instability (FD p 21 emphases in original)

Bracketing Grayrsquos tenuous characterization of the statersquos raison drsquoecirctreeven the most cursory examination of contemporary state policies andpractices makes palpable the radical reordering of state ideals and func-tions each of which is now cast in the discourse of eYcient productionand service The same can be observed for the meaning and practiceof contemporary citizenship and by extension democracy each of whichis similarly cast in terms of consumption Weak citizenship ie weakcivil society and attenuated democracy serves to stabilize nay strengthenboth the state and the capitalist class not vice versa As Gray himselfargues ldquoTransnational organizations [ like the WTO] can get away withthis [the spread of free markets] only insofar as they are immune fromthe pressures of democratic public liferdquo (FD p 18) But this banal obser-vation is moot in light of the semantic transformation of state citizen-ship and democracy each of which is now subsumed under the aegisof consumer capitalism Consumer democracy is to global capitalismneither friend nor foe the former is the progeny of the latter

Grayrsquos failure to unpack the semantic shifts bound-up with ldquoglobal-izationrdquo stems from a still larger failure to escape two common prob-lems in macrohistorical theory rei cation and its consequent teleologyReturning to the question of agency posed above Gray leaves unex-plained the historical causes or if you prefer the crucial preconditions of

review essay 333

the emergence of a volatile strain of capitalism the consequences ofwhich he enumerates thoroughly and by and large unproblematicallyIf neither nation-states nor multinational corporations are in charge(Gray argues that both institutional forms have been hollowed-out) justwho is responsible for this mess The question for Gray however seemsrather more like ldquowhat is responsiblerdquo Consider the following exam-ples selected more or less at random

Laissez-faire thinking was supplanted by the ldquoNew Liberalrdquo thinkers suchas Hobhouse Hobson Bosanquet Green and Keynes who were ready toharness the powers of the state to moderate the eVects of market forces (FD p 15 emphasis mine)

This statement is all the more telling for its immanent juxtapositionof the actions of actual people and a collection thereof to wit the stateon the one hand and the nebula of ldquomarket forcesrdquo on the other Whoit must always be asked and answered are the individuals and institu-tions that create ldquomarket forcesrdquo And what actions do such ldquoforcesrdquoentail Again Gray

However the dislocations of social and economic life today are not causedsolely by free markets Ultimately they arise from the banalization of tech-nology Technological innovations made in advanced western countries aresoon copied everywhere Even without free-market policies the managedeconomies of the post-war period could not have survivedmdashtechnologicaladvance would have made them unsustainable (FD pp 19ndash20 emphasis mine)9

Here we encounter two further rei cations First the ldquofree marketrdquothe entity responsible one presumes for ldquomarket forcesrdquo Nowhere doesGray de ne a market be it free or regulated And at no time doesGray delineate the sets of overlapping and embedded economic polit-ical and social relations that constitute a market much less couch hisanalysis of globalization in the matrix of these relations We must bearin mind that ldquoglobalizationrdquo is as much a rei cation as ldquothe marketrdquothat they are in fact synonymous To subsume willy-nilly under thesingular undiVerentiated rubric of the ldquomarketrdquo or ldquoglobalizationrdquo mys-ti es rather than illuminates our present condition

Next is ldquotechnologyrdquo here dressed in its familiar hazardous garbWhen invoked as an active verb technology otherwise a singular if farfrom semantically transparent noun becomes an autonomous agentcapable of creating eVects in the world This use of ldquotechnologyrdquo servesonly to obscure the relations and practices that constitute technologyand to further remove us from the empirical world for which we arein need of grounded explanations involving the actions of individuals

334 review essay

and groups Consider the following passage which is instructive inso-far as it unites these heretofore disparate images

The world-historical movement we call globalization has momentum that isinexorable We are not the masters of the technologies that drive the global economythey condition us in many ways we have not begun to understand (FD p 206emphasis mine)

So long as we continue to employ this form of causal imagery wewill never fully appreciate globalization Worse still we will never bein a position to resist and reform it for the most pernicious conse-quence of rei cation is the tendency to jettison causality for teleologywhich like rei cation discourages political action10 Gray is silent onthe speci c initiatives that might constitute eYcacious resistance to andreform of the global economy This of course is the predictable resultof an analysis that relies on the rei cation of social relations which inturn relieves the reformer of her task According to Gray

The free market cannot last in an age in which economic security for themajority of people is being reduced by the world economy The regimeof laissez-faire is bound to trigger counter-movements which reject its con-straints (FD p 20 emphasis mine)

Later however Gray acknowledges that

A vital condition of reform of the international economy is that it be sup-ported by the worldrsquos single most important power Without active andcontinuing American endorsement there can be no workable institutionsof global governance But so long as the United States remains commit-ted to a global free market it will veto any such reform So long asAmerican policy is based on the laissez-faire ideology that informs theWashington consensus there is no prospect of reforming the world econ-omy (FD p 200)11

Which may appear not a little bit pessimistic until that is it is morewidely recognized that

The Washington consensus will not last forever It will undoubtedly beshaken by economic shocks and geopolitical shifts (FD p 205 emphasismine)

The question of economic and political reform then goes the wayof historical agency and causality

Lukacsrsquo lucid de nition of rei cation is instructive here Rei cationoccurs when ldquoa relation between people takes on the character of athing and thus acquires a lsquophantom-objectivityrsquo an autonomy that seems

review essay 335

so strictly rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of itsfundamental nature the relation between peoplerdquo (Lukacs 1971 pp83ndash87) The problem of rei cation it turns out plagues all of the worksunder review here and most of the discourse analytic and political alikeregarding globalization Throughout this review I try to theorize thismisapprehension of ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollary rei cations as theresult of ideological predilections and otherwise untenable methodolog-ical choices each of which can ultimately be largely explained as con-sequences of the actions and events bound-up in globalization itself

Rei cation rears its ugly head too in Anthony Giddensrsquo RunawayWorld How Globalization is Reshaping Our Livesmdashthe title itself suggests as much Giddens is however an eminently more agile social theoristthan Gray indeed more agile than most Originally given as the 1999Reith lectures broadcast globally by the BBC via both radio and theInternet Giddens oVers the following salvo regarding the character ofglobalization

Globalisation is political technological and cultural as well as economicIt has been in uenced above all by development in systems of communi-cations dating back only to the late 1960s The changes [encompassedby globalization] are being propelled by a range of factors some struc-tural others more speci c and historical Economic in uences are certainlyamong the driving forces especially the global nancial system Yet theyarenrsquot forces of nature They have been shaped by technology and cul-tural diVusion as well as by the decisions of governments to liberalise andderegulate their national economies (RW p 8)

Globalization it seems aVects everything and everything in turnaVects globalization Here the absence of clarity in the de nition ofglobalization manifests itself in a corresponding lack of clarity govern-ing its explanation Giddensrsquo argument is much like the above de nitionit tries to be all things to all people Case in point is Giddensrsquo ambiva-lence regarding the role of the state vis-agrave-vis globalization On the onehand Giddens acknowledges the decisions made by the state This issure to please sociologists who argue for the analytic importance of stateactions and not least those critical of the statersquos strategic retreat frompublic life Giddens is cognizant too of the way in which the nature ofthe state has been transformed Giddens however subtly elides the next(specious I think) question namely has the state reconciled itself to itsnew role or is the state a hapless victim powerless in the face of trans-national forces A theorist as agile as Giddens would doubtless argueif forced ldquobothrdquo but the spirit of his presentation suggests if somewhat

336 review essay

equivocally that the statersquos autonomy has been and continues to bewhittled away by the myriad ldquoforcesrdquo at work in the world today

Giddens goes on to rehearse familiar topics and arguments concern-ing the relationship between globalization (however one takes it) andrisk tradition and fundamentalism the family and feminism and nallythe prospects for democracy Democracy argues Giddens is good andas such worth ghting for Overall this captures the tenor of Giddensrsquoslim little book12 Giddens asks ldquoIs globalisation a force promoting thegeneral goodrdquo (RW p 10) That question in addition to whether wecan gain more control over our ldquorunaway worldrdquo is important ldquoForglobalisation is not incidental to our lives today It is a shift in our verylife circumstances It is the way we now liverdquo (RW pp 11ndash12) Giddensraises few compelling questions and still fewer answers The rapid pub-lication of these BBC lectures with virtually no modi cation or expansionarguably has more to say about the power and force of ldquoglobalizationrdquothan does Giddens

ldquoCulture follows money we will be the Romans in the next gen-erations as the English are nowrdquo wrote F Scott Fitzgerald with con-siderable prescience in 1921 while sojourning in France13 Sixty yearslater and culture still seemed to follow capital In 1982 French culturaloYcials warned of ldquoAmerican cultural imperialismrdquo Soon after a car-toon appeared portraying the noble European continent defended bythe likes of drsquoArtagnan Don Quixote and Shakespeare against anAmerican attack from the skies lead by Mickey Mouse anked by ETMarilyn Monroe and a hamburger14 Walter LaFeberrsquos Michael Jordanand the New Global Capitalism can be read as an elaboration of Fitzgeraldrsquosprediction and Francersquos nay the worldrsquos predicament Namely global-ization as the apotheosis of American popular culture

LaFeber begins his thin historical account in the 1890s the timeperiod in which the American economy rose to preeminence and thegame of basketball was invented For LaFeber ldquoThe history of basket-ball especially in the era of Michael Jordan helps us understand thisera known as lsquothe American Centuryrsquordquo (NGC p 22) The 1890s werealso witness to the rise of the rst multinational corporations includ-ing Standard Oil Eastman Kodak Singer and McCormick Accordingto LaFeber these companies diVer from their late-twentieth centurycounterparts in at least four respects (1) 1890s rms largely employedAmerican workers whereas 1990s rms rely on cheap foreign labor (2)While late-nineteenth century concerns traded in natural resources andindustrial goods corporations nowadays increasingly produce ldquoknowl-edgerdquo and ldquoinformationrdquo Here LaFeber like Barber (1992) signals his

review essay 337

move away from the analysis of hard political power toward soft eco-nomic and symbolic power (3) Todayrsquos transnationals unlike their an-cestors increasingly depend upon ldquoworld marketsrdquo for their pro ts (eg in 1996 four out of every ve bottles of coke were sold outside ofthe United States) and (4) Consequently late-twentieth century trans-nationals depend for their continued success on massive global adver-tising campaigns ldquoto make people want their productsrdquo (NGC p 56) Theadvertising employed by transnationals like Nike is argued to be ldquorev-olutionaryrdquo because it can be seen on as many as thirty to ve hun-dred television channels in many countries thanks to the new technologyof communication satellites and ber-optic cable For LaFeber the med-ium and the message collude to make the products of transnationalsirresistible to the denizens of the new global village Consider LaFeberrsquostake on the fall of Communism

During these decades [1970ndash1990] such new global technologies as com-puters communication satellites and ber optics transformed the globersquoseconomy It should be pointed out that this new era in world history begannot with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold Warin 1989ndash1991 but with the appearance of the post-industrial technologynearly a generation earlier For this technology changed the lives of peo-ples around the world and in so doing brought down the Communistsystem which could not adjust to this revolution (NGC p 58)

In addition to the problem of the rei cation of technology LaFebersimilarly rei es ldquothe world marketrdquo on which transnationals depend butover which the same transnationals wield considerable in uence via theirmarketing campaigns By presuming the perlocutionary power of mediamessages and indeed of the media themselves LaFeber eVectively rendsinvisible the relations between foreign consumers and the popular cul-ture and other fare produced by transnational corporations What doNike shoes or the images of Michael Jordan do for people in and outof America How are American products and symbols experienced insitu15 LaFeber like most globalization theorists emphasizes global pushfactors at the expense of the local pull factors felt articulated andinstantiated by real people in real places who constitute the real powerof ldquoworld marketsrdquo The result is a top-down externalist perspectivebereft of the global consumerrsquos Lebenswelt Consumption is explainedaway as a passive act of reception rather than an inde nite series ofmicroscopic acts of appropriation of the social world In this way LaFeberreproduces indeed globalizes the causal assumptions of the FrankfurtSchoolrsquos critique of mass culture The positive moment of consumerism

338 review essay

insofar as it is de ned as such by variously situated individuals is leftutterly untheorized Methodologically a hermeneutic reconstruction ofthe consumerrsquos point of view is attainable only through ethnographicengagement across a number of cultural sites16 Sociologically the ldquoarm-chairrdquo approach employed by LaFeber and the other authors under re-view here is methodologically and theoretically untenable Ideologicallyhowever it is quite useful insofar as it allows for a political critique thatassigns culpability to only the global cultural ldquopushersrdquo and eVectivelyabsolves the rest of the world of any responsibility whatsoever render-ing them so many dupes under the sway of expensive irresistible imagesIronically the rei cation of powerful world markets has the eVect ofstripping the consumers embedded within them of any potential foragency much less in uence For LaFeber then culture does in fact fol-low the money

The foregoing should not however be read as an aYrmation of theintellectualist romance with and tendentious presumption of subalternresistance commonplace as it is in the discipline of cultural studies Itis after all no more tenable to assume ldquoordinary peoplerdquo to be preter-naturally counter-hegemonic in their quotidien lives than it is to dis-miss them as cultural dopes Recalling Grayrsquos call for ldquonewrdquo and ldquomore exiblerdquo institutions to rescue social markets cultural critics must re exivelyaccount for their own role in the larger eld of cultural production AsThomas Frank (1999 p 84) perspicuously notes many cultural criticsmiss entirely the fatal irony of an academic radicalism that is increas-ingly coterminous with much management theory at precisely the samemoment when capitalist consultants and managers have decided to brandthemselves as radicals equating democracy and dissent with consumerismThe point rather is a simple one An understanding of globalizationas a eld of relations encompassing both power and resistance is impos-sible absent ethnographic engagement in this eld with all the variouslysituated actors involved (eg managers politicians citizens consumersworkers sub-proletariat intellectuals)

An ethnographic case makes the point American anthropologist LilaAbu-Lughod (1990) demonstrates in her ethnographic analysis of Bedouinwomen the intersection of power and resistance in global perspectiveBedouin women it turns out are avid consumers of Western pop musicTheir consumptive behavior has little to do however with the billionsspent annually on advertising by American rms Bedouin women activelyuse the lyrics of Western pop songs particularly romantic ones to sub-vert the regime of patriarchy they confront in their own local culturewherein the oral poetics of love and romance are severely restricted soas to reproduce male privilege Western music then oVers a partial

review essay 339

escape from and critical commentary on patriarchal Bedouin cultureAt the same time Bedouin culture is brought into the web of powerrelations involving the Egyptian nation-state and the larger internationalpolitical economy This instance of resistance exempli es Bourdieursquospoint about relations of power ldquoResistance can be alienating and sub-mission can be liberating Such is the paradox of the dominated andthere is no way out of itrdquo17 The chief limitation of New Global Capitalismis its exaggeration of the power of the dominant and its wholesale in-attention to the agency of the dominated18

Ditto for Zygmunt Baumanrsquos Globalization The Human ConsequencesBaumanrsquos point of departure into the global is Foucaultrsquos instrumentalmetaphor of the Panopticon In the modern exercise of power the spec-tacle was replaced by surveillance In pre-modern times power wasimpressed upon the public via displays of wealth splendor and notleast violence Modern power concentrated in the nation-state by con-trast preferred instead to linger in the shadows closely but discreetlymonitoring its subjects A case of the few regarding the many WhatFoucault overlooked however was the parallel modern development ofnew techniques of power consisting in contradistinction to surveillanceof the various mass media especially television A case of the manywatching the few19

The Panopticon even when universal in application was essentiallya local institution The Synopticon ie the mass media is increasinglyglobal The nature of the power each wields is diVerent too While thePanopticon forced people into the position where they could be watchedthe Synopticon requires little in the way of coercion By contrast theSynopticon seduces people into watching (THC p 52 emphasis in orig-inal) The many now watch the few And the few who are watched arethe celebrities No matter whence they originate all celebrities put ondisplay the world of celebrities a world whose distinctive feature is pre-cisely the quality of being watched by the many in all corners of theworld Whatever they speak about when on air they convey the mes-sage of a total way of life ldquoTheir life their way of liferdquo (THC p 52emphasis in original) To question the impact of that message on themany who watch is to Bauman

less like asking about preconceived fears and hopes and more like askingabout the ldquoeVectsrdquo of Christianity on onersquos view of the world ormdashas theChinese had askedmdashof Confucianism on public morality20

For Bauman as for LaFeber the world watches the fare producedby the globals ie the multinational corporations and the rest is his-tory The billions expended (for LaFeber) and the lofty other-worldly

340 review essay

character (for Bauman) of the globals renders otherwise legitimate naypressing questions of reception and interpretation entirely irrelevant

For all the power contained in the messages and presumably con-ferred upon the messengers Bauman much like Gray and Giddens isstill not entirely sure just who is in charge

To put it in a nutshell no one seems now to be in control Worse still it isnot clear what ldquobeing in controlrdquo could under the circumstances be like The deepest meaning conveyed by the idea of globalization is that ofthe indeterminate unruly and self-propelled character of world aVairs the absenceof a centre of a controlling desk of a board of directors of a manager-ial oYce Globalization is Jowittrsquos ldquonew world disorderrdquo under anothername (THC pp 58ndash59 rst emphasis in original second emphasis mine)

Note the now familiar tell-tale signs of rei cation the obfuscation ofsocial relations and human agency tightly coupled with the attributionof telos to ldquoworld aVairsrdquo The world may be disorderly but for Baumanat least one thing is for sure Wherever the new seat of power residesif it resides anywhere if it even exists at all it is certainly not withinthe nation-state

In the words of GH von Wright the ldquonation-state it seems is erodingor perhaps lsquowithering awayrsquo The eroding forces are transnationalrdquo Since nation-states remain the sole frame for book-balancing and the sole sources ofeVective political initiative the lsquotransnationalityrsquo or eroding forces putsthem outside the realm of deliberate purposeful and potentially rationalaction As everything that elides such action such forces their shapes andactions are blurred in the mist of mystery they are objects of guessesrather than reliable analysis (THC pp 56ndash57 rst emphasis mine secondemphasis in original)

Having thus ruled out both nations and transnationals as the sourceof the ldquoeroding forcesrdquo at work in the world Bauman asks

How has it come about that this vast expanse of man-made wilderness (notthe ldquonaturalrdquo wilderness which modernity set out to conquer and tamebut to paraphrase Anthony Giddensrsquo felicitous phrase a ldquomanufactured jun-glerdquomdashthe post-domestication wilderness one that emerged after the con-quest and as a result) has sprung into vision And why did it acquire theformidable power of obstinacy and resilience which since Durkheim istaken to be the de ning mark of ldquohard realityrdquo (THC p 69 rst empha-sis mine second emphasis in original)

This indeed is the question that should orient our analyses of ldquoglob-alizationrdquo21 As an analytic tool however it is instructive only inasmuchas we apply it equally to the putative ldquocausesrdquo of ldquoglobalizationrdquo for

review essay 341

example the withering away of the nation-state at the hands of thosepunitive and unforgiving ldquo nancial marketsrdquo (THC p 69) each of whichhas assumed of late the marks of ldquohard realityrdquo Bauman poses the ini-tial question but fails to similarly question the ontological reality of whatare actually epistemological heuristics The use of terms such as ldquomar-ketsrdquo and ldquo nancesrdquo and ldquotechnological forcesrdquo are potentially usefulwhen they serve as a kind of analytic shorthand for sets of social rela-tions that have already been enumerated and explicated explicitly andexhaustively When however they substitute for explanations when theystand in as explanations in and of themselves they serve not only tocomplicate our thinking but more egregious still to insidiously repro-duce those discourses and practices of domination against which criti-cal scholars are aligned Bauman himself anticipates this problem whenhe acknowledges with an approving nod to Cornelius Castoriadis that

the trouble with the contemporary condition of modern civilization isthat it stopped questioning itself Not asking certain questions is pregnantwith more dangers than failing to answer the questions already on theoYcial agenda while asking the wrong kind of questions all too often helpsto avert eyes from the truly important issues The price of silence is paidin the hard currency of human suVering Asking the right questions makesafter all all the diVerence between fate and destination drifting and trav-elling Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way oflife is arguably the most urgent of the services we owe our fellow humansand ourselves (THC p 5)

Like Gray and LaFeber Bauman oVers us an impassioned threnodydevoted to the deleterious eVects borne by globalization but in so doingunwittingly disarms us intellectually and consequently renders us inca-pable of intervention and resistance much less understanding We shouldtherefore welcome Pierre Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance Against the Tyrannyof the Market for Bourdieu perhaps more than any other living scholarand public intellectual deftly combines scholarly and political analysis

Bourdieursquos approach is to read ldquoglobalizationrdquo as a neo-liberal dis-course a mythology that poses as reality

Irsquove used the word ldquoglobalizationrdquo It is a myth in the strong sense of theword a powerful discourse and ideacutee force an idea which has social forcewhich obtains belief It is the main weapon in the battles against the gainsof the welfare state (AOR p 34)

Bourdieu goes on to dissect this discourse pointing out the way itevokes and rati es the ldquoso-called law of the marketrdquo (AOR p 35) Byso impugning the natural and inevitable ontological character of ldquoglobal-

342 review essay

izationrdquo and the ldquosupposed iron laws of the nancial marketsrdquo Bourdieuis poised to make the theoretical contribution Gray irted with but failedto realize to wit an analysis of the social construction of the globaleconomy (AOR pp 26ndash27) Yet Bourdieu soon after does an about-face on this issue writing

While globalization is above all a justi catory myth there is one case whereit is quite real that of the nancial markets Thanks to the removal of a num-ber of legal restrictions and the development of electronic communicationswhich lead to lower communication costs we are moving towards a uniednancial market (AOR p 38 emphasis mine)

Bourdieursquos account is rife with contradictions and illogical unsub-stantiated assertions of fact Particularly disabling is his myopia regard-ing the role of the nation-state While ldquoglobalizationrdquo is a myth (wellyes it is) the power of the ldquo nancial marketsrdquo and the ldquointernationalcapital marketrdquo is quite real indeed22 The latter according to Bourdieuprevents individual nation-states from manipulating their exchange andinterest rates which in turn are increasingly determined by a powerconcentrated in the hands of a small number of countries whose iden-tities are never revealed and although one presumes that Bourdieu hasin mind the United States it is not at all clear which other nationsmight be controlling the rest of the worldrsquos nances (Germanyrsquos socialmarket Japanrsquos Certainly neither the French nor the English registerhere) So nations are powerless a familiar refrain Unless that is theyare a part of the small exclusive cabal of nations that rules the worldin which case they have considerable power after all

Bourdieu calls for the creation of a class of collective intellectualswho can among other things analyze the production and circulationof neo-liberal discourse to expose the ideological work of journalistsmanagers and not least the cunning reason of intellectuals23 Thisanalysis is to be carried out presumably in a manner consistent withhis project of re exive sociology24 That would mean mapping the full eld of cultural production and symbolic power that now obtains on aglobal level specifying the key actors and the objective structure of theirrelationships and analyzing the habitus of the agents that nds its tra-jectory within the speci c eld(s) in question25 That Bourdieu fails toattempt much less accomplish this admittedly bold project is a majorshortcoming of Acts of Resistance which amounts to little more than asteady stream of breathless bromides forever interrupted by conceptualand logical inconsistencies

Worse still is the manner in which Bourdieumdashlike Gray Giddens

review essay 343

and Baumanmdashunwittingly buttresses the discourse of neo-liberalism byutterly ignoring the active role played by the state in ushering in anostensible new world disorder in which the state appears as a shadowof its former self at best a hapless and unwilling conspirator accordedlittle responsibility Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance as with the other titlesunder review here quickly establishes its liberal credentials through itslament for a safer more secure and certain world (sicherheit) in whichthe state and the citizen and one suspects the progressive intellectualeach mattered Those nominal credentials however mask and insidi-ously support the state in its new corporatist guise26 Take for instancethe manifesto co-authored by prime ministers Tony Blair and GerhardSchroeder entitled ldquoThe Third WayDie Neue Mitterdquo27 Therein the min-isters declare

In a world of ever more rapid globalization and scienti c changes we needto create the conditions in which existing businesses can prosper and adaptand new businesses can be set up and grow Our aim is to modern-ize the welfare state not dismantle it Flexible markets must be combinedwith a newly dened role for an active state The state must become an activeagent for employment not merely the passive recipient of the casualties ofeconomic failure (emphasis mine)28

If ldquoglobalizationrdquo did not exist the state would have invented itOr consider to choose another recent example the passing of a new

bill in Britain which rede nes terrorism as ldquoThe use of serious violenceagainst persons or property or the threat to use such violence to intim-idate or coerce a government the public or any section of the publicfor political religious or ideological endsrdquo29 Borrowed verbatim fromthe American FBI this new bill was passed in British parliament inMarch 2000 by 210 votes to one Among other purposes the bill willserve as a deterrent to activists who would campaign publicly againstglobalization and multinational corporations as thousands recently didon ldquoMay Dayrdquo in Britain According to a British GM food activistldquoThe government is creating a private security service for transnationalcorporationsrdquo 30 To Bourdieu et al this is simply another example ofthe puppet that is the new nation-state orchestrated from above andafar by those indomitable nancial markets

To the sociologist Saskia Sassen however it is a case in point of thestatersquos active and voluntary complicity in the construction and not leaststrategic invocation of ldquoglobalizationrdquo Sassen contends that far frombeing passive and merely reactive under the sway of globalizationldquonational rms and national institutions have participated in the processrdquo

344 review essay

Sassen moreover rejects the notion that the global economy is ldquosome-how lsquoout therersquordquo forcing a nation and its corporations to change theirpractices Rather Sassen argues forcefully that the global economy hasbeen created by national industries with the assistance of their ownnationrsquos legislative and regulatory bodies In so doing Sassen pushes thede nition of the global economy beyond the production distributionand consumption of goods and services to encompass a worldwide sys-tem of governance and power within a ldquonew frontier zonerdquo which

is not merely a dividing line between the national economy and theglobal economy It is a zone of politico-economic interactions that pro-duce new institutional forms and alter some of the old ones Nor is this encounterbetween the global and the national just a matter of reducing regulations or the role ofgovernment generally simply to posit as is so often done that economic glob-alization has brought with it declining signi cance of the national state toutcourt misses some of the ner points of this transformation (emphasis mine)31

Pace Sassen and others who argue convincingly for the need to ldquobringthe state back inrdquo32 to our analyses the failure to recognize the trans-formation of the nonetheless active role of the nation-state is a symp-tom of a much broader failure of the sociological imagination bear inmind that the works discussed above are by some of the eldrsquos mostprominent gures Despite their admirably meliorist intentions theseworks each serve to invest ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollaries ie mar-ket and technological ldquoforcesrdquo with a ldquothingnessrdquo and an eYcacy itdoes not cannot possess This tendency stems I think from the nolonger tenable theoretical assumption that modernity consists of the compartmentalization of reality into three distinct domains (1) Market(economy) (2) State (polity) and (3) Civil Society (culturepublic sphere)It is arguable whether this tripartite heuristic was ever analytically use-ful but the problem it poses for sociologists now is a diVerent one forthis heuristic has assumed the status of a dead metaphor that of hardreality According to Wallerstein this theorem of separateness and mutualexclusivity a mere two hundred years old is now so deeply rooted inour consciousness and linguistic tools that we nd it almost impossibleto formulate sentences much less cogent analytic arguments free of thisthreefold monster33 Thus rei ed these epistemologic tools no longerserve us They instead predispose us to see each sphere in terms onlyof expansion (as in the case of the market) or retraction (as in the rolesof the state and the public sphere) rather than the simultaneous seman-tic and ontological transformation of all three34 Returning to Cassirer

review essay 345

But this problem itself appears spurious as soon as we realize that the dis-tinctions which here are taken for granted the analysis of reality in termsof things and processes permanent and transitory aspects objects andactions do not precede language as a substratum of given fact but thatlanguage itself is what initiates such articulations and develops them inits own sphere35

As Wallerstein adroitly notes these unconscious rei cations obscuremuch of reality from the scholars who unre exively deploy them36 Thereis however still more at work than this For all the attention I havedevoted to disentangling the discourse of ldquoglobalizationrdquo we must notlose sight of the many decisions actions and consequences intentionalor not that loosely comprise the ever-shifting reality of globalizationwithin which our analytic discourse is developed and deployed Chiefamong these in this context are the sense and the reality of profounddislocation displacement and disengagement that aVect sociologists asmuch as anyone else37 Our theories and methods bear the indelibleimprint of the world we seek to comprehend

A renovated sociological imagination of globalization must steer clearof the grand theorizing rehearsed by the works reviewed here withoutsimultaneously lapsing into the abstracted empiricism that infects mostof the technical work on globalization38 To avoid these twin pitfalls wewill need to develop an entirely new vocabulary grounded in directempirical engagement with our new globalizing reality Examples ofthis new approach are already under way They include so far Marcusrsquocall for multi-sited ethnography Sassenrsquos work toward cultivating anethnographic approach to studying the way the global is instantiatedwithin local urban spaces and Duneierrsquos ldquoextended place methodrdquo39

The considerable potential of these approaches notwithstanding the soci-ological apprehension of globalization will require rst and foremost acollective eVort on the part of variously situated scholars to wit a globalnetwork consisting of several local nodes in which substantive con ictand cooperation may freely occur What the late Bill Readings calleda community of ldquodissensusrdquo40 Absent these eVorts our meliorist inten-tions have little chance of ever becoming eYcacious interventions

Notes

1 Thanks to Denis Wall for editorial assistance and to Julie Custeau for her ever-astute guidance and unfailing support of everything that I do The works reviewed hereinclude Bauman Zygmunt 1998 Globalization the human consequences (New York ColumbiaUniversity Press) hereafter THC Bourdieu Pierre 1998 Acts of resistance against the tyranny

346 review essay

of the market (New York The New Press) hereafter AOR Gray John 1998 False dawnthe delusions of global capitalism (London Granta Books) hereafter FD Giddens Anthony2000 Runaway World (New York Routledge) hereafter RW and LaFeber Walter 1999Michael Jordan and the new global capitalism (New York W W Norton amp Company) here-after NGC

2 1946 p 73 See Cassidy (1997) The recent highly organized public protests in Davos Seattle

and Washington lend support to this prediction4 For an historical perspective on the semantic polyvalence if not polysemy of

ldquoglobalizationrdquo over the Longue Dureacutee see Moore (1997)5 As Giddens puts it ldquoThe global spread of the term [globalization] is evidence of

the very developments to which it refersrdquo (RW p 3)6 See Bourdieursquos AOR p 427 Gray later asserts however that ldquoThe leverage of sovereign states over business

may actually be greater in some respects today than it has been in the pastrdquo (FD p 67) In which respects Gray does not say Nor does he oVer any evidence to but-tress what must be classi ed as like so many of the statements comprising FD purespeculation (or what might be euphemized as ldquoarm-chair economicsrdquo)

8 See the intriguing if tentative results of an international project comparing thefuture of nationally embedded capitalism in the global economy in Streeck and Yamamura(2000)

9 For an illuminating historical treatment of the rei cation of technology see Marx(1997)

10 Gray argues further that the eVects of these forces are irrevocable and irreversibleThe regrettable and wrong-headed policy choices made by the Thatcher administrationnow constitute the ineluctable reality of the Blair government Gray goes on to arguethe same for the neo-liberal turn taken by New Zealand Grayrsquos argument is contra-dicted however by rst the palpably intentional adoption of neo-liberal tenets on thepart of the Blair government (not least its elimination of Article Four hitherto the cor-nerstone of Labour politics) and second by the recent election of a Labour governmentin New Zealand whose popularity in the polls in 1990 was just 2 percent a Labourgovernment that is moreover authentically committed to rebuilding and underwritingits social institutions See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 11 Even the Economistadmitted no doubt plaintively that ldquoglobalization is not irreversiblerdquo (see Smith andMoran [2000 p 70])

11 Gray is confused about the power of the American model Of ldquohyperglobaliza-tion a corporate utopiardquo Gray writes ldquoIt represents an historical transformation thathas no end-state and which is subverting American capitalism as well as its rivals as aprocess leading to the universal acceptance of American free marketsrdquo (FD p 67)

12 In contradistinction to Giddensrsquo slim but instructive A Brief but Critical Introductionto Sociology

13 Fitzgerald made this prediction in a personal letter to the novelist and criticEdmund (Bunny) Wilson

14 de Medici and de Medici (1986 pp 17ndash20)15 For an empirically rich and theoretically supple analysis of the local experience

of McDonaldrsquos throughout east Asia refer to Watson et al (1997) This volume of ethno-graphic accounts makes particularly plain the ways in which McDonaldrsquos as a transna-tional corporation has allowed itself via a local ownership structure to adapt to theexigencies and idiosyncrasies of local cultures Even while McDonaldrsquos market share reclinedin the United States during the 1990s it continued to grow in foreign markets includ-ing but not limited to east Asia

16 See Marcus (1995) on the advantages of conducting multi-site ethnography inofthe world system

17 Bourdieu (1987 p 184)

review essay 347

18 One nal word of warning regarding NGC the strength and weakness of thisbook are one in the same NGC is unique in that it tries to marry the history of bas-ketball with the history of the American economy A short book it suYciently coversneither task Basketball fans in particular should look elsewhere for a treatment of boththe NBA and the career of Michael Jordan See instead the eminently readable andinformative Halberstam (1999) and in keeping with the line of argument pursued aboveJordan (1998)

19 This is what Mathiesen (1997) aptly coined the Synopticon20 Gerbner and Gross (1976) quoted in THC p 5321 This question if broadened in scope is arguably the most important question

sociologists can pose Period Substitute ldquosocietyrdquo for ldquoglobalizationrdquo and the analyticpotential of the question comes into bold relief

22 Compare the putative reality of the nancial market with the following breath-less declaration ldquoIn short against all the prophets of misery who want to convince youthat your destiny is in the hands of transcendent independent indiVerent powers suchas the lsquo nancial marketsrsquo or the mechanisms if lsquoglobalizationrsquo I want to declare withthe hope of convincing you that the future your future which is also our future thatof all Europeans depends a great deal on you as Germans and trade unionistsrdquo (AORp 69)

23 For his own analysis cum criticism of the ldquojournalistic eldrdquo see Bourdieu (1998)for Bourdieursquos take on the role of intellectuals in diVusing the new global vulgate seeBourdieu and Wacquant (1999a 1999b)

24 I say presumably because Bourdieu at no point in AOR elaborates this programFor an original and compelling criticism of Bourdieursquos sociological theory and methodsee Griller (1996)

25 See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992 pp 104ndash5) Whether or not the global eldis coterminous with what Bourdieu calls the eld of power (a kind of meta- eld) is aninteresting question

26 If I am harder on Bourdieu than the other authors under review (which is arguable)it is due rst to the inconsistency that obtains between his previous scholarly work andhis present political critique and second and most important because his ostensibly lib-eral critique unwittingly and insidiously reproduces the neo-liberal discourse he seeks tosubvert

27 Not coincidentally the so-called ldquothird wayrdquo also advocated by Bill Clinton islargely inspired by Anthony Giddensrsquo book of the same name Space does not permitan analysis of Giddensrsquo contribution to practical politics here Blair and Schroederrsquos man-ifesto is reprinted in the spring 2000 edition of Dissent pp 51ndash65

28 Small wonder Gray who makes the same recommendation demonizes the Thatcheradministration on the one (left) hand while he serves as an apologist for the presentBlair government on the other (right) hand

29 See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 2030 Ibid31 See Sassen (2000 pp 164ndash65)32 For example the entire corpus of Theda Skocpal33 Wallerstein (2000 p 307)34 An apt example of the compartmentalist way of thinking about the state is Daniel

Bellrsquos famous remark that the nation-state is at once too small and too large to ade-quately address most of the problems it faces

35 1946 p 1236 Which in the case of Bourdieu in particular is all the more ironic for its theo-

retical inconsistency with his overall sociological-epistemological project37 Why after all is ldquoglobalizationrdquo now on everyonersquos lips in academe Might it

have something to do as a colleague of mine astutely theorizes because the educatedand professional middle-classes including university professors of Western nations are

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

332 review essay

need to be established Novelty and not least exibility are key tropesin the discourse of laissez-faire global capitalism typically invoked not toweaken the state but to transform its policies and practices vis-agrave-vis eco-nomic actors and institutions which include both the corporations andstate actors themselves

The new reality we face today is one in which the dichotomies ofstatecorporation governmentbusiness even publicprivate are dan-gerously false and misleading antinomies Globalization and ldquoglobaliza-tionrdquo are transforming the very meanings and lived realities of ldquostaterdquoldquocitizenshiprdquo and ldquodemocracyrdquo Gray argues that the free-market anddemocracy are in reality foes not the friends they are assumed to bein the new global vulgate issued daily from New York City and Wash-ington Gray writes

Nor evidently does a world economy that is organized as a global freemarket meet the universal human need for security The raison drsquoecirctre ofgovernments everywhere is their ability to protect citizens from insecurityA regime of global laissez-faire that prevents governments from discharg-ing this protective role is creating the conditions for still greater politicaland economic instability (FD p 21 emphases in original)

Bracketing Grayrsquos tenuous characterization of the statersquos raison drsquoecirctreeven the most cursory examination of contemporary state policies andpractices makes palpable the radical reordering of state ideals and func-tions each of which is now cast in the discourse of eYcient productionand service The same can be observed for the meaning and practiceof contemporary citizenship and by extension democracy each of whichis similarly cast in terms of consumption Weak citizenship ie weakcivil society and attenuated democracy serves to stabilize nay strengthenboth the state and the capitalist class not vice versa As Gray himselfargues ldquoTransnational organizations [ like the WTO] can get away withthis [the spread of free markets] only insofar as they are immune fromthe pressures of democratic public liferdquo (FD p 18) But this banal obser-vation is moot in light of the semantic transformation of state citizen-ship and democracy each of which is now subsumed under the aegisof consumer capitalism Consumer democracy is to global capitalismneither friend nor foe the former is the progeny of the latter

Grayrsquos failure to unpack the semantic shifts bound-up with ldquoglobal-izationrdquo stems from a still larger failure to escape two common prob-lems in macrohistorical theory rei cation and its consequent teleologyReturning to the question of agency posed above Gray leaves unex-plained the historical causes or if you prefer the crucial preconditions of

review essay 333

the emergence of a volatile strain of capitalism the consequences ofwhich he enumerates thoroughly and by and large unproblematicallyIf neither nation-states nor multinational corporations are in charge(Gray argues that both institutional forms have been hollowed-out) justwho is responsible for this mess The question for Gray however seemsrather more like ldquowhat is responsiblerdquo Consider the following exam-ples selected more or less at random

Laissez-faire thinking was supplanted by the ldquoNew Liberalrdquo thinkers suchas Hobhouse Hobson Bosanquet Green and Keynes who were ready toharness the powers of the state to moderate the eVects of market forces (FD p 15 emphasis mine)

This statement is all the more telling for its immanent juxtapositionof the actions of actual people and a collection thereof to wit the stateon the one hand and the nebula of ldquomarket forcesrdquo on the other Whoit must always be asked and answered are the individuals and institu-tions that create ldquomarket forcesrdquo And what actions do such ldquoforcesrdquoentail Again Gray

However the dislocations of social and economic life today are not causedsolely by free markets Ultimately they arise from the banalization of tech-nology Technological innovations made in advanced western countries aresoon copied everywhere Even without free-market policies the managedeconomies of the post-war period could not have survivedmdashtechnologicaladvance would have made them unsustainable (FD pp 19ndash20 emphasis mine)9

Here we encounter two further rei cations First the ldquofree marketrdquothe entity responsible one presumes for ldquomarket forcesrdquo Nowhere doesGray de ne a market be it free or regulated And at no time doesGray delineate the sets of overlapping and embedded economic polit-ical and social relations that constitute a market much less couch hisanalysis of globalization in the matrix of these relations We must bearin mind that ldquoglobalizationrdquo is as much a rei cation as ldquothe marketrdquothat they are in fact synonymous To subsume willy-nilly under thesingular undiVerentiated rubric of the ldquomarketrdquo or ldquoglobalizationrdquo mys-ti es rather than illuminates our present condition

Next is ldquotechnologyrdquo here dressed in its familiar hazardous garbWhen invoked as an active verb technology otherwise a singular if farfrom semantically transparent noun becomes an autonomous agentcapable of creating eVects in the world This use of ldquotechnologyrdquo servesonly to obscure the relations and practices that constitute technologyand to further remove us from the empirical world for which we arein need of grounded explanations involving the actions of individuals

334 review essay

and groups Consider the following passage which is instructive inso-far as it unites these heretofore disparate images

The world-historical movement we call globalization has momentum that isinexorable We are not the masters of the technologies that drive the global economythey condition us in many ways we have not begun to understand (FD p 206emphasis mine)

So long as we continue to employ this form of causal imagery wewill never fully appreciate globalization Worse still we will never bein a position to resist and reform it for the most pernicious conse-quence of rei cation is the tendency to jettison causality for teleologywhich like rei cation discourages political action10 Gray is silent onthe speci c initiatives that might constitute eYcacious resistance to andreform of the global economy This of course is the predictable resultof an analysis that relies on the rei cation of social relations which inturn relieves the reformer of her task According to Gray

The free market cannot last in an age in which economic security for themajority of people is being reduced by the world economy The regimeof laissez-faire is bound to trigger counter-movements which reject its con-straints (FD p 20 emphasis mine)

Later however Gray acknowledges that

A vital condition of reform of the international economy is that it be sup-ported by the worldrsquos single most important power Without active andcontinuing American endorsement there can be no workable institutionsof global governance But so long as the United States remains commit-ted to a global free market it will veto any such reform So long asAmerican policy is based on the laissez-faire ideology that informs theWashington consensus there is no prospect of reforming the world econ-omy (FD p 200)11

Which may appear not a little bit pessimistic until that is it is morewidely recognized that

The Washington consensus will not last forever It will undoubtedly beshaken by economic shocks and geopolitical shifts (FD p 205 emphasismine)

The question of economic and political reform then goes the wayof historical agency and causality

Lukacsrsquo lucid de nition of rei cation is instructive here Rei cationoccurs when ldquoa relation between people takes on the character of athing and thus acquires a lsquophantom-objectivityrsquo an autonomy that seems

review essay 335

so strictly rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of itsfundamental nature the relation between peoplerdquo (Lukacs 1971 pp83ndash87) The problem of rei cation it turns out plagues all of the worksunder review here and most of the discourse analytic and political alikeregarding globalization Throughout this review I try to theorize thismisapprehension of ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollary rei cations as theresult of ideological predilections and otherwise untenable methodolog-ical choices each of which can ultimately be largely explained as con-sequences of the actions and events bound-up in globalization itself

Rei cation rears its ugly head too in Anthony Giddensrsquo RunawayWorld How Globalization is Reshaping Our Livesmdashthe title itself suggests as much Giddens is however an eminently more agile social theoristthan Gray indeed more agile than most Originally given as the 1999Reith lectures broadcast globally by the BBC via both radio and theInternet Giddens oVers the following salvo regarding the character ofglobalization

Globalisation is political technological and cultural as well as economicIt has been in uenced above all by development in systems of communi-cations dating back only to the late 1960s The changes [encompassedby globalization] are being propelled by a range of factors some struc-tural others more speci c and historical Economic in uences are certainlyamong the driving forces especially the global nancial system Yet theyarenrsquot forces of nature They have been shaped by technology and cul-tural diVusion as well as by the decisions of governments to liberalise andderegulate their national economies (RW p 8)

Globalization it seems aVects everything and everything in turnaVects globalization Here the absence of clarity in the de nition ofglobalization manifests itself in a corresponding lack of clarity govern-ing its explanation Giddensrsquo argument is much like the above de nitionit tries to be all things to all people Case in point is Giddensrsquo ambiva-lence regarding the role of the state vis-agrave-vis globalization On the onehand Giddens acknowledges the decisions made by the state This issure to please sociologists who argue for the analytic importance of stateactions and not least those critical of the statersquos strategic retreat frompublic life Giddens is cognizant too of the way in which the nature ofthe state has been transformed Giddens however subtly elides the next(specious I think) question namely has the state reconciled itself to itsnew role or is the state a hapless victim powerless in the face of trans-national forces A theorist as agile as Giddens would doubtless argueif forced ldquobothrdquo but the spirit of his presentation suggests if somewhat

336 review essay

equivocally that the statersquos autonomy has been and continues to bewhittled away by the myriad ldquoforcesrdquo at work in the world today

Giddens goes on to rehearse familiar topics and arguments concern-ing the relationship between globalization (however one takes it) andrisk tradition and fundamentalism the family and feminism and nallythe prospects for democracy Democracy argues Giddens is good andas such worth ghting for Overall this captures the tenor of Giddensrsquoslim little book12 Giddens asks ldquoIs globalisation a force promoting thegeneral goodrdquo (RW p 10) That question in addition to whether wecan gain more control over our ldquorunaway worldrdquo is important ldquoForglobalisation is not incidental to our lives today It is a shift in our verylife circumstances It is the way we now liverdquo (RW pp 11ndash12) Giddensraises few compelling questions and still fewer answers The rapid pub-lication of these BBC lectures with virtually no modi cation or expansionarguably has more to say about the power and force of ldquoglobalizationrdquothan does Giddens

ldquoCulture follows money we will be the Romans in the next gen-erations as the English are nowrdquo wrote F Scott Fitzgerald with con-siderable prescience in 1921 while sojourning in France13 Sixty yearslater and culture still seemed to follow capital In 1982 French culturaloYcials warned of ldquoAmerican cultural imperialismrdquo Soon after a car-toon appeared portraying the noble European continent defended bythe likes of drsquoArtagnan Don Quixote and Shakespeare against anAmerican attack from the skies lead by Mickey Mouse anked by ETMarilyn Monroe and a hamburger14 Walter LaFeberrsquos Michael Jordanand the New Global Capitalism can be read as an elaboration of Fitzgeraldrsquosprediction and Francersquos nay the worldrsquos predicament Namely global-ization as the apotheosis of American popular culture

LaFeber begins his thin historical account in the 1890s the timeperiod in which the American economy rose to preeminence and thegame of basketball was invented For LaFeber ldquoThe history of basket-ball especially in the era of Michael Jordan helps us understand thisera known as lsquothe American Centuryrsquordquo (NGC p 22) The 1890s werealso witness to the rise of the rst multinational corporations includ-ing Standard Oil Eastman Kodak Singer and McCormick Accordingto LaFeber these companies diVer from their late-twentieth centurycounterparts in at least four respects (1) 1890s rms largely employedAmerican workers whereas 1990s rms rely on cheap foreign labor (2)While late-nineteenth century concerns traded in natural resources andindustrial goods corporations nowadays increasingly produce ldquoknowl-edgerdquo and ldquoinformationrdquo Here LaFeber like Barber (1992) signals his

review essay 337

move away from the analysis of hard political power toward soft eco-nomic and symbolic power (3) Todayrsquos transnationals unlike their an-cestors increasingly depend upon ldquoworld marketsrdquo for their pro ts (eg in 1996 four out of every ve bottles of coke were sold outside ofthe United States) and (4) Consequently late-twentieth century trans-nationals depend for their continued success on massive global adver-tising campaigns ldquoto make people want their productsrdquo (NGC p 56) Theadvertising employed by transnationals like Nike is argued to be ldquorev-olutionaryrdquo because it can be seen on as many as thirty to ve hun-dred television channels in many countries thanks to the new technologyof communication satellites and ber-optic cable For LaFeber the med-ium and the message collude to make the products of transnationalsirresistible to the denizens of the new global village Consider LaFeberrsquostake on the fall of Communism

During these decades [1970ndash1990] such new global technologies as com-puters communication satellites and ber optics transformed the globersquoseconomy It should be pointed out that this new era in world history begannot with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold Warin 1989ndash1991 but with the appearance of the post-industrial technologynearly a generation earlier For this technology changed the lives of peo-ples around the world and in so doing brought down the Communistsystem which could not adjust to this revolution (NGC p 58)

In addition to the problem of the rei cation of technology LaFebersimilarly rei es ldquothe world marketrdquo on which transnationals depend butover which the same transnationals wield considerable in uence via theirmarketing campaigns By presuming the perlocutionary power of mediamessages and indeed of the media themselves LaFeber eVectively rendsinvisible the relations between foreign consumers and the popular cul-ture and other fare produced by transnational corporations What doNike shoes or the images of Michael Jordan do for people in and outof America How are American products and symbols experienced insitu15 LaFeber like most globalization theorists emphasizes global pushfactors at the expense of the local pull factors felt articulated andinstantiated by real people in real places who constitute the real powerof ldquoworld marketsrdquo The result is a top-down externalist perspectivebereft of the global consumerrsquos Lebenswelt Consumption is explainedaway as a passive act of reception rather than an inde nite series ofmicroscopic acts of appropriation of the social world In this way LaFeberreproduces indeed globalizes the causal assumptions of the FrankfurtSchoolrsquos critique of mass culture The positive moment of consumerism

338 review essay

insofar as it is de ned as such by variously situated individuals is leftutterly untheorized Methodologically a hermeneutic reconstruction ofthe consumerrsquos point of view is attainable only through ethnographicengagement across a number of cultural sites16 Sociologically the ldquoarm-chairrdquo approach employed by LaFeber and the other authors under re-view here is methodologically and theoretically untenable Ideologicallyhowever it is quite useful insofar as it allows for a political critique thatassigns culpability to only the global cultural ldquopushersrdquo and eVectivelyabsolves the rest of the world of any responsibility whatsoever render-ing them so many dupes under the sway of expensive irresistible imagesIronically the rei cation of powerful world markets has the eVect ofstripping the consumers embedded within them of any potential foragency much less in uence For LaFeber then culture does in fact fol-low the money

The foregoing should not however be read as an aYrmation of theintellectualist romance with and tendentious presumption of subalternresistance commonplace as it is in the discipline of cultural studies Itis after all no more tenable to assume ldquoordinary peoplerdquo to be preter-naturally counter-hegemonic in their quotidien lives than it is to dis-miss them as cultural dopes Recalling Grayrsquos call for ldquonewrdquo and ldquomore exiblerdquo institutions to rescue social markets cultural critics must re exivelyaccount for their own role in the larger eld of cultural production AsThomas Frank (1999 p 84) perspicuously notes many cultural criticsmiss entirely the fatal irony of an academic radicalism that is increas-ingly coterminous with much management theory at precisely the samemoment when capitalist consultants and managers have decided to brandthemselves as radicals equating democracy and dissent with consumerismThe point rather is a simple one An understanding of globalizationas a eld of relations encompassing both power and resistance is impos-sible absent ethnographic engagement in this eld with all the variouslysituated actors involved (eg managers politicians citizens consumersworkers sub-proletariat intellectuals)

An ethnographic case makes the point American anthropologist LilaAbu-Lughod (1990) demonstrates in her ethnographic analysis of Bedouinwomen the intersection of power and resistance in global perspectiveBedouin women it turns out are avid consumers of Western pop musicTheir consumptive behavior has little to do however with the billionsspent annually on advertising by American rms Bedouin women activelyuse the lyrics of Western pop songs particularly romantic ones to sub-vert the regime of patriarchy they confront in their own local culturewherein the oral poetics of love and romance are severely restricted soas to reproduce male privilege Western music then oVers a partial

review essay 339

escape from and critical commentary on patriarchal Bedouin cultureAt the same time Bedouin culture is brought into the web of powerrelations involving the Egyptian nation-state and the larger internationalpolitical economy This instance of resistance exempli es Bourdieursquospoint about relations of power ldquoResistance can be alienating and sub-mission can be liberating Such is the paradox of the dominated andthere is no way out of itrdquo17 The chief limitation of New Global Capitalismis its exaggeration of the power of the dominant and its wholesale in-attention to the agency of the dominated18

Ditto for Zygmunt Baumanrsquos Globalization The Human ConsequencesBaumanrsquos point of departure into the global is Foucaultrsquos instrumentalmetaphor of the Panopticon In the modern exercise of power the spec-tacle was replaced by surveillance In pre-modern times power wasimpressed upon the public via displays of wealth splendor and notleast violence Modern power concentrated in the nation-state by con-trast preferred instead to linger in the shadows closely but discreetlymonitoring its subjects A case of the few regarding the many WhatFoucault overlooked however was the parallel modern development ofnew techniques of power consisting in contradistinction to surveillanceof the various mass media especially television A case of the manywatching the few19

The Panopticon even when universal in application was essentiallya local institution The Synopticon ie the mass media is increasinglyglobal The nature of the power each wields is diVerent too While thePanopticon forced people into the position where they could be watchedthe Synopticon requires little in the way of coercion By contrast theSynopticon seduces people into watching (THC p 52 emphasis in orig-inal) The many now watch the few And the few who are watched arethe celebrities No matter whence they originate all celebrities put ondisplay the world of celebrities a world whose distinctive feature is pre-cisely the quality of being watched by the many in all corners of theworld Whatever they speak about when on air they convey the mes-sage of a total way of life ldquoTheir life their way of liferdquo (THC p 52emphasis in original) To question the impact of that message on themany who watch is to Bauman

less like asking about preconceived fears and hopes and more like askingabout the ldquoeVectsrdquo of Christianity on onersquos view of the world ormdashas theChinese had askedmdashof Confucianism on public morality20

For Bauman as for LaFeber the world watches the fare producedby the globals ie the multinational corporations and the rest is his-tory The billions expended (for LaFeber) and the lofty other-worldly

340 review essay

character (for Bauman) of the globals renders otherwise legitimate naypressing questions of reception and interpretation entirely irrelevant

For all the power contained in the messages and presumably con-ferred upon the messengers Bauman much like Gray and Giddens isstill not entirely sure just who is in charge

To put it in a nutshell no one seems now to be in control Worse still it isnot clear what ldquobeing in controlrdquo could under the circumstances be like The deepest meaning conveyed by the idea of globalization is that ofthe indeterminate unruly and self-propelled character of world aVairs the absenceof a centre of a controlling desk of a board of directors of a manager-ial oYce Globalization is Jowittrsquos ldquonew world disorderrdquo under anothername (THC pp 58ndash59 rst emphasis in original second emphasis mine)

Note the now familiar tell-tale signs of rei cation the obfuscation ofsocial relations and human agency tightly coupled with the attributionof telos to ldquoworld aVairsrdquo The world may be disorderly but for Baumanat least one thing is for sure Wherever the new seat of power residesif it resides anywhere if it even exists at all it is certainly not withinthe nation-state

In the words of GH von Wright the ldquonation-state it seems is erodingor perhaps lsquowithering awayrsquo The eroding forces are transnationalrdquo Since nation-states remain the sole frame for book-balancing and the sole sources ofeVective political initiative the lsquotransnationalityrsquo or eroding forces putsthem outside the realm of deliberate purposeful and potentially rationalaction As everything that elides such action such forces their shapes andactions are blurred in the mist of mystery they are objects of guessesrather than reliable analysis (THC pp 56ndash57 rst emphasis mine secondemphasis in original)

Having thus ruled out both nations and transnationals as the sourceof the ldquoeroding forcesrdquo at work in the world Bauman asks

How has it come about that this vast expanse of man-made wilderness (notthe ldquonaturalrdquo wilderness which modernity set out to conquer and tamebut to paraphrase Anthony Giddensrsquo felicitous phrase a ldquomanufactured jun-glerdquomdashthe post-domestication wilderness one that emerged after the con-quest and as a result) has sprung into vision And why did it acquire theformidable power of obstinacy and resilience which since Durkheim istaken to be the de ning mark of ldquohard realityrdquo (THC p 69 rst empha-sis mine second emphasis in original)

This indeed is the question that should orient our analyses of ldquoglob-alizationrdquo21 As an analytic tool however it is instructive only inasmuchas we apply it equally to the putative ldquocausesrdquo of ldquoglobalizationrdquo for

review essay 341

example the withering away of the nation-state at the hands of thosepunitive and unforgiving ldquo nancial marketsrdquo (THC p 69) each of whichhas assumed of late the marks of ldquohard realityrdquo Bauman poses the ini-tial question but fails to similarly question the ontological reality of whatare actually epistemological heuristics The use of terms such as ldquomar-ketsrdquo and ldquo nancesrdquo and ldquotechnological forcesrdquo are potentially usefulwhen they serve as a kind of analytic shorthand for sets of social rela-tions that have already been enumerated and explicated explicitly andexhaustively When however they substitute for explanations when theystand in as explanations in and of themselves they serve not only tocomplicate our thinking but more egregious still to insidiously repro-duce those discourses and practices of domination against which criti-cal scholars are aligned Bauman himself anticipates this problem whenhe acknowledges with an approving nod to Cornelius Castoriadis that

the trouble with the contemporary condition of modern civilization isthat it stopped questioning itself Not asking certain questions is pregnantwith more dangers than failing to answer the questions already on theoYcial agenda while asking the wrong kind of questions all too often helpsto avert eyes from the truly important issues The price of silence is paidin the hard currency of human suVering Asking the right questions makesafter all all the diVerence between fate and destination drifting and trav-elling Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way oflife is arguably the most urgent of the services we owe our fellow humansand ourselves (THC p 5)

Like Gray and LaFeber Bauman oVers us an impassioned threnodydevoted to the deleterious eVects borne by globalization but in so doingunwittingly disarms us intellectually and consequently renders us inca-pable of intervention and resistance much less understanding We shouldtherefore welcome Pierre Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance Against the Tyrannyof the Market for Bourdieu perhaps more than any other living scholarand public intellectual deftly combines scholarly and political analysis

Bourdieursquos approach is to read ldquoglobalizationrdquo as a neo-liberal dis-course a mythology that poses as reality

Irsquove used the word ldquoglobalizationrdquo It is a myth in the strong sense of theword a powerful discourse and ideacutee force an idea which has social forcewhich obtains belief It is the main weapon in the battles against the gainsof the welfare state (AOR p 34)

Bourdieu goes on to dissect this discourse pointing out the way itevokes and rati es the ldquoso-called law of the marketrdquo (AOR p 35) Byso impugning the natural and inevitable ontological character of ldquoglobal-

342 review essay

izationrdquo and the ldquosupposed iron laws of the nancial marketsrdquo Bourdieuis poised to make the theoretical contribution Gray irted with but failedto realize to wit an analysis of the social construction of the globaleconomy (AOR pp 26ndash27) Yet Bourdieu soon after does an about-face on this issue writing

While globalization is above all a justi catory myth there is one case whereit is quite real that of the nancial markets Thanks to the removal of a num-ber of legal restrictions and the development of electronic communicationswhich lead to lower communication costs we are moving towards a uniednancial market (AOR p 38 emphasis mine)

Bourdieursquos account is rife with contradictions and illogical unsub-stantiated assertions of fact Particularly disabling is his myopia regard-ing the role of the nation-state While ldquoglobalizationrdquo is a myth (wellyes it is) the power of the ldquo nancial marketsrdquo and the ldquointernationalcapital marketrdquo is quite real indeed22 The latter according to Bourdieuprevents individual nation-states from manipulating their exchange andinterest rates which in turn are increasingly determined by a powerconcentrated in the hands of a small number of countries whose iden-tities are never revealed and although one presumes that Bourdieu hasin mind the United States it is not at all clear which other nationsmight be controlling the rest of the worldrsquos nances (Germanyrsquos socialmarket Japanrsquos Certainly neither the French nor the English registerhere) So nations are powerless a familiar refrain Unless that is theyare a part of the small exclusive cabal of nations that rules the worldin which case they have considerable power after all

Bourdieu calls for the creation of a class of collective intellectualswho can among other things analyze the production and circulationof neo-liberal discourse to expose the ideological work of journalistsmanagers and not least the cunning reason of intellectuals23 Thisanalysis is to be carried out presumably in a manner consistent withhis project of re exive sociology24 That would mean mapping the full eld of cultural production and symbolic power that now obtains on aglobal level specifying the key actors and the objective structure of theirrelationships and analyzing the habitus of the agents that nds its tra-jectory within the speci c eld(s) in question25 That Bourdieu fails toattempt much less accomplish this admittedly bold project is a majorshortcoming of Acts of Resistance which amounts to little more than asteady stream of breathless bromides forever interrupted by conceptualand logical inconsistencies

Worse still is the manner in which Bourdieumdashlike Gray Giddens

review essay 343

and Baumanmdashunwittingly buttresses the discourse of neo-liberalism byutterly ignoring the active role played by the state in ushering in anostensible new world disorder in which the state appears as a shadowof its former self at best a hapless and unwilling conspirator accordedlittle responsibility Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance as with the other titlesunder review here quickly establishes its liberal credentials through itslament for a safer more secure and certain world (sicherheit) in whichthe state and the citizen and one suspects the progressive intellectualeach mattered Those nominal credentials however mask and insidi-ously support the state in its new corporatist guise26 Take for instancethe manifesto co-authored by prime ministers Tony Blair and GerhardSchroeder entitled ldquoThe Third WayDie Neue Mitterdquo27 Therein the min-isters declare

In a world of ever more rapid globalization and scienti c changes we needto create the conditions in which existing businesses can prosper and adaptand new businesses can be set up and grow Our aim is to modern-ize the welfare state not dismantle it Flexible markets must be combinedwith a newly dened role for an active state The state must become an activeagent for employment not merely the passive recipient of the casualties ofeconomic failure (emphasis mine)28

If ldquoglobalizationrdquo did not exist the state would have invented itOr consider to choose another recent example the passing of a new

bill in Britain which rede nes terrorism as ldquoThe use of serious violenceagainst persons or property or the threat to use such violence to intim-idate or coerce a government the public or any section of the publicfor political religious or ideological endsrdquo29 Borrowed verbatim fromthe American FBI this new bill was passed in British parliament inMarch 2000 by 210 votes to one Among other purposes the bill willserve as a deterrent to activists who would campaign publicly againstglobalization and multinational corporations as thousands recently didon ldquoMay Dayrdquo in Britain According to a British GM food activistldquoThe government is creating a private security service for transnationalcorporationsrdquo 30 To Bourdieu et al this is simply another example ofthe puppet that is the new nation-state orchestrated from above andafar by those indomitable nancial markets

To the sociologist Saskia Sassen however it is a case in point of thestatersquos active and voluntary complicity in the construction and not leaststrategic invocation of ldquoglobalizationrdquo Sassen contends that far frombeing passive and merely reactive under the sway of globalizationldquonational rms and national institutions have participated in the processrdquo

344 review essay

Sassen moreover rejects the notion that the global economy is ldquosome-how lsquoout therersquordquo forcing a nation and its corporations to change theirpractices Rather Sassen argues forcefully that the global economy hasbeen created by national industries with the assistance of their ownnationrsquos legislative and regulatory bodies In so doing Sassen pushes thede nition of the global economy beyond the production distributionand consumption of goods and services to encompass a worldwide sys-tem of governance and power within a ldquonew frontier zonerdquo which

is not merely a dividing line between the national economy and theglobal economy It is a zone of politico-economic interactions that pro-duce new institutional forms and alter some of the old ones Nor is this encounterbetween the global and the national just a matter of reducing regulations or the role ofgovernment generally simply to posit as is so often done that economic glob-alization has brought with it declining signi cance of the national state toutcourt misses some of the ner points of this transformation (emphasis mine)31

Pace Sassen and others who argue convincingly for the need to ldquobringthe state back inrdquo32 to our analyses the failure to recognize the trans-formation of the nonetheless active role of the nation-state is a symp-tom of a much broader failure of the sociological imagination bear inmind that the works discussed above are by some of the eldrsquos mostprominent gures Despite their admirably meliorist intentions theseworks each serve to invest ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollaries ie mar-ket and technological ldquoforcesrdquo with a ldquothingnessrdquo and an eYcacy itdoes not cannot possess This tendency stems I think from the nolonger tenable theoretical assumption that modernity consists of the compartmentalization of reality into three distinct domains (1) Market(economy) (2) State (polity) and (3) Civil Society (culturepublic sphere)It is arguable whether this tripartite heuristic was ever analytically use-ful but the problem it poses for sociologists now is a diVerent one forthis heuristic has assumed the status of a dead metaphor that of hardreality According to Wallerstein this theorem of separateness and mutualexclusivity a mere two hundred years old is now so deeply rooted inour consciousness and linguistic tools that we nd it almost impossibleto formulate sentences much less cogent analytic arguments free of thisthreefold monster33 Thus rei ed these epistemologic tools no longerserve us They instead predispose us to see each sphere in terms onlyof expansion (as in the case of the market) or retraction (as in the rolesof the state and the public sphere) rather than the simultaneous seman-tic and ontological transformation of all three34 Returning to Cassirer

review essay 345

But this problem itself appears spurious as soon as we realize that the dis-tinctions which here are taken for granted the analysis of reality in termsof things and processes permanent and transitory aspects objects andactions do not precede language as a substratum of given fact but thatlanguage itself is what initiates such articulations and develops them inits own sphere35

As Wallerstein adroitly notes these unconscious rei cations obscuremuch of reality from the scholars who unre exively deploy them36 Thereis however still more at work than this For all the attention I havedevoted to disentangling the discourse of ldquoglobalizationrdquo we must notlose sight of the many decisions actions and consequences intentionalor not that loosely comprise the ever-shifting reality of globalizationwithin which our analytic discourse is developed and deployed Chiefamong these in this context are the sense and the reality of profounddislocation displacement and disengagement that aVect sociologists asmuch as anyone else37 Our theories and methods bear the indelibleimprint of the world we seek to comprehend

A renovated sociological imagination of globalization must steer clearof the grand theorizing rehearsed by the works reviewed here withoutsimultaneously lapsing into the abstracted empiricism that infects mostof the technical work on globalization38 To avoid these twin pitfalls wewill need to develop an entirely new vocabulary grounded in directempirical engagement with our new globalizing reality Examples ofthis new approach are already under way They include so far Marcusrsquocall for multi-sited ethnography Sassenrsquos work toward cultivating anethnographic approach to studying the way the global is instantiatedwithin local urban spaces and Duneierrsquos ldquoextended place methodrdquo39

The considerable potential of these approaches notwithstanding the soci-ological apprehension of globalization will require rst and foremost acollective eVort on the part of variously situated scholars to wit a globalnetwork consisting of several local nodes in which substantive con ictand cooperation may freely occur What the late Bill Readings calleda community of ldquodissensusrdquo40 Absent these eVorts our meliorist inten-tions have little chance of ever becoming eYcacious interventions

Notes

1 Thanks to Denis Wall for editorial assistance and to Julie Custeau for her ever-astute guidance and unfailing support of everything that I do The works reviewed hereinclude Bauman Zygmunt 1998 Globalization the human consequences (New York ColumbiaUniversity Press) hereafter THC Bourdieu Pierre 1998 Acts of resistance against the tyranny

346 review essay

of the market (New York The New Press) hereafter AOR Gray John 1998 False dawnthe delusions of global capitalism (London Granta Books) hereafter FD Giddens Anthony2000 Runaway World (New York Routledge) hereafter RW and LaFeber Walter 1999Michael Jordan and the new global capitalism (New York W W Norton amp Company) here-after NGC

2 1946 p 73 See Cassidy (1997) The recent highly organized public protests in Davos Seattle

and Washington lend support to this prediction4 For an historical perspective on the semantic polyvalence if not polysemy of

ldquoglobalizationrdquo over the Longue Dureacutee see Moore (1997)5 As Giddens puts it ldquoThe global spread of the term [globalization] is evidence of

the very developments to which it refersrdquo (RW p 3)6 See Bourdieursquos AOR p 427 Gray later asserts however that ldquoThe leverage of sovereign states over business

may actually be greater in some respects today than it has been in the pastrdquo (FD p 67) In which respects Gray does not say Nor does he oVer any evidence to but-tress what must be classi ed as like so many of the statements comprising FD purespeculation (or what might be euphemized as ldquoarm-chair economicsrdquo)

8 See the intriguing if tentative results of an international project comparing thefuture of nationally embedded capitalism in the global economy in Streeck and Yamamura(2000)

9 For an illuminating historical treatment of the rei cation of technology see Marx(1997)

10 Gray argues further that the eVects of these forces are irrevocable and irreversibleThe regrettable and wrong-headed policy choices made by the Thatcher administrationnow constitute the ineluctable reality of the Blair government Gray goes on to arguethe same for the neo-liberal turn taken by New Zealand Grayrsquos argument is contra-dicted however by rst the palpably intentional adoption of neo-liberal tenets on thepart of the Blair government (not least its elimination of Article Four hitherto the cor-nerstone of Labour politics) and second by the recent election of a Labour governmentin New Zealand whose popularity in the polls in 1990 was just 2 percent a Labourgovernment that is moreover authentically committed to rebuilding and underwritingits social institutions See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 11 Even the Economistadmitted no doubt plaintively that ldquoglobalization is not irreversiblerdquo (see Smith andMoran [2000 p 70])

11 Gray is confused about the power of the American model Of ldquohyperglobaliza-tion a corporate utopiardquo Gray writes ldquoIt represents an historical transformation thathas no end-state and which is subverting American capitalism as well as its rivals as aprocess leading to the universal acceptance of American free marketsrdquo (FD p 67)

12 In contradistinction to Giddensrsquo slim but instructive A Brief but Critical Introductionto Sociology

13 Fitzgerald made this prediction in a personal letter to the novelist and criticEdmund (Bunny) Wilson

14 de Medici and de Medici (1986 pp 17ndash20)15 For an empirically rich and theoretically supple analysis of the local experience

of McDonaldrsquos throughout east Asia refer to Watson et al (1997) This volume of ethno-graphic accounts makes particularly plain the ways in which McDonaldrsquos as a transna-tional corporation has allowed itself via a local ownership structure to adapt to theexigencies and idiosyncrasies of local cultures Even while McDonaldrsquos market share reclinedin the United States during the 1990s it continued to grow in foreign markets includ-ing but not limited to east Asia

16 See Marcus (1995) on the advantages of conducting multi-site ethnography inofthe world system

17 Bourdieu (1987 p 184)

review essay 347

18 One nal word of warning regarding NGC the strength and weakness of thisbook are one in the same NGC is unique in that it tries to marry the history of bas-ketball with the history of the American economy A short book it suYciently coversneither task Basketball fans in particular should look elsewhere for a treatment of boththe NBA and the career of Michael Jordan See instead the eminently readable andinformative Halberstam (1999) and in keeping with the line of argument pursued aboveJordan (1998)

19 This is what Mathiesen (1997) aptly coined the Synopticon20 Gerbner and Gross (1976) quoted in THC p 5321 This question if broadened in scope is arguably the most important question

sociologists can pose Period Substitute ldquosocietyrdquo for ldquoglobalizationrdquo and the analyticpotential of the question comes into bold relief

22 Compare the putative reality of the nancial market with the following breath-less declaration ldquoIn short against all the prophets of misery who want to convince youthat your destiny is in the hands of transcendent independent indiVerent powers suchas the lsquo nancial marketsrsquo or the mechanisms if lsquoglobalizationrsquo I want to declare withthe hope of convincing you that the future your future which is also our future thatof all Europeans depends a great deal on you as Germans and trade unionistsrdquo (AORp 69)

23 For his own analysis cum criticism of the ldquojournalistic eldrdquo see Bourdieu (1998)for Bourdieursquos take on the role of intellectuals in diVusing the new global vulgate seeBourdieu and Wacquant (1999a 1999b)

24 I say presumably because Bourdieu at no point in AOR elaborates this programFor an original and compelling criticism of Bourdieursquos sociological theory and methodsee Griller (1996)

25 See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992 pp 104ndash5) Whether or not the global eldis coterminous with what Bourdieu calls the eld of power (a kind of meta- eld) is aninteresting question

26 If I am harder on Bourdieu than the other authors under review (which is arguable)it is due rst to the inconsistency that obtains between his previous scholarly work andhis present political critique and second and most important because his ostensibly lib-eral critique unwittingly and insidiously reproduces the neo-liberal discourse he seeks tosubvert

27 Not coincidentally the so-called ldquothird wayrdquo also advocated by Bill Clinton islargely inspired by Anthony Giddensrsquo book of the same name Space does not permitan analysis of Giddensrsquo contribution to practical politics here Blair and Schroederrsquos man-ifesto is reprinted in the spring 2000 edition of Dissent pp 51ndash65

28 Small wonder Gray who makes the same recommendation demonizes the Thatcheradministration on the one (left) hand while he serves as an apologist for the presentBlair government on the other (right) hand

29 See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 2030 Ibid31 See Sassen (2000 pp 164ndash65)32 For example the entire corpus of Theda Skocpal33 Wallerstein (2000 p 307)34 An apt example of the compartmentalist way of thinking about the state is Daniel

Bellrsquos famous remark that the nation-state is at once too small and too large to ade-quately address most of the problems it faces

35 1946 p 1236 Which in the case of Bourdieu in particular is all the more ironic for its theo-

retical inconsistency with his overall sociological-epistemological project37 Why after all is ldquoglobalizationrdquo now on everyonersquos lips in academe Might it

have something to do as a colleague of mine astutely theorizes because the educatedand professional middle-classes including university professors of Western nations are

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

review essay 333

the emergence of a volatile strain of capitalism the consequences ofwhich he enumerates thoroughly and by and large unproblematicallyIf neither nation-states nor multinational corporations are in charge(Gray argues that both institutional forms have been hollowed-out) justwho is responsible for this mess The question for Gray however seemsrather more like ldquowhat is responsiblerdquo Consider the following exam-ples selected more or less at random

Laissez-faire thinking was supplanted by the ldquoNew Liberalrdquo thinkers suchas Hobhouse Hobson Bosanquet Green and Keynes who were ready toharness the powers of the state to moderate the eVects of market forces (FD p 15 emphasis mine)

This statement is all the more telling for its immanent juxtapositionof the actions of actual people and a collection thereof to wit the stateon the one hand and the nebula of ldquomarket forcesrdquo on the other Whoit must always be asked and answered are the individuals and institu-tions that create ldquomarket forcesrdquo And what actions do such ldquoforcesrdquoentail Again Gray

However the dislocations of social and economic life today are not causedsolely by free markets Ultimately they arise from the banalization of tech-nology Technological innovations made in advanced western countries aresoon copied everywhere Even without free-market policies the managedeconomies of the post-war period could not have survivedmdashtechnologicaladvance would have made them unsustainable (FD pp 19ndash20 emphasis mine)9

Here we encounter two further rei cations First the ldquofree marketrdquothe entity responsible one presumes for ldquomarket forcesrdquo Nowhere doesGray de ne a market be it free or regulated And at no time doesGray delineate the sets of overlapping and embedded economic polit-ical and social relations that constitute a market much less couch hisanalysis of globalization in the matrix of these relations We must bearin mind that ldquoglobalizationrdquo is as much a rei cation as ldquothe marketrdquothat they are in fact synonymous To subsume willy-nilly under thesingular undiVerentiated rubric of the ldquomarketrdquo or ldquoglobalizationrdquo mys-ti es rather than illuminates our present condition

Next is ldquotechnologyrdquo here dressed in its familiar hazardous garbWhen invoked as an active verb technology otherwise a singular if farfrom semantically transparent noun becomes an autonomous agentcapable of creating eVects in the world This use of ldquotechnologyrdquo servesonly to obscure the relations and practices that constitute technologyand to further remove us from the empirical world for which we arein need of grounded explanations involving the actions of individuals

334 review essay

and groups Consider the following passage which is instructive inso-far as it unites these heretofore disparate images

The world-historical movement we call globalization has momentum that isinexorable We are not the masters of the technologies that drive the global economythey condition us in many ways we have not begun to understand (FD p 206emphasis mine)

So long as we continue to employ this form of causal imagery wewill never fully appreciate globalization Worse still we will never bein a position to resist and reform it for the most pernicious conse-quence of rei cation is the tendency to jettison causality for teleologywhich like rei cation discourages political action10 Gray is silent onthe speci c initiatives that might constitute eYcacious resistance to andreform of the global economy This of course is the predictable resultof an analysis that relies on the rei cation of social relations which inturn relieves the reformer of her task According to Gray

The free market cannot last in an age in which economic security for themajority of people is being reduced by the world economy The regimeof laissez-faire is bound to trigger counter-movements which reject its con-straints (FD p 20 emphasis mine)

Later however Gray acknowledges that

A vital condition of reform of the international economy is that it be sup-ported by the worldrsquos single most important power Without active andcontinuing American endorsement there can be no workable institutionsof global governance But so long as the United States remains commit-ted to a global free market it will veto any such reform So long asAmerican policy is based on the laissez-faire ideology that informs theWashington consensus there is no prospect of reforming the world econ-omy (FD p 200)11

Which may appear not a little bit pessimistic until that is it is morewidely recognized that

The Washington consensus will not last forever It will undoubtedly beshaken by economic shocks and geopolitical shifts (FD p 205 emphasismine)

The question of economic and political reform then goes the wayof historical agency and causality

Lukacsrsquo lucid de nition of rei cation is instructive here Rei cationoccurs when ldquoa relation between people takes on the character of athing and thus acquires a lsquophantom-objectivityrsquo an autonomy that seems

review essay 335

so strictly rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of itsfundamental nature the relation between peoplerdquo (Lukacs 1971 pp83ndash87) The problem of rei cation it turns out plagues all of the worksunder review here and most of the discourse analytic and political alikeregarding globalization Throughout this review I try to theorize thismisapprehension of ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollary rei cations as theresult of ideological predilections and otherwise untenable methodolog-ical choices each of which can ultimately be largely explained as con-sequences of the actions and events bound-up in globalization itself

Rei cation rears its ugly head too in Anthony Giddensrsquo RunawayWorld How Globalization is Reshaping Our Livesmdashthe title itself suggests as much Giddens is however an eminently more agile social theoristthan Gray indeed more agile than most Originally given as the 1999Reith lectures broadcast globally by the BBC via both radio and theInternet Giddens oVers the following salvo regarding the character ofglobalization

Globalisation is political technological and cultural as well as economicIt has been in uenced above all by development in systems of communi-cations dating back only to the late 1960s The changes [encompassedby globalization] are being propelled by a range of factors some struc-tural others more speci c and historical Economic in uences are certainlyamong the driving forces especially the global nancial system Yet theyarenrsquot forces of nature They have been shaped by technology and cul-tural diVusion as well as by the decisions of governments to liberalise andderegulate their national economies (RW p 8)

Globalization it seems aVects everything and everything in turnaVects globalization Here the absence of clarity in the de nition ofglobalization manifests itself in a corresponding lack of clarity govern-ing its explanation Giddensrsquo argument is much like the above de nitionit tries to be all things to all people Case in point is Giddensrsquo ambiva-lence regarding the role of the state vis-agrave-vis globalization On the onehand Giddens acknowledges the decisions made by the state This issure to please sociologists who argue for the analytic importance of stateactions and not least those critical of the statersquos strategic retreat frompublic life Giddens is cognizant too of the way in which the nature ofthe state has been transformed Giddens however subtly elides the next(specious I think) question namely has the state reconciled itself to itsnew role or is the state a hapless victim powerless in the face of trans-national forces A theorist as agile as Giddens would doubtless argueif forced ldquobothrdquo but the spirit of his presentation suggests if somewhat

336 review essay

equivocally that the statersquos autonomy has been and continues to bewhittled away by the myriad ldquoforcesrdquo at work in the world today

Giddens goes on to rehearse familiar topics and arguments concern-ing the relationship between globalization (however one takes it) andrisk tradition and fundamentalism the family and feminism and nallythe prospects for democracy Democracy argues Giddens is good andas such worth ghting for Overall this captures the tenor of Giddensrsquoslim little book12 Giddens asks ldquoIs globalisation a force promoting thegeneral goodrdquo (RW p 10) That question in addition to whether wecan gain more control over our ldquorunaway worldrdquo is important ldquoForglobalisation is not incidental to our lives today It is a shift in our verylife circumstances It is the way we now liverdquo (RW pp 11ndash12) Giddensraises few compelling questions and still fewer answers The rapid pub-lication of these BBC lectures with virtually no modi cation or expansionarguably has more to say about the power and force of ldquoglobalizationrdquothan does Giddens

ldquoCulture follows money we will be the Romans in the next gen-erations as the English are nowrdquo wrote F Scott Fitzgerald with con-siderable prescience in 1921 while sojourning in France13 Sixty yearslater and culture still seemed to follow capital In 1982 French culturaloYcials warned of ldquoAmerican cultural imperialismrdquo Soon after a car-toon appeared portraying the noble European continent defended bythe likes of drsquoArtagnan Don Quixote and Shakespeare against anAmerican attack from the skies lead by Mickey Mouse anked by ETMarilyn Monroe and a hamburger14 Walter LaFeberrsquos Michael Jordanand the New Global Capitalism can be read as an elaboration of Fitzgeraldrsquosprediction and Francersquos nay the worldrsquos predicament Namely global-ization as the apotheosis of American popular culture

LaFeber begins his thin historical account in the 1890s the timeperiod in which the American economy rose to preeminence and thegame of basketball was invented For LaFeber ldquoThe history of basket-ball especially in the era of Michael Jordan helps us understand thisera known as lsquothe American Centuryrsquordquo (NGC p 22) The 1890s werealso witness to the rise of the rst multinational corporations includ-ing Standard Oil Eastman Kodak Singer and McCormick Accordingto LaFeber these companies diVer from their late-twentieth centurycounterparts in at least four respects (1) 1890s rms largely employedAmerican workers whereas 1990s rms rely on cheap foreign labor (2)While late-nineteenth century concerns traded in natural resources andindustrial goods corporations nowadays increasingly produce ldquoknowl-edgerdquo and ldquoinformationrdquo Here LaFeber like Barber (1992) signals his

review essay 337

move away from the analysis of hard political power toward soft eco-nomic and symbolic power (3) Todayrsquos transnationals unlike their an-cestors increasingly depend upon ldquoworld marketsrdquo for their pro ts (eg in 1996 four out of every ve bottles of coke were sold outside ofthe United States) and (4) Consequently late-twentieth century trans-nationals depend for their continued success on massive global adver-tising campaigns ldquoto make people want their productsrdquo (NGC p 56) Theadvertising employed by transnationals like Nike is argued to be ldquorev-olutionaryrdquo because it can be seen on as many as thirty to ve hun-dred television channels in many countries thanks to the new technologyof communication satellites and ber-optic cable For LaFeber the med-ium and the message collude to make the products of transnationalsirresistible to the denizens of the new global village Consider LaFeberrsquostake on the fall of Communism

During these decades [1970ndash1990] such new global technologies as com-puters communication satellites and ber optics transformed the globersquoseconomy It should be pointed out that this new era in world history begannot with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold Warin 1989ndash1991 but with the appearance of the post-industrial technologynearly a generation earlier For this technology changed the lives of peo-ples around the world and in so doing brought down the Communistsystem which could not adjust to this revolution (NGC p 58)

In addition to the problem of the rei cation of technology LaFebersimilarly rei es ldquothe world marketrdquo on which transnationals depend butover which the same transnationals wield considerable in uence via theirmarketing campaigns By presuming the perlocutionary power of mediamessages and indeed of the media themselves LaFeber eVectively rendsinvisible the relations between foreign consumers and the popular cul-ture and other fare produced by transnational corporations What doNike shoes or the images of Michael Jordan do for people in and outof America How are American products and symbols experienced insitu15 LaFeber like most globalization theorists emphasizes global pushfactors at the expense of the local pull factors felt articulated andinstantiated by real people in real places who constitute the real powerof ldquoworld marketsrdquo The result is a top-down externalist perspectivebereft of the global consumerrsquos Lebenswelt Consumption is explainedaway as a passive act of reception rather than an inde nite series ofmicroscopic acts of appropriation of the social world In this way LaFeberreproduces indeed globalizes the causal assumptions of the FrankfurtSchoolrsquos critique of mass culture The positive moment of consumerism

338 review essay

insofar as it is de ned as such by variously situated individuals is leftutterly untheorized Methodologically a hermeneutic reconstruction ofthe consumerrsquos point of view is attainable only through ethnographicengagement across a number of cultural sites16 Sociologically the ldquoarm-chairrdquo approach employed by LaFeber and the other authors under re-view here is methodologically and theoretically untenable Ideologicallyhowever it is quite useful insofar as it allows for a political critique thatassigns culpability to only the global cultural ldquopushersrdquo and eVectivelyabsolves the rest of the world of any responsibility whatsoever render-ing them so many dupes under the sway of expensive irresistible imagesIronically the rei cation of powerful world markets has the eVect ofstripping the consumers embedded within them of any potential foragency much less in uence For LaFeber then culture does in fact fol-low the money

The foregoing should not however be read as an aYrmation of theintellectualist romance with and tendentious presumption of subalternresistance commonplace as it is in the discipline of cultural studies Itis after all no more tenable to assume ldquoordinary peoplerdquo to be preter-naturally counter-hegemonic in their quotidien lives than it is to dis-miss them as cultural dopes Recalling Grayrsquos call for ldquonewrdquo and ldquomore exiblerdquo institutions to rescue social markets cultural critics must re exivelyaccount for their own role in the larger eld of cultural production AsThomas Frank (1999 p 84) perspicuously notes many cultural criticsmiss entirely the fatal irony of an academic radicalism that is increas-ingly coterminous with much management theory at precisely the samemoment when capitalist consultants and managers have decided to brandthemselves as radicals equating democracy and dissent with consumerismThe point rather is a simple one An understanding of globalizationas a eld of relations encompassing both power and resistance is impos-sible absent ethnographic engagement in this eld with all the variouslysituated actors involved (eg managers politicians citizens consumersworkers sub-proletariat intellectuals)

An ethnographic case makes the point American anthropologist LilaAbu-Lughod (1990) demonstrates in her ethnographic analysis of Bedouinwomen the intersection of power and resistance in global perspectiveBedouin women it turns out are avid consumers of Western pop musicTheir consumptive behavior has little to do however with the billionsspent annually on advertising by American rms Bedouin women activelyuse the lyrics of Western pop songs particularly romantic ones to sub-vert the regime of patriarchy they confront in their own local culturewherein the oral poetics of love and romance are severely restricted soas to reproduce male privilege Western music then oVers a partial

review essay 339

escape from and critical commentary on patriarchal Bedouin cultureAt the same time Bedouin culture is brought into the web of powerrelations involving the Egyptian nation-state and the larger internationalpolitical economy This instance of resistance exempli es Bourdieursquospoint about relations of power ldquoResistance can be alienating and sub-mission can be liberating Such is the paradox of the dominated andthere is no way out of itrdquo17 The chief limitation of New Global Capitalismis its exaggeration of the power of the dominant and its wholesale in-attention to the agency of the dominated18

Ditto for Zygmunt Baumanrsquos Globalization The Human ConsequencesBaumanrsquos point of departure into the global is Foucaultrsquos instrumentalmetaphor of the Panopticon In the modern exercise of power the spec-tacle was replaced by surveillance In pre-modern times power wasimpressed upon the public via displays of wealth splendor and notleast violence Modern power concentrated in the nation-state by con-trast preferred instead to linger in the shadows closely but discreetlymonitoring its subjects A case of the few regarding the many WhatFoucault overlooked however was the parallel modern development ofnew techniques of power consisting in contradistinction to surveillanceof the various mass media especially television A case of the manywatching the few19

The Panopticon even when universal in application was essentiallya local institution The Synopticon ie the mass media is increasinglyglobal The nature of the power each wields is diVerent too While thePanopticon forced people into the position where they could be watchedthe Synopticon requires little in the way of coercion By contrast theSynopticon seduces people into watching (THC p 52 emphasis in orig-inal) The many now watch the few And the few who are watched arethe celebrities No matter whence they originate all celebrities put ondisplay the world of celebrities a world whose distinctive feature is pre-cisely the quality of being watched by the many in all corners of theworld Whatever they speak about when on air they convey the mes-sage of a total way of life ldquoTheir life their way of liferdquo (THC p 52emphasis in original) To question the impact of that message on themany who watch is to Bauman

less like asking about preconceived fears and hopes and more like askingabout the ldquoeVectsrdquo of Christianity on onersquos view of the world ormdashas theChinese had askedmdashof Confucianism on public morality20

For Bauman as for LaFeber the world watches the fare producedby the globals ie the multinational corporations and the rest is his-tory The billions expended (for LaFeber) and the lofty other-worldly

340 review essay

character (for Bauman) of the globals renders otherwise legitimate naypressing questions of reception and interpretation entirely irrelevant

For all the power contained in the messages and presumably con-ferred upon the messengers Bauman much like Gray and Giddens isstill not entirely sure just who is in charge

To put it in a nutshell no one seems now to be in control Worse still it isnot clear what ldquobeing in controlrdquo could under the circumstances be like The deepest meaning conveyed by the idea of globalization is that ofthe indeterminate unruly and self-propelled character of world aVairs the absenceof a centre of a controlling desk of a board of directors of a manager-ial oYce Globalization is Jowittrsquos ldquonew world disorderrdquo under anothername (THC pp 58ndash59 rst emphasis in original second emphasis mine)

Note the now familiar tell-tale signs of rei cation the obfuscation ofsocial relations and human agency tightly coupled with the attributionof telos to ldquoworld aVairsrdquo The world may be disorderly but for Baumanat least one thing is for sure Wherever the new seat of power residesif it resides anywhere if it even exists at all it is certainly not withinthe nation-state

In the words of GH von Wright the ldquonation-state it seems is erodingor perhaps lsquowithering awayrsquo The eroding forces are transnationalrdquo Since nation-states remain the sole frame for book-balancing and the sole sources ofeVective political initiative the lsquotransnationalityrsquo or eroding forces putsthem outside the realm of deliberate purposeful and potentially rationalaction As everything that elides such action such forces their shapes andactions are blurred in the mist of mystery they are objects of guessesrather than reliable analysis (THC pp 56ndash57 rst emphasis mine secondemphasis in original)

Having thus ruled out both nations and transnationals as the sourceof the ldquoeroding forcesrdquo at work in the world Bauman asks

How has it come about that this vast expanse of man-made wilderness (notthe ldquonaturalrdquo wilderness which modernity set out to conquer and tamebut to paraphrase Anthony Giddensrsquo felicitous phrase a ldquomanufactured jun-glerdquomdashthe post-domestication wilderness one that emerged after the con-quest and as a result) has sprung into vision And why did it acquire theformidable power of obstinacy and resilience which since Durkheim istaken to be the de ning mark of ldquohard realityrdquo (THC p 69 rst empha-sis mine second emphasis in original)

This indeed is the question that should orient our analyses of ldquoglob-alizationrdquo21 As an analytic tool however it is instructive only inasmuchas we apply it equally to the putative ldquocausesrdquo of ldquoglobalizationrdquo for

review essay 341

example the withering away of the nation-state at the hands of thosepunitive and unforgiving ldquo nancial marketsrdquo (THC p 69) each of whichhas assumed of late the marks of ldquohard realityrdquo Bauman poses the ini-tial question but fails to similarly question the ontological reality of whatare actually epistemological heuristics The use of terms such as ldquomar-ketsrdquo and ldquo nancesrdquo and ldquotechnological forcesrdquo are potentially usefulwhen they serve as a kind of analytic shorthand for sets of social rela-tions that have already been enumerated and explicated explicitly andexhaustively When however they substitute for explanations when theystand in as explanations in and of themselves they serve not only tocomplicate our thinking but more egregious still to insidiously repro-duce those discourses and practices of domination against which criti-cal scholars are aligned Bauman himself anticipates this problem whenhe acknowledges with an approving nod to Cornelius Castoriadis that

the trouble with the contemporary condition of modern civilization isthat it stopped questioning itself Not asking certain questions is pregnantwith more dangers than failing to answer the questions already on theoYcial agenda while asking the wrong kind of questions all too often helpsto avert eyes from the truly important issues The price of silence is paidin the hard currency of human suVering Asking the right questions makesafter all all the diVerence between fate and destination drifting and trav-elling Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way oflife is arguably the most urgent of the services we owe our fellow humansand ourselves (THC p 5)

Like Gray and LaFeber Bauman oVers us an impassioned threnodydevoted to the deleterious eVects borne by globalization but in so doingunwittingly disarms us intellectually and consequently renders us inca-pable of intervention and resistance much less understanding We shouldtherefore welcome Pierre Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance Against the Tyrannyof the Market for Bourdieu perhaps more than any other living scholarand public intellectual deftly combines scholarly and political analysis

Bourdieursquos approach is to read ldquoglobalizationrdquo as a neo-liberal dis-course a mythology that poses as reality

Irsquove used the word ldquoglobalizationrdquo It is a myth in the strong sense of theword a powerful discourse and ideacutee force an idea which has social forcewhich obtains belief It is the main weapon in the battles against the gainsof the welfare state (AOR p 34)

Bourdieu goes on to dissect this discourse pointing out the way itevokes and rati es the ldquoso-called law of the marketrdquo (AOR p 35) Byso impugning the natural and inevitable ontological character of ldquoglobal-

342 review essay

izationrdquo and the ldquosupposed iron laws of the nancial marketsrdquo Bourdieuis poised to make the theoretical contribution Gray irted with but failedto realize to wit an analysis of the social construction of the globaleconomy (AOR pp 26ndash27) Yet Bourdieu soon after does an about-face on this issue writing

While globalization is above all a justi catory myth there is one case whereit is quite real that of the nancial markets Thanks to the removal of a num-ber of legal restrictions and the development of electronic communicationswhich lead to lower communication costs we are moving towards a uniednancial market (AOR p 38 emphasis mine)

Bourdieursquos account is rife with contradictions and illogical unsub-stantiated assertions of fact Particularly disabling is his myopia regard-ing the role of the nation-state While ldquoglobalizationrdquo is a myth (wellyes it is) the power of the ldquo nancial marketsrdquo and the ldquointernationalcapital marketrdquo is quite real indeed22 The latter according to Bourdieuprevents individual nation-states from manipulating their exchange andinterest rates which in turn are increasingly determined by a powerconcentrated in the hands of a small number of countries whose iden-tities are never revealed and although one presumes that Bourdieu hasin mind the United States it is not at all clear which other nationsmight be controlling the rest of the worldrsquos nances (Germanyrsquos socialmarket Japanrsquos Certainly neither the French nor the English registerhere) So nations are powerless a familiar refrain Unless that is theyare a part of the small exclusive cabal of nations that rules the worldin which case they have considerable power after all

Bourdieu calls for the creation of a class of collective intellectualswho can among other things analyze the production and circulationof neo-liberal discourse to expose the ideological work of journalistsmanagers and not least the cunning reason of intellectuals23 Thisanalysis is to be carried out presumably in a manner consistent withhis project of re exive sociology24 That would mean mapping the full eld of cultural production and symbolic power that now obtains on aglobal level specifying the key actors and the objective structure of theirrelationships and analyzing the habitus of the agents that nds its tra-jectory within the speci c eld(s) in question25 That Bourdieu fails toattempt much less accomplish this admittedly bold project is a majorshortcoming of Acts of Resistance which amounts to little more than asteady stream of breathless bromides forever interrupted by conceptualand logical inconsistencies

Worse still is the manner in which Bourdieumdashlike Gray Giddens

review essay 343

and Baumanmdashunwittingly buttresses the discourse of neo-liberalism byutterly ignoring the active role played by the state in ushering in anostensible new world disorder in which the state appears as a shadowof its former self at best a hapless and unwilling conspirator accordedlittle responsibility Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance as with the other titlesunder review here quickly establishes its liberal credentials through itslament for a safer more secure and certain world (sicherheit) in whichthe state and the citizen and one suspects the progressive intellectualeach mattered Those nominal credentials however mask and insidi-ously support the state in its new corporatist guise26 Take for instancethe manifesto co-authored by prime ministers Tony Blair and GerhardSchroeder entitled ldquoThe Third WayDie Neue Mitterdquo27 Therein the min-isters declare

In a world of ever more rapid globalization and scienti c changes we needto create the conditions in which existing businesses can prosper and adaptand new businesses can be set up and grow Our aim is to modern-ize the welfare state not dismantle it Flexible markets must be combinedwith a newly dened role for an active state The state must become an activeagent for employment not merely the passive recipient of the casualties ofeconomic failure (emphasis mine)28

If ldquoglobalizationrdquo did not exist the state would have invented itOr consider to choose another recent example the passing of a new

bill in Britain which rede nes terrorism as ldquoThe use of serious violenceagainst persons or property or the threat to use such violence to intim-idate or coerce a government the public or any section of the publicfor political religious or ideological endsrdquo29 Borrowed verbatim fromthe American FBI this new bill was passed in British parliament inMarch 2000 by 210 votes to one Among other purposes the bill willserve as a deterrent to activists who would campaign publicly againstglobalization and multinational corporations as thousands recently didon ldquoMay Dayrdquo in Britain According to a British GM food activistldquoThe government is creating a private security service for transnationalcorporationsrdquo 30 To Bourdieu et al this is simply another example ofthe puppet that is the new nation-state orchestrated from above andafar by those indomitable nancial markets

To the sociologist Saskia Sassen however it is a case in point of thestatersquos active and voluntary complicity in the construction and not leaststrategic invocation of ldquoglobalizationrdquo Sassen contends that far frombeing passive and merely reactive under the sway of globalizationldquonational rms and national institutions have participated in the processrdquo

344 review essay

Sassen moreover rejects the notion that the global economy is ldquosome-how lsquoout therersquordquo forcing a nation and its corporations to change theirpractices Rather Sassen argues forcefully that the global economy hasbeen created by national industries with the assistance of their ownnationrsquos legislative and regulatory bodies In so doing Sassen pushes thede nition of the global economy beyond the production distributionand consumption of goods and services to encompass a worldwide sys-tem of governance and power within a ldquonew frontier zonerdquo which

is not merely a dividing line between the national economy and theglobal economy It is a zone of politico-economic interactions that pro-duce new institutional forms and alter some of the old ones Nor is this encounterbetween the global and the national just a matter of reducing regulations or the role ofgovernment generally simply to posit as is so often done that economic glob-alization has brought with it declining signi cance of the national state toutcourt misses some of the ner points of this transformation (emphasis mine)31

Pace Sassen and others who argue convincingly for the need to ldquobringthe state back inrdquo32 to our analyses the failure to recognize the trans-formation of the nonetheless active role of the nation-state is a symp-tom of a much broader failure of the sociological imagination bear inmind that the works discussed above are by some of the eldrsquos mostprominent gures Despite their admirably meliorist intentions theseworks each serve to invest ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollaries ie mar-ket and technological ldquoforcesrdquo with a ldquothingnessrdquo and an eYcacy itdoes not cannot possess This tendency stems I think from the nolonger tenable theoretical assumption that modernity consists of the compartmentalization of reality into three distinct domains (1) Market(economy) (2) State (polity) and (3) Civil Society (culturepublic sphere)It is arguable whether this tripartite heuristic was ever analytically use-ful but the problem it poses for sociologists now is a diVerent one forthis heuristic has assumed the status of a dead metaphor that of hardreality According to Wallerstein this theorem of separateness and mutualexclusivity a mere two hundred years old is now so deeply rooted inour consciousness and linguistic tools that we nd it almost impossibleto formulate sentences much less cogent analytic arguments free of thisthreefold monster33 Thus rei ed these epistemologic tools no longerserve us They instead predispose us to see each sphere in terms onlyof expansion (as in the case of the market) or retraction (as in the rolesof the state and the public sphere) rather than the simultaneous seman-tic and ontological transformation of all three34 Returning to Cassirer

review essay 345

But this problem itself appears spurious as soon as we realize that the dis-tinctions which here are taken for granted the analysis of reality in termsof things and processes permanent and transitory aspects objects andactions do not precede language as a substratum of given fact but thatlanguage itself is what initiates such articulations and develops them inits own sphere35

As Wallerstein adroitly notes these unconscious rei cations obscuremuch of reality from the scholars who unre exively deploy them36 Thereis however still more at work than this For all the attention I havedevoted to disentangling the discourse of ldquoglobalizationrdquo we must notlose sight of the many decisions actions and consequences intentionalor not that loosely comprise the ever-shifting reality of globalizationwithin which our analytic discourse is developed and deployed Chiefamong these in this context are the sense and the reality of profounddislocation displacement and disengagement that aVect sociologists asmuch as anyone else37 Our theories and methods bear the indelibleimprint of the world we seek to comprehend

A renovated sociological imagination of globalization must steer clearof the grand theorizing rehearsed by the works reviewed here withoutsimultaneously lapsing into the abstracted empiricism that infects mostof the technical work on globalization38 To avoid these twin pitfalls wewill need to develop an entirely new vocabulary grounded in directempirical engagement with our new globalizing reality Examples ofthis new approach are already under way They include so far Marcusrsquocall for multi-sited ethnography Sassenrsquos work toward cultivating anethnographic approach to studying the way the global is instantiatedwithin local urban spaces and Duneierrsquos ldquoextended place methodrdquo39

The considerable potential of these approaches notwithstanding the soci-ological apprehension of globalization will require rst and foremost acollective eVort on the part of variously situated scholars to wit a globalnetwork consisting of several local nodes in which substantive con ictand cooperation may freely occur What the late Bill Readings calleda community of ldquodissensusrdquo40 Absent these eVorts our meliorist inten-tions have little chance of ever becoming eYcacious interventions

Notes

1 Thanks to Denis Wall for editorial assistance and to Julie Custeau for her ever-astute guidance and unfailing support of everything that I do The works reviewed hereinclude Bauman Zygmunt 1998 Globalization the human consequences (New York ColumbiaUniversity Press) hereafter THC Bourdieu Pierre 1998 Acts of resistance against the tyranny

346 review essay

of the market (New York The New Press) hereafter AOR Gray John 1998 False dawnthe delusions of global capitalism (London Granta Books) hereafter FD Giddens Anthony2000 Runaway World (New York Routledge) hereafter RW and LaFeber Walter 1999Michael Jordan and the new global capitalism (New York W W Norton amp Company) here-after NGC

2 1946 p 73 See Cassidy (1997) The recent highly organized public protests in Davos Seattle

and Washington lend support to this prediction4 For an historical perspective on the semantic polyvalence if not polysemy of

ldquoglobalizationrdquo over the Longue Dureacutee see Moore (1997)5 As Giddens puts it ldquoThe global spread of the term [globalization] is evidence of

the very developments to which it refersrdquo (RW p 3)6 See Bourdieursquos AOR p 427 Gray later asserts however that ldquoThe leverage of sovereign states over business

may actually be greater in some respects today than it has been in the pastrdquo (FD p 67) In which respects Gray does not say Nor does he oVer any evidence to but-tress what must be classi ed as like so many of the statements comprising FD purespeculation (or what might be euphemized as ldquoarm-chair economicsrdquo)

8 See the intriguing if tentative results of an international project comparing thefuture of nationally embedded capitalism in the global economy in Streeck and Yamamura(2000)

9 For an illuminating historical treatment of the rei cation of technology see Marx(1997)

10 Gray argues further that the eVects of these forces are irrevocable and irreversibleThe regrettable and wrong-headed policy choices made by the Thatcher administrationnow constitute the ineluctable reality of the Blair government Gray goes on to arguethe same for the neo-liberal turn taken by New Zealand Grayrsquos argument is contra-dicted however by rst the palpably intentional adoption of neo-liberal tenets on thepart of the Blair government (not least its elimination of Article Four hitherto the cor-nerstone of Labour politics) and second by the recent election of a Labour governmentin New Zealand whose popularity in the polls in 1990 was just 2 percent a Labourgovernment that is moreover authentically committed to rebuilding and underwritingits social institutions See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 11 Even the Economistadmitted no doubt plaintively that ldquoglobalization is not irreversiblerdquo (see Smith andMoran [2000 p 70])

11 Gray is confused about the power of the American model Of ldquohyperglobaliza-tion a corporate utopiardquo Gray writes ldquoIt represents an historical transformation thathas no end-state and which is subverting American capitalism as well as its rivals as aprocess leading to the universal acceptance of American free marketsrdquo (FD p 67)

12 In contradistinction to Giddensrsquo slim but instructive A Brief but Critical Introductionto Sociology

13 Fitzgerald made this prediction in a personal letter to the novelist and criticEdmund (Bunny) Wilson

14 de Medici and de Medici (1986 pp 17ndash20)15 For an empirically rich and theoretically supple analysis of the local experience

of McDonaldrsquos throughout east Asia refer to Watson et al (1997) This volume of ethno-graphic accounts makes particularly plain the ways in which McDonaldrsquos as a transna-tional corporation has allowed itself via a local ownership structure to adapt to theexigencies and idiosyncrasies of local cultures Even while McDonaldrsquos market share reclinedin the United States during the 1990s it continued to grow in foreign markets includ-ing but not limited to east Asia

16 See Marcus (1995) on the advantages of conducting multi-site ethnography inofthe world system

17 Bourdieu (1987 p 184)

review essay 347

18 One nal word of warning regarding NGC the strength and weakness of thisbook are one in the same NGC is unique in that it tries to marry the history of bas-ketball with the history of the American economy A short book it suYciently coversneither task Basketball fans in particular should look elsewhere for a treatment of boththe NBA and the career of Michael Jordan See instead the eminently readable andinformative Halberstam (1999) and in keeping with the line of argument pursued aboveJordan (1998)

19 This is what Mathiesen (1997) aptly coined the Synopticon20 Gerbner and Gross (1976) quoted in THC p 5321 This question if broadened in scope is arguably the most important question

sociologists can pose Period Substitute ldquosocietyrdquo for ldquoglobalizationrdquo and the analyticpotential of the question comes into bold relief

22 Compare the putative reality of the nancial market with the following breath-less declaration ldquoIn short against all the prophets of misery who want to convince youthat your destiny is in the hands of transcendent independent indiVerent powers suchas the lsquo nancial marketsrsquo or the mechanisms if lsquoglobalizationrsquo I want to declare withthe hope of convincing you that the future your future which is also our future thatof all Europeans depends a great deal on you as Germans and trade unionistsrdquo (AORp 69)

23 For his own analysis cum criticism of the ldquojournalistic eldrdquo see Bourdieu (1998)for Bourdieursquos take on the role of intellectuals in diVusing the new global vulgate seeBourdieu and Wacquant (1999a 1999b)

24 I say presumably because Bourdieu at no point in AOR elaborates this programFor an original and compelling criticism of Bourdieursquos sociological theory and methodsee Griller (1996)

25 See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992 pp 104ndash5) Whether or not the global eldis coterminous with what Bourdieu calls the eld of power (a kind of meta- eld) is aninteresting question

26 If I am harder on Bourdieu than the other authors under review (which is arguable)it is due rst to the inconsistency that obtains between his previous scholarly work andhis present political critique and second and most important because his ostensibly lib-eral critique unwittingly and insidiously reproduces the neo-liberal discourse he seeks tosubvert

27 Not coincidentally the so-called ldquothird wayrdquo also advocated by Bill Clinton islargely inspired by Anthony Giddensrsquo book of the same name Space does not permitan analysis of Giddensrsquo contribution to practical politics here Blair and Schroederrsquos man-ifesto is reprinted in the spring 2000 edition of Dissent pp 51ndash65

28 Small wonder Gray who makes the same recommendation demonizes the Thatcheradministration on the one (left) hand while he serves as an apologist for the presentBlair government on the other (right) hand

29 See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 2030 Ibid31 See Sassen (2000 pp 164ndash65)32 For example the entire corpus of Theda Skocpal33 Wallerstein (2000 p 307)34 An apt example of the compartmentalist way of thinking about the state is Daniel

Bellrsquos famous remark that the nation-state is at once too small and too large to ade-quately address most of the problems it faces

35 1946 p 1236 Which in the case of Bourdieu in particular is all the more ironic for its theo-

retical inconsistency with his overall sociological-epistemological project37 Why after all is ldquoglobalizationrdquo now on everyonersquos lips in academe Might it

have something to do as a colleague of mine astutely theorizes because the educatedand professional middle-classes including university professors of Western nations are

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

334 review essay

and groups Consider the following passage which is instructive inso-far as it unites these heretofore disparate images

The world-historical movement we call globalization has momentum that isinexorable We are not the masters of the technologies that drive the global economythey condition us in many ways we have not begun to understand (FD p 206emphasis mine)

So long as we continue to employ this form of causal imagery wewill never fully appreciate globalization Worse still we will never bein a position to resist and reform it for the most pernicious conse-quence of rei cation is the tendency to jettison causality for teleologywhich like rei cation discourages political action10 Gray is silent onthe speci c initiatives that might constitute eYcacious resistance to andreform of the global economy This of course is the predictable resultof an analysis that relies on the rei cation of social relations which inturn relieves the reformer of her task According to Gray

The free market cannot last in an age in which economic security for themajority of people is being reduced by the world economy The regimeof laissez-faire is bound to trigger counter-movements which reject its con-straints (FD p 20 emphasis mine)

Later however Gray acknowledges that

A vital condition of reform of the international economy is that it be sup-ported by the worldrsquos single most important power Without active andcontinuing American endorsement there can be no workable institutionsof global governance But so long as the United States remains commit-ted to a global free market it will veto any such reform So long asAmerican policy is based on the laissez-faire ideology that informs theWashington consensus there is no prospect of reforming the world econ-omy (FD p 200)11

Which may appear not a little bit pessimistic until that is it is morewidely recognized that

The Washington consensus will not last forever It will undoubtedly beshaken by economic shocks and geopolitical shifts (FD p 205 emphasismine)

The question of economic and political reform then goes the wayof historical agency and causality

Lukacsrsquo lucid de nition of rei cation is instructive here Rei cationoccurs when ldquoa relation between people takes on the character of athing and thus acquires a lsquophantom-objectivityrsquo an autonomy that seems

review essay 335

so strictly rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of itsfundamental nature the relation between peoplerdquo (Lukacs 1971 pp83ndash87) The problem of rei cation it turns out plagues all of the worksunder review here and most of the discourse analytic and political alikeregarding globalization Throughout this review I try to theorize thismisapprehension of ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollary rei cations as theresult of ideological predilections and otherwise untenable methodolog-ical choices each of which can ultimately be largely explained as con-sequences of the actions and events bound-up in globalization itself

Rei cation rears its ugly head too in Anthony Giddensrsquo RunawayWorld How Globalization is Reshaping Our Livesmdashthe title itself suggests as much Giddens is however an eminently more agile social theoristthan Gray indeed more agile than most Originally given as the 1999Reith lectures broadcast globally by the BBC via both radio and theInternet Giddens oVers the following salvo regarding the character ofglobalization

Globalisation is political technological and cultural as well as economicIt has been in uenced above all by development in systems of communi-cations dating back only to the late 1960s The changes [encompassedby globalization] are being propelled by a range of factors some struc-tural others more speci c and historical Economic in uences are certainlyamong the driving forces especially the global nancial system Yet theyarenrsquot forces of nature They have been shaped by technology and cul-tural diVusion as well as by the decisions of governments to liberalise andderegulate their national economies (RW p 8)

Globalization it seems aVects everything and everything in turnaVects globalization Here the absence of clarity in the de nition ofglobalization manifests itself in a corresponding lack of clarity govern-ing its explanation Giddensrsquo argument is much like the above de nitionit tries to be all things to all people Case in point is Giddensrsquo ambiva-lence regarding the role of the state vis-agrave-vis globalization On the onehand Giddens acknowledges the decisions made by the state This issure to please sociologists who argue for the analytic importance of stateactions and not least those critical of the statersquos strategic retreat frompublic life Giddens is cognizant too of the way in which the nature ofthe state has been transformed Giddens however subtly elides the next(specious I think) question namely has the state reconciled itself to itsnew role or is the state a hapless victim powerless in the face of trans-national forces A theorist as agile as Giddens would doubtless argueif forced ldquobothrdquo but the spirit of his presentation suggests if somewhat

336 review essay

equivocally that the statersquos autonomy has been and continues to bewhittled away by the myriad ldquoforcesrdquo at work in the world today

Giddens goes on to rehearse familiar topics and arguments concern-ing the relationship between globalization (however one takes it) andrisk tradition and fundamentalism the family and feminism and nallythe prospects for democracy Democracy argues Giddens is good andas such worth ghting for Overall this captures the tenor of Giddensrsquoslim little book12 Giddens asks ldquoIs globalisation a force promoting thegeneral goodrdquo (RW p 10) That question in addition to whether wecan gain more control over our ldquorunaway worldrdquo is important ldquoForglobalisation is not incidental to our lives today It is a shift in our verylife circumstances It is the way we now liverdquo (RW pp 11ndash12) Giddensraises few compelling questions and still fewer answers The rapid pub-lication of these BBC lectures with virtually no modi cation or expansionarguably has more to say about the power and force of ldquoglobalizationrdquothan does Giddens

ldquoCulture follows money we will be the Romans in the next gen-erations as the English are nowrdquo wrote F Scott Fitzgerald with con-siderable prescience in 1921 while sojourning in France13 Sixty yearslater and culture still seemed to follow capital In 1982 French culturaloYcials warned of ldquoAmerican cultural imperialismrdquo Soon after a car-toon appeared portraying the noble European continent defended bythe likes of drsquoArtagnan Don Quixote and Shakespeare against anAmerican attack from the skies lead by Mickey Mouse anked by ETMarilyn Monroe and a hamburger14 Walter LaFeberrsquos Michael Jordanand the New Global Capitalism can be read as an elaboration of Fitzgeraldrsquosprediction and Francersquos nay the worldrsquos predicament Namely global-ization as the apotheosis of American popular culture

LaFeber begins his thin historical account in the 1890s the timeperiod in which the American economy rose to preeminence and thegame of basketball was invented For LaFeber ldquoThe history of basket-ball especially in the era of Michael Jordan helps us understand thisera known as lsquothe American Centuryrsquordquo (NGC p 22) The 1890s werealso witness to the rise of the rst multinational corporations includ-ing Standard Oil Eastman Kodak Singer and McCormick Accordingto LaFeber these companies diVer from their late-twentieth centurycounterparts in at least four respects (1) 1890s rms largely employedAmerican workers whereas 1990s rms rely on cheap foreign labor (2)While late-nineteenth century concerns traded in natural resources andindustrial goods corporations nowadays increasingly produce ldquoknowl-edgerdquo and ldquoinformationrdquo Here LaFeber like Barber (1992) signals his

review essay 337

move away from the analysis of hard political power toward soft eco-nomic and symbolic power (3) Todayrsquos transnationals unlike their an-cestors increasingly depend upon ldquoworld marketsrdquo for their pro ts (eg in 1996 four out of every ve bottles of coke were sold outside ofthe United States) and (4) Consequently late-twentieth century trans-nationals depend for their continued success on massive global adver-tising campaigns ldquoto make people want their productsrdquo (NGC p 56) Theadvertising employed by transnationals like Nike is argued to be ldquorev-olutionaryrdquo because it can be seen on as many as thirty to ve hun-dred television channels in many countries thanks to the new technologyof communication satellites and ber-optic cable For LaFeber the med-ium and the message collude to make the products of transnationalsirresistible to the denizens of the new global village Consider LaFeberrsquostake on the fall of Communism

During these decades [1970ndash1990] such new global technologies as com-puters communication satellites and ber optics transformed the globersquoseconomy It should be pointed out that this new era in world history begannot with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold Warin 1989ndash1991 but with the appearance of the post-industrial technologynearly a generation earlier For this technology changed the lives of peo-ples around the world and in so doing brought down the Communistsystem which could not adjust to this revolution (NGC p 58)

In addition to the problem of the rei cation of technology LaFebersimilarly rei es ldquothe world marketrdquo on which transnationals depend butover which the same transnationals wield considerable in uence via theirmarketing campaigns By presuming the perlocutionary power of mediamessages and indeed of the media themselves LaFeber eVectively rendsinvisible the relations between foreign consumers and the popular cul-ture and other fare produced by transnational corporations What doNike shoes or the images of Michael Jordan do for people in and outof America How are American products and symbols experienced insitu15 LaFeber like most globalization theorists emphasizes global pushfactors at the expense of the local pull factors felt articulated andinstantiated by real people in real places who constitute the real powerof ldquoworld marketsrdquo The result is a top-down externalist perspectivebereft of the global consumerrsquos Lebenswelt Consumption is explainedaway as a passive act of reception rather than an inde nite series ofmicroscopic acts of appropriation of the social world In this way LaFeberreproduces indeed globalizes the causal assumptions of the FrankfurtSchoolrsquos critique of mass culture The positive moment of consumerism

338 review essay

insofar as it is de ned as such by variously situated individuals is leftutterly untheorized Methodologically a hermeneutic reconstruction ofthe consumerrsquos point of view is attainable only through ethnographicengagement across a number of cultural sites16 Sociologically the ldquoarm-chairrdquo approach employed by LaFeber and the other authors under re-view here is methodologically and theoretically untenable Ideologicallyhowever it is quite useful insofar as it allows for a political critique thatassigns culpability to only the global cultural ldquopushersrdquo and eVectivelyabsolves the rest of the world of any responsibility whatsoever render-ing them so many dupes under the sway of expensive irresistible imagesIronically the rei cation of powerful world markets has the eVect ofstripping the consumers embedded within them of any potential foragency much less in uence For LaFeber then culture does in fact fol-low the money

The foregoing should not however be read as an aYrmation of theintellectualist romance with and tendentious presumption of subalternresistance commonplace as it is in the discipline of cultural studies Itis after all no more tenable to assume ldquoordinary peoplerdquo to be preter-naturally counter-hegemonic in their quotidien lives than it is to dis-miss them as cultural dopes Recalling Grayrsquos call for ldquonewrdquo and ldquomore exiblerdquo institutions to rescue social markets cultural critics must re exivelyaccount for their own role in the larger eld of cultural production AsThomas Frank (1999 p 84) perspicuously notes many cultural criticsmiss entirely the fatal irony of an academic radicalism that is increas-ingly coterminous with much management theory at precisely the samemoment when capitalist consultants and managers have decided to brandthemselves as radicals equating democracy and dissent with consumerismThe point rather is a simple one An understanding of globalizationas a eld of relations encompassing both power and resistance is impos-sible absent ethnographic engagement in this eld with all the variouslysituated actors involved (eg managers politicians citizens consumersworkers sub-proletariat intellectuals)

An ethnographic case makes the point American anthropologist LilaAbu-Lughod (1990) demonstrates in her ethnographic analysis of Bedouinwomen the intersection of power and resistance in global perspectiveBedouin women it turns out are avid consumers of Western pop musicTheir consumptive behavior has little to do however with the billionsspent annually on advertising by American rms Bedouin women activelyuse the lyrics of Western pop songs particularly romantic ones to sub-vert the regime of patriarchy they confront in their own local culturewherein the oral poetics of love and romance are severely restricted soas to reproduce male privilege Western music then oVers a partial

review essay 339

escape from and critical commentary on patriarchal Bedouin cultureAt the same time Bedouin culture is brought into the web of powerrelations involving the Egyptian nation-state and the larger internationalpolitical economy This instance of resistance exempli es Bourdieursquospoint about relations of power ldquoResistance can be alienating and sub-mission can be liberating Such is the paradox of the dominated andthere is no way out of itrdquo17 The chief limitation of New Global Capitalismis its exaggeration of the power of the dominant and its wholesale in-attention to the agency of the dominated18

Ditto for Zygmunt Baumanrsquos Globalization The Human ConsequencesBaumanrsquos point of departure into the global is Foucaultrsquos instrumentalmetaphor of the Panopticon In the modern exercise of power the spec-tacle was replaced by surveillance In pre-modern times power wasimpressed upon the public via displays of wealth splendor and notleast violence Modern power concentrated in the nation-state by con-trast preferred instead to linger in the shadows closely but discreetlymonitoring its subjects A case of the few regarding the many WhatFoucault overlooked however was the parallel modern development ofnew techniques of power consisting in contradistinction to surveillanceof the various mass media especially television A case of the manywatching the few19

The Panopticon even when universal in application was essentiallya local institution The Synopticon ie the mass media is increasinglyglobal The nature of the power each wields is diVerent too While thePanopticon forced people into the position where they could be watchedthe Synopticon requires little in the way of coercion By contrast theSynopticon seduces people into watching (THC p 52 emphasis in orig-inal) The many now watch the few And the few who are watched arethe celebrities No matter whence they originate all celebrities put ondisplay the world of celebrities a world whose distinctive feature is pre-cisely the quality of being watched by the many in all corners of theworld Whatever they speak about when on air they convey the mes-sage of a total way of life ldquoTheir life their way of liferdquo (THC p 52emphasis in original) To question the impact of that message on themany who watch is to Bauman

less like asking about preconceived fears and hopes and more like askingabout the ldquoeVectsrdquo of Christianity on onersquos view of the world ormdashas theChinese had askedmdashof Confucianism on public morality20

For Bauman as for LaFeber the world watches the fare producedby the globals ie the multinational corporations and the rest is his-tory The billions expended (for LaFeber) and the lofty other-worldly

340 review essay

character (for Bauman) of the globals renders otherwise legitimate naypressing questions of reception and interpretation entirely irrelevant

For all the power contained in the messages and presumably con-ferred upon the messengers Bauman much like Gray and Giddens isstill not entirely sure just who is in charge

To put it in a nutshell no one seems now to be in control Worse still it isnot clear what ldquobeing in controlrdquo could under the circumstances be like The deepest meaning conveyed by the idea of globalization is that ofthe indeterminate unruly and self-propelled character of world aVairs the absenceof a centre of a controlling desk of a board of directors of a manager-ial oYce Globalization is Jowittrsquos ldquonew world disorderrdquo under anothername (THC pp 58ndash59 rst emphasis in original second emphasis mine)

Note the now familiar tell-tale signs of rei cation the obfuscation ofsocial relations and human agency tightly coupled with the attributionof telos to ldquoworld aVairsrdquo The world may be disorderly but for Baumanat least one thing is for sure Wherever the new seat of power residesif it resides anywhere if it even exists at all it is certainly not withinthe nation-state

In the words of GH von Wright the ldquonation-state it seems is erodingor perhaps lsquowithering awayrsquo The eroding forces are transnationalrdquo Since nation-states remain the sole frame for book-balancing and the sole sources ofeVective political initiative the lsquotransnationalityrsquo or eroding forces putsthem outside the realm of deliberate purposeful and potentially rationalaction As everything that elides such action such forces their shapes andactions are blurred in the mist of mystery they are objects of guessesrather than reliable analysis (THC pp 56ndash57 rst emphasis mine secondemphasis in original)

Having thus ruled out both nations and transnationals as the sourceof the ldquoeroding forcesrdquo at work in the world Bauman asks

How has it come about that this vast expanse of man-made wilderness (notthe ldquonaturalrdquo wilderness which modernity set out to conquer and tamebut to paraphrase Anthony Giddensrsquo felicitous phrase a ldquomanufactured jun-glerdquomdashthe post-domestication wilderness one that emerged after the con-quest and as a result) has sprung into vision And why did it acquire theformidable power of obstinacy and resilience which since Durkheim istaken to be the de ning mark of ldquohard realityrdquo (THC p 69 rst empha-sis mine second emphasis in original)

This indeed is the question that should orient our analyses of ldquoglob-alizationrdquo21 As an analytic tool however it is instructive only inasmuchas we apply it equally to the putative ldquocausesrdquo of ldquoglobalizationrdquo for

review essay 341

example the withering away of the nation-state at the hands of thosepunitive and unforgiving ldquo nancial marketsrdquo (THC p 69) each of whichhas assumed of late the marks of ldquohard realityrdquo Bauman poses the ini-tial question but fails to similarly question the ontological reality of whatare actually epistemological heuristics The use of terms such as ldquomar-ketsrdquo and ldquo nancesrdquo and ldquotechnological forcesrdquo are potentially usefulwhen they serve as a kind of analytic shorthand for sets of social rela-tions that have already been enumerated and explicated explicitly andexhaustively When however they substitute for explanations when theystand in as explanations in and of themselves they serve not only tocomplicate our thinking but more egregious still to insidiously repro-duce those discourses and practices of domination against which criti-cal scholars are aligned Bauman himself anticipates this problem whenhe acknowledges with an approving nod to Cornelius Castoriadis that

the trouble with the contemporary condition of modern civilization isthat it stopped questioning itself Not asking certain questions is pregnantwith more dangers than failing to answer the questions already on theoYcial agenda while asking the wrong kind of questions all too often helpsto avert eyes from the truly important issues The price of silence is paidin the hard currency of human suVering Asking the right questions makesafter all all the diVerence between fate and destination drifting and trav-elling Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way oflife is arguably the most urgent of the services we owe our fellow humansand ourselves (THC p 5)

Like Gray and LaFeber Bauman oVers us an impassioned threnodydevoted to the deleterious eVects borne by globalization but in so doingunwittingly disarms us intellectually and consequently renders us inca-pable of intervention and resistance much less understanding We shouldtherefore welcome Pierre Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance Against the Tyrannyof the Market for Bourdieu perhaps more than any other living scholarand public intellectual deftly combines scholarly and political analysis

Bourdieursquos approach is to read ldquoglobalizationrdquo as a neo-liberal dis-course a mythology that poses as reality

Irsquove used the word ldquoglobalizationrdquo It is a myth in the strong sense of theword a powerful discourse and ideacutee force an idea which has social forcewhich obtains belief It is the main weapon in the battles against the gainsof the welfare state (AOR p 34)

Bourdieu goes on to dissect this discourse pointing out the way itevokes and rati es the ldquoso-called law of the marketrdquo (AOR p 35) Byso impugning the natural and inevitable ontological character of ldquoglobal-

342 review essay

izationrdquo and the ldquosupposed iron laws of the nancial marketsrdquo Bourdieuis poised to make the theoretical contribution Gray irted with but failedto realize to wit an analysis of the social construction of the globaleconomy (AOR pp 26ndash27) Yet Bourdieu soon after does an about-face on this issue writing

While globalization is above all a justi catory myth there is one case whereit is quite real that of the nancial markets Thanks to the removal of a num-ber of legal restrictions and the development of electronic communicationswhich lead to lower communication costs we are moving towards a uniednancial market (AOR p 38 emphasis mine)

Bourdieursquos account is rife with contradictions and illogical unsub-stantiated assertions of fact Particularly disabling is his myopia regard-ing the role of the nation-state While ldquoglobalizationrdquo is a myth (wellyes it is) the power of the ldquo nancial marketsrdquo and the ldquointernationalcapital marketrdquo is quite real indeed22 The latter according to Bourdieuprevents individual nation-states from manipulating their exchange andinterest rates which in turn are increasingly determined by a powerconcentrated in the hands of a small number of countries whose iden-tities are never revealed and although one presumes that Bourdieu hasin mind the United States it is not at all clear which other nationsmight be controlling the rest of the worldrsquos nances (Germanyrsquos socialmarket Japanrsquos Certainly neither the French nor the English registerhere) So nations are powerless a familiar refrain Unless that is theyare a part of the small exclusive cabal of nations that rules the worldin which case they have considerable power after all

Bourdieu calls for the creation of a class of collective intellectualswho can among other things analyze the production and circulationof neo-liberal discourse to expose the ideological work of journalistsmanagers and not least the cunning reason of intellectuals23 Thisanalysis is to be carried out presumably in a manner consistent withhis project of re exive sociology24 That would mean mapping the full eld of cultural production and symbolic power that now obtains on aglobal level specifying the key actors and the objective structure of theirrelationships and analyzing the habitus of the agents that nds its tra-jectory within the speci c eld(s) in question25 That Bourdieu fails toattempt much less accomplish this admittedly bold project is a majorshortcoming of Acts of Resistance which amounts to little more than asteady stream of breathless bromides forever interrupted by conceptualand logical inconsistencies

Worse still is the manner in which Bourdieumdashlike Gray Giddens

review essay 343

and Baumanmdashunwittingly buttresses the discourse of neo-liberalism byutterly ignoring the active role played by the state in ushering in anostensible new world disorder in which the state appears as a shadowof its former self at best a hapless and unwilling conspirator accordedlittle responsibility Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance as with the other titlesunder review here quickly establishes its liberal credentials through itslament for a safer more secure and certain world (sicherheit) in whichthe state and the citizen and one suspects the progressive intellectualeach mattered Those nominal credentials however mask and insidi-ously support the state in its new corporatist guise26 Take for instancethe manifesto co-authored by prime ministers Tony Blair and GerhardSchroeder entitled ldquoThe Third WayDie Neue Mitterdquo27 Therein the min-isters declare

In a world of ever more rapid globalization and scienti c changes we needto create the conditions in which existing businesses can prosper and adaptand new businesses can be set up and grow Our aim is to modern-ize the welfare state not dismantle it Flexible markets must be combinedwith a newly dened role for an active state The state must become an activeagent for employment not merely the passive recipient of the casualties ofeconomic failure (emphasis mine)28

If ldquoglobalizationrdquo did not exist the state would have invented itOr consider to choose another recent example the passing of a new

bill in Britain which rede nes terrorism as ldquoThe use of serious violenceagainst persons or property or the threat to use such violence to intim-idate or coerce a government the public or any section of the publicfor political religious or ideological endsrdquo29 Borrowed verbatim fromthe American FBI this new bill was passed in British parliament inMarch 2000 by 210 votes to one Among other purposes the bill willserve as a deterrent to activists who would campaign publicly againstglobalization and multinational corporations as thousands recently didon ldquoMay Dayrdquo in Britain According to a British GM food activistldquoThe government is creating a private security service for transnationalcorporationsrdquo 30 To Bourdieu et al this is simply another example ofthe puppet that is the new nation-state orchestrated from above andafar by those indomitable nancial markets

To the sociologist Saskia Sassen however it is a case in point of thestatersquos active and voluntary complicity in the construction and not leaststrategic invocation of ldquoglobalizationrdquo Sassen contends that far frombeing passive and merely reactive under the sway of globalizationldquonational rms and national institutions have participated in the processrdquo

344 review essay

Sassen moreover rejects the notion that the global economy is ldquosome-how lsquoout therersquordquo forcing a nation and its corporations to change theirpractices Rather Sassen argues forcefully that the global economy hasbeen created by national industries with the assistance of their ownnationrsquos legislative and regulatory bodies In so doing Sassen pushes thede nition of the global economy beyond the production distributionand consumption of goods and services to encompass a worldwide sys-tem of governance and power within a ldquonew frontier zonerdquo which

is not merely a dividing line between the national economy and theglobal economy It is a zone of politico-economic interactions that pro-duce new institutional forms and alter some of the old ones Nor is this encounterbetween the global and the national just a matter of reducing regulations or the role ofgovernment generally simply to posit as is so often done that economic glob-alization has brought with it declining signi cance of the national state toutcourt misses some of the ner points of this transformation (emphasis mine)31

Pace Sassen and others who argue convincingly for the need to ldquobringthe state back inrdquo32 to our analyses the failure to recognize the trans-formation of the nonetheless active role of the nation-state is a symp-tom of a much broader failure of the sociological imagination bear inmind that the works discussed above are by some of the eldrsquos mostprominent gures Despite their admirably meliorist intentions theseworks each serve to invest ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollaries ie mar-ket and technological ldquoforcesrdquo with a ldquothingnessrdquo and an eYcacy itdoes not cannot possess This tendency stems I think from the nolonger tenable theoretical assumption that modernity consists of the compartmentalization of reality into three distinct domains (1) Market(economy) (2) State (polity) and (3) Civil Society (culturepublic sphere)It is arguable whether this tripartite heuristic was ever analytically use-ful but the problem it poses for sociologists now is a diVerent one forthis heuristic has assumed the status of a dead metaphor that of hardreality According to Wallerstein this theorem of separateness and mutualexclusivity a mere two hundred years old is now so deeply rooted inour consciousness and linguistic tools that we nd it almost impossibleto formulate sentences much less cogent analytic arguments free of thisthreefold monster33 Thus rei ed these epistemologic tools no longerserve us They instead predispose us to see each sphere in terms onlyof expansion (as in the case of the market) or retraction (as in the rolesof the state and the public sphere) rather than the simultaneous seman-tic and ontological transformation of all three34 Returning to Cassirer

review essay 345

But this problem itself appears spurious as soon as we realize that the dis-tinctions which here are taken for granted the analysis of reality in termsof things and processes permanent and transitory aspects objects andactions do not precede language as a substratum of given fact but thatlanguage itself is what initiates such articulations and develops them inits own sphere35

As Wallerstein adroitly notes these unconscious rei cations obscuremuch of reality from the scholars who unre exively deploy them36 Thereis however still more at work than this For all the attention I havedevoted to disentangling the discourse of ldquoglobalizationrdquo we must notlose sight of the many decisions actions and consequences intentionalor not that loosely comprise the ever-shifting reality of globalizationwithin which our analytic discourse is developed and deployed Chiefamong these in this context are the sense and the reality of profounddislocation displacement and disengagement that aVect sociologists asmuch as anyone else37 Our theories and methods bear the indelibleimprint of the world we seek to comprehend

A renovated sociological imagination of globalization must steer clearof the grand theorizing rehearsed by the works reviewed here withoutsimultaneously lapsing into the abstracted empiricism that infects mostof the technical work on globalization38 To avoid these twin pitfalls wewill need to develop an entirely new vocabulary grounded in directempirical engagement with our new globalizing reality Examples ofthis new approach are already under way They include so far Marcusrsquocall for multi-sited ethnography Sassenrsquos work toward cultivating anethnographic approach to studying the way the global is instantiatedwithin local urban spaces and Duneierrsquos ldquoextended place methodrdquo39

The considerable potential of these approaches notwithstanding the soci-ological apprehension of globalization will require rst and foremost acollective eVort on the part of variously situated scholars to wit a globalnetwork consisting of several local nodes in which substantive con ictand cooperation may freely occur What the late Bill Readings calleda community of ldquodissensusrdquo40 Absent these eVorts our meliorist inten-tions have little chance of ever becoming eYcacious interventions

Notes

1 Thanks to Denis Wall for editorial assistance and to Julie Custeau for her ever-astute guidance and unfailing support of everything that I do The works reviewed hereinclude Bauman Zygmunt 1998 Globalization the human consequences (New York ColumbiaUniversity Press) hereafter THC Bourdieu Pierre 1998 Acts of resistance against the tyranny

346 review essay

of the market (New York The New Press) hereafter AOR Gray John 1998 False dawnthe delusions of global capitalism (London Granta Books) hereafter FD Giddens Anthony2000 Runaway World (New York Routledge) hereafter RW and LaFeber Walter 1999Michael Jordan and the new global capitalism (New York W W Norton amp Company) here-after NGC

2 1946 p 73 See Cassidy (1997) The recent highly organized public protests in Davos Seattle

and Washington lend support to this prediction4 For an historical perspective on the semantic polyvalence if not polysemy of

ldquoglobalizationrdquo over the Longue Dureacutee see Moore (1997)5 As Giddens puts it ldquoThe global spread of the term [globalization] is evidence of

the very developments to which it refersrdquo (RW p 3)6 See Bourdieursquos AOR p 427 Gray later asserts however that ldquoThe leverage of sovereign states over business

may actually be greater in some respects today than it has been in the pastrdquo (FD p 67) In which respects Gray does not say Nor does he oVer any evidence to but-tress what must be classi ed as like so many of the statements comprising FD purespeculation (or what might be euphemized as ldquoarm-chair economicsrdquo)

8 See the intriguing if tentative results of an international project comparing thefuture of nationally embedded capitalism in the global economy in Streeck and Yamamura(2000)

9 For an illuminating historical treatment of the rei cation of technology see Marx(1997)

10 Gray argues further that the eVects of these forces are irrevocable and irreversibleThe regrettable and wrong-headed policy choices made by the Thatcher administrationnow constitute the ineluctable reality of the Blair government Gray goes on to arguethe same for the neo-liberal turn taken by New Zealand Grayrsquos argument is contra-dicted however by rst the palpably intentional adoption of neo-liberal tenets on thepart of the Blair government (not least its elimination of Article Four hitherto the cor-nerstone of Labour politics) and second by the recent election of a Labour governmentin New Zealand whose popularity in the polls in 1990 was just 2 percent a Labourgovernment that is moreover authentically committed to rebuilding and underwritingits social institutions See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 11 Even the Economistadmitted no doubt plaintively that ldquoglobalization is not irreversiblerdquo (see Smith andMoran [2000 p 70])

11 Gray is confused about the power of the American model Of ldquohyperglobaliza-tion a corporate utopiardquo Gray writes ldquoIt represents an historical transformation thathas no end-state and which is subverting American capitalism as well as its rivals as aprocess leading to the universal acceptance of American free marketsrdquo (FD p 67)

12 In contradistinction to Giddensrsquo slim but instructive A Brief but Critical Introductionto Sociology

13 Fitzgerald made this prediction in a personal letter to the novelist and criticEdmund (Bunny) Wilson

14 de Medici and de Medici (1986 pp 17ndash20)15 For an empirically rich and theoretically supple analysis of the local experience

of McDonaldrsquos throughout east Asia refer to Watson et al (1997) This volume of ethno-graphic accounts makes particularly plain the ways in which McDonaldrsquos as a transna-tional corporation has allowed itself via a local ownership structure to adapt to theexigencies and idiosyncrasies of local cultures Even while McDonaldrsquos market share reclinedin the United States during the 1990s it continued to grow in foreign markets includ-ing but not limited to east Asia

16 See Marcus (1995) on the advantages of conducting multi-site ethnography inofthe world system

17 Bourdieu (1987 p 184)

review essay 347

18 One nal word of warning regarding NGC the strength and weakness of thisbook are one in the same NGC is unique in that it tries to marry the history of bas-ketball with the history of the American economy A short book it suYciently coversneither task Basketball fans in particular should look elsewhere for a treatment of boththe NBA and the career of Michael Jordan See instead the eminently readable andinformative Halberstam (1999) and in keeping with the line of argument pursued aboveJordan (1998)

19 This is what Mathiesen (1997) aptly coined the Synopticon20 Gerbner and Gross (1976) quoted in THC p 5321 This question if broadened in scope is arguably the most important question

sociologists can pose Period Substitute ldquosocietyrdquo for ldquoglobalizationrdquo and the analyticpotential of the question comes into bold relief

22 Compare the putative reality of the nancial market with the following breath-less declaration ldquoIn short against all the prophets of misery who want to convince youthat your destiny is in the hands of transcendent independent indiVerent powers suchas the lsquo nancial marketsrsquo or the mechanisms if lsquoglobalizationrsquo I want to declare withthe hope of convincing you that the future your future which is also our future thatof all Europeans depends a great deal on you as Germans and trade unionistsrdquo (AORp 69)

23 For his own analysis cum criticism of the ldquojournalistic eldrdquo see Bourdieu (1998)for Bourdieursquos take on the role of intellectuals in diVusing the new global vulgate seeBourdieu and Wacquant (1999a 1999b)

24 I say presumably because Bourdieu at no point in AOR elaborates this programFor an original and compelling criticism of Bourdieursquos sociological theory and methodsee Griller (1996)

25 See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992 pp 104ndash5) Whether or not the global eldis coterminous with what Bourdieu calls the eld of power (a kind of meta- eld) is aninteresting question

26 If I am harder on Bourdieu than the other authors under review (which is arguable)it is due rst to the inconsistency that obtains between his previous scholarly work andhis present political critique and second and most important because his ostensibly lib-eral critique unwittingly and insidiously reproduces the neo-liberal discourse he seeks tosubvert

27 Not coincidentally the so-called ldquothird wayrdquo also advocated by Bill Clinton islargely inspired by Anthony Giddensrsquo book of the same name Space does not permitan analysis of Giddensrsquo contribution to practical politics here Blair and Schroederrsquos man-ifesto is reprinted in the spring 2000 edition of Dissent pp 51ndash65

28 Small wonder Gray who makes the same recommendation demonizes the Thatcheradministration on the one (left) hand while he serves as an apologist for the presentBlair government on the other (right) hand

29 See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 2030 Ibid31 See Sassen (2000 pp 164ndash65)32 For example the entire corpus of Theda Skocpal33 Wallerstein (2000 p 307)34 An apt example of the compartmentalist way of thinking about the state is Daniel

Bellrsquos famous remark that the nation-state is at once too small and too large to ade-quately address most of the problems it faces

35 1946 p 1236 Which in the case of Bourdieu in particular is all the more ironic for its theo-

retical inconsistency with his overall sociological-epistemological project37 Why after all is ldquoglobalizationrdquo now on everyonersquos lips in academe Might it

have something to do as a colleague of mine astutely theorizes because the educatedand professional middle-classes including university professors of Western nations are

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

review essay 335

so strictly rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of itsfundamental nature the relation between peoplerdquo (Lukacs 1971 pp83ndash87) The problem of rei cation it turns out plagues all of the worksunder review here and most of the discourse analytic and political alikeregarding globalization Throughout this review I try to theorize thismisapprehension of ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollary rei cations as theresult of ideological predilections and otherwise untenable methodolog-ical choices each of which can ultimately be largely explained as con-sequences of the actions and events bound-up in globalization itself

Rei cation rears its ugly head too in Anthony Giddensrsquo RunawayWorld How Globalization is Reshaping Our Livesmdashthe title itself suggests as much Giddens is however an eminently more agile social theoristthan Gray indeed more agile than most Originally given as the 1999Reith lectures broadcast globally by the BBC via both radio and theInternet Giddens oVers the following salvo regarding the character ofglobalization

Globalisation is political technological and cultural as well as economicIt has been in uenced above all by development in systems of communi-cations dating back only to the late 1960s The changes [encompassedby globalization] are being propelled by a range of factors some struc-tural others more speci c and historical Economic in uences are certainlyamong the driving forces especially the global nancial system Yet theyarenrsquot forces of nature They have been shaped by technology and cul-tural diVusion as well as by the decisions of governments to liberalise andderegulate their national economies (RW p 8)

Globalization it seems aVects everything and everything in turnaVects globalization Here the absence of clarity in the de nition ofglobalization manifests itself in a corresponding lack of clarity govern-ing its explanation Giddensrsquo argument is much like the above de nitionit tries to be all things to all people Case in point is Giddensrsquo ambiva-lence regarding the role of the state vis-agrave-vis globalization On the onehand Giddens acknowledges the decisions made by the state This issure to please sociologists who argue for the analytic importance of stateactions and not least those critical of the statersquos strategic retreat frompublic life Giddens is cognizant too of the way in which the nature ofthe state has been transformed Giddens however subtly elides the next(specious I think) question namely has the state reconciled itself to itsnew role or is the state a hapless victim powerless in the face of trans-national forces A theorist as agile as Giddens would doubtless argueif forced ldquobothrdquo but the spirit of his presentation suggests if somewhat

336 review essay

equivocally that the statersquos autonomy has been and continues to bewhittled away by the myriad ldquoforcesrdquo at work in the world today

Giddens goes on to rehearse familiar topics and arguments concern-ing the relationship between globalization (however one takes it) andrisk tradition and fundamentalism the family and feminism and nallythe prospects for democracy Democracy argues Giddens is good andas such worth ghting for Overall this captures the tenor of Giddensrsquoslim little book12 Giddens asks ldquoIs globalisation a force promoting thegeneral goodrdquo (RW p 10) That question in addition to whether wecan gain more control over our ldquorunaway worldrdquo is important ldquoForglobalisation is not incidental to our lives today It is a shift in our verylife circumstances It is the way we now liverdquo (RW pp 11ndash12) Giddensraises few compelling questions and still fewer answers The rapid pub-lication of these BBC lectures with virtually no modi cation or expansionarguably has more to say about the power and force of ldquoglobalizationrdquothan does Giddens

ldquoCulture follows money we will be the Romans in the next gen-erations as the English are nowrdquo wrote F Scott Fitzgerald with con-siderable prescience in 1921 while sojourning in France13 Sixty yearslater and culture still seemed to follow capital In 1982 French culturaloYcials warned of ldquoAmerican cultural imperialismrdquo Soon after a car-toon appeared portraying the noble European continent defended bythe likes of drsquoArtagnan Don Quixote and Shakespeare against anAmerican attack from the skies lead by Mickey Mouse anked by ETMarilyn Monroe and a hamburger14 Walter LaFeberrsquos Michael Jordanand the New Global Capitalism can be read as an elaboration of Fitzgeraldrsquosprediction and Francersquos nay the worldrsquos predicament Namely global-ization as the apotheosis of American popular culture

LaFeber begins his thin historical account in the 1890s the timeperiod in which the American economy rose to preeminence and thegame of basketball was invented For LaFeber ldquoThe history of basket-ball especially in the era of Michael Jordan helps us understand thisera known as lsquothe American Centuryrsquordquo (NGC p 22) The 1890s werealso witness to the rise of the rst multinational corporations includ-ing Standard Oil Eastman Kodak Singer and McCormick Accordingto LaFeber these companies diVer from their late-twentieth centurycounterparts in at least four respects (1) 1890s rms largely employedAmerican workers whereas 1990s rms rely on cheap foreign labor (2)While late-nineteenth century concerns traded in natural resources andindustrial goods corporations nowadays increasingly produce ldquoknowl-edgerdquo and ldquoinformationrdquo Here LaFeber like Barber (1992) signals his

review essay 337

move away from the analysis of hard political power toward soft eco-nomic and symbolic power (3) Todayrsquos transnationals unlike their an-cestors increasingly depend upon ldquoworld marketsrdquo for their pro ts (eg in 1996 four out of every ve bottles of coke were sold outside ofthe United States) and (4) Consequently late-twentieth century trans-nationals depend for their continued success on massive global adver-tising campaigns ldquoto make people want their productsrdquo (NGC p 56) Theadvertising employed by transnationals like Nike is argued to be ldquorev-olutionaryrdquo because it can be seen on as many as thirty to ve hun-dred television channels in many countries thanks to the new technologyof communication satellites and ber-optic cable For LaFeber the med-ium and the message collude to make the products of transnationalsirresistible to the denizens of the new global village Consider LaFeberrsquostake on the fall of Communism

During these decades [1970ndash1990] such new global technologies as com-puters communication satellites and ber optics transformed the globersquoseconomy It should be pointed out that this new era in world history begannot with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold Warin 1989ndash1991 but with the appearance of the post-industrial technologynearly a generation earlier For this technology changed the lives of peo-ples around the world and in so doing brought down the Communistsystem which could not adjust to this revolution (NGC p 58)

In addition to the problem of the rei cation of technology LaFebersimilarly rei es ldquothe world marketrdquo on which transnationals depend butover which the same transnationals wield considerable in uence via theirmarketing campaigns By presuming the perlocutionary power of mediamessages and indeed of the media themselves LaFeber eVectively rendsinvisible the relations between foreign consumers and the popular cul-ture and other fare produced by transnational corporations What doNike shoes or the images of Michael Jordan do for people in and outof America How are American products and symbols experienced insitu15 LaFeber like most globalization theorists emphasizes global pushfactors at the expense of the local pull factors felt articulated andinstantiated by real people in real places who constitute the real powerof ldquoworld marketsrdquo The result is a top-down externalist perspectivebereft of the global consumerrsquos Lebenswelt Consumption is explainedaway as a passive act of reception rather than an inde nite series ofmicroscopic acts of appropriation of the social world In this way LaFeberreproduces indeed globalizes the causal assumptions of the FrankfurtSchoolrsquos critique of mass culture The positive moment of consumerism

338 review essay

insofar as it is de ned as such by variously situated individuals is leftutterly untheorized Methodologically a hermeneutic reconstruction ofthe consumerrsquos point of view is attainable only through ethnographicengagement across a number of cultural sites16 Sociologically the ldquoarm-chairrdquo approach employed by LaFeber and the other authors under re-view here is methodologically and theoretically untenable Ideologicallyhowever it is quite useful insofar as it allows for a political critique thatassigns culpability to only the global cultural ldquopushersrdquo and eVectivelyabsolves the rest of the world of any responsibility whatsoever render-ing them so many dupes under the sway of expensive irresistible imagesIronically the rei cation of powerful world markets has the eVect ofstripping the consumers embedded within them of any potential foragency much less in uence For LaFeber then culture does in fact fol-low the money

The foregoing should not however be read as an aYrmation of theintellectualist romance with and tendentious presumption of subalternresistance commonplace as it is in the discipline of cultural studies Itis after all no more tenable to assume ldquoordinary peoplerdquo to be preter-naturally counter-hegemonic in their quotidien lives than it is to dis-miss them as cultural dopes Recalling Grayrsquos call for ldquonewrdquo and ldquomore exiblerdquo institutions to rescue social markets cultural critics must re exivelyaccount for their own role in the larger eld of cultural production AsThomas Frank (1999 p 84) perspicuously notes many cultural criticsmiss entirely the fatal irony of an academic radicalism that is increas-ingly coterminous with much management theory at precisely the samemoment when capitalist consultants and managers have decided to brandthemselves as radicals equating democracy and dissent with consumerismThe point rather is a simple one An understanding of globalizationas a eld of relations encompassing both power and resistance is impos-sible absent ethnographic engagement in this eld with all the variouslysituated actors involved (eg managers politicians citizens consumersworkers sub-proletariat intellectuals)

An ethnographic case makes the point American anthropologist LilaAbu-Lughod (1990) demonstrates in her ethnographic analysis of Bedouinwomen the intersection of power and resistance in global perspectiveBedouin women it turns out are avid consumers of Western pop musicTheir consumptive behavior has little to do however with the billionsspent annually on advertising by American rms Bedouin women activelyuse the lyrics of Western pop songs particularly romantic ones to sub-vert the regime of patriarchy they confront in their own local culturewherein the oral poetics of love and romance are severely restricted soas to reproduce male privilege Western music then oVers a partial

review essay 339

escape from and critical commentary on patriarchal Bedouin cultureAt the same time Bedouin culture is brought into the web of powerrelations involving the Egyptian nation-state and the larger internationalpolitical economy This instance of resistance exempli es Bourdieursquospoint about relations of power ldquoResistance can be alienating and sub-mission can be liberating Such is the paradox of the dominated andthere is no way out of itrdquo17 The chief limitation of New Global Capitalismis its exaggeration of the power of the dominant and its wholesale in-attention to the agency of the dominated18

Ditto for Zygmunt Baumanrsquos Globalization The Human ConsequencesBaumanrsquos point of departure into the global is Foucaultrsquos instrumentalmetaphor of the Panopticon In the modern exercise of power the spec-tacle was replaced by surveillance In pre-modern times power wasimpressed upon the public via displays of wealth splendor and notleast violence Modern power concentrated in the nation-state by con-trast preferred instead to linger in the shadows closely but discreetlymonitoring its subjects A case of the few regarding the many WhatFoucault overlooked however was the parallel modern development ofnew techniques of power consisting in contradistinction to surveillanceof the various mass media especially television A case of the manywatching the few19

The Panopticon even when universal in application was essentiallya local institution The Synopticon ie the mass media is increasinglyglobal The nature of the power each wields is diVerent too While thePanopticon forced people into the position where they could be watchedthe Synopticon requires little in the way of coercion By contrast theSynopticon seduces people into watching (THC p 52 emphasis in orig-inal) The many now watch the few And the few who are watched arethe celebrities No matter whence they originate all celebrities put ondisplay the world of celebrities a world whose distinctive feature is pre-cisely the quality of being watched by the many in all corners of theworld Whatever they speak about when on air they convey the mes-sage of a total way of life ldquoTheir life their way of liferdquo (THC p 52emphasis in original) To question the impact of that message on themany who watch is to Bauman

less like asking about preconceived fears and hopes and more like askingabout the ldquoeVectsrdquo of Christianity on onersquos view of the world ormdashas theChinese had askedmdashof Confucianism on public morality20

For Bauman as for LaFeber the world watches the fare producedby the globals ie the multinational corporations and the rest is his-tory The billions expended (for LaFeber) and the lofty other-worldly

340 review essay

character (for Bauman) of the globals renders otherwise legitimate naypressing questions of reception and interpretation entirely irrelevant

For all the power contained in the messages and presumably con-ferred upon the messengers Bauman much like Gray and Giddens isstill not entirely sure just who is in charge

To put it in a nutshell no one seems now to be in control Worse still it isnot clear what ldquobeing in controlrdquo could under the circumstances be like The deepest meaning conveyed by the idea of globalization is that ofthe indeterminate unruly and self-propelled character of world aVairs the absenceof a centre of a controlling desk of a board of directors of a manager-ial oYce Globalization is Jowittrsquos ldquonew world disorderrdquo under anothername (THC pp 58ndash59 rst emphasis in original second emphasis mine)

Note the now familiar tell-tale signs of rei cation the obfuscation ofsocial relations and human agency tightly coupled with the attributionof telos to ldquoworld aVairsrdquo The world may be disorderly but for Baumanat least one thing is for sure Wherever the new seat of power residesif it resides anywhere if it even exists at all it is certainly not withinthe nation-state

In the words of GH von Wright the ldquonation-state it seems is erodingor perhaps lsquowithering awayrsquo The eroding forces are transnationalrdquo Since nation-states remain the sole frame for book-balancing and the sole sources ofeVective political initiative the lsquotransnationalityrsquo or eroding forces putsthem outside the realm of deliberate purposeful and potentially rationalaction As everything that elides such action such forces their shapes andactions are blurred in the mist of mystery they are objects of guessesrather than reliable analysis (THC pp 56ndash57 rst emphasis mine secondemphasis in original)

Having thus ruled out both nations and transnationals as the sourceof the ldquoeroding forcesrdquo at work in the world Bauman asks

How has it come about that this vast expanse of man-made wilderness (notthe ldquonaturalrdquo wilderness which modernity set out to conquer and tamebut to paraphrase Anthony Giddensrsquo felicitous phrase a ldquomanufactured jun-glerdquomdashthe post-domestication wilderness one that emerged after the con-quest and as a result) has sprung into vision And why did it acquire theformidable power of obstinacy and resilience which since Durkheim istaken to be the de ning mark of ldquohard realityrdquo (THC p 69 rst empha-sis mine second emphasis in original)

This indeed is the question that should orient our analyses of ldquoglob-alizationrdquo21 As an analytic tool however it is instructive only inasmuchas we apply it equally to the putative ldquocausesrdquo of ldquoglobalizationrdquo for

review essay 341

example the withering away of the nation-state at the hands of thosepunitive and unforgiving ldquo nancial marketsrdquo (THC p 69) each of whichhas assumed of late the marks of ldquohard realityrdquo Bauman poses the ini-tial question but fails to similarly question the ontological reality of whatare actually epistemological heuristics The use of terms such as ldquomar-ketsrdquo and ldquo nancesrdquo and ldquotechnological forcesrdquo are potentially usefulwhen they serve as a kind of analytic shorthand for sets of social rela-tions that have already been enumerated and explicated explicitly andexhaustively When however they substitute for explanations when theystand in as explanations in and of themselves they serve not only tocomplicate our thinking but more egregious still to insidiously repro-duce those discourses and practices of domination against which criti-cal scholars are aligned Bauman himself anticipates this problem whenhe acknowledges with an approving nod to Cornelius Castoriadis that

the trouble with the contemporary condition of modern civilization isthat it stopped questioning itself Not asking certain questions is pregnantwith more dangers than failing to answer the questions already on theoYcial agenda while asking the wrong kind of questions all too often helpsto avert eyes from the truly important issues The price of silence is paidin the hard currency of human suVering Asking the right questions makesafter all all the diVerence between fate and destination drifting and trav-elling Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way oflife is arguably the most urgent of the services we owe our fellow humansand ourselves (THC p 5)

Like Gray and LaFeber Bauman oVers us an impassioned threnodydevoted to the deleterious eVects borne by globalization but in so doingunwittingly disarms us intellectually and consequently renders us inca-pable of intervention and resistance much less understanding We shouldtherefore welcome Pierre Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance Against the Tyrannyof the Market for Bourdieu perhaps more than any other living scholarand public intellectual deftly combines scholarly and political analysis

Bourdieursquos approach is to read ldquoglobalizationrdquo as a neo-liberal dis-course a mythology that poses as reality

Irsquove used the word ldquoglobalizationrdquo It is a myth in the strong sense of theword a powerful discourse and ideacutee force an idea which has social forcewhich obtains belief It is the main weapon in the battles against the gainsof the welfare state (AOR p 34)

Bourdieu goes on to dissect this discourse pointing out the way itevokes and rati es the ldquoso-called law of the marketrdquo (AOR p 35) Byso impugning the natural and inevitable ontological character of ldquoglobal-

342 review essay

izationrdquo and the ldquosupposed iron laws of the nancial marketsrdquo Bourdieuis poised to make the theoretical contribution Gray irted with but failedto realize to wit an analysis of the social construction of the globaleconomy (AOR pp 26ndash27) Yet Bourdieu soon after does an about-face on this issue writing

While globalization is above all a justi catory myth there is one case whereit is quite real that of the nancial markets Thanks to the removal of a num-ber of legal restrictions and the development of electronic communicationswhich lead to lower communication costs we are moving towards a uniednancial market (AOR p 38 emphasis mine)

Bourdieursquos account is rife with contradictions and illogical unsub-stantiated assertions of fact Particularly disabling is his myopia regard-ing the role of the nation-state While ldquoglobalizationrdquo is a myth (wellyes it is) the power of the ldquo nancial marketsrdquo and the ldquointernationalcapital marketrdquo is quite real indeed22 The latter according to Bourdieuprevents individual nation-states from manipulating their exchange andinterest rates which in turn are increasingly determined by a powerconcentrated in the hands of a small number of countries whose iden-tities are never revealed and although one presumes that Bourdieu hasin mind the United States it is not at all clear which other nationsmight be controlling the rest of the worldrsquos nances (Germanyrsquos socialmarket Japanrsquos Certainly neither the French nor the English registerhere) So nations are powerless a familiar refrain Unless that is theyare a part of the small exclusive cabal of nations that rules the worldin which case they have considerable power after all

Bourdieu calls for the creation of a class of collective intellectualswho can among other things analyze the production and circulationof neo-liberal discourse to expose the ideological work of journalistsmanagers and not least the cunning reason of intellectuals23 Thisanalysis is to be carried out presumably in a manner consistent withhis project of re exive sociology24 That would mean mapping the full eld of cultural production and symbolic power that now obtains on aglobal level specifying the key actors and the objective structure of theirrelationships and analyzing the habitus of the agents that nds its tra-jectory within the speci c eld(s) in question25 That Bourdieu fails toattempt much less accomplish this admittedly bold project is a majorshortcoming of Acts of Resistance which amounts to little more than asteady stream of breathless bromides forever interrupted by conceptualand logical inconsistencies

Worse still is the manner in which Bourdieumdashlike Gray Giddens

review essay 343

and Baumanmdashunwittingly buttresses the discourse of neo-liberalism byutterly ignoring the active role played by the state in ushering in anostensible new world disorder in which the state appears as a shadowof its former self at best a hapless and unwilling conspirator accordedlittle responsibility Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance as with the other titlesunder review here quickly establishes its liberal credentials through itslament for a safer more secure and certain world (sicherheit) in whichthe state and the citizen and one suspects the progressive intellectualeach mattered Those nominal credentials however mask and insidi-ously support the state in its new corporatist guise26 Take for instancethe manifesto co-authored by prime ministers Tony Blair and GerhardSchroeder entitled ldquoThe Third WayDie Neue Mitterdquo27 Therein the min-isters declare

In a world of ever more rapid globalization and scienti c changes we needto create the conditions in which existing businesses can prosper and adaptand new businesses can be set up and grow Our aim is to modern-ize the welfare state not dismantle it Flexible markets must be combinedwith a newly dened role for an active state The state must become an activeagent for employment not merely the passive recipient of the casualties ofeconomic failure (emphasis mine)28

If ldquoglobalizationrdquo did not exist the state would have invented itOr consider to choose another recent example the passing of a new

bill in Britain which rede nes terrorism as ldquoThe use of serious violenceagainst persons or property or the threat to use such violence to intim-idate or coerce a government the public or any section of the publicfor political religious or ideological endsrdquo29 Borrowed verbatim fromthe American FBI this new bill was passed in British parliament inMarch 2000 by 210 votes to one Among other purposes the bill willserve as a deterrent to activists who would campaign publicly againstglobalization and multinational corporations as thousands recently didon ldquoMay Dayrdquo in Britain According to a British GM food activistldquoThe government is creating a private security service for transnationalcorporationsrdquo 30 To Bourdieu et al this is simply another example ofthe puppet that is the new nation-state orchestrated from above andafar by those indomitable nancial markets

To the sociologist Saskia Sassen however it is a case in point of thestatersquos active and voluntary complicity in the construction and not leaststrategic invocation of ldquoglobalizationrdquo Sassen contends that far frombeing passive and merely reactive under the sway of globalizationldquonational rms and national institutions have participated in the processrdquo

344 review essay

Sassen moreover rejects the notion that the global economy is ldquosome-how lsquoout therersquordquo forcing a nation and its corporations to change theirpractices Rather Sassen argues forcefully that the global economy hasbeen created by national industries with the assistance of their ownnationrsquos legislative and regulatory bodies In so doing Sassen pushes thede nition of the global economy beyond the production distributionand consumption of goods and services to encompass a worldwide sys-tem of governance and power within a ldquonew frontier zonerdquo which

is not merely a dividing line between the national economy and theglobal economy It is a zone of politico-economic interactions that pro-duce new institutional forms and alter some of the old ones Nor is this encounterbetween the global and the national just a matter of reducing regulations or the role ofgovernment generally simply to posit as is so often done that economic glob-alization has brought with it declining signi cance of the national state toutcourt misses some of the ner points of this transformation (emphasis mine)31

Pace Sassen and others who argue convincingly for the need to ldquobringthe state back inrdquo32 to our analyses the failure to recognize the trans-formation of the nonetheless active role of the nation-state is a symp-tom of a much broader failure of the sociological imagination bear inmind that the works discussed above are by some of the eldrsquos mostprominent gures Despite their admirably meliorist intentions theseworks each serve to invest ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollaries ie mar-ket and technological ldquoforcesrdquo with a ldquothingnessrdquo and an eYcacy itdoes not cannot possess This tendency stems I think from the nolonger tenable theoretical assumption that modernity consists of the compartmentalization of reality into three distinct domains (1) Market(economy) (2) State (polity) and (3) Civil Society (culturepublic sphere)It is arguable whether this tripartite heuristic was ever analytically use-ful but the problem it poses for sociologists now is a diVerent one forthis heuristic has assumed the status of a dead metaphor that of hardreality According to Wallerstein this theorem of separateness and mutualexclusivity a mere two hundred years old is now so deeply rooted inour consciousness and linguistic tools that we nd it almost impossibleto formulate sentences much less cogent analytic arguments free of thisthreefold monster33 Thus rei ed these epistemologic tools no longerserve us They instead predispose us to see each sphere in terms onlyof expansion (as in the case of the market) or retraction (as in the rolesof the state and the public sphere) rather than the simultaneous seman-tic and ontological transformation of all three34 Returning to Cassirer

review essay 345

But this problem itself appears spurious as soon as we realize that the dis-tinctions which here are taken for granted the analysis of reality in termsof things and processes permanent and transitory aspects objects andactions do not precede language as a substratum of given fact but thatlanguage itself is what initiates such articulations and develops them inits own sphere35

As Wallerstein adroitly notes these unconscious rei cations obscuremuch of reality from the scholars who unre exively deploy them36 Thereis however still more at work than this For all the attention I havedevoted to disentangling the discourse of ldquoglobalizationrdquo we must notlose sight of the many decisions actions and consequences intentionalor not that loosely comprise the ever-shifting reality of globalizationwithin which our analytic discourse is developed and deployed Chiefamong these in this context are the sense and the reality of profounddislocation displacement and disengagement that aVect sociologists asmuch as anyone else37 Our theories and methods bear the indelibleimprint of the world we seek to comprehend

A renovated sociological imagination of globalization must steer clearof the grand theorizing rehearsed by the works reviewed here withoutsimultaneously lapsing into the abstracted empiricism that infects mostof the technical work on globalization38 To avoid these twin pitfalls wewill need to develop an entirely new vocabulary grounded in directempirical engagement with our new globalizing reality Examples ofthis new approach are already under way They include so far Marcusrsquocall for multi-sited ethnography Sassenrsquos work toward cultivating anethnographic approach to studying the way the global is instantiatedwithin local urban spaces and Duneierrsquos ldquoextended place methodrdquo39

The considerable potential of these approaches notwithstanding the soci-ological apprehension of globalization will require rst and foremost acollective eVort on the part of variously situated scholars to wit a globalnetwork consisting of several local nodes in which substantive con ictand cooperation may freely occur What the late Bill Readings calleda community of ldquodissensusrdquo40 Absent these eVorts our meliorist inten-tions have little chance of ever becoming eYcacious interventions

Notes

1 Thanks to Denis Wall for editorial assistance and to Julie Custeau for her ever-astute guidance and unfailing support of everything that I do The works reviewed hereinclude Bauman Zygmunt 1998 Globalization the human consequences (New York ColumbiaUniversity Press) hereafter THC Bourdieu Pierre 1998 Acts of resistance against the tyranny

346 review essay

of the market (New York The New Press) hereafter AOR Gray John 1998 False dawnthe delusions of global capitalism (London Granta Books) hereafter FD Giddens Anthony2000 Runaway World (New York Routledge) hereafter RW and LaFeber Walter 1999Michael Jordan and the new global capitalism (New York W W Norton amp Company) here-after NGC

2 1946 p 73 See Cassidy (1997) The recent highly organized public protests in Davos Seattle

and Washington lend support to this prediction4 For an historical perspective on the semantic polyvalence if not polysemy of

ldquoglobalizationrdquo over the Longue Dureacutee see Moore (1997)5 As Giddens puts it ldquoThe global spread of the term [globalization] is evidence of

the very developments to which it refersrdquo (RW p 3)6 See Bourdieursquos AOR p 427 Gray later asserts however that ldquoThe leverage of sovereign states over business

may actually be greater in some respects today than it has been in the pastrdquo (FD p 67) In which respects Gray does not say Nor does he oVer any evidence to but-tress what must be classi ed as like so many of the statements comprising FD purespeculation (or what might be euphemized as ldquoarm-chair economicsrdquo)

8 See the intriguing if tentative results of an international project comparing thefuture of nationally embedded capitalism in the global economy in Streeck and Yamamura(2000)

9 For an illuminating historical treatment of the rei cation of technology see Marx(1997)

10 Gray argues further that the eVects of these forces are irrevocable and irreversibleThe regrettable and wrong-headed policy choices made by the Thatcher administrationnow constitute the ineluctable reality of the Blair government Gray goes on to arguethe same for the neo-liberal turn taken by New Zealand Grayrsquos argument is contra-dicted however by rst the palpably intentional adoption of neo-liberal tenets on thepart of the Blair government (not least its elimination of Article Four hitherto the cor-nerstone of Labour politics) and second by the recent election of a Labour governmentin New Zealand whose popularity in the polls in 1990 was just 2 percent a Labourgovernment that is moreover authentically committed to rebuilding and underwritingits social institutions See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 11 Even the Economistadmitted no doubt plaintively that ldquoglobalization is not irreversiblerdquo (see Smith andMoran [2000 p 70])

11 Gray is confused about the power of the American model Of ldquohyperglobaliza-tion a corporate utopiardquo Gray writes ldquoIt represents an historical transformation thathas no end-state and which is subverting American capitalism as well as its rivals as aprocess leading to the universal acceptance of American free marketsrdquo (FD p 67)

12 In contradistinction to Giddensrsquo slim but instructive A Brief but Critical Introductionto Sociology

13 Fitzgerald made this prediction in a personal letter to the novelist and criticEdmund (Bunny) Wilson

14 de Medici and de Medici (1986 pp 17ndash20)15 For an empirically rich and theoretically supple analysis of the local experience

of McDonaldrsquos throughout east Asia refer to Watson et al (1997) This volume of ethno-graphic accounts makes particularly plain the ways in which McDonaldrsquos as a transna-tional corporation has allowed itself via a local ownership structure to adapt to theexigencies and idiosyncrasies of local cultures Even while McDonaldrsquos market share reclinedin the United States during the 1990s it continued to grow in foreign markets includ-ing but not limited to east Asia

16 See Marcus (1995) on the advantages of conducting multi-site ethnography inofthe world system

17 Bourdieu (1987 p 184)

review essay 347

18 One nal word of warning regarding NGC the strength and weakness of thisbook are one in the same NGC is unique in that it tries to marry the history of bas-ketball with the history of the American economy A short book it suYciently coversneither task Basketball fans in particular should look elsewhere for a treatment of boththe NBA and the career of Michael Jordan See instead the eminently readable andinformative Halberstam (1999) and in keeping with the line of argument pursued aboveJordan (1998)

19 This is what Mathiesen (1997) aptly coined the Synopticon20 Gerbner and Gross (1976) quoted in THC p 5321 This question if broadened in scope is arguably the most important question

sociologists can pose Period Substitute ldquosocietyrdquo for ldquoglobalizationrdquo and the analyticpotential of the question comes into bold relief

22 Compare the putative reality of the nancial market with the following breath-less declaration ldquoIn short against all the prophets of misery who want to convince youthat your destiny is in the hands of transcendent independent indiVerent powers suchas the lsquo nancial marketsrsquo or the mechanisms if lsquoglobalizationrsquo I want to declare withthe hope of convincing you that the future your future which is also our future thatof all Europeans depends a great deal on you as Germans and trade unionistsrdquo (AORp 69)

23 For his own analysis cum criticism of the ldquojournalistic eldrdquo see Bourdieu (1998)for Bourdieursquos take on the role of intellectuals in diVusing the new global vulgate seeBourdieu and Wacquant (1999a 1999b)

24 I say presumably because Bourdieu at no point in AOR elaborates this programFor an original and compelling criticism of Bourdieursquos sociological theory and methodsee Griller (1996)

25 See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992 pp 104ndash5) Whether or not the global eldis coterminous with what Bourdieu calls the eld of power (a kind of meta- eld) is aninteresting question

26 If I am harder on Bourdieu than the other authors under review (which is arguable)it is due rst to the inconsistency that obtains between his previous scholarly work andhis present political critique and second and most important because his ostensibly lib-eral critique unwittingly and insidiously reproduces the neo-liberal discourse he seeks tosubvert

27 Not coincidentally the so-called ldquothird wayrdquo also advocated by Bill Clinton islargely inspired by Anthony Giddensrsquo book of the same name Space does not permitan analysis of Giddensrsquo contribution to practical politics here Blair and Schroederrsquos man-ifesto is reprinted in the spring 2000 edition of Dissent pp 51ndash65

28 Small wonder Gray who makes the same recommendation demonizes the Thatcheradministration on the one (left) hand while he serves as an apologist for the presentBlair government on the other (right) hand

29 See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 2030 Ibid31 See Sassen (2000 pp 164ndash65)32 For example the entire corpus of Theda Skocpal33 Wallerstein (2000 p 307)34 An apt example of the compartmentalist way of thinking about the state is Daniel

Bellrsquos famous remark that the nation-state is at once too small and too large to ade-quately address most of the problems it faces

35 1946 p 1236 Which in the case of Bourdieu in particular is all the more ironic for its theo-

retical inconsistency with his overall sociological-epistemological project37 Why after all is ldquoglobalizationrdquo now on everyonersquos lips in academe Might it

have something to do as a colleague of mine astutely theorizes because the educatedand professional middle-classes including university professors of Western nations are

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

336 review essay

equivocally that the statersquos autonomy has been and continues to bewhittled away by the myriad ldquoforcesrdquo at work in the world today

Giddens goes on to rehearse familiar topics and arguments concern-ing the relationship between globalization (however one takes it) andrisk tradition and fundamentalism the family and feminism and nallythe prospects for democracy Democracy argues Giddens is good andas such worth ghting for Overall this captures the tenor of Giddensrsquoslim little book12 Giddens asks ldquoIs globalisation a force promoting thegeneral goodrdquo (RW p 10) That question in addition to whether wecan gain more control over our ldquorunaway worldrdquo is important ldquoForglobalisation is not incidental to our lives today It is a shift in our verylife circumstances It is the way we now liverdquo (RW pp 11ndash12) Giddensraises few compelling questions and still fewer answers The rapid pub-lication of these BBC lectures with virtually no modi cation or expansionarguably has more to say about the power and force of ldquoglobalizationrdquothan does Giddens

ldquoCulture follows money we will be the Romans in the next gen-erations as the English are nowrdquo wrote F Scott Fitzgerald with con-siderable prescience in 1921 while sojourning in France13 Sixty yearslater and culture still seemed to follow capital In 1982 French culturaloYcials warned of ldquoAmerican cultural imperialismrdquo Soon after a car-toon appeared portraying the noble European continent defended bythe likes of drsquoArtagnan Don Quixote and Shakespeare against anAmerican attack from the skies lead by Mickey Mouse anked by ETMarilyn Monroe and a hamburger14 Walter LaFeberrsquos Michael Jordanand the New Global Capitalism can be read as an elaboration of Fitzgeraldrsquosprediction and Francersquos nay the worldrsquos predicament Namely global-ization as the apotheosis of American popular culture

LaFeber begins his thin historical account in the 1890s the timeperiod in which the American economy rose to preeminence and thegame of basketball was invented For LaFeber ldquoThe history of basket-ball especially in the era of Michael Jordan helps us understand thisera known as lsquothe American Centuryrsquordquo (NGC p 22) The 1890s werealso witness to the rise of the rst multinational corporations includ-ing Standard Oil Eastman Kodak Singer and McCormick Accordingto LaFeber these companies diVer from their late-twentieth centurycounterparts in at least four respects (1) 1890s rms largely employedAmerican workers whereas 1990s rms rely on cheap foreign labor (2)While late-nineteenth century concerns traded in natural resources andindustrial goods corporations nowadays increasingly produce ldquoknowl-edgerdquo and ldquoinformationrdquo Here LaFeber like Barber (1992) signals his

review essay 337

move away from the analysis of hard political power toward soft eco-nomic and symbolic power (3) Todayrsquos transnationals unlike their an-cestors increasingly depend upon ldquoworld marketsrdquo for their pro ts (eg in 1996 four out of every ve bottles of coke were sold outside ofthe United States) and (4) Consequently late-twentieth century trans-nationals depend for their continued success on massive global adver-tising campaigns ldquoto make people want their productsrdquo (NGC p 56) Theadvertising employed by transnationals like Nike is argued to be ldquorev-olutionaryrdquo because it can be seen on as many as thirty to ve hun-dred television channels in many countries thanks to the new technologyof communication satellites and ber-optic cable For LaFeber the med-ium and the message collude to make the products of transnationalsirresistible to the denizens of the new global village Consider LaFeberrsquostake on the fall of Communism

During these decades [1970ndash1990] such new global technologies as com-puters communication satellites and ber optics transformed the globersquoseconomy It should be pointed out that this new era in world history begannot with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold Warin 1989ndash1991 but with the appearance of the post-industrial technologynearly a generation earlier For this technology changed the lives of peo-ples around the world and in so doing brought down the Communistsystem which could not adjust to this revolution (NGC p 58)

In addition to the problem of the rei cation of technology LaFebersimilarly rei es ldquothe world marketrdquo on which transnationals depend butover which the same transnationals wield considerable in uence via theirmarketing campaigns By presuming the perlocutionary power of mediamessages and indeed of the media themselves LaFeber eVectively rendsinvisible the relations between foreign consumers and the popular cul-ture and other fare produced by transnational corporations What doNike shoes or the images of Michael Jordan do for people in and outof America How are American products and symbols experienced insitu15 LaFeber like most globalization theorists emphasizes global pushfactors at the expense of the local pull factors felt articulated andinstantiated by real people in real places who constitute the real powerof ldquoworld marketsrdquo The result is a top-down externalist perspectivebereft of the global consumerrsquos Lebenswelt Consumption is explainedaway as a passive act of reception rather than an inde nite series ofmicroscopic acts of appropriation of the social world In this way LaFeberreproduces indeed globalizes the causal assumptions of the FrankfurtSchoolrsquos critique of mass culture The positive moment of consumerism

338 review essay

insofar as it is de ned as such by variously situated individuals is leftutterly untheorized Methodologically a hermeneutic reconstruction ofthe consumerrsquos point of view is attainable only through ethnographicengagement across a number of cultural sites16 Sociologically the ldquoarm-chairrdquo approach employed by LaFeber and the other authors under re-view here is methodologically and theoretically untenable Ideologicallyhowever it is quite useful insofar as it allows for a political critique thatassigns culpability to only the global cultural ldquopushersrdquo and eVectivelyabsolves the rest of the world of any responsibility whatsoever render-ing them so many dupes under the sway of expensive irresistible imagesIronically the rei cation of powerful world markets has the eVect ofstripping the consumers embedded within them of any potential foragency much less in uence For LaFeber then culture does in fact fol-low the money

The foregoing should not however be read as an aYrmation of theintellectualist romance with and tendentious presumption of subalternresistance commonplace as it is in the discipline of cultural studies Itis after all no more tenable to assume ldquoordinary peoplerdquo to be preter-naturally counter-hegemonic in their quotidien lives than it is to dis-miss them as cultural dopes Recalling Grayrsquos call for ldquonewrdquo and ldquomore exiblerdquo institutions to rescue social markets cultural critics must re exivelyaccount for their own role in the larger eld of cultural production AsThomas Frank (1999 p 84) perspicuously notes many cultural criticsmiss entirely the fatal irony of an academic radicalism that is increas-ingly coterminous with much management theory at precisely the samemoment when capitalist consultants and managers have decided to brandthemselves as radicals equating democracy and dissent with consumerismThe point rather is a simple one An understanding of globalizationas a eld of relations encompassing both power and resistance is impos-sible absent ethnographic engagement in this eld with all the variouslysituated actors involved (eg managers politicians citizens consumersworkers sub-proletariat intellectuals)

An ethnographic case makes the point American anthropologist LilaAbu-Lughod (1990) demonstrates in her ethnographic analysis of Bedouinwomen the intersection of power and resistance in global perspectiveBedouin women it turns out are avid consumers of Western pop musicTheir consumptive behavior has little to do however with the billionsspent annually on advertising by American rms Bedouin women activelyuse the lyrics of Western pop songs particularly romantic ones to sub-vert the regime of patriarchy they confront in their own local culturewherein the oral poetics of love and romance are severely restricted soas to reproduce male privilege Western music then oVers a partial

review essay 339

escape from and critical commentary on patriarchal Bedouin cultureAt the same time Bedouin culture is brought into the web of powerrelations involving the Egyptian nation-state and the larger internationalpolitical economy This instance of resistance exempli es Bourdieursquospoint about relations of power ldquoResistance can be alienating and sub-mission can be liberating Such is the paradox of the dominated andthere is no way out of itrdquo17 The chief limitation of New Global Capitalismis its exaggeration of the power of the dominant and its wholesale in-attention to the agency of the dominated18

Ditto for Zygmunt Baumanrsquos Globalization The Human ConsequencesBaumanrsquos point of departure into the global is Foucaultrsquos instrumentalmetaphor of the Panopticon In the modern exercise of power the spec-tacle was replaced by surveillance In pre-modern times power wasimpressed upon the public via displays of wealth splendor and notleast violence Modern power concentrated in the nation-state by con-trast preferred instead to linger in the shadows closely but discreetlymonitoring its subjects A case of the few regarding the many WhatFoucault overlooked however was the parallel modern development ofnew techniques of power consisting in contradistinction to surveillanceof the various mass media especially television A case of the manywatching the few19

The Panopticon even when universal in application was essentiallya local institution The Synopticon ie the mass media is increasinglyglobal The nature of the power each wields is diVerent too While thePanopticon forced people into the position where they could be watchedthe Synopticon requires little in the way of coercion By contrast theSynopticon seduces people into watching (THC p 52 emphasis in orig-inal) The many now watch the few And the few who are watched arethe celebrities No matter whence they originate all celebrities put ondisplay the world of celebrities a world whose distinctive feature is pre-cisely the quality of being watched by the many in all corners of theworld Whatever they speak about when on air they convey the mes-sage of a total way of life ldquoTheir life their way of liferdquo (THC p 52emphasis in original) To question the impact of that message on themany who watch is to Bauman

less like asking about preconceived fears and hopes and more like askingabout the ldquoeVectsrdquo of Christianity on onersquos view of the world ormdashas theChinese had askedmdashof Confucianism on public morality20

For Bauman as for LaFeber the world watches the fare producedby the globals ie the multinational corporations and the rest is his-tory The billions expended (for LaFeber) and the lofty other-worldly

340 review essay

character (for Bauman) of the globals renders otherwise legitimate naypressing questions of reception and interpretation entirely irrelevant

For all the power contained in the messages and presumably con-ferred upon the messengers Bauman much like Gray and Giddens isstill not entirely sure just who is in charge

To put it in a nutshell no one seems now to be in control Worse still it isnot clear what ldquobeing in controlrdquo could under the circumstances be like The deepest meaning conveyed by the idea of globalization is that ofthe indeterminate unruly and self-propelled character of world aVairs the absenceof a centre of a controlling desk of a board of directors of a manager-ial oYce Globalization is Jowittrsquos ldquonew world disorderrdquo under anothername (THC pp 58ndash59 rst emphasis in original second emphasis mine)

Note the now familiar tell-tale signs of rei cation the obfuscation ofsocial relations and human agency tightly coupled with the attributionof telos to ldquoworld aVairsrdquo The world may be disorderly but for Baumanat least one thing is for sure Wherever the new seat of power residesif it resides anywhere if it even exists at all it is certainly not withinthe nation-state

In the words of GH von Wright the ldquonation-state it seems is erodingor perhaps lsquowithering awayrsquo The eroding forces are transnationalrdquo Since nation-states remain the sole frame for book-balancing and the sole sources ofeVective political initiative the lsquotransnationalityrsquo or eroding forces putsthem outside the realm of deliberate purposeful and potentially rationalaction As everything that elides such action such forces their shapes andactions are blurred in the mist of mystery they are objects of guessesrather than reliable analysis (THC pp 56ndash57 rst emphasis mine secondemphasis in original)

Having thus ruled out both nations and transnationals as the sourceof the ldquoeroding forcesrdquo at work in the world Bauman asks

How has it come about that this vast expanse of man-made wilderness (notthe ldquonaturalrdquo wilderness which modernity set out to conquer and tamebut to paraphrase Anthony Giddensrsquo felicitous phrase a ldquomanufactured jun-glerdquomdashthe post-domestication wilderness one that emerged after the con-quest and as a result) has sprung into vision And why did it acquire theformidable power of obstinacy and resilience which since Durkheim istaken to be the de ning mark of ldquohard realityrdquo (THC p 69 rst empha-sis mine second emphasis in original)

This indeed is the question that should orient our analyses of ldquoglob-alizationrdquo21 As an analytic tool however it is instructive only inasmuchas we apply it equally to the putative ldquocausesrdquo of ldquoglobalizationrdquo for

review essay 341

example the withering away of the nation-state at the hands of thosepunitive and unforgiving ldquo nancial marketsrdquo (THC p 69) each of whichhas assumed of late the marks of ldquohard realityrdquo Bauman poses the ini-tial question but fails to similarly question the ontological reality of whatare actually epistemological heuristics The use of terms such as ldquomar-ketsrdquo and ldquo nancesrdquo and ldquotechnological forcesrdquo are potentially usefulwhen they serve as a kind of analytic shorthand for sets of social rela-tions that have already been enumerated and explicated explicitly andexhaustively When however they substitute for explanations when theystand in as explanations in and of themselves they serve not only tocomplicate our thinking but more egregious still to insidiously repro-duce those discourses and practices of domination against which criti-cal scholars are aligned Bauman himself anticipates this problem whenhe acknowledges with an approving nod to Cornelius Castoriadis that

the trouble with the contemporary condition of modern civilization isthat it stopped questioning itself Not asking certain questions is pregnantwith more dangers than failing to answer the questions already on theoYcial agenda while asking the wrong kind of questions all too often helpsto avert eyes from the truly important issues The price of silence is paidin the hard currency of human suVering Asking the right questions makesafter all all the diVerence between fate and destination drifting and trav-elling Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way oflife is arguably the most urgent of the services we owe our fellow humansand ourselves (THC p 5)

Like Gray and LaFeber Bauman oVers us an impassioned threnodydevoted to the deleterious eVects borne by globalization but in so doingunwittingly disarms us intellectually and consequently renders us inca-pable of intervention and resistance much less understanding We shouldtherefore welcome Pierre Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance Against the Tyrannyof the Market for Bourdieu perhaps more than any other living scholarand public intellectual deftly combines scholarly and political analysis

Bourdieursquos approach is to read ldquoglobalizationrdquo as a neo-liberal dis-course a mythology that poses as reality

Irsquove used the word ldquoglobalizationrdquo It is a myth in the strong sense of theword a powerful discourse and ideacutee force an idea which has social forcewhich obtains belief It is the main weapon in the battles against the gainsof the welfare state (AOR p 34)

Bourdieu goes on to dissect this discourse pointing out the way itevokes and rati es the ldquoso-called law of the marketrdquo (AOR p 35) Byso impugning the natural and inevitable ontological character of ldquoglobal-

342 review essay

izationrdquo and the ldquosupposed iron laws of the nancial marketsrdquo Bourdieuis poised to make the theoretical contribution Gray irted with but failedto realize to wit an analysis of the social construction of the globaleconomy (AOR pp 26ndash27) Yet Bourdieu soon after does an about-face on this issue writing

While globalization is above all a justi catory myth there is one case whereit is quite real that of the nancial markets Thanks to the removal of a num-ber of legal restrictions and the development of electronic communicationswhich lead to lower communication costs we are moving towards a uniednancial market (AOR p 38 emphasis mine)

Bourdieursquos account is rife with contradictions and illogical unsub-stantiated assertions of fact Particularly disabling is his myopia regard-ing the role of the nation-state While ldquoglobalizationrdquo is a myth (wellyes it is) the power of the ldquo nancial marketsrdquo and the ldquointernationalcapital marketrdquo is quite real indeed22 The latter according to Bourdieuprevents individual nation-states from manipulating their exchange andinterest rates which in turn are increasingly determined by a powerconcentrated in the hands of a small number of countries whose iden-tities are never revealed and although one presumes that Bourdieu hasin mind the United States it is not at all clear which other nationsmight be controlling the rest of the worldrsquos nances (Germanyrsquos socialmarket Japanrsquos Certainly neither the French nor the English registerhere) So nations are powerless a familiar refrain Unless that is theyare a part of the small exclusive cabal of nations that rules the worldin which case they have considerable power after all

Bourdieu calls for the creation of a class of collective intellectualswho can among other things analyze the production and circulationof neo-liberal discourse to expose the ideological work of journalistsmanagers and not least the cunning reason of intellectuals23 Thisanalysis is to be carried out presumably in a manner consistent withhis project of re exive sociology24 That would mean mapping the full eld of cultural production and symbolic power that now obtains on aglobal level specifying the key actors and the objective structure of theirrelationships and analyzing the habitus of the agents that nds its tra-jectory within the speci c eld(s) in question25 That Bourdieu fails toattempt much less accomplish this admittedly bold project is a majorshortcoming of Acts of Resistance which amounts to little more than asteady stream of breathless bromides forever interrupted by conceptualand logical inconsistencies

Worse still is the manner in which Bourdieumdashlike Gray Giddens

review essay 343

and Baumanmdashunwittingly buttresses the discourse of neo-liberalism byutterly ignoring the active role played by the state in ushering in anostensible new world disorder in which the state appears as a shadowof its former self at best a hapless and unwilling conspirator accordedlittle responsibility Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance as with the other titlesunder review here quickly establishes its liberal credentials through itslament for a safer more secure and certain world (sicherheit) in whichthe state and the citizen and one suspects the progressive intellectualeach mattered Those nominal credentials however mask and insidi-ously support the state in its new corporatist guise26 Take for instancethe manifesto co-authored by prime ministers Tony Blair and GerhardSchroeder entitled ldquoThe Third WayDie Neue Mitterdquo27 Therein the min-isters declare

In a world of ever more rapid globalization and scienti c changes we needto create the conditions in which existing businesses can prosper and adaptand new businesses can be set up and grow Our aim is to modern-ize the welfare state not dismantle it Flexible markets must be combinedwith a newly dened role for an active state The state must become an activeagent for employment not merely the passive recipient of the casualties ofeconomic failure (emphasis mine)28

If ldquoglobalizationrdquo did not exist the state would have invented itOr consider to choose another recent example the passing of a new

bill in Britain which rede nes terrorism as ldquoThe use of serious violenceagainst persons or property or the threat to use such violence to intim-idate or coerce a government the public or any section of the publicfor political religious or ideological endsrdquo29 Borrowed verbatim fromthe American FBI this new bill was passed in British parliament inMarch 2000 by 210 votes to one Among other purposes the bill willserve as a deterrent to activists who would campaign publicly againstglobalization and multinational corporations as thousands recently didon ldquoMay Dayrdquo in Britain According to a British GM food activistldquoThe government is creating a private security service for transnationalcorporationsrdquo 30 To Bourdieu et al this is simply another example ofthe puppet that is the new nation-state orchestrated from above andafar by those indomitable nancial markets

To the sociologist Saskia Sassen however it is a case in point of thestatersquos active and voluntary complicity in the construction and not leaststrategic invocation of ldquoglobalizationrdquo Sassen contends that far frombeing passive and merely reactive under the sway of globalizationldquonational rms and national institutions have participated in the processrdquo

344 review essay

Sassen moreover rejects the notion that the global economy is ldquosome-how lsquoout therersquordquo forcing a nation and its corporations to change theirpractices Rather Sassen argues forcefully that the global economy hasbeen created by national industries with the assistance of their ownnationrsquos legislative and regulatory bodies In so doing Sassen pushes thede nition of the global economy beyond the production distributionand consumption of goods and services to encompass a worldwide sys-tem of governance and power within a ldquonew frontier zonerdquo which

is not merely a dividing line between the national economy and theglobal economy It is a zone of politico-economic interactions that pro-duce new institutional forms and alter some of the old ones Nor is this encounterbetween the global and the national just a matter of reducing regulations or the role ofgovernment generally simply to posit as is so often done that economic glob-alization has brought with it declining signi cance of the national state toutcourt misses some of the ner points of this transformation (emphasis mine)31

Pace Sassen and others who argue convincingly for the need to ldquobringthe state back inrdquo32 to our analyses the failure to recognize the trans-formation of the nonetheless active role of the nation-state is a symp-tom of a much broader failure of the sociological imagination bear inmind that the works discussed above are by some of the eldrsquos mostprominent gures Despite their admirably meliorist intentions theseworks each serve to invest ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollaries ie mar-ket and technological ldquoforcesrdquo with a ldquothingnessrdquo and an eYcacy itdoes not cannot possess This tendency stems I think from the nolonger tenable theoretical assumption that modernity consists of the compartmentalization of reality into three distinct domains (1) Market(economy) (2) State (polity) and (3) Civil Society (culturepublic sphere)It is arguable whether this tripartite heuristic was ever analytically use-ful but the problem it poses for sociologists now is a diVerent one forthis heuristic has assumed the status of a dead metaphor that of hardreality According to Wallerstein this theorem of separateness and mutualexclusivity a mere two hundred years old is now so deeply rooted inour consciousness and linguistic tools that we nd it almost impossibleto formulate sentences much less cogent analytic arguments free of thisthreefold monster33 Thus rei ed these epistemologic tools no longerserve us They instead predispose us to see each sphere in terms onlyof expansion (as in the case of the market) or retraction (as in the rolesof the state and the public sphere) rather than the simultaneous seman-tic and ontological transformation of all three34 Returning to Cassirer

review essay 345

But this problem itself appears spurious as soon as we realize that the dis-tinctions which here are taken for granted the analysis of reality in termsof things and processes permanent and transitory aspects objects andactions do not precede language as a substratum of given fact but thatlanguage itself is what initiates such articulations and develops them inits own sphere35

As Wallerstein adroitly notes these unconscious rei cations obscuremuch of reality from the scholars who unre exively deploy them36 Thereis however still more at work than this For all the attention I havedevoted to disentangling the discourse of ldquoglobalizationrdquo we must notlose sight of the many decisions actions and consequences intentionalor not that loosely comprise the ever-shifting reality of globalizationwithin which our analytic discourse is developed and deployed Chiefamong these in this context are the sense and the reality of profounddislocation displacement and disengagement that aVect sociologists asmuch as anyone else37 Our theories and methods bear the indelibleimprint of the world we seek to comprehend

A renovated sociological imagination of globalization must steer clearof the grand theorizing rehearsed by the works reviewed here withoutsimultaneously lapsing into the abstracted empiricism that infects mostof the technical work on globalization38 To avoid these twin pitfalls wewill need to develop an entirely new vocabulary grounded in directempirical engagement with our new globalizing reality Examples ofthis new approach are already under way They include so far Marcusrsquocall for multi-sited ethnography Sassenrsquos work toward cultivating anethnographic approach to studying the way the global is instantiatedwithin local urban spaces and Duneierrsquos ldquoextended place methodrdquo39

The considerable potential of these approaches notwithstanding the soci-ological apprehension of globalization will require rst and foremost acollective eVort on the part of variously situated scholars to wit a globalnetwork consisting of several local nodes in which substantive con ictand cooperation may freely occur What the late Bill Readings calleda community of ldquodissensusrdquo40 Absent these eVorts our meliorist inten-tions have little chance of ever becoming eYcacious interventions

Notes

1 Thanks to Denis Wall for editorial assistance and to Julie Custeau for her ever-astute guidance and unfailing support of everything that I do The works reviewed hereinclude Bauman Zygmunt 1998 Globalization the human consequences (New York ColumbiaUniversity Press) hereafter THC Bourdieu Pierre 1998 Acts of resistance against the tyranny

346 review essay

of the market (New York The New Press) hereafter AOR Gray John 1998 False dawnthe delusions of global capitalism (London Granta Books) hereafter FD Giddens Anthony2000 Runaway World (New York Routledge) hereafter RW and LaFeber Walter 1999Michael Jordan and the new global capitalism (New York W W Norton amp Company) here-after NGC

2 1946 p 73 See Cassidy (1997) The recent highly organized public protests in Davos Seattle

and Washington lend support to this prediction4 For an historical perspective on the semantic polyvalence if not polysemy of

ldquoglobalizationrdquo over the Longue Dureacutee see Moore (1997)5 As Giddens puts it ldquoThe global spread of the term [globalization] is evidence of

the very developments to which it refersrdquo (RW p 3)6 See Bourdieursquos AOR p 427 Gray later asserts however that ldquoThe leverage of sovereign states over business

may actually be greater in some respects today than it has been in the pastrdquo (FD p 67) In which respects Gray does not say Nor does he oVer any evidence to but-tress what must be classi ed as like so many of the statements comprising FD purespeculation (or what might be euphemized as ldquoarm-chair economicsrdquo)

8 See the intriguing if tentative results of an international project comparing thefuture of nationally embedded capitalism in the global economy in Streeck and Yamamura(2000)

9 For an illuminating historical treatment of the rei cation of technology see Marx(1997)

10 Gray argues further that the eVects of these forces are irrevocable and irreversibleThe regrettable and wrong-headed policy choices made by the Thatcher administrationnow constitute the ineluctable reality of the Blair government Gray goes on to arguethe same for the neo-liberal turn taken by New Zealand Grayrsquos argument is contra-dicted however by rst the palpably intentional adoption of neo-liberal tenets on thepart of the Blair government (not least its elimination of Article Four hitherto the cor-nerstone of Labour politics) and second by the recent election of a Labour governmentin New Zealand whose popularity in the polls in 1990 was just 2 percent a Labourgovernment that is moreover authentically committed to rebuilding and underwritingits social institutions See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 11 Even the Economistadmitted no doubt plaintively that ldquoglobalization is not irreversiblerdquo (see Smith andMoran [2000 p 70])

11 Gray is confused about the power of the American model Of ldquohyperglobaliza-tion a corporate utopiardquo Gray writes ldquoIt represents an historical transformation thathas no end-state and which is subverting American capitalism as well as its rivals as aprocess leading to the universal acceptance of American free marketsrdquo (FD p 67)

12 In contradistinction to Giddensrsquo slim but instructive A Brief but Critical Introductionto Sociology

13 Fitzgerald made this prediction in a personal letter to the novelist and criticEdmund (Bunny) Wilson

14 de Medici and de Medici (1986 pp 17ndash20)15 For an empirically rich and theoretically supple analysis of the local experience

of McDonaldrsquos throughout east Asia refer to Watson et al (1997) This volume of ethno-graphic accounts makes particularly plain the ways in which McDonaldrsquos as a transna-tional corporation has allowed itself via a local ownership structure to adapt to theexigencies and idiosyncrasies of local cultures Even while McDonaldrsquos market share reclinedin the United States during the 1990s it continued to grow in foreign markets includ-ing but not limited to east Asia

16 See Marcus (1995) on the advantages of conducting multi-site ethnography inofthe world system

17 Bourdieu (1987 p 184)

review essay 347

18 One nal word of warning regarding NGC the strength and weakness of thisbook are one in the same NGC is unique in that it tries to marry the history of bas-ketball with the history of the American economy A short book it suYciently coversneither task Basketball fans in particular should look elsewhere for a treatment of boththe NBA and the career of Michael Jordan See instead the eminently readable andinformative Halberstam (1999) and in keeping with the line of argument pursued aboveJordan (1998)

19 This is what Mathiesen (1997) aptly coined the Synopticon20 Gerbner and Gross (1976) quoted in THC p 5321 This question if broadened in scope is arguably the most important question

sociologists can pose Period Substitute ldquosocietyrdquo for ldquoglobalizationrdquo and the analyticpotential of the question comes into bold relief

22 Compare the putative reality of the nancial market with the following breath-less declaration ldquoIn short against all the prophets of misery who want to convince youthat your destiny is in the hands of transcendent independent indiVerent powers suchas the lsquo nancial marketsrsquo or the mechanisms if lsquoglobalizationrsquo I want to declare withthe hope of convincing you that the future your future which is also our future thatof all Europeans depends a great deal on you as Germans and trade unionistsrdquo (AORp 69)

23 For his own analysis cum criticism of the ldquojournalistic eldrdquo see Bourdieu (1998)for Bourdieursquos take on the role of intellectuals in diVusing the new global vulgate seeBourdieu and Wacquant (1999a 1999b)

24 I say presumably because Bourdieu at no point in AOR elaborates this programFor an original and compelling criticism of Bourdieursquos sociological theory and methodsee Griller (1996)

25 See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992 pp 104ndash5) Whether or not the global eldis coterminous with what Bourdieu calls the eld of power (a kind of meta- eld) is aninteresting question

26 If I am harder on Bourdieu than the other authors under review (which is arguable)it is due rst to the inconsistency that obtains between his previous scholarly work andhis present political critique and second and most important because his ostensibly lib-eral critique unwittingly and insidiously reproduces the neo-liberal discourse he seeks tosubvert

27 Not coincidentally the so-called ldquothird wayrdquo also advocated by Bill Clinton islargely inspired by Anthony Giddensrsquo book of the same name Space does not permitan analysis of Giddensrsquo contribution to practical politics here Blair and Schroederrsquos man-ifesto is reprinted in the spring 2000 edition of Dissent pp 51ndash65

28 Small wonder Gray who makes the same recommendation demonizes the Thatcheradministration on the one (left) hand while he serves as an apologist for the presentBlair government on the other (right) hand

29 See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 2030 Ibid31 See Sassen (2000 pp 164ndash65)32 For example the entire corpus of Theda Skocpal33 Wallerstein (2000 p 307)34 An apt example of the compartmentalist way of thinking about the state is Daniel

Bellrsquos famous remark that the nation-state is at once too small and too large to ade-quately address most of the problems it faces

35 1946 p 1236 Which in the case of Bourdieu in particular is all the more ironic for its theo-

retical inconsistency with his overall sociological-epistemological project37 Why after all is ldquoglobalizationrdquo now on everyonersquos lips in academe Might it

have something to do as a colleague of mine astutely theorizes because the educatedand professional middle-classes including university professors of Western nations are

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

review essay 337

move away from the analysis of hard political power toward soft eco-nomic and symbolic power (3) Todayrsquos transnationals unlike their an-cestors increasingly depend upon ldquoworld marketsrdquo for their pro ts (eg in 1996 four out of every ve bottles of coke were sold outside ofthe United States) and (4) Consequently late-twentieth century trans-nationals depend for their continued success on massive global adver-tising campaigns ldquoto make people want their productsrdquo (NGC p 56) Theadvertising employed by transnationals like Nike is argued to be ldquorev-olutionaryrdquo because it can be seen on as many as thirty to ve hun-dred television channels in many countries thanks to the new technologyof communication satellites and ber-optic cable For LaFeber the med-ium and the message collude to make the products of transnationalsirresistible to the denizens of the new global village Consider LaFeberrsquostake on the fall of Communism

During these decades [1970ndash1990] such new global technologies as com-puters communication satellites and ber optics transformed the globersquoseconomy It should be pointed out that this new era in world history begannot with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold Warin 1989ndash1991 but with the appearance of the post-industrial technologynearly a generation earlier For this technology changed the lives of peo-ples around the world and in so doing brought down the Communistsystem which could not adjust to this revolution (NGC p 58)

In addition to the problem of the rei cation of technology LaFebersimilarly rei es ldquothe world marketrdquo on which transnationals depend butover which the same transnationals wield considerable in uence via theirmarketing campaigns By presuming the perlocutionary power of mediamessages and indeed of the media themselves LaFeber eVectively rendsinvisible the relations between foreign consumers and the popular cul-ture and other fare produced by transnational corporations What doNike shoes or the images of Michael Jordan do for people in and outof America How are American products and symbols experienced insitu15 LaFeber like most globalization theorists emphasizes global pushfactors at the expense of the local pull factors felt articulated andinstantiated by real people in real places who constitute the real powerof ldquoworld marketsrdquo The result is a top-down externalist perspectivebereft of the global consumerrsquos Lebenswelt Consumption is explainedaway as a passive act of reception rather than an inde nite series ofmicroscopic acts of appropriation of the social world In this way LaFeberreproduces indeed globalizes the causal assumptions of the FrankfurtSchoolrsquos critique of mass culture The positive moment of consumerism

338 review essay

insofar as it is de ned as such by variously situated individuals is leftutterly untheorized Methodologically a hermeneutic reconstruction ofthe consumerrsquos point of view is attainable only through ethnographicengagement across a number of cultural sites16 Sociologically the ldquoarm-chairrdquo approach employed by LaFeber and the other authors under re-view here is methodologically and theoretically untenable Ideologicallyhowever it is quite useful insofar as it allows for a political critique thatassigns culpability to only the global cultural ldquopushersrdquo and eVectivelyabsolves the rest of the world of any responsibility whatsoever render-ing them so many dupes under the sway of expensive irresistible imagesIronically the rei cation of powerful world markets has the eVect ofstripping the consumers embedded within them of any potential foragency much less in uence For LaFeber then culture does in fact fol-low the money

The foregoing should not however be read as an aYrmation of theintellectualist romance with and tendentious presumption of subalternresistance commonplace as it is in the discipline of cultural studies Itis after all no more tenable to assume ldquoordinary peoplerdquo to be preter-naturally counter-hegemonic in their quotidien lives than it is to dis-miss them as cultural dopes Recalling Grayrsquos call for ldquonewrdquo and ldquomore exiblerdquo institutions to rescue social markets cultural critics must re exivelyaccount for their own role in the larger eld of cultural production AsThomas Frank (1999 p 84) perspicuously notes many cultural criticsmiss entirely the fatal irony of an academic radicalism that is increas-ingly coterminous with much management theory at precisely the samemoment when capitalist consultants and managers have decided to brandthemselves as radicals equating democracy and dissent with consumerismThe point rather is a simple one An understanding of globalizationas a eld of relations encompassing both power and resistance is impos-sible absent ethnographic engagement in this eld with all the variouslysituated actors involved (eg managers politicians citizens consumersworkers sub-proletariat intellectuals)

An ethnographic case makes the point American anthropologist LilaAbu-Lughod (1990) demonstrates in her ethnographic analysis of Bedouinwomen the intersection of power and resistance in global perspectiveBedouin women it turns out are avid consumers of Western pop musicTheir consumptive behavior has little to do however with the billionsspent annually on advertising by American rms Bedouin women activelyuse the lyrics of Western pop songs particularly romantic ones to sub-vert the regime of patriarchy they confront in their own local culturewherein the oral poetics of love and romance are severely restricted soas to reproduce male privilege Western music then oVers a partial

review essay 339

escape from and critical commentary on patriarchal Bedouin cultureAt the same time Bedouin culture is brought into the web of powerrelations involving the Egyptian nation-state and the larger internationalpolitical economy This instance of resistance exempli es Bourdieursquospoint about relations of power ldquoResistance can be alienating and sub-mission can be liberating Such is the paradox of the dominated andthere is no way out of itrdquo17 The chief limitation of New Global Capitalismis its exaggeration of the power of the dominant and its wholesale in-attention to the agency of the dominated18

Ditto for Zygmunt Baumanrsquos Globalization The Human ConsequencesBaumanrsquos point of departure into the global is Foucaultrsquos instrumentalmetaphor of the Panopticon In the modern exercise of power the spec-tacle was replaced by surveillance In pre-modern times power wasimpressed upon the public via displays of wealth splendor and notleast violence Modern power concentrated in the nation-state by con-trast preferred instead to linger in the shadows closely but discreetlymonitoring its subjects A case of the few regarding the many WhatFoucault overlooked however was the parallel modern development ofnew techniques of power consisting in contradistinction to surveillanceof the various mass media especially television A case of the manywatching the few19

The Panopticon even when universal in application was essentiallya local institution The Synopticon ie the mass media is increasinglyglobal The nature of the power each wields is diVerent too While thePanopticon forced people into the position where they could be watchedthe Synopticon requires little in the way of coercion By contrast theSynopticon seduces people into watching (THC p 52 emphasis in orig-inal) The many now watch the few And the few who are watched arethe celebrities No matter whence they originate all celebrities put ondisplay the world of celebrities a world whose distinctive feature is pre-cisely the quality of being watched by the many in all corners of theworld Whatever they speak about when on air they convey the mes-sage of a total way of life ldquoTheir life their way of liferdquo (THC p 52emphasis in original) To question the impact of that message on themany who watch is to Bauman

less like asking about preconceived fears and hopes and more like askingabout the ldquoeVectsrdquo of Christianity on onersquos view of the world ormdashas theChinese had askedmdashof Confucianism on public morality20

For Bauman as for LaFeber the world watches the fare producedby the globals ie the multinational corporations and the rest is his-tory The billions expended (for LaFeber) and the lofty other-worldly

340 review essay

character (for Bauman) of the globals renders otherwise legitimate naypressing questions of reception and interpretation entirely irrelevant

For all the power contained in the messages and presumably con-ferred upon the messengers Bauman much like Gray and Giddens isstill not entirely sure just who is in charge

To put it in a nutshell no one seems now to be in control Worse still it isnot clear what ldquobeing in controlrdquo could under the circumstances be like The deepest meaning conveyed by the idea of globalization is that ofthe indeterminate unruly and self-propelled character of world aVairs the absenceof a centre of a controlling desk of a board of directors of a manager-ial oYce Globalization is Jowittrsquos ldquonew world disorderrdquo under anothername (THC pp 58ndash59 rst emphasis in original second emphasis mine)

Note the now familiar tell-tale signs of rei cation the obfuscation ofsocial relations and human agency tightly coupled with the attributionof telos to ldquoworld aVairsrdquo The world may be disorderly but for Baumanat least one thing is for sure Wherever the new seat of power residesif it resides anywhere if it even exists at all it is certainly not withinthe nation-state

In the words of GH von Wright the ldquonation-state it seems is erodingor perhaps lsquowithering awayrsquo The eroding forces are transnationalrdquo Since nation-states remain the sole frame for book-balancing and the sole sources ofeVective political initiative the lsquotransnationalityrsquo or eroding forces putsthem outside the realm of deliberate purposeful and potentially rationalaction As everything that elides such action such forces their shapes andactions are blurred in the mist of mystery they are objects of guessesrather than reliable analysis (THC pp 56ndash57 rst emphasis mine secondemphasis in original)

Having thus ruled out both nations and transnationals as the sourceof the ldquoeroding forcesrdquo at work in the world Bauman asks

How has it come about that this vast expanse of man-made wilderness (notthe ldquonaturalrdquo wilderness which modernity set out to conquer and tamebut to paraphrase Anthony Giddensrsquo felicitous phrase a ldquomanufactured jun-glerdquomdashthe post-domestication wilderness one that emerged after the con-quest and as a result) has sprung into vision And why did it acquire theformidable power of obstinacy and resilience which since Durkheim istaken to be the de ning mark of ldquohard realityrdquo (THC p 69 rst empha-sis mine second emphasis in original)

This indeed is the question that should orient our analyses of ldquoglob-alizationrdquo21 As an analytic tool however it is instructive only inasmuchas we apply it equally to the putative ldquocausesrdquo of ldquoglobalizationrdquo for

review essay 341

example the withering away of the nation-state at the hands of thosepunitive and unforgiving ldquo nancial marketsrdquo (THC p 69) each of whichhas assumed of late the marks of ldquohard realityrdquo Bauman poses the ini-tial question but fails to similarly question the ontological reality of whatare actually epistemological heuristics The use of terms such as ldquomar-ketsrdquo and ldquo nancesrdquo and ldquotechnological forcesrdquo are potentially usefulwhen they serve as a kind of analytic shorthand for sets of social rela-tions that have already been enumerated and explicated explicitly andexhaustively When however they substitute for explanations when theystand in as explanations in and of themselves they serve not only tocomplicate our thinking but more egregious still to insidiously repro-duce those discourses and practices of domination against which criti-cal scholars are aligned Bauman himself anticipates this problem whenhe acknowledges with an approving nod to Cornelius Castoriadis that

the trouble with the contemporary condition of modern civilization isthat it stopped questioning itself Not asking certain questions is pregnantwith more dangers than failing to answer the questions already on theoYcial agenda while asking the wrong kind of questions all too often helpsto avert eyes from the truly important issues The price of silence is paidin the hard currency of human suVering Asking the right questions makesafter all all the diVerence between fate and destination drifting and trav-elling Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way oflife is arguably the most urgent of the services we owe our fellow humansand ourselves (THC p 5)

Like Gray and LaFeber Bauman oVers us an impassioned threnodydevoted to the deleterious eVects borne by globalization but in so doingunwittingly disarms us intellectually and consequently renders us inca-pable of intervention and resistance much less understanding We shouldtherefore welcome Pierre Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance Against the Tyrannyof the Market for Bourdieu perhaps more than any other living scholarand public intellectual deftly combines scholarly and political analysis

Bourdieursquos approach is to read ldquoglobalizationrdquo as a neo-liberal dis-course a mythology that poses as reality

Irsquove used the word ldquoglobalizationrdquo It is a myth in the strong sense of theword a powerful discourse and ideacutee force an idea which has social forcewhich obtains belief It is the main weapon in the battles against the gainsof the welfare state (AOR p 34)

Bourdieu goes on to dissect this discourse pointing out the way itevokes and rati es the ldquoso-called law of the marketrdquo (AOR p 35) Byso impugning the natural and inevitable ontological character of ldquoglobal-

342 review essay

izationrdquo and the ldquosupposed iron laws of the nancial marketsrdquo Bourdieuis poised to make the theoretical contribution Gray irted with but failedto realize to wit an analysis of the social construction of the globaleconomy (AOR pp 26ndash27) Yet Bourdieu soon after does an about-face on this issue writing

While globalization is above all a justi catory myth there is one case whereit is quite real that of the nancial markets Thanks to the removal of a num-ber of legal restrictions and the development of electronic communicationswhich lead to lower communication costs we are moving towards a uniednancial market (AOR p 38 emphasis mine)

Bourdieursquos account is rife with contradictions and illogical unsub-stantiated assertions of fact Particularly disabling is his myopia regard-ing the role of the nation-state While ldquoglobalizationrdquo is a myth (wellyes it is) the power of the ldquo nancial marketsrdquo and the ldquointernationalcapital marketrdquo is quite real indeed22 The latter according to Bourdieuprevents individual nation-states from manipulating their exchange andinterest rates which in turn are increasingly determined by a powerconcentrated in the hands of a small number of countries whose iden-tities are never revealed and although one presumes that Bourdieu hasin mind the United States it is not at all clear which other nationsmight be controlling the rest of the worldrsquos nances (Germanyrsquos socialmarket Japanrsquos Certainly neither the French nor the English registerhere) So nations are powerless a familiar refrain Unless that is theyare a part of the small exclusive cabal of nations that rules the worldin which case they have considerable power after all

Bourdieu calls for the creation of a class of collective intellectualswho can among other things analyze the production and circulationof neo-liberal discourse to expose the ideological work of journalistsmanagers and not least the cunning reason of intellectuals23 Thisanalysis is to be carried out presumably in a manner consistent withhis project of re exive sociology24 That would mean mapping the full eld of cultural production and symbolic power that now obtains on aglobal level specifying the key actors and the objective structure of theirrelationships and analyzing the habitus of the agents that nds its tra-jectory within the speci c eld(s) in question25 That Bourdieu fails toattempt much less accomplish this admittedly bold project is a majorshortcoming of Acts of Resistance which amounts to little more than asteady stream of breathless bromides forever interrupted by conceptualand logical inconsistencies

Worse still is the manner in which Bourdieumdashlike Gray Giddens

review essay 343

and Baumanmdashunwittingly buttresses the discourse of neo-liberalism byutterly ignoring the active role played by the state in ushering in anostensible new world disorder in which the state appears as a shadowof its former self at best a hapless and unwilling conspirator accordedlittle responsibility Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance as with the other titlesunder review here quickly establishes its liberal credentials through itslament for a safer more secure and certain world (sicherheit) in whichthe state and the citizen and one suspects the progressive intellectualeach mattered Those nominal credentials however mask and insidi-ously support the state in its new corporatist guise26 Take for instancethe manifesto co-authored by prime ministers Tony Blair and GerhardSchroeder entitled ldquoThe Third WayDie Neue Mitterdquo27 Therein the min-isters declare

In a world of ever more rapid globalization and scienti c changes we needto create the conditions in which existing businesses can prosper and adaptand new businesses can be set up and grow Our aim is to modern-ize the welfare state not dismantle it Flexible markets must be combinedwith a newly dened role for an active state The state must become an activeagent for employment not merely the passive recipient of the casualties ofeconomic failure (emphasis mine)28

If ldquoglobalizationrdquo did not exist the state would have invented itOr consider to choose another recent example the passing of a new

bill in Britain which rede nes terrorism as ldquoThe use of serious violenceagainst persons or property or the threat to use such violence to intim-idate or coerce a government the public or any section of the publicfor political religious or ideological endsrdquo29 Borrowed verbatim fromthe American FBI this new bill was passed in British parliament inMarch 2000 by 210 votes to one Among other purposes the bill willserve as a deterrent to activists who would campaign publicly againstglobalization and multinational corporations as thousands recently didon ldquoMay Dayrdquo in Britain According to a British GM food activistldquoThe government is creating a private security service for transnationalcorporationsrdquo 30 To Bourdieu et al this is simply another example ofthe puppet that is the new nation-state orchestrated from above andafar by those indomitable nancial markets

To the sociologist Saskia Sassen however it is a case in point of thestatersquos active and voluntary complicity in the construction and not leaststrategic invocation of ldquoglobalizationrdquo Sassen contends that far frombeing passive and merely reactive under the sway of globalizationldquonational rms and national institutions have participated in the processrdquo

344 review essay

Sassen moreover rejects the notion that the global economy is ldquosome-how lsquoout therersquordquo forcing a nation and its corporations to change theirpractices Rather Sassen argues forcefully that the global economy hasbeen created by national industries with the assistance of their ownnationrsquos legislative and regulatory bodies In so doing Sassen pushes thede nition of the global economy beyond the production distributionand consumption of goods and services to encompass a worldwide sys-tem of governance and power within a ldquonew frontier zonerdquo which

is not merely a dividing line between the national economy and theglobal economy It is a zone of politico-economic interactions that pro-duce new institutional forms and alter some of the old ones Nor is this encounterbetween the global and the national just a matter of reducing regulations or the role ofgovernment generally simply to posit as is so often done that economic glob-alization has brought with it declining signi cance of the national state toutcourt misses some of the ner points of this transformation (emphasis mine)31

Pace Sassen and others who argue convincingly for the need to ldquobringthe state back inrdquo32 to our analyses the failure to recognize the trans-formation of the nonetheless active role of the nation-state is a symp-tom of a much broader failure of the sociological imagination bear inmind that the works discussed above are by some of the eldrsquos mostprominent gures Despite their admirably meliorist intentions theseworks each serve to invest ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollaries ie mar-ket and technological ldquoforcesrdquo with a ldquothingnessrdquo and an eYcacy itdoes not cannot possess This tendency stems I think from the nolonger tenable theoretical assumption that modernity consists of the compartmentalization of reality into three distinct domains (1) Market(economy) (2) State (polity) and (3) Civil Society (culturepublic sphere)It is arguable whether this tripartite heuristic was ever analytically use-ful but the problem it poses for sociologists now is a diVerent one forthis heuristic has assumed the status of a dead metaphor that of hardreality According to Wallerstein this theorem of separateness and mutualexclusivity a mere two hundred years old is now so deeply rooted inour consciousness and linguistic tools that we nd it almost impossibleto formulate sentences much less cogent analytic arguments free of thisthreefold monster33 Thus rei ed these epistemologic tools no longerserve us They instead predispose us to see each sphere in terms onlyof expansion (as in the case of the market) or retraction (as in the rolesof the state and the public sphere) rather than the simultaneous seman-tic and ontological transformation of all three34 Returning to Cassirer

review essay 345

But this problem itself appears spurious as soon as we realize that the dis-tinctions which here are taken for granted the analysis of reality in termsof things and processes permanent and transitory aspects objects andactions do not precede language as a substratum of given fact but thatlanguage itself is what initiates such articulations and develops them inits own sphere35

As Wallerstein adroitly notes these unconscious rei cations obscuremuch of reality from the scholars who unre exively deploy them36 Thereis however still more at work than this For all the attention I havedevoted to disentangling the discourse of ldquoglobalizationrdquo we must notlose sight of the many decisions actions and consequences intentionalor not that loosely comprise the ever-shifting reality of globalizationwithin which our analytic discourse is developed and deployed Chiefamong these in this context are the sense and the reality of profounddislocation displacement and disengagement that aVect sociologists asmuch as anyone else37 Our theories and methods bear the indelibleimprint of the world we seek to comprehend

A renovated sociological imagination of globalization must steer clearof the grand theorizing rehearsed by the works reviewed here withoutsimultaneously lapsing into the abstracted empiricism that infects mostof the technical work on globalization38 To avoid these twin pitfalls wewill need to develop an entirely new vocabulary grounded in directempirical engagement with our new globalizing reality Examples ofthis new approach are already under way They include so far Marcusrsquocall for multi-sited ethnography Sassenrsquos work toward cultivating anethnographic approach to studying the way the global is instantiatedwithin local urban spaces and Duneierrsquos ldquoextended place methodrdquo39

The considerable potential of these approaches notwithstanding the soci-ological apprehension of globalization will require rst and foremost acollective eVort on the part of variously situated scholars to wit a globalnetwork consisting of several local nodes in which substantive con ictand cooperation may freely occur What the late Bill Readings calleda community of ldquodissensusrdquo40 Absent these eVorts our meliorist inten-tions have little chance of ever becoming eYcacious interventions

Notes

1 Thanks to Denis Wall for editorial assistance and to Julie Custeau for her ever-astute guidance and unfailing support of everything that I do The works reviewed hereinclude Bauman Zygmunt 1998 Globalization the human consequences (New York ColumbiaUniversity Press) hereafter THC Bourdieu Pierre 1998 Acts of resistance against the tyranny

346 review essay

of the market (New York The New Press) hereafter AOR Gray John 1998 False dawnthe delusions of global capitalism (London Granta Books) hereafter FD Giddens Anthony2000 Runaway World (New York Routledge) hereafter RW and LaFeber Walter 1999Michael Jordan and the new global capitalism (New York W W Norton amp Company) here-after NGC

2 1946 p 73 See Cassidy (1997) The recent highly organized public protests in Davos Seattle

and Washington lend support to this prediction4 For an historical perspective on the semantic polyvalence if not polysemy of

ldquoglobalizationrdquo over the Longue Dureacutee see Moore (1997)5 As Giddens puts it ldquoThe global spread of the term [globalization] is evidence of

the very developments to which it refersrdquo (RW p 3)6 See Bourdieursquos AOR p 427 Gray later asserts however that ldquoThe leverage of sovereign states over business

may actually be greater in some respects today than it has been in the pastrdquo (FD p 67) In which respects Gray does not say Nor does he oVer any evidence to but-tress what must be classi ed as like so many of the statements comprising FD purespeculation (or what might be euphemized as ldquoarm-chair economicsrdquo)

8 See the intriguing if tentative results of an international project comparing thefuture of nationally embedded capitalism in the global economy in Streeck and Yamamura(2000)

9 For an illuminating historical treatment of the rei cation of technology see Marx(1997)

10 Gray argues further that the eVects of these forces are irrevocable and irreversibleThe regrettable and wrong-headed policy choices made by the Thatcher administrationnow constitute the ineluctable reality of the Blair government Gray goes on to arguethe same for the neo-liberal turn taken by New Zealand Grayrsquos argument is contra-dicted however by rst the palpably intentional adoption of neo-liberal tenets on thepart of the Blair government (not least its elimination of Article Four hitherto the cor-nerstone of Labour politics) and second by the recent election of a Labour governmentin New Zealand whose popularity in the polls in 1990 was just 2 percent a Labourgovernment that is moreover authentically committed to rebuilding and underwritingits social institutions See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 11 Even the Economistadmitted no doubt plaintively that ldquoglobalization is not irreversiblerdquo (see Smith andMoran [2000 p 70])

11 Gray is confused about the power of the American model Of ldquohyperglobaliza-tion a corporate utopiardquo Gray writes ldquoIt represents an historical transformation thathas no end-state and which is subverting American capitalism as well as its rivals as aprocess leading to the universal acceptance of American free marketsrdquo (FD p 67)

12 In contradistinction to Giddensrsquo slim but instructive A Brief but Critical Introductionto Sociology

13 Fitzgerald made this prediction in a personal letter to the novelist and criticEdmund (Bunny) Wilson

14 de Medici and de Medici (1986 pp 17ndash20)15 For an empirically rich and theoretically supple analysis of the local experience

of McDonaldrsquos throughout east Asia refer to Watson et al (1997) This volume of ethno-graphic accounts makes particularly plain the ways in which McDonaldrsquos as a transna-tional corporation has allowed itself via a local ownership structure to adapt to theexigencies and idiosyncrasies of local cultures Even while McDonaldrsquos market share reclinedin the United States during the 1990s it continued to grow in foreign markets includ-ing but not limited to east Asia

16 See Marcus (1995) on the advantages of conducting multi-site ethnography inofthe world system

17 Bourdieu (1987 p 184)

review essay 347

18 One nal word of warning regarding NGC the strength and weakness of thisbook are one in the same NGC is unique in that it tries to marry the history of bas-ketball with the history of the American economy A short book it suYciently coversneither task Basketball fans in particular should look elsewhere for a treatment of boththe NBA and the career of Michael Jordan See instead the eminently readable andinformative Halberstam (1999) and in keeping with the line of argument pursued aboveJordan (1998)

19 This is what Mathiesen (1997) aptly coined the Synopticon20 Gerbner and Gross (1976) quoted in THC p 5321 This question if broadened in scope is arguably the most important question

sociologists can pose Period Substitute ldquosocietyrdquo for ldquoglobalizationrdquo and the analyticpotential of the question comes into bold relief

22 Compare the putative reality of the nancial market with the following breath-less declaration ldquoIn short against all the prophets of misery who want to convince youthat your destiny is in the hands of transcendent independent indiVerent powers suchas the lsquo nancial marketsrsquo or the mechanisms if lsquoglobalizationrsquo I want to declare withthe hope of convincing you that the future your future which is also our future thatof all Europeans depends a great deal on you as Germans and trade unionistsrdquo (AORp 69)

23 For his own analysis cum criticism of the ldquojournalistic eldrdquo see Bourdieu (1998)for Bourdieursquos take on the role of intellectuals in diVusing the new global vulgate seeBourdieu and Wacquant (1999a 1999b)

24 I say presumably because Bourdieu at no point in AOR elaborates this programFor an original and compelling criticism of Bourdieursquos sociological theory and methodsee Griller (1996)

25 See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992 pp 104ndash5) Whether or not the global eldis coterminous with what Bourdieu calls the eld of power (a kind of meta- eld) is aninteresting question

26 If I am harder on Bourdieu than the other authors under review (which is arguable)it is due rst to the inconsistency that obtains between his previous scholarly work andhis present political critique and second and most important because his ostensibly lib-eral critique unwittingly and insidiously reproduces the neo-liberal discourse he seeks tosubvert

27 Not coincidentally the so-called ldquothird wayrdquo also advocated by Bill Clinton islargely inspired by Anthony Giddensrsquo book of the same name Space does not permitan analysis of Giddensrsquo contribution to practical politics here Blair and Schroederrsquos man-ifesto is reprinted in the spring 2000 edition of Dissent pp 51ndash65

28 Small wonder Gray who makes the same recommendation demonizes the Thatcheradministration on the one (left) hand while he serves as an apologist for the presentBlair government on the other (right) hand

29 See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 2030 Ibid31 See Sassen (2000 pp 164ndash65)32 For example the entire corpus of Theda Skocpal33 Wallerstein (2000 p 307)34 An apt example of the compartmentalist way of thinking about the state is Daniel

Bellrsquos famous remark that the nation-state is at once too small and too large to ade-quately address most of the problems it faces

35 1946 p 1236 Which in the case of Bourdieu in particular is all the more ironic for its theo-

retical inconsistency with his overall sociological-epistemological project37 Why after all is ldquoglobalizationrdquo now on everyonersquos lips in academe Might it

have something to do as a colleague of mine astutely theorizes because the educatedand professional middle-classes including university professors of Western nations are

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

338 review essay

insofar as it is de ned as such by variously situated individuals is leftutterly untheorized Methodologically a hermeneutic reconstruction ofthe consumerrsquos point of view is attainable only through ethnographicengagement across a number of cultural sites16 Sociologically the ldquoarm-chairrdquo approach employed by LaFeber and the other authors under re-view here is methodologically and theoretically untenable Ideologicallyhowever it is quite useful insofar as it allows for a political critique thatassigns culpability to only the global cultural ldquopushersrdquo and eVectivelyabsolves the rest of the world of any responsibility whatsoever render-ing them so many dupes under the sway of expensive irresistible imagesIronically the rei cation of powerful world markets has the eVect ofstripping the consumers embedded within them of any potential foragency much less in uence For LaFeber then culture does in fact fol-low the money

The foregoing should not however be read as an aYrmation of theintellectualist romance with and tendentious presumption of subalternresistance commonplace as it is in the discipline of cultural studies Itis after all no more tenable to assume ldquoordinary peoplerdquo to be preter-naturally counter-hegemonic in their quotidien lives than it is to dis-miss them as cultural dopes Recalling Grayrsquos call for ldquonewrdquo and ldquomore exiblerdquo institutions to rescue social markets cultural critics must re exivelyaccount for their own role in the larger eld of cultural production AsThomas Frank (1999 p 84) perspicuously notes many cultural criticsmiss entirely the fatal irony of an academic radicalism that is increas-ingly coterminous with much management theory at precisely the samemoment when capitalist consultants and managers have decided to brandthemselves as radicals equating democracy and dissent with consumerismThe point rather is a simple one An understanding of globalizationas a eld of relations encompassing both power and resistance is impos-sible absent ethnographic engagement in this eld with all the variouslysituated actors involved (eg managers politicians citizens consumersworkers sub-proletariat intellectuals)

An ethnographic case makes the point American anthropologist LilaAbu-Lughod (1990) demonstrates in her ethnographic analysis of Bedouinwomen the intersection of power and resistance in global perspectiveBedouin women it turns out are avid consumers of Western pop musicTheir consumptive behavior has little to do however with the billionsspent annually on advertising by American rms Bedouin women activelyuse the lyrics of Western pop songs particularly romantic ones to sub-vert the regime of patriarchy they confront in their own local culturewherein the oral poetics of love and romance are severely restricted soas to reproduce male privilege Western music then oVers a partial

review essay 339

escape from and critical commentary on patriarchal Bedouin cultureAt the same time Bedouin culture is brought into the web of powerrelations involving the Egyptian nation-state and the larger internationalpolitical economy This instance of resistance exempli es Bourdieursquospoint about relations of power ldquoResistance can be alienating and sub-mission can be liberating Such is the paradox of the dominated andthere is no way out of itrdquo17 The chief limitation of New Global Capitalismis its exaggeration of the power of the dominant and its wholesale in-attention to the agency of the dominated18

Ditto for Zygmunt Baumanrsquos Globalization The Human ConsequencesBaumanrsquos point of departure into the global is Foucaultrsquos instrumentalmetaphor of the Panopticon In the modern exercise of power the spec-tacle was replaced by surveillance In pre-modern times power wasimpressed upon the public via displays of wealth splendor and notleast violence Modern power concentrated in the nation-state by con-trast preferred instead to linger in the shadows closely but discreetlymonitoring its subjects A case of the few regarding the many WhatFoucault overlooked however was the parallel modern development ofnew techniques of power consisting in contradistinction to surveillanceof the various mass media especially television A case of the manywatching the few19

The Panopticon even when universal in application was essentiallya local institution The Synopticon ie the mass media is increasinglyglobal The nature of the power each wields is diVerent too While thePanopticon forced people into the position where they could be watchedthe Synopticon requires little in the way of coercion By contrast theSynopticon seduces people into watching (THC p 52 emphasis in orig-inal) The many now watch the few And the few who are watched arethe celebrities No matter whence they originate all celebrities put ondisplay the world of celebrities a world whose distinctive feature is pre-cisely the quality of being watched by the many in all corners of theworld Whatever they speak about when on air they convey the mes-sage of a total way of life ldquoTheir life their way of liferdquo (THC p 52emphasis in original) To question the impact of that message on themany who watch is to Bauman

less like asking about preconceived fears and hopes and more like askingabout the ldquoeVectsrdquo of Christianity on onersquos view of the world ormdashas theChinese had askedmdashof Confucianism on public morality20

For Bauman as for LaFeber the world watches the fare producedby the globals ie the multinational corporations and the rest is his-tory The billions expended (for LaFeber) and the lofty other-worldly

340 review essay

character (for Bauman) of the globals renders otherwise legitimate naypressing questions of reception and interpretation entirely irrelevant

For all the power contained in the messages and presumably con-ferred upon the messengers Bauman much like Gray and Giddens isstill not entirely sure just who is in charge

To put it in a nutshell no one seems now to be in control Worse still it isnot clear what ldquobeing in controlrdquo could under the circumstances be like The deepest meaning conveyed by the idea of globalization is that ofthe indeterminate unruly and self-propelled character of world aVairs the absenceof a centre of a controlling desk of a board of directors of a manager-ial oYce Globalization is Jowittrsquos ldquonew world disorderrdquo under anothername (THC pp 58ndash59 rst emphasis in original second emphasis mine)

Note the now familiar tell-tale signs of rei cation the obfuscation ofsocial relations and human agency tightly coupled with the attributionof telos to ldquoworld aVairsrdquo The world may be disorderly but for Baumanat least one thing is for sure Wherever the new seat of power residesif it resides anywhere if it even exists at all it is certainly not withinthe nation-state

In the words of GH von Wright the ldquonation-state it seems is erodingor perhaps lsquowithering awayrsquo The eroding forces are transnationalrdquo Since nation-states remain the sole frame for book-balancing and the sole sources ofeVective political initiative the lsquotransnationalityrsquo or eroding forces putsthem outside the realm of deliberate purposeful and potentially rationalaction As everything that elides such action such forces their shapes andactions are blurred in the mist of mystery they are objects of guessesrather than reliable analysis (THC pp 56ndash57 rst emphasis mine secondemphasis in original)

Having thus ruled out both nations and transnationals as the sourceof the ldquoeroding forcesrdquo at work in the world Bauman asks

How has it come about that this vast expanse of man-made wilderness (notthe ldquonaturalrdquo wilderness which modernity set out to conquer and tamebut to paraphrase Anthony Giddensrsquo felicitous phrase a ldquomanufactured jun-glerdquomdashthe post-domestication wilderness one that emerged after the con-quest and as a result) has sprung into vision And why did it acquire theformidable power of obstinacy and resilience which since Durkheim istaken to be the de ning mark of ldquohard realityrdquo (THC p 69 rst empha-sis mine second emphasis in original)

This indeed is the question that should orient our analyses of ldquoglob-alizationrdquo21 As an analytic tool however it is instructive only inasmuchas we apply it equally to the putative ldquocausesrdquo of ldquoglobalizationrdquo for

review essay 341

example the withering away of the nation-state at the hands of thosepunitive and unforgiving ldquo nancial marketsrdquo (THC p 69) each of whichhas assumed of late the marks of ldquohard realityrdquo Bauman poses the ini-tial question but fails to similarly question the ontological reality of whatare actually epistemological heuristics The use of terms such as ldquomar-ketsrdquo and ldquo nancesrdquo and ldquotechnological forcesrdquo are potentially usefulwhen they serve as a kind of analytic shorthand for sets of social rela-tions that have already been enumerated and explicated explicitly andexhaustively When however they substitute for explanations when theystand in as explanations in and of themselves they serve not only tocomplicate our thinking but more egregious still to insidiously repro-duce those discourses and practices of domination against which criti-cal scholars are aligned Bauman himself anticipates this problem whenhe acknowledges with an approving nod to Cornelius Castoriadis that

the trouble with the contemporary condition of modern civilization isthat it stopped questioning itself Not asking certain questions is pregnantwith more dangers than failing to answer the questions already on theoYcial agenda while asking the wrong kind of questions all too often helpsto avert eyes from the truly important issues The price of silence is paidin the hard currency of human suVering Asking the right questions makesafter all all the diVerence between fate and destination drifting and trav-elling Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way oflife is arguably the most urgent of the services we owe our fellow humansand ourselves (THC p 5)

Like Gray and LaFeber Bauman oVers us an impassioned threnodydevoted to the deleterious eVects borne by globalization but in so doingunwittingly disarms us intellectually and consequently renders us inca-pable of intervention and resistance much less understanding We shouldtherefore welcome Pierre Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance Against the Tyrannyof the Market for Bourdieu perhaps more than any other living scholarand public intellectual deftly combines scholarly and political analysis

Bourdieursquos approach is to read ldquoglobalizationrdquo as a neo-liberal dis-course a mythology that poses as reality

Irsquove used the word ldquoglobalizationrdquo It is a myth in the strong sense of theword a powerful discourse and ideacutee force an idea which has social forcewhich obtains belief It is the main weapon in the battles against the gainsof the welfare state (AOR p 34)

Bourdieu goes on to dissect this discourse pointing out the way itevokes and rati es the ldquoso-called law of the marketrdquo (AOR p 35) Byso impugning the natural and inevitable ontological character of ldquoglobal-

342 review essay

izationrdquo and the ldquosupposed iron laws of the nancial marketsrdquo Bourdieuis poised to make the theoretical contribution Gray irted with but failedto realize to wit an analysis of the social construction of the globaleconomy (AOR pp 26ndash27) Yet Bourdieu soon after does an about-face on this issue writing

While globalization is above all a justi catory myth there is one case whereit is quite real that of the nancial markets Thanks to the removal of a num-ber of legal restrictions and the development of electronic communicationswhich lead to lower communication costs we are moving towards a uniednancial market (AOR p 38 emphasis mine)

Bourdieursquos account is rife with contradictions and illogical unsub-stantiated assertions of fact Particularly disabling is his myopia regard-ing the role of the nation-state While ldquoglobalizationrdquo is a myth (wellyes it is) the power of the ldquo nancial marketsrdquo and the ldquointernationalcapital marketrdquo is quite real indeed22 The latter according to Bourdieuprevents individual nation-states from manipulating their exchange andinterest rates which in turn are increasingly determined by a powerconcentrated in the hands of a small number of countries whose iden-tities are never revealed and although one presumes that Bourdieu hasin mind the United States it is not at all clear which other nationsmight be controlling the rest of the worldrsquos nances (Germanyrsquos socialmarket Japanrsquos Certainly neither the French nor the English registerhere) So nations are powerless a familiar refrain Unless that is theyare a part of the small exclusive cabal of nations that rules the worldin which case they have considerable power after all

Bourdieu calls for the creation of a class of collective intellectualswho can among other things analyze the production and circulationof neo-liberal discourse to expose the ideological work of journalistsmanagers and not least the cunning reason of intellectuals23 Thisanalysis is to be carried out presumably in a manner consistent withhis project of re exive sociology24 That would mean mapping the full eld of cultural production and symbolic power that now obtains on aglobal level specifying the key actors and the objective structure of theirrelationships and analyzing the habitus of the agents that nds its tra-jectory within the speci c eld(s) in question25 That Bourdieu fails toattempt much less accomplish this admittedly bold project is a majorshortcoming of Acts of Resistance which amounts to little more than asteady stream of breathless bromides forever interrupted by conceptualand logical inconsistencies

Worse still is the manner in which Bourdieumdashlike Gray Giddens

review essay 343

and Baumanmdashunwittingly buttresses the discourse of neo-liberalism byutterly ignoring the active role played by the state in ushering in anostensible new world disorder in which the state appears as a shadowof its former self at best a hapless and unwilling conspirator accordedlittle responsibility Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance as with the other titlesunder review here quickly establishes its liberal credentials through itslament for a safer more secure and certain world (sicherheit) in whichthe state and the citizen and one suspects the progressive intellectualeach mattered Those nominal credentials however mask and insidi-ously support the state in its new corporatist guise26 Take for instancethe manifesto co-authored by prime ministers Tony Blair and GerhardSchroeder entitled ldquoThe Third WayDie Neue Mitterdquo27 Therein the min-isters declare

In a world of ever more rapid globalization and scienti c changes we needto create the conditions in which existing businesses can prosper and adaptand new businesses can be set up and grow Our aim is to modern-ize the welfare state not dismantle it Flexible markets must be combinedwith a newly dened role for an active state The state must become an activeagent for employment not merely the passive recipient of the casualties ofeconomic failure (emphasis mine)28

If ldquoglobalizationrdquo did not exist the state would have invented itOr consider to choose another recent example the passing of a new

bill in Britain which rede nes terrorism as ldquoThe use of serious violenceagainst persons or property or the threat to use such violence to intim-idate or coerce a government the public or any section of the publicfor political religious or ideological endsrdquo29 Borrowed verbatim fromthe American FBI this new bill was passed in British parliament inMarch 2000 by 210 votes to one Among other purposes the bill willserve as a deterrent to activists who would campaign publicly againstglobalization and multinational corporations as thousands recently didon ldquoMay Dayrdquo in Britain According to a British GM food activistldquoThe government is creating a private security service for transnationalcorporationsrdquo 30 To Bourdieu et al this is simply another example ofthe puppet that is the new nation-state orchestrated from above andafar by those indomitable nancial markets

To the sociologist Saskia Sassen however it is a case in point of thestatersquos active and voluntary complicity in the construction and not leaststrategic invocation of ldquoglobalizationrdquo Sassen contends that far frombeing passive and merely reactive under the sway of globalizationldquonational rms and national institutions have participated in the processrdquo

344 review essay

Sassen moreover rejects the notion that the global economy is ldquosome-how lsquoout therersquordquo forcing a nation and its corporations to change theirpractices Rather Sassen argues forcefully that the global economy hasbeen created by national industries with the assistance of their ownnationrsquos legislative and regulatory bodies In so doing Sassen pushes thede nition of the global economy beyond the production distributionand consumption of goods and services to encompass a worldwide sys-tem of governance and power within a ldquonew frontier zonerdquo which

is not merely a dividing line between the national economy and theglobal economy It is a zone of politico-economic interactions that pro-duce new institutional forms and alter some of the old ones Nor is this encounterbetween the global and the national just a matter of reducing regulations or the role ofgovernment generally simply to posit as is so often done that economic glob-alization has brought with it declining signi cance of the national state toutcourt misses some of the ner points of this transformation (emphasis mine)31

Pace Sassen and others who argue convincingly for the need to ldquobringthe state back inrdquo32 to our analyses the failure to recognize the trans-formation of the nonetheless active role of the nation-state is a symp-tom of a much broader failure of the sociological imagination bear inmind that the works discussed above are by some of the eldrsquos mostprominent gures Despite their admirably meliorist intentions theseworks each serve to invest ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollaries ie mar-ket and technological ldquoforcesrdquo with a ldquothingnessrdquo and an eYcacy itdoes not cannot possess This tendency stems I think from the nolonger tenable theoretical assumption that modernity consists of the compartmentalization of reality into three distinct domains (1) Market(economy) (2) State (polity) and (3) Civil Society (culturepublic sphere)It is arguable whether this tripartite heuristic was ever analytically use-ful but the problem it poses for sociologists now is a diVerent one forthis heuristic has assumed the status of a dead metaphor that of hardreality According to Wallerstein this theorem of separateness and mutualexclusivity a mere two hundred years old is now so deeply rooted inour consciousness and linguistic tools that we nd it almost impossibleto formulate sentences much less cogent analytic arguments free of thisthreefold monster33 Thus rei ed these epistemologic tools no longerserve us They instead predispose us to see each sphere in terms onlyof expansion (as in the case of the market) or retraction (as in the rolesof the state and the public sphere) rather than the simultaneous seman-tic and ontological transformation of all three34 Returning to Cassirer

review essay 345

But this problem itself appears spurious as soon as we realize that the dis-tinctions which here are taken for granted the analysis of reality in termsof things and processes permanent and transitory aspects objects andactions do not precede language as a substratum of given fact but thatlanguage itself is what initiates such articulations and develops them inits own sphere35

As Wallerstein adroitly notes these unconscious rei cations obscuremuch of reality from the scholars who unre exively deploy them36 Thereis however still more at work than this For all the attention I havedevoted to disentangling the discourse of ldquoglobalizationrdquo we must notlose sight of the many decisions actions and consequences intentionalor not that loosely comprise the ever-shifting reality of globalizationwithin which our analytic discourse is developed and deployed Chiefamong these in this context are the sense and the reality of profounddislocation displacement and disengagement that aVect sociologists asmuch as anyone else37 Our theories and methods bear the indelibleimprint of the world we seek to comprehend

A renovated sociological imagination of globalization must steer clearof the grand theorizing rehearsed by the works reviewed here withoutsimultaneously lapsing into the abstracted empiricism that infects mostof the technical work on globalization38 To avoid these twin pitfalls wewill need to develop an entirely new vocabulary grounded in directempirical engagement with our new globalizing reality Examples ofthis new approach are already under way They include so far Marcusrsquocall for multi-sited ethnography Sassenrsquos work toward cultivating anethnographic approach to studying the way the global is instantiatedwithin local urban spaces and Duneierrsquos ldquoextended place methodrdquo39

The considerable potential of these approaches notwithstanding the soci-ological apprehension of globalization will require rst and foremost acollective eVort on the part of variously situated scholars to wit a globalnetwork consisting of several local nodes in which substantive con ictand cooperation may freely occur What the late Bill Readings calleda community of ldquodissensusrdquo40 Absent these eVorts our meliorist inten-tions have little chance of ever becoming eYcacious interventions

Notes

1 Thanks to Denis Wall for editorial assistance and to Julie Custeau for her ever-astute guidance and unfailing support of everything that I do The works reviewed hereinclude Bauman Zygmunt 1998 Globalization the human consequences (New York ColumbiaUniversity Press) hereafter THC Bourdieu Pierre 1998 Acts of resistance against the tyranny

346 review essay

of the market (New York The New Press) hereafter AOR Gray John 1998 False dawnthe delusions of global capitalism (London Granta Books) hereafter FD Giddens Anthony2000 Runaway World (New York Routledge) hereafter RW and LaFeber Walter 1999Michael Jordan and the new global capitalism (New York W W Norton amp Company) here-after NGC

2 1946 p 73 See Cassidy (1997) The recent highly organized public protests in Davos Seattle

and Washington lend support to this prediction4 For an historical perspective on the semantic polyvalence if not polysemy of

ldquoglobalizationrdquo over the Longue Dureacutee see Moore (1997)5 As Giddens puts it ldquoThe global spread of the term [globalization] is evidence of

the very developments to which it refersrdquo (RW p 3)6 See Bourdieursquos AOR p 427 Gray later asserts however that ldquoThe leverage of sovereign states over business

may actually be greater in some respects today than it has been in the pastrdquo (FD p 67) In which respects Gray does not say Nor does he oVer any evidence to but-tress what must be classi ed as like so many of the statements comprising FD purespeculation (or what might be euphemized as ldquoarm-chair economicsrdquo)

8 See the intriguing if tentative results of an international project comparing thefuture of nationally embedded capitalism in the global economy in Streeck and Yamamura(2000)

9 For an illuminating historical treatment of the rei cation of technology see Marx(1997)

10 Gray argues further that the eVects of these forces are irrevocable and irreversibleThe regrettable and wrong-headed policy choices made by the Thatcher administrationnow constitute the ineluctable reality of the Blair government Gray goes on to arguethe same for the neo-liberal turn taken by New Zealand Grayrsquos argument is contra-dicted however by rst the palpably intentional adoption of neo-liberal tenets on thepart of the Blair government (not least its elimination of Article Four hitherto the cor-nerstone of Labour politics) and second by the recent election of a Labour governmentin New Zealand whose popularity in the polls in 1990 was just 2 percent a Labourgovernment that is moreover authentically committed to rebuilding and underwritingits social institutions See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 11 Even the Economistadmitted no doubt plaintively that ldquoglobalization is not irreversiblerdquo (see Smith andMoran [2000 p 70])

11 Gray is confused about the power of the American model Of ldquohyperglobaliza-tion a corporate utopiardquo Gray writes ldquoIt represents an historical transformation thathas no end-state and which is subverting American capitalism as well as its rivals as aprocess leading to the universal acceptance of American free marketsrdquo (FD p 67)

12 In contradistinction to Giddensrsquo slim but instructive A Brief but Critical Introductionto Sociology

13 Fitzgerald made this prediction in a personal letter to the novelist and criticEdmund (Bunny) Wilson

14 de Medici and de Medici (1986 pp 17ndash20)15 For an empirically rich and theoretically supple analysis of the local experience

of McDonaldrsquos throughout east Asia refer to Watson et al (1997) This volume of ethno-graphic accounts makes particularly plain the ways in which McDonaldrsquos as a transna-tional corporation has allowed itself via a local ownership structure to adapt to theexigencies and idiosyncrasies of local cultures Even while McDonaldrsquos market share reclinedin the United States during the 1990s it continued to grow in foreign markets includ-ing but not limited to east Asia

16 See Marcus (1995) on the advantages of conducting multi-site ethnography inofthe world system

17 Bourdieu (1987 p 184)

review essay 347

18 One nal word of warning regarding NGC the strength and weakness of thisbook are one in the same NGC is unique in that it tries to marry the history of bas-ketball with the history of the American economy A short book it suYciently coversneither task Basketball fans in particular should look elsewhere for a treatment of boththe NBA and the career of Michael Jordan See instead the eminently readable andinformative Halberstam (1999) and in keeping with the line of argument pursued aboveJordan (1998)

19 This is what Mathiesen (1997) aptly coined the Synopticon20 Gerbner and Gross (1976) quoted in THC p 5321 This question if broadened in scope is arguably the most important question

sociologists can pose Period Substitute ldquosocietyrdquo for ldquoglobalizationrdquo and the analyticpotential of the question comes into bold relief

22 Compare the putative reality of the nancial market with the following breath-less declaration ldquoIn short against all the prophets of misery who want to convince youthat your destiny is in the hands of transcendent independent indiVerent powers suchas the lsquo nancial marketsrsquo or the mechanisms if lsquoglobalizationrsquo I want to declare withthe hope of convincing you that the future your future which is also our future thatof all Europeans depends a great deal on you as Germans and trade unionistsrdquo (AORp 69)

23 For his own analysis cum criticism of the ldquojournalistic eldrdquo see Bourdieu (1998)for Bourdieursquos take on the role of intellectuals in diVusing the new global vulgate seeBourdieu and Wacquant (1999a 1999b)

24 I say presumably because Bourdieu at no point in AOR elaborates this programFor an original and compelling criticism of Bourdieursquos sociological theory and methodsee Griller (1996)

25 See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992 pp 104ndash5) Whether or not the global eldis coterminous with what Bourdieu calls the eld of power (a kind of meta- eld) is aninteresting question

26 If I am harder on Bourdieu than the other authors under review (which is arguable)it is due rst to the inconsistency that obtains between his previous scholarly work andhis present political critique and second and most important because his ostensibly lib-eral critique unwittingly and insidiously reproduces the neo-liberal discourse he seeks tosubvert

27 Not coincidentally the so-called ldquothird wayrdquo also advocated by Bill Clinton islargely inspired by Anthony Giddensrsquo book of the same name Space does not permitan analysis of Giddensrsquo contribution to practical politics here Blair and Schroederrsquos man-ifesto is reprinted in the spring 2000 edition of Dissent pp 51ndash65

28 Small wonder Gray who makes the same recommendation demonizes the Thatcheradministration on the one (left) hand while he serves as an apologist for the presentBlair government on the other (right) hand

29 See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 2030 Ibid31 See Sassen (2000 pp 164ndash65)32 For example the entire corpus of Theda Skocpal33 Wallerstein (2000 p 307)34 An apt example of the compartmentalist way of thinking about the state is Daniel

Bellrsquos famous remark that the nation-state is at once too small and too large to ade-quately address most of the problems it faces

35 1946 p 1236 Which in the case of Bourdieu in particular is all the more ironic for its theo-

retical inconsistency with his overall sociological-epistemological project37 Why after all is ldquoglobalizationrdquo now on everyonersquos lips in academe Might it

have something to do as a colleague of mine astutely theorizes because the educatedand professional middle-classes including university professors of Western nations are

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

review essay 339

escape from and critical commentary on patriarchal Bedouin cultureAt the same time Bedouin culture is brought into the web of powerrelations involving the Egyptian nation-state and the larger internationalpolitical economy This instance of resistance exempli es Bourdieursquospoint about relations of power ldquoResistance can be alienating and sub-mission can be liberating Such is the paradox of the dominated andthere is no way out of itrdquo17 The chief limitation of New Global Capitalismis its exaggeration of the power of the dominant and its wholesale in-attention to the agency of the dominated18

Ditto for Zygmunt Baumanrsquos Globalization The Human ConsequencesBaumanrsquos point of departure into the global is Foucaultrsquos instrumentalmetaphor of the Panopticon In the modern exercise of power the spec-tacle was replaced by surveillance In pre-modern times power wasimpressed upon the public via displays of wealth splendor and notleast violence Modern power concentrated in the nation-state by con-trast preferred instead to linger in the shadows closely but discreetlymonitoring its subjects A case of the few regarding the many WhatFoucault overlooked however was the parallel modern development ofnew techniques of power consisting in contradistinction to surveillanceof the various mass media especially television A case of the manywatching the few19

The Panopticon even when universal in application was essentiallya local institution The Synopticon ie the mass media is increasinglyglobal The nature of the power each wields is diVerent too While thePanopticon forced people into the position where they could be watchedthe Synopticon requires little in the way of coercion By contrast theSynopticon seduces people into watching (THC p 52 emphasis in orig-inal) The many now watch the few And the few who are watched arethe celebrities No matter whence they originate all celebrities put ondisplay the world of celebrities a world whose distinctive feature is pre-cisely the quality of being watched by the many in all corners of theworld Whatever they speak about when on air they convey the mes-sage of a total way of life ldquoTheir life their way of liferdquo (THC p 52emphasis in original) To question the impact of that message on themany who watch is to Bauman

less like asking about preconceived fears and hopes and more like askingabout the ldquoeVectsrdquo of Christianity on onersquos view of the world ormdashas theChinese had askedmdashof Confucianism on public morality20

For Bauman as for LaFeber the world watches the fare producedby the globals ie the multinational corporations and the rest is his-tory The billions expended (for LaFeber) and the lofty other-worldly

340 review essay

character (for Bauman) of the globals renders otherwise legitimate naypressing questions of reception and interpretation entirely irrelevant

For all the power contained in the messages and presumably con-ferred upon the messengers Bauman much like Gray and Giddens isstill not entirely sure just who is in charge

To put it in a nutshell no one seems now to be in control Worse still it isnot clear what ldquobeing in controlrdquo could under the circumstances be like The deepest meaning conveyed by the idea of globalization is that ofthe indeterminate unruly and self-propelled character of world aVairs the absenceof a centre of a controlling desk of a board of directors of a manager-ial oYce Globalization is Jowittrsquos ldquonew world disorderrdquo under anothername (THC pp 58ndash59 rst emphasis in original second emphasis mine)

Note the now familiar tell-tale signs of rei cation the obfuscation ofsocial relations and human agency tightly coupled with the attributionof telos to ldquoworld aVairsrdquo The world may be disorderly but for Baumanat least one thing is for sure Wherever the new seat of power residesif it resides anywhere if it even exists at all it is certainly not withinthe nation-state

In the words of GH von Wright the ldquonation-state it seems is erodingor perhaps lsquowithering awayrsquo The eroding forces are transnationalrdquo Since nation-states remain the sole frame for book-balancing and the sole sources ofeVective political initiative the lsquotransnationalityrsquo or eroding forces putsthem outside the realm of deliberate purposeful and potentially rationalaction As everything that elides such action such forces their shapes andactions are blurred in the mist of mystery they are objects of guessesrather than reliable analysis (THC pp 56ndash57 rst emphasis mine secondemphasis in original)

Having thus ruled out both nations and transnationals as the sourceof the ldquoeroding forcesrdquo at work in the world Bauman asks

How has it come about that this vast expanse of man-made wilderness (notthe ldquonaturalrdquo wilderness which modernity set out to conquer and tamebut to paraphrase Anthony Giddensrsquo felicitous phrase a ldquomanufactured jun-glerdquomdashthe post-domestication wilderness one that emerged after the con-quest and as a result) has sprung into vision And why did it acquire theformidable power of obstinacy and resilience which since Durkheim istaken to be the de ning mark of ldquohard realityrdquo (THC p 69 rst empha-sis mine second emphasis in original)

This indeed is the question that should orient our analyses of ldquoglob-alizationrdquo21 As an analytic tool however it is instructive only inasmuchas we apply it equally to the putative ldquocausesrdquo of ldquoglobalizationrdquo for

review essay 341

example the withering away of the nation-state at the hands of thosepunitive and unforgiving ldquo nancial marketsrdquo (THC p 69) each of whichhas assumed of late the marks of ldquohard realityrdquo Bauman poses the ini-tial question but fails to similarly question the ontological reality of whatare actually epistemological heuristics The use of terms such as ldquomar-ketsrdquo and ldquo nancesrdquo and ldquotechnological forcesrdquo are potentially usefulwhen they serve as a kind of analytic shorthand for sets of social rela-tions that have already been enumerated and explicated explicitly andexhaustively When however they substitute for explanations when theystand in as explanations in and of themselves they serve not only tocomplicate our thinking but more egregious still to insidiously repro-duce those discourses and practices of domination against which criti-cal scholars are aligned Bauman himself anticipates this problem whenhe acknowledges with an approving nod to Cornelius Castoriadis that

the trouble with the contemporary condition of modern civilization isthat it stopped questioning itself Not asking certain questions is pregnantwith more dangers than failing to answer the questions already on theoYcial agenda while asking the wrong kind of questions all too often helpsto avert eyes from the truly important issues The price of silence is paidin the hard currency of human suVering Asking the right questions makesafter all all the diVerence between fate and destination drifting and trav-elling Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way oflife is arguably the most urgent of the services we owe our fellow humansand ourselves (THC p 5)

Like Gray and LaFeber Bauman oVers us an impassioned threnodydevoted to the deleterious eVects borne by globalization but in so doingunwittingly disarms us intellectually and consequently renders us inca-pable of intervention and resistance much less understanding We shouldtherefore welcome Pierre Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance Against the Tyrannyof the Market for Bourdieu perhaps more than any other living scholarand public intellectual deftly combines scholarly and political analysis

Bourdieursquos approach is to read ldquoglobalizationrdquo as a neo-liberal dis-course a mythology that poses as reality

Irsquove used the word ldquoglobalizationrdquo It is a myth in the strong sense of theword a powerful discourse and ideacutee force an idea which has social forcewhich obtains belief It is the main weapon in the battles against the gainsof the welfare state (AOR p 34)

Bourdieu goes on to dissect this discourse pointing out the way itevokes and rati es the ldquoso-called law of the marketrdquo (AOR p 35) Byso impugning the natural and inevitable ontological character of ldquoglobal-

342 review essay

izationrdquo and the ldquosupposed iron laws of the nancial marketsrdquo Bourdieuis poised to make the theoretical contribution Gray irted with but failedto realize to wit an analysis of the social construction of the globaleconomy (AOR pp 26ndash27) Yet Bourdieu soon after does an about-face on this issue writing

While globalization is above all a justi catory myth there is one case whereit is quite real that of the nancial markets Thanks to the removal of a num-ber of legal restrictions and the development of electronic communicationswhich lead to lower communication costs we are moving towards a uniednancial market (AOR p 38 emphasis mine)

Bourdieursquos account is rife with contradictions and illogical unsub-stantiated assertions of fact Particularly disabling is his myopia regard-ing the role of the nation-state While ldquoglobalizationrdquo is a myth (wellyes it is) the power of the ldquo nancial marketsrdquo and the ldquointernationalcapital marketrdquo is quite real indeed22 The latter according to Bourdieuprevents individual nation-states from manipulating their exchange andinterest rates which in turn are increasingly determined by a powerconcentrated in the hands of a small number of countries whose iden-tities are never revealed and although one presumes that Bourdieu hasin mind the United States it is not at all clear which other nationsmight be controlling the rest of the worldrsquos nances (Germanyrsquos socialmarket Japanrsquos Certainly neither the French nor the English registerhere) So nations are powerless a familiar refrain Unless that is theyare a part of the small exclusive cabal of nations that rules the worldin which case they have considerable power after all

Bourdieu calls for the creation of a class of collective intellectualswho can among other things analyze the production and circulationof neo-liberal discourse to expose the ideological work of journalistsmanagers and not least the cunning reason of intellectuals23 Thisanalysis is to be carried out presumably in a manner consistent withhis project of re exive sociology24 That would mean mapping the full eld of cultural production and symbolic power that now obtains on aglobal level specifying the key actors and the objective structure of theirrelationships and analyzing the habitus of the agents that nds its tra-jectory within the speci c eld(s) in question25 That Bourdieu fails toattempt much less accomplish this admittedly bold project is a majorshortcoming of Acts of Resistance which amounts to little more than asteady stream of breathless bromides forever interrupted by conceptualand logical inconsistencies

Worse still is the manner in which Bourdieumdashlike Gray Giddens

review essay 343

and Baumanmdashunwittingly buttresses the discourse of neo-liberalism byutterly ignoring the active role played by the state in ushering in anostensible new world disorder in which the state appears as a shadowof its former self at best a hapless and unwilling conspirator accordedlittle responsibility Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance as with the other titlesunder review here quickly establishes its liberal credentials through itslament for a safer more secure and certain world (sicherheit) in whichthe state and the citizen and one suspects the progressive intellectualeach mattered Those nominal credentials however mask and insidi-ously support the state in its new corporatist guise26 Take for instancethe manifesto co-authored by prime ministers Tony Blair and GerhardSchroeder entitled ldquoThe Third WayDie Neue Mitterdquo27 Therein the min-isters declare

In a world of ever more rapid globalization and scienti c changes we needto create the conditions in which existing businesses can prosper and adaptand new businesses can be set up and grow Our aim is to modern-ize the welfare state not dismantle it Flexible markets must be combinedwith a newly dened role for an active state The state must become an activeagent for employment not merely the passive recipient of the casualties ofeconomic failure (emphasis mine)28

If ldquoglobalizationrdquo did not exist the state would have invented itOr consider to choose another recent example the passing of a new

bill in Britain which rede nes terrorism as ldquoThe use of serious violenceagainst persons or property or the threat to use such violence to intim-idate or coerce a government the public or any section of the publicfor political religious or ideological endsrdquo29 Borrowed verbatim fromthe American FBI this new bill was passed in British parliament inMarch 2000 by 210 votes to one Among other purposes the bill willserve as a deterrent to activists who would campaign publicly againstglobalization and multinational corporations as thousands recently didon ldquoMay Dayrdquo in Britain According to a British GM food activistldquoThe government is creating a private security service for transnationalcorporationsrdquo 30 To Bourdieu et al this is simply another example ofthe puppet that is the new nation-state orchestrated from above andafar by those indomitable nancial markets

To the sociologist Saskia Sassen however it is a case in point of thestatersquos active and voluntary complicity in the construction and not leaststrategic invocation of ldquoglobalizationrdquo Sassen contends that far frombeing passive and merely reactive under the sway of globalizationldquonational rms and national institutions have participated in the processrdquo

344 review essay

Sassen moreover rejects the notion that the global economy is ldquosome-how lsquoout therersquordquo forcing a nation and its corporations to change theirpractices Rather Sassen argues forcefully that the global economy hasbeen created by national industries with the assistance of their ownnationrsquos legislative and regulatory bodies In so doing Sassen pushes thede nition of the global economy beyond the production distributionand consumption of goods and services to encompass a worldwide sys-tem of governance and power within a ldquonew frontier zonerdquo which

is not merely a dividing line between the national economy and theglobal economy It is a zone of politico-economic interactions that pro-duce new institutional forms and alter some of the old ones Nor is this encounterbetween the global and the national just a matter of reducing regulations or the role ofgovernment generally simply to posit as is so often done that economic glob-alization has brought with it declining signi cance of the national state toutcourt misses some of the ner points of this transformation (emphasis mine)31

Pace Sassen and others who argue convincingly for the need to ldquobringthe state back inrdquo32 to our analyses the failure to recognize the trans-formation of the nonetheless active role of the nation-state is a symp-tom of a much broader failure of the sociological imagination bear inmind that the works discussed above are by some of the eldrsquos mostprominent gures Despite their admirably meliorist intentions theseworks each serve to invest ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollaries ie mar-ket and technological ldquoforcesrdquo with a ldquothingnessrdquo and an eYcacy itdoes not cannot possess This tendency stems I think from the nolonger tenable theoretical assumption that modernity consists of the compartmentalization of reality into three distinct domains (1) Market(economy) (2) State (polity) and (3) Civil Society (culturepublic sphere)It is arguable whether this tripartite heuristic was ever analytically use-ful but the problem it poses for sociologists now is a diVerent one forthis heuristic has assumed the status of a dead metaphor that of hardreality According to Wallerstein this theorem of separateness and mutualexclusivity a mere two hundred years old is now so deeply rooted inour consciousness and linguistic tools that we nd it almost impossibleto formulate sentences much less cogent analytic arguments free of thisthreefold monster33 Thus rei ed these epistemologic tools no longerserve us They instead predispose us to see each sphere in terms onlyof expansion (as in the case of the market) or retraction (as in the rolesof the state and the public sphere) rather than the simultaneous seman-tic and ontological transformation of all three34 Returning to Cassirer

review essay 345

But this problem itself appears spurious as soon as we realize that the dis-tinctions which here are taken for granted the analysis of reality in termsof things and processes permanent and transitory aspects objects andactions do not precede language as a substratum of given fact but thatlanguage itself is what initiates such articulations and develops them inits own sphere35

As Wallerstein adroitly notes these unconscious rei cations obscuremuch of reality from the scholars who unre exively deploy them36 Thereis however still more at work than this For all the attention I havedevoted to disentangling the discourse of ldquoglobalizationrdquo we must notlose sight of the many decisions actions and consequences intentionalor not that loosely comprise the ever-shifting reality of globalizationwithin which our analytic discourse is developed and deployed Chiefamong these in this context are the sense and the reality of profounddislocation displacement and disengagement that aVect sociologists asmuch as anyone else37 Our theories and methods bear the indelibleimprint of the world we seek to comprehend

A renovated sociological imagination of globalization must steer clearof the grand theorizing rehearsed by the works reviewed here withoutsimultaneously lapsing into the abstracted empiricism that infects mostof the technical work on globalization38 To avoid these twin pitfalls wewill need to develop an entirely new vocabulary grounded in directempirical engagement with our new globalizing reality Examples ofthis new approach are already under way They include so far Marcusrsquocall for multi-sited ethnography Sassenrsquos work toward cultivating anethnographic approach to studying the way the global is instantiatedwithin local urban spaces and Duneierrsquos ldquoextended place methodrdquo39

The considerable potential of these approaches notwithstanding the soci-ological apprehension of globalization will require rst and foremost acollective eVort on the part of variously situated scholars to wit a globalnetwork consisting of several local nodes in which substantive con ictand cooperation may freely occur What the late Bill Readings calleda community of ldquodissensusrdquo40 Absent these eVorts our meliorist inten-tions have little chance of ever becoming eYcacious interventions

Notes

1 Thanks to Denis Wall for editorial assistance and to Julie Custeau for her ever-astute guidance and unfailing support of everything that I do The works reviewed hereinclude Bauman Zygmunt 1998 Globalization the human consequences (New York ColumbiaUniversity Press) hereafter THC Bourdieu Pierre 1998 Acts of resistance against the tyranny

346 review essay

of the market (New York The New Press) hereafter AOR Gray John 1998 False dawnthe delusions of global capitalism (London Granta Books) hereafter FD Giddens Anthony2000 Runaway World (New York Routledge) hereafter RW and LaFeber Walter 1999Michael Jordan and the new global capitalism (New York W W Norton amp Company) here-after NGC

2 1946 p 73 See Cassidy (1997) The recent highly organized public protests in Davos Seattle

and Washington lend support to this prediction4 For an historical perspective on the semantic polyvalence if not polysemy of

ldquoglobalizationrdquo over the Longue Dureacutee see Moore (1997)5 As Giddens puts it ldquoThe global spread of the term [globalization] is evidence of

the very developments to which it refersrdquo (RW p 3)6 See Bourdieursquos AOR p 427 Gray later asserts however that ldquoThe leverage of sovereign states over business

may actually be greater in some respects today than it has been in the pastrdquo (FD p 67) In which respects Gray does not say Nor does he oVer any evidence to but-tress what must be classi ed as like so many of the statements comprising FD purespeculation (or what might be euphemized as ldquoarm-chair economicsrdquo)

8 See the intriguing if tentative results of an international project comparing thefuture of nationally embedded capitalism in the global economy in Streeck and Yamamura(2000)

9 For an illuminating historical treatment of the rei cation of technology see Marx(1997)

10 Gray argues further that the eVects of these forces are irrevocable and irreversibleThe regrettable and wrong-headed policy choices made by the Thatcher administrationnow constitute the ineluctable reality of the Blair government Gray goes on to arguethe same for the neo-liberal turn taken by New Zealand Grayrsquos argument is contra-dicted however by rst the palpably intentional adoption of neo-liberal tenets on thepart of the Blair government (not least its elimination of Article Four hitherto the cor-nerstone of Labour politics) and second by the recent election of a Labour governmentin New Zealand whose popularity in the polls in 1990 was just 2 percent a Labourgovernment that is moreover authentically committed to rebuilding and underwritingits social institutions See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 11 Even the Economistadmitted no doubt plaintively that ldquoglobalization is not irreversiblerdquo (see Smith andMoran [2000 p 70])

11 Gray is confused about the power of the American model Of ldquohyperglobaliza-tion a corporate utopiardquo Gray writes ldquoIt represents an historical transformation thathas no end-state and which is subverting American capitalism as well as its rivals as aprocess leading to the universal acceptance of American free marketsrdquo (FD p 67)

12 In contradistinction to Giddensrsquo slim but instructive A Brief but Critical Introductionto Sociology

13 Fitzgerald made this prediction in a personal letter to the novelist and criticEdmund (Bunny) Wilson

14 de Medici and de Medici (1986 pp 17ndash20)15 For an empirically rich and theoretically supple analysis of the local experience

of McDonaldrsquos throughout east Asia refer to Watson et al (1997) This volume of ethno-graphic accounts makes particularly plain the ways in which McDonaldrsquos as a transna-tional corporation has allowed itself via a local ownership structure to adapt to theexigencies and idiosyncrasies of local cultures Even while McDonaldrsquos market share reclinedin the United States during the 1990s it continued to grow in foreign markets includ-ing but not limited to east Asia

16 See Marcus (1995) on the advantages of conducting multi-site ethnography inofthe world system

17 Bourdieu (1987 p 184)

review essay 347

18 One nal word of warning regarding NGC the strength and weakness of thisbook are one in the same NGC is unique in that it tries to marry the history of bas-ketball with the history of the American economy A short book it suYciently coversneither task Basketball fans in particular should look elsewhere for a treatment of boththe NBA and the career of Michael Jordan See instead the eminently readable andinformative Halberstam (1999) and in keeping with the line of argument pursued aboveJordan (1998)

19 This is what Mathiesen (1997) aptly coined the Synopticon20 Gerbner and Gross (1976) quoted in THC p 5321 This question if broadened in scope is arguably the most important question

sociologists can pose Period Substitute ldquosocietyrdquo for ldquoglobalizationrdquo and the analyticpotential of the question comes into bold relief

22 Compare the putative reality of the nancial market with the following breath-less declaration ldquoIn short against all the prophets of misery who want to convince youthat your destiny is in the hands of transcendent independent indiVerent powers suchas the lsquo nancial marketsrsquo or the mechanisms if lsquoglobalizationrsquo I want to declare withthe hope of convincing you that the future your future which is also our future thatof all Europeans depends a great deal on you as Germans and trade unionistsrdquo (AORp 69)

23 For his own analysis cum criticism of the ldquojournalistic eldrdquo see Bourdieu (1998)for Bourdieursquos take on the role of intellectuals in diVusing the new global vulgate seeBourdieu and Wacquant (1999a 1999b)

24 I say presumably because Bourdieu at no point in AOR elaborates this programFor an original and compelling criticism of Bourdieursquos sociological theory and methodsee Griller (1996)

25 See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992 pp 104ndash5) Whether or not the global eldis coterminous with what Bourdieu calls the eld of power (a kind of meta- eld) is aninteresting question

26 If I am harder on Bourdieu than the other authors under review (which is arguable)it is due rst to the inconsistency that obtains between his previous scholarly work andhis present political critique and second and most important because his ostensibly lib-eral critique unwittingly and insidiously reproduces the neo-liberal discourse he seeks tosubvert

27 Not coincidentally the so-called ldquothird wayrdquo also advocated by Bill Clinton islargely inspired by Anthony Giddensrsquo book of the same name Space does not permitan analysis of Giddensrsquo contribution to practical politics here Blair and Schroederrsquos man-ifesto is reprinted in the spring 2000 edition of Dissent pp 51ndash65

28 Small wonder Gray who makes the same recommendation demonizes the Thatcheradministration on the one (left) hand while he serves as an apologist for the presentBlair government on the other (right) hand

29 See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 2030 Ibid31 See Sassen (2000 pp 164ndash65)32 For example the entire corpus of Theda Skocpal33 Wallerstein (2000 p 307)34 An apt example of the compartmentalist way of thinking about the state is Daniel

Bellrsquos famous remark that the nation-state is at once too small and too large to ade-quately address most of the problems it faces

35 1946 p 1236 Which in the case of Bourdieu in particular is all the more ironic for its theo-

retical inconsistency with his overall sociological-epistemological project37 Why after all is ldquoglobalizationrdquo now on everyonersquos lips in academe Might it

have something to do as a colleague of mine astutely theorizes because the educatedand professional middle-classes including university professors of Western nations are

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

340 review essay

character (for Bauman) of the globals renders otherwise legitimate naypressing questions of reception and interpretation entirely irrelevant

For all the power contained in the messages and presumably con-ferred upon the messengers Bauman much like Gray and Giddens isstill not entirely sure just who is in charge

To put it in a nutshell no one seems now to be in control Worse still it isnot clear what ldquobeing in controlrdquo could under the circumstances be like The deepest meaning conveyed by the idea of globalization is that ofthe indeterminate unruly and self-propelled character of world aVairs the absenceof a centre of a controlling desk of a board of directors of a manager-ial oYce Globalization is Jowittrsquos ldquonew world disorderrdquo under anothername (THC pp 58ndash59 rst emphasis in original second emphasis mine)

Note the now familiar tell-tale signs of rei cation the obfuscation ofsocial relations and human agency tightly coupled with the attributionof telos to ldquoworld aVairsrdquo The world may be disorderly but for Baumanat least one thing is for sure Wherever the new seat of power residesif it resides anywhere if it even exists at all it is certainly not withinthe nation-state

In the words of GH von Wright the ldquonation-state it seems is erodingor perhaps lsquowithering awayrsquo The eroding forces are transnationalrdquo Since nation-states remain the sole frame for book-balancing and the sole sources ofeVective political initiative the lsquotransnationalityrsquo or eroding forces putsthem outside the realm of deliberate purposeful and potentially rationalaction As everything that elides such action such forces their shapes andactions are blurred in the mist of mystery they are objects of guessesrather than reliable analysis (THC pp 56ndash57 rst emphasis mine secondemphasis in original)

Having thus ruled out both nations and transnationals as the sourceof the ldquoeroding forcesrdquo at work in the world Bauman asks

How has it come about that this vast expanse of man-made wilderness (notthe ldquonaturalrdquo wilderness which modernity set out to conquer and tamebut to paraphrase Anthony Giddensrsquo felicitous phrase a ldquomanufactured jun-glerdquomdashthe post-domestication wilderness one that emerged after the con-quest and as a result) has sprung into vision And why did it acquire theformidable power of obstinacy and resilience which since Durkheim istaken to be the de ning mark of ldquohard realityrdquo (THC p 69 rst empha-sis mine second emphasis in original)

This indeed is the question that should orient our analyses of ldquoglob-alizationrdquo21 As an analytic tool however it is instructive only inasmuchas we apply it equally to the putative ldquocausesrdquo of ldquoglobalizationrdquo for

review essay 341

example the withering away of the nation-state at the hands of thosepunitive and unforgiving ldquo nancial marketsrdquo (THC p 69) each of whichhas assumed of late the marks of ldquohard realityrdquo Bauman poses the ini-tial question but fails to similarly question the ontological reality of whatare actually epistemological heuristics The use of terms such as ldquomar-ketsrdquo and ldquo nancesrdquo and ldquotechnological forcesrdquo are potentially usefulwhen they serve as a kind of analytic shorthand for sets of social rela-tions that have already been enumerated and explicated explicitly andexhaustively When however they substitute for explanations when theystand in as explanations in and of themselves they serve not only tocomplicate our thinking but more egregious still to insidiously repro-duce those discourses and practices of domination against which criti-cal scholars are aligned Bauman himself anticipates this problem whenhe acknowledges with an approving nod to Cornelius Castoriadis that

the trouble with the contemporary condition of modern civilization isthat it stopped questioning itself Not asking certain questions is pregnantwith more dangers than failing to answer the questions already on theoYcial agenda while asking the wrong kind of questions all too often helpsto avert eyes from the truly important issues The price of silence is paidin the hard currency of human suVering Asking the right questions makesafter all all the diVerence between fate and destination drifting and trav-elling Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way oflife is arguably the most urgent of the services we owe our fellow humansand ourselves (THC p 5)

Like Gray and LaFeber Bauman oVers us an impassioned threnodydevoted to the deleterious eVects borne by globalization but in so doingunwittingly disarms us intellectually and consequently renders us inca-pable of intervention and resistance much less understanding We shouldtherefore welcome Pierre Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance Against the Tyrannyof the Market for Bourdieu perhaps more than any other living scholarand public intellectual deftly combines scholarly and political analysis

Bourdieursquos approach is to read ldquoglobalizationrdquo as a neo-liberal dis-course a mythology that poses as reality

Irsquove used the word ldquoglobalizationrdquo It is a myth in the strong sense of theword a powerful discourse and ideacutee force an idea which has social forcewhich obtains belief It is the main weapon in the battles against the gainsof the welfare state (AOR p 34)

Bourdieu goes on to dissect this discourse pointing out the way itevokes and rati es the ldquoso-called law of the marketrdquo (AOR p 35) Byso impugning the natural and inevitable ontological character of ldquoglobal-

342 review essay

izationrdquo and the ldquosupposed iron laws of the nancial marketsrdquo Bourdieuis poised to make the theoretical contribution Gray irted with but failedto realize to wit an analysis of the social construction of the globaleconomy (AOR pp 26ndash27) Yet Bourdieu soon after does an about-face on this issue writing

While globalization is above all a justi catory myth there is one case whereit is quite real that of the nancial markets Thanks to the removal of a num-ber of legal restrictions and the development of electronic communicationswhich lead to lower communication costs we are moving towards a uniednancial market (AOR p 38 emphasis mine)

Bourdieursquos account is rife with contradictions and illogical unsub-stantiated assertions of fact Particularly disabling is his myopia regard-ing the role of the nation-state While ldquoglobalizationrdquo is a myth (wellyes it is) the power of the ldquo nancial marketsrdquo and the ldquointernationalcapital marketrdquo is quite real indeed22 The latter according to Bourdieuprevents individual nation-states from manipulating their exchange andinterest rates which in turn are increasingly determined by a powerconcentrated in the hands of a small number of countries whose iden-tities are never revealed and although one presumes that Bourdieu hasin mind the United States it is not at all clear which other nationsmight be controlling the rest of the worldrsquos nances (Germanyrsquos socialmarket Japanrsquos Certainly neither the French nor the English registerhere) So nations are powerless a familiar refrain Unless that is theyare a part of the small exclusive cabal of nations that rules the worldin which case they have considerable power after all

Bourdieu calls for the creation of a class of collective intellectualswho can among other things analyze the production and circulationof neo-liberal discourse to expose the ideological work of journalistsmanagers and not least the cunning reason of intellectuals23 Thisanalysis is to be carried out presumably in a manner consistent withhis project of re exive sociology24 That would mean mapping the full eld of cultural production and symbolic power that now obtains on aglobal level specifying the key actors and the objective structure of theirrelationships and analyzing the habitus of the agents that nds its tra-jectory within the speci c eld(s) in question25 That Bourdieu fails toattempt much less accomplish this admittedly bold project is a majorshortcoming of Acts of Resistance which amounts to little more than asteady stream of breathless bromides forever interrupted by conceptualand logical inconsistencies

Worse still is the manner in which Bourdieumdashlike Gray Giddens

review essay 343

and Baumanmdashunwittingly buttresses the discourse of neo-liberalism byutterly ignoring the active role played by the state in ushering in anostensible new world disorder in which the state appears as a shadowof its former self at best a hapless and unwilling conspirator accordedlittle responsibility Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance as with the other titlesunder review here quickly establishes its liberal credentials through itslament for a safer more secure and certain world (sicherheit) in whichthe state and the citizen and one suspects the progressive intellectualeach mattered Those nominal credentials however mask and insidi-ously support the state in its new corporatist guise26 Take for instancethe manifesto co-authored by prime ministers Tony Blair and GerhardSchroeder entitled ldquoThe Third WayDie Neue Mitterdquo27 Therein the min-isters declare

In a world of ever more rapid globalization and scienti c changes we needto create the conditions in which existing businesses can prosper and adaptand new businesses can be set up and grow Our aim is to modern-ize the welfare state not dismantle it Flexible markets must be combinedwith a newly dened role for an active state The state must become an activeagent for employment not merely the passive recipient of the casualties ofeconomic failure (emphasis mine)28

If ldquoglobalizationrdquo did not exist the state would have invented itOr consider to choose another recent example the passing of a new

bill in Britain which rede nes terrorism as ldquoThe use of serious violenceagainst persons or property or the threat to use such violence to intim-idate or coerce a government the public or any section of the publicfor political religious or ideological endsrdquo29 Borrowed verbatim fromthe American FBI this new bill was passed in British parliament inMarch 2000 by 210 votes to one Among other purposes the bill willserve as a deterrent to activists who would campaign publicly againstglobalization and multinational corporations as thousands recently didon ldquoMay Dayrdquo in Britain According to a British GM food activistldquoThe government is creating a private security service for transnationalcorporationsrdquo 30 To Bourdieu et al this is simply another example ofthe puppet that is the new nation-state orchestrated from above andafar by those indomitable nancial markets

To the sociologist Saskia Sassen however it is a case in point of thestatersquos active and voluntary complicity in the construction and not leaststrategic invocation of ldquoglobalizationrdquo Sassen contends that far frombeing passive and merely reactive under the sway of globalizationldquonational rms and national institutions have participated in the processrdquo

344 review essay

Sassen moreover rejects the notion that the global economy is ldquosome-how lsquoout therersquordquo forcing a nation and its corporations to change theirpractices Rather Sassen argues forcefully that the global economy hasbeen created by national industries with the assistance of their ownnationrsquos legislative and regulatory bodies In so doing Sassen pushes thede nition of the global economy beyond the production distributionand consumption of goods and services to encompass a worldwide sys-tem of governance and power within a ldquonew frontier zonerdquo which

is not merely a dividing line between the national economy and theglobal economy It is a zone of politico-economic interactions that pro-duce new institutional forms and alter some of the old ones Nor is this encounterbetween the global and the national just a matter of reducing regulations or the role ofgovernment generally simply to posit as is so often done that economic glob-alization has brought with it declining signi cance of the national state toutcourt misses some of the ner points of this transformation (emphasis mine)31

Pace Sassen and others who argue convincingly for the need to ldquobringthe state back inrdquo32 to our analyses the failure to recognize the trans-formation of the nonetheless active role of the nation-state is a symp-tom of a much broader failure of the sociological imagination bear inmind that the works discussed above are by some of the eldrsquos mostprominent gures Despite their admirably meliorist intentions theseworks each serve to invest ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollaries ie mar-ket and technological ldquoforcesrdquo with a ldquothingnessrdquo and an eYcacy itdoes not cannot possess This tendency stems I think from the nolonger tenable theoretical assumption that modernity consists of the compartmentalization of reality into three distinct domains (1) Market(economy) (2) State (polity) and (3) Civil Society (culturepublic sphere)It is arguable whether this tripartite heuristic was ever analytically use-ful but the problem it poses for sociologists now is a diVerent one forthis heuristic has assumed the status of a dead metaphor that of hardreality According to Wallerstein this theorem of separateness and mutualexclusivity a mere two hundred years old is now so deeply rooted inour consciousness and linguistic tools that we nd it almost impossibleto formulate sentences much less cogent analytic arguments free of thisthreefold monster33 Thus rei ed these epistemologic tools no longerserve us They instead predispose us to see each sphere in terms onlyof expansion (as in the case of the market) or retraction (as in the rolesof the state and the public sphere) rather than the simultaneous seman-tic and ontological transformation of all three34 Returning to Cassirer

review essay 345

But this problem itself appears spurious as soon as we realize that the dis-tinctions which here are taken for granted the analysis of reality in termsof things and processes permanent and transitory aspects objects andactions do not precede language as a substratum of given fact but thatlanguage itself is what initiates such articulations and develops them inits own sphere35

As Wallerstein adroitly notes these unconscious rei cations obscuremuch of reality from the scholars who unre exively deploy them36 Thereis however still more at work than this For all the attention I havedevoted to disentangling the discourse of ldquoglobalizationrdquo we must notlose sight of the many decisions actions and consequences intentionalor not that loosely comprise the ever-shifting reality of globalizationwithin which our analytic discourse is developed and deployed Chiefamong these in this context are the sense and the reality of profounddislocation displacement and disengagement that aVect sociologists asmuch as anyone else37 Our theories and methods bear the indelibleimprint of the world we seek to comprehend

A renovated sociological imagination of globalization must steer clearof the grand theorizing rehearsed by the works reviewed here withoutsimultaneously lapsing into the abstracted empiricism that infects mostof the technical work on globalization38 To avoid these twin pitfalls wewill need to develop an entirely new vocabulary grounded in directempirical engagement with our new globalizing reality Examples ofthis new approach are already under way They include so far Marcusrsquocall for multi-sited ethnography Sassenrsquos work toward cultivating anethnographic approach to studying the way the global is instantiatedwithin local urban spaces and Duneierrsquos ldquoextended place methodrdquo39

The considerable potential of these approaches notwithstanding the soci-ological apprehension of globalization will require rst and foremost acollective eVort on the part of variously situated scholars to wit a globalnetwork consisting of several local nodes in which substantive con ictand cooperation may freely occur What the late Bill Readings calleda community of ldquodissensusrdquo40 Absent these eVorts our meliorist inten-tions have little chance of ever becoming eYcacious interventions

Notes

1 Thanks to Denis Wall for editorial assistance and to Julie Custeau for her ever-astute guidance and unfailing support of everything that I do The works reviewed hereinclude Bauman Zygmunt 1998 Globalization the human consequences (New York ColumbiaUniversity Press) hereafter THC Bourdieu Pierre 1998 Acts of resistance against the tyranny

346 review essay

of the market (New York The New Press) hereafter AOR Gray John 1998 False dawnthe delusions of global capitalism (London Granta Books) hereafter FD Giddens Anthony2000 Runaway World (New York Routledge) hereafter RW and LaFeber Walter 1999Michael Jordan and the new global capitalism (New York W W Norton amp Company) here-after NGC

2 1946 p 73 See Cassidy (1997) The recent highly organized public protests in Davos Seattle

and Washington lend support to this prediction4 For an historical perspective on the semantic polyvalence if not polysemy of

ldquoglobalizationrdquo over the Longue Dureacutee see Moore (1997)5 As Giddens puts it ldquoThe global spread of the term [globalization] is evidence of

the very developments to which it refersrdquo (RW p 3)6 See Bourdieursquos AOR p 427 Gray later asserts however that ldquoThe leverage of sovereign states over business

may actually be greater in some respects today than it has been in the pastrdquo (FD p 67) In which respects Gray does not say Nor does he oVer any evidence to but-tress what must be classi ed as like so many of the statements comprising FD purespeculation (or what might be euphemized as ldquoarm-chair economicsrdquo)

8 See the intriguing if tentative results of an international project comparing thefuture of nationally embedded capitalism in the global economy in Streeck and Yamamura(2000)

9 For an illuminating historical treatment of the rei cation of technology see Marx(1997)

10 Gray argues further that the eVects of these forces are irrevocable and irreversibleThe regrettable and wrong-headed policy choices made by the Thatcher administrationnow constitute the ineluctable reality of the Blair government Gray goes on to arguethe same for the neo-liberal turn taken by New Zealand Grayrsquos argument is contra-dicted however by rst the palpably intentional adoption of neo-liberal tenets on thepart of the Blair government (not least its elimination of Article Four hitherto the cor-nerstone of Labour politics) and second by the recent election of a Labour governmentin New Zealand whose popularity in the polls in 1990 was just 2 percent a Labourgovernment that is moreover authentically committed to rebuilding and underwritingits social institutions See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 11 Even the Economistadmitted no doubt plaintively that ldquoglobalization is not irreversiblerdquo (see Smith andMoran [2000 p 70])

11 Gray is confused about the power of the American model Of ldquohyperglobaliza-tion a corporate utopiardquo Gray writes ldquoIt represents an historical transformation thathas no end-state and which is subverting American capitalism as well as its rivals as aprocess leading to the universal acceptance of American free marketsrdquo (FD p 67)

12 In contradistinction to Giddensrsquo slim but instructive A Brief but Critical Introductionto Sociology

13 Fitzgerald made this prediction in a personal letter to the novelist and criticEdmund (Bunny) Wilson

14 de Medici and de Medici (1986 pp 17ndash20)15 For an empirically rich and theoretically supple analysis of the local experience

of McDonaldrsquos throughout east Asia refer to Watson et al (1997) This volume of ethno-graphic accounts makes particularly plain the ways in which McDonaldrsquos as a transna-tional corporation has allowed itself via a local ownership structure to adapt to theexigencies and idiosyncrasies of local cultures Even while McDonaldrsquos market share reclinedin the United States during the 1990s it continued to grow in foreign markets includ-ing but not limited to east Asia

16 See Marcus (1995) on the advantages of conducting multi-site ethnography inofthe world system

17 Bourdieu (1987 p 184)

review essay 347

18 One nal word of warning regarding NGC the strength and weakness of thisbook are one in the same NGC is unique in that it tries to marry the history of bas-ketball with the history of the American economy A short book it suYciently coversneither task Basketball fans in particular should look elsewhere for a treatment of boththe NBA and the career of Michael Jordan See instead the eminently readable andinformative Halberstam (1999) and in keeping with the line of argument pursued aboveJordan (1998)

19 This is what Mathiesen (1997) aptly coined the Synopticon20 Gerbner and Gross (1976) quoted in THC p 5321 This question if broadened in scope is arguably the most important question

sociologists can pose Period Substitute ldquosocietyrdquo for ldquoglobalizationrdquo and the analyticpotential of the question comes into bold relief

22 Compare the putative reality of the nancial market with the following breath-less declaration ldquoIn short against all the prophets of misery who want to convince youthat your destiny is in the hands of transcendent independent indiVerent powers suchas the lsquo nancial marketsrsquo or the mechanisms if lsquoglobalizationrsquo I want to declare withthe hope of convincing you that the future your future which is also our future thatof all Europeans depends a great deal on you as Germans and trade unionistsrdquo (AORp 69)

23 For his own analysis cum criticism of the ldquojournalistic eldrdquo see Bourdieu (1998)for Bourdieursquos take on the role of intellectuals in diVusing the new global vulgate seeBourdieu and Wacquant (1999a 1999b)

24 I say presumably because Bourdieu at no point in AOR elaborates this programFor an original and compelling criticism of Bourdieursquos sociological theory and methodsee Griller (1996)

25 See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992 pp 104ndash5) Whether or not the global eldis coterminous with what Bourdieu calls the eld of power (a kind of meta- eld) is aninteresting question

26 If I am harder on Bourdieu than the other authors under review (which is arguable)it is due rst to the inconsistency that obtains between his previous scholarly work andhis present political critique and second and most important because his ostensibly lib-eral critique unwittingly and insidiously reproduces the neo-liberal discourse he seeks tosubvert

27 Not coincidentally the so-called ldquothird wayrdquo also advocated by Bill Clinton islargely inspired by Anthony Giddensrsquo book of the same name Space does not permitan analysis of Giddensrsquo contribution to practical politics here Blair and Schroederrsquos man-ifesto is reprinted in the spring 2000 edition of Dissent pp 51ndash65

28 Small wonder Gray who makes the same recommendation demonizes the Thatcheradministration on the one (left) hand while he serves as an apologist for the presentBlair government on the other (right) hand

29 See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 2030 Ibid31 See Sassen (2000 pp 164ndash65)32 For example the entire corpus of Theda Skocpal33 Wallerstein (2000 p 307)34 An apt example of the compartmentalist way of thinking about the state is Daniel

Bellrsquos famous remark that the nation-state is at once too small and too large to ade-quately address most of the problems it faces

35 1946 p 1236 Which in the case of Bourdieu in particular is all the more ironic for its theo-

retical inconsistency with his overall sociological-epistemological project37 Why after all is ldquoglobalizationrdquo now on everyonersquos lips in academe Might it

have something to do as a colleague of mine astutely theorizes because the educatedand professional middle-classes including university professors of Western nations are

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

review essay 341

example the withering away of the nation-state at the hands of thosepunitive and unforgiving ldquo nancial marketsrdquo (THC p 69) each of whichhas assumed of late the marks of ldquohard realityrdquo Bauman poses the ini-tial question but fails to similarly question the ontological reality of whatare actually epistemological heuristics The use of terms such as ldquomar-ketsrdquo and ldquo nancesrdquo and ldquotechnological forcesrdquo are potentially usefulwhen they serve as a kind of analytic shorthand for sets of social rela-tions that have already been enumerated and explicated explicitly andexhaustively When however they substitute for explanations when theystand in as explanations in and of themselves they serve not only tocomplicate our thinking but more egregious still to insidiously repro-duce those discourses and practices of domination against which criti-cal scholars are aligned Bauman himself anticipates this problem whenhe acknowledges with an approving nod to Cornelius Castoriadis that

the trouble with the contemporary condition of modern civilization isthat it stopped questioning itself Not asking certain questions is pregnantwith more dangers than failing to answer the questions already on theoYcial agenda while asking the wrong kind of questions all too often helpsto avert eyes from the truly important issues The price of silence is paidin the hard currency of human suVering Asking the right questions makesafter all all the diVerence between fate and destination drifting and trav-elling Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way oflife is arguably the most urgent of the services we owe our fellow humansand ourselves (THC p 5)

Like Gray and LaFeber Bauman oVers us an impassioned threnodydevoted to the deleterious eVects borne by globalization but in so doingunwittingly disarms us intellectually and consequently renders us inca-pable of intervention and resistance much less understanding We shouldtherefore welcome Pierre Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance Against the Tyrannyof the Market for Bourdieu perhaps more than any other living scholarand public intellectual deftly combines scholarly and political analysis

Bourdieursquos approach is to read ldquoglobalizationrdquo as a neo-liberal dis-course a mythology that poses as reality

Irsquove used the word ldquoglobalizationrdquo It is a myth in the strong sense of theword a powerful discourse and ideacutee force an idea which has social forcewhich obtains belief It is the main weapon in the battles against the gainsof the welfare state (AOR p 34)

Bourdieu goes on to dissect this discourse pointing out the way itevokes and rati es the ldquoso-called law of the marketrdquo (AOR p 35) Byso impugning the natural and inevitable ontological character of ldquoglobal-

342 review essay

izationrdquo and the ldquosupposed iron laws of the nancial marketsrdquo Bourdieuis poised to make the theoretical contribution Gray irted with but failedto realize to wit an analysis of the social construction of the globaleconomy (AOR pp 26ndash27) Yet Bourdieu soon after does an about-face on this issue writing

While globalization is above all a justi catory myth there is one case whereit is quite real that of the nancial markets Thanks to the removal of a num-ber of legal restrictions and the development of electronic communicationswhich lead to lower communication costs we are moving towards a uniednancial market (AOR p 38 emphasis mine)

Bourdieursquos account is rife with contradictions and illogical unsub-stantiated assertions of fact Particularly disabling is his myopia regard-ing the role of the nation-state While ldquoglobalizationrdquo is a myth (wellyes it is) the power of the ldquo nancial marketsrdquo and the ldquointernationalcapital marketrdquo is quite real indeed22 The latter according to Bourdieuprevents individual nation-states from manipulating their exchange andinterest rates which in turn are increasingly determined by a powerconcentrated in the hands of a small number of countries whose iden-tities are never revealed and although one presumes that Bourdieu hasin mind the United States it is not at all clear which other nationsmight be controlling the rest of the worldrsquos nances (Germanyrsquos socialmarket Japanrsquos Certainly neither the French nor the English registerhere) So nations are powerless a familiar refrain Unless that is theyare a part of the small exclusive cabal of nations that rules the worldin which case they have considerable power after all

Bourdieu calls for the creation of a class of collective intellectualswho can among other things analyze the production and circulationof neo-liberal discourse to expose the ideological work of journalistsmanagers and not least the cunning reason of intellectuals23 Thisanalysis is to be carried out presumably in a manner consistent withhis project of re exive sociology24 That would mean mapping the full eld of cultural production and symbolic power that now obtains on aglobal level specifying the key actors and the objective structure of theirrelationships and analyzing the habitus of the agents that nds its tra-jectory within the speci c eld(s) in question25 That Bourdieu fails toattempt much less accomplish this admittedly bold project is a majorshortcoming of Acts of Resistance which amounts to little more than asteady stream of breathless bromides forever interrupted by conceptualand logical inconsistencies

Worse still is the manner in which Bourdieumdashlike Gray Giddens

review essay 343

and Baumanmdashunwittingly buttresses the discourse of neo-liberalism byutterly ignoring the active role played by the state in ushering in anostensible new world disorder in which the state appears as a shadowof its former self at best a hapless and unwilling conspirator accordedlittle responsibility Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance as with the other titlesunder review here quickly establishes its liberal credentials through itslament for a safer more secure and certain world (sicherheit) in whichthe state and the citizen and one suspects the progressive intellectualeach mattered Those nominal credentials however mask and insidi-ously support the state in its new corporatist guise26 Take for instancethe manifesto co-authored by prime ministers Tony Blair and GerhardSchroeder entitled ldquoThe Third WayDie Neue Mitterdquo27 Therein the min-isters declare

In a world of ever more rapid globalization and scienti c changes we needto create the conditions in which existing businesses can prosper and adaptand new businesses can be set up and grow Our aim is to modern-ize the welfare state not dismantle it Flexible markets must be combinedwith a newly dened role for an active state The state must become an activeagent for employment not merely the passive recipient of the casualties ofeconomic failure (emphasis mine)28

If ldquoglobalizationrdquo did not exist the state would have invented itOr consider to choose another recent example the passing of a new

bill in Britain which rede nes terrorism as ldquoThe use of serious violenceagainst persons or property or the threat to use such violence to intim-idate or coerce a government the public or any section of the publicfor political religious or ideological endsrdquo29 Borrowed verbatim fromthe American FBI this new bill was passed in British parliament inMarch 2000 by 210 votes to one Among other purposes the bill willserve as a deterrent to activists who would campaign publicly againstglobalization and multinational corporations as thousands recently didon ldquoMay Dayrdquo in Britain According to a British GM food activistldquoThe government is creating a private security service for transnationalcorporationsrdquo 30 To Bourdieu et al this is simply another example ofthe puppet that is the new nation-state orchestrated from above andafar by those indomitable nancial markets

To the sociologist Saskia Sassen however it is a case in point of thestatersquos active and voluntary complicity in the construction and not leaststrategic invocation of ldquoglobalizationrdquo Sassen contends that far frombeing passive and merely reactive under the sway of globalizationldquonational rms and national institutions have participated in the processrdquo

344 review essay

Sassen moreover rejects the notion that the global economy is ldquosome-how lsquoout therersquordquo forcing a nation and its corporations to change theirpractices Rather Sassen argues forcefully that the global economy hasbeen created by national industries with the assistance of their ownnationrsquos legislative and regulatory bodies In so doing Sassen pushes thede nition of the global economy beyond the production distributionand consumption of goods and services to encompass a worldwide sys-tem of governance and power within a ldquonew frontier zonerdquo which

is not merely a dividing line between the national economy and theglobal economy It is a zone of politico-economic interactions that pro-duce new institutional forms and alter some of the old ones Nor is this encounterbetween the global and the national just a matter of reducing regulations or the role ofgovernment generally simply to posit as is so often done that economic glob-alization has brought with it declining signi cance of the national state toutcourt misses some of the ner points of this transformation (emphasis mine)31

Pace Sassen and others who argue convincingly for the need to ldquobringthe state back inrdquo32 to our analyses the failure to recognize the trans-formation of the nonetheless active role of the nation-state is a symp-tom of a much broader failure of the sociological imagination bear inmind that the works discussed above are by some of the eldrsquos mostprominent gures Despite their admirably meliorist intentions theseworks each serve to invest ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollaries ie mar-ket and technological ldquoforcesrdquo with a ldquothingnessrdquo and an eYcacy itdoes not cannot possess This tendency stems I think from the nolonger tenable theoretical assumption that modernity consists of the compartmentalization of reality into three distinct domains (1) Market(economy) (2) State (polity) and (3) Civil Society (culturepublic sphere)It is arguable whether this tripartite heuristic was ever analytically use-ful but the problem it poses for sociologists now is a diVerent one forthis heuristic has assumed the status of a dead metaphor that of hardreality According to Wallerstein this theorem of separateness and mutualexclusivity a mere two hundred years old is now so deeply rooted inour consciousness and linguistic tools that we nd it almost impossibleto formulate sentences much less cogent analytic arguments free of thisthreefold monster33 Thus rei ed these epistemologic tools no longerserve us They instead predispose us to see each sphere in terms onlyof expansion (as in the case of the market) or retraction (as in the rolesof the state and the public sphere) rather than the simultaneous seman-tic and ontological transformation of all three34 Returning to Cassirer

review essay 345

But this problem itself appears spurious as soon as we realize that the dis-tinctions which here are taken for granted the analysis of reality in termsof things and processes permanent and transitory aspects objects andactions do not precede language as a substratum of given fact but thatlanguage itself is what initiates such articulations and develops them inits own sphere35

As Wallerstein adroitly notes these unconscious rei cations obscuremuch of reality from the scholars who unre exively deploy them36 Thereis however still more at work than this For all the attention I havedevoted to disentangling the discourse of ldquoglobalizationrdquo we must notlose sight of the many decisions actions and consequences intentionalor not that loosely comprise the ever-shifting reality of globalizationwithin which our analytic discourse is developed and deployed Chiefamong these in this context are the sense and the reality of profounddislocation displacement and disengagement that aVect sociologists asmuch as anyone else37 Our theories and methods bear the indelibleimprint of the world we seek to comprehend

A renovated sociological imagination of globalization must steer clearof the grand theorizing rehearsed by the works reviewed here withoutsimultaneously lapsing into the abstracted empiricism that infects mostof the technical work on globalization38 To avoid these twin pitfalls wewill need to develop an entirely new vocabulary grounded in directempirical engagement with our new globalizing reality Examples ofthis new approach are already under way They include so far Marcusrsquocall for multi-sited ethnography Sassenrsquos work toward cultivating anethnographic approach to studying the way the global is instantiatedwithin local urban spaces and Duneierrsquos ldquoextended place methodrdquo39

The considerable potential of these approaches notwithstanding the soci-ological apprehension of globalization will require rst and foremost acollective eVort on the part of variously situated scholars to wit a globalnetwork consisting of several local nodes in which substantive con ictand cooperation may freely occur What the late Bill Readings calleda community of ldquodissensusrdquo40 Absent these eVorts our meliorist inten-tions have little chance of ever becoming eYcacious interventions

Notes

1 Thanks to Denis Wall for editorial assistance and to Julie Custeau for her ever-astute guidance and unfailing support of everything that I do The works reviewed hereinclude Bauman Zygmunt 1998 Globalization the human consequences (New York ColumbiaUniversity Press) hereafter THC Bourdieu Pierre 1998 Acts of resistance against the tyranny

346 review essay

of the market (New York The New Press) hereafter AOR Gray John 1998 False dawnthe delusions of global capitalism (London Granta Books) hereafter FD Giddens Anthony2000 Runaway World (New York Routledge) hereafter RW and LaFeber Walter 1999Michael Jordan and the new global capitalism (New York W W Norton amp Company) here-after NGC

2 1946 p 73 See Cassidy (1997) The recent highly organized public protests in Davos Seattle

and Washington lend support to this prediction4 For an historical perspective on the semantic polyvalence if not polysemy of

ldquoglobalizationrdquo over the Longue Dureacutee see Moore (1997)5 As Giddens puts it ldquoThe global spread of the term [globalization] is evidence of

the very developments to which it refersrdquo (RW p 3)6 See Bourdieursquos AOR p 427 Gray later asserts however that ldquoThe leverage of sovereign states over business

may actually be greater in some respects today than it has been in the pastrdquo (FD p 67) In which respects Gray does not say Nor does he oVer any evidence to but-tress what must be classi ed as like so many of the statements comprising FD purespeculation (or what might be euphemized as ldquoarm-chair economicsrdquo)

8 See the intriguing if tentative results of an international project comparing thefuture of nationally embedded capitalism in the global economy in Streeck and Yamamura(2000)

9 For an illuminating historical treatment of the rei cation of technology see Marx(1997)

10 Gray argues further that the eVects of these forces are irrevocable and irreversibleThe regrettable and wrong-headed policy choices made by the Thatcher administrationnow constitute the ineluctable reality of the Blair government Gray goes on to arguethe same for the neo-liberal turn taken by New Zealand Grayrsquos argument is contra-dicted however by rst the palpably intentional adoption of neo-liberal tenets on thepart of the Blair government (not least its elimination of Article Four hitherto the cor-nerstone of Labour politics) and second by the recent election of a Labour governmentin New Zealand whose popularity in the polls in 1990 was just 2 percent a Labourgovernment that is moreover authentically committed to rebuilding and underwritingits social institutions See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 11 Even the Economistadmitted no doubt plaintively that ldquoglobalization is not irreversiblerdquo (see Smith andMoran [2000 p 70])

11 Gray is confused about the power of the American model Of ldquohyperglobaliza-tion a corporate utopiardquo Gray writes ldquoIt represents an historical transformation thathas no end-state and which is subverting American capitalism as well as its rivals as aprocess leading to the universal acceptance of American free marketsrdquo (FD p 67)

12 In contradistinction to Giddensrsquo slim but instructive A Brief but Critical Introductionto Sociology

13 Fitzgerald made this prediction in a personal letter to the novelist and criticEdmund (Bunny) Wilson

14 de Medici and de Medici (1986 pp 17ndash20)15 For an empirically rich and theoretically supple analysis of the local experience

of McDonaldrsquos throughout east Asia refer to Watson et al (1997) This volume of ethno-graphic accounts makes particularly plain the ways in which McDonaldrsquos as a transna-tional corporation has allowed itself via a local ownership structure to adapt to theexigencies and idiosyncrasies of local cultures Even while McDonaldrsquos market share reclinedin the United States during the 1990s it continued to grow in foreign markets includ-ing but not limited to east Asia

16 See Marcus (1995) on the advantages of conducting multi-site ethnography inofthe world system

17 Bourdieu (1987 p 184)

review essay 347

18 One nal word of warning regarding NGC the strength and weakness of thisbook are one in the same NGC is unique in that it tries to marry the history of bas-ketball with the history of the American economy A short book it suYciently coversneither task Basketball fans in particular should look elsewhere for a treatment of boththe NBA and the career of Michael Jordan See instead the eminently readable andinformative Halberstam (1999) and in keeping with the line of argument pursued aboveJordan (1998)

19 This is what Mathiesen (1997) aptly coined the Synopticon20 Gerbner and Gross (1976) quoted in THC p 5321 This question if broadened in scope is arguably the most important question

sociologists can pose Period Substitute ldquosocietyrdquo for ldquoglobalizationrdquo and the analyticpotential of the question comes into bold relief

22 Compare the putative reality of the nancial market with the following breath-less declaration ldquoIn short against all the prophets of misery who want to convince youthat your destiny is in the hands of transcendent independent indiVerent powers suchas the lsquo nancial marketsrsquo or the mechanisms if lsquoglobalizationrsquo I want to declare withthe hope of convincing you that the future your future which is also our future thatof all Europeans depends a great deal on you as Germans and trade unionistsrdquo (AORp 69)

23 For his own analysis cum criticism of the ldquojournalistic eldrdquo see Bourdieu (1998)for Bourdieursquos take on the role of intellectuals in diVusing the new global vulgate seeBourdieu and Wacquant (1999a 1999b)

24 I say presumably because Bourdieu at no point in AOR elaborates this programFor an original and compelling criticism of Bourdieursquos sociological theory and methodsee Griller (1996)

25 See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992 pp 104ndash5) Whether or not the global eldis coterminous with what Bourdieu calls the eld of power (a kind of meta- eld) is aninteresting question

26 If I am harder on Bourdieu than the other authors under review (which is arguable)it is due rst to the inconsistency that obtains between his previous scholarly work andhis present political critique and second and most important because his ostensibly lib-eral critique unwittingly and insidiously reproduces the neo-liberal discourse he seeks tosubvert

27 Not coincidentally the so-called ldquothird wayrdquo also advocated by Bill Clinton islargely inspired by Anthony Giddensrsquo book of the same name Space does not permitan analysis of Giddensrsquo contribution to practical politics here Blair and Schroederrsquos man-ifesto is reprinted in the spring 2000 edition of Dissent pp 51ndash65

28 Small wonder Gray who makes the same recommendation demonizes the Thatcheradministration on the one (left) hand while he serves as an apologist for the presentBlair government on the other (right) hand

29 See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 2030 Ibid31 See Sassen (2000 pp 164ndash65)32 For example the entire corpus of Theda Skocpal33 Wallerstein (2000 p 307)34 An apt example of the compartmentalist way of thinking about the state is Daniel

Bellrsquos famous remark that the nation-state is at once too small and too large to ade-quately address most of the problems it faces

35 1946 p 1236 Which in the case of Bourdieu in particular is all the more ironic for its theo-

retical inconsistency with his overall sociological-epistemological project37 Why after all is ldquoglobalizationrdquo now on everyonersquos lips in academe Might it

have something to do as a colleague of mine astutely theorizes because the educatedand professional middle-classes including university professors of Western nations are

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

342 review essay

izationrdquo and the ldquosupposed iron laws of the nancial marketsrdquo Bourdieuis poised to make the theoretical contribution Gray irted with but failedto realize to wit an analysis of the social construction of the globaleconomy (AOR pp 26ndash27) Yet Bourdieu soon after does an about-face on this issue writing

While globalization is above all a justi catory myth there is one case whereit is quite real that of the nancial markets Thanks to the removal of a num-ber of legal restrictions and the development of electronic communicationswhich lead to lower communication costs we are moving towards a uniednancial market (AOR p 38 emphasis mine)

Bourdieursquos account is rife with contradictions and illogical unsub-stantiated assertions of fact Particularly disabling is his myopia regard-ing the role of the nation-state While ldquoglobalizationrdquo is a myth (wellyes it is) the power of the ldquo nancial marketsrdquo and the ldquointernationalcapital marketrdquo is quite real indeed22 The latter according to Bourdieuprevents individual nation-states from manipulating their exchange andinterest rates which in turn are increasingly determined by a powerconcentrated in the hands of a small number of countries whose iden-tities are never revealed and although one presumes that Bourdieu hasin mind the United States it is not at all clear which other nationsmight be controlling the rest of the worldrsquos nances (Germanyrsquos socialmarket Japanrsquos Certainly neither the French nor the English registerhere) So nations are powerless a familiar refrain Unless that is theyare a part of the small exclusive cabal of nations that rules the worldin which case they have considerable power after all

Bourdieu calls for the creation of a class of collective intellectualswho can among other things analyze the production and circulationof neo-liberal discourse to expose the ideological work of journalistsmanagers and not least the cunning reason of intellectuals23 Thisanalysis is to be carried out presumably in a manner consistent withhis project of re exive sociology24 That would mean mapping the full eld of cultural production and symbolic power that now obtains on aglobal level specifying the key actors and the objective structure of theirrelationships and analyzing the habitus of the agents that nds its tra-jectory within the speci c eld(s) in question25 That Bourdieu fails toattempt much less accomplish this admittedly bold project is a majorshortcoming of Acts of Resistance which amounts to little more than asteady stream of breathless bromides forever interrupted by conceptualand logical inconsistencies

Worse still is the manner in which Bourdieumdashlike Gray Giddens

review essay 343

and Baumanmdashunwittingly buttresses the discourse of neo-liberalism byutterly ignoring the active role played by the state in ushering in anostensible new world disorder in which the state appears as a shadowof its former self at best a hapless and unwilling conspirator accordedlittle responsibility Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance as with the other titlesunder review here quickly establishes its liberal credentials through itslament for a safer more secure and certain world (sicherheit) in whichthe state and the citizen and one suspects the progressive intellectualeach mattered Those nominal credentials however mask and insidi-ously support the state in its new corporatist guise26 Take for instancethe manifesto co-authored by prime ministers Tony Blair and GerhardSchroeder entitled ldquoThe Third WayDie Neue Mitterdquo27 Therein the min-isters declare

In a world of ever more rapid globalization and scienti c changes we needto create the conditions in which existing businesses can prosper and adaptand new businesses can be set up and grow Our aim is to modern-ize the welfare state not dismantle it Flexible markets must be combinedwith a newly dened role for an active state The state must become an activeagent for employment not merely the passive recipient of the casualties ofeconomic failure (emphasis mine)28

If ldquoglobalizationrdquo did not exist the state would have invented itOr consider to choose another recent example the passing of a new

bill in Britain which rede nes terrorism as ldquoThe use of serious violenceagainst persons or property or the threat to use such violence to intim-idate or coerce a government the public or any section of the publicfor political religious or ideological endsrdquo29 Borrowed verbatim fromthe American FBI this new bill was passed in British parliament inMarch 2000 by 210 votes to one Among other purposes the bill willserve as a deterrent to activists who would campaign publicly againstglobalization and multinational corporations as thousands recently didon ldquoMay Dayrdquo in Britain According to a British GM food activistldquoThe government is creating a private security service for transnationalcorporationsrdquo 30 To Bourdieu et al this is simply another example ofthe puppet that is the new nation-state orchestrated from above andafar by those indomitable nancial markets

To the sociologist Saskia Sassen however it is a case in point of thestatersquos active and voluntary complicity in the construction and not leaststrategic invocation of ldquoglobalizationrdquo Sassen contends that far frombeing passive and merely reactive under the sway of globalizationldquonational rms and national institutions have participated in the processrdquo

344 review essay

Sassen moreover rejects the notion that the global economy is ldquosome-how lsquoout therersquordquo forcing a nation and its corporations to change theirpractices Rather Sassen argues forcefully that the global economy hasbeen created by national industries with the assistance of their ownnationrsquos legislative and regulatory bodies In so doing Sassen pushes thede nition of the global economy beyond the production distributionand consumption of goods and services to encompass a worldwide sys-tem of governance and power within a ldquonew frontier zonerdquo which

is not merely a dividing line between the national economy and theglobal economy It is a zone of politico-economic interactions that pro-duce new institutional forms and alter some of the old ones Nor is this encounterbetween the global and the national just a matter of reducing regulations or the role ofgovernment generally simply to posit as is so often done that economic glob-alization has brought with it declining signi cance of the national state toutcourt misses some of the ner points of this transformation (emphasis mine)31

Pace Sassen and others who argue convincingly for the need to ldquobringthe state back inrdquo32 to our analyses the failure to recognize the trans-formation of the nonetheless active role of the nation-state is a symp-tom of a much broader failure of the sociological imagination bear inmind that the works discussed above are by some of the eldrsquos mostprominent gures Despite their admirably meliorist intentions theseworks each serve to invest ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollaries ie mar-ket and technological ldquoforcesrdquo with a ldquothingnessrdquo and an eYcacy itdoes not cannot possess This tendency stems I think from the nolonger tenable theoretical assumption that modernity consists of the compartmentalization of reality into three distinct domains (1) Market(economy) (2) State (polity) and (3) Civil Society (culturepublic sphere)It is arguable whether this tripartite heuristic was ever analytically use-ful but the problem it poses for sociologists now is a diVerent one forthis heuristic has assumed the status of a dead metaphor that of hardreality According to Wallerstein this theorem of separateness and mutualexclusivity a mere two hundred years old is now so deeply rooted inour consciousness and linguistic tools that we nd it almost impossibleto formulate sentences much less cogent analytic arguments free of thisthreefold monster33 Thus rei ed these epistemologic tools no longerserve us They instead predispose us to see each sphere in terms onlyof expansion (as in the case of the market) or retraction (as in the rolesof the state and the public sphere) rather than the simultaneous seman-tic and ontological transformation of all three34 Returning to Cassirer

review essay 345

But this problem itself appears spurious as soon as we realize that the dis-tinctions which here are taken for granted the analysis of reality in termsof things and processes permanent and transitory aspects objects andactions do not precede language as a substratum of given fact but thatlanguage itself is what initiates such articulations and develops them inits own sphere35

As Wallerstein adroitly notes these unconscious rei cations obscuremuch of reality from the scholars who unre exively deploy them36 Thereis however still more at work than this For all the attention I havedevoted to disentangling the discourse of ldquoglobalizationrdquo we must notlose sight of the many decisions actions and consequences intentionalor not that loosely comprise the ever-shifting reality of globalizationwithin which our analytic discourse is developed and deployed Chiefamong these in this context are the sense and the reality of profounddislocation displacement and disengagement that aVect sociologists asmuch as anyone else37 Our theories and methods bear the indelibleimprint of the world we seek to comprehend

A renovated sociological imagination of globalization must steer clearof the grand theorizing rehearsed by the works reviewed here withoutsimultaneously lapsing into the abstracted empiricism that infects mostof the technical work on globalization38 To avoid these twin pitfalls wewill need to develop an entirely new vocabulary grounded in directempirical engagement with our new globalizing reality Examples ofthis new approach are already under way They include so far Marcusrsquocall for multi-sited ethnography Sassenrsquos work toward cultivating anethnographic approach to studying the way the global is instantiatedwithin local urban spaces and Duneierrsquos ldquoextended place methodrdquo39

The considerable potential of these approaches notwithstanding the soci-ological apprehension of globalization will require rst and foremost acollective eVort on the part of variously situated scholars to wit a globalnetwork consisting of several local nodes in which substantive con ictand cooperation may freely occur What the late Bill Readings calleda community of ldquodissensusrdquo40 Absent these eVorts our meliorist inten-tions have little chance of ever becoming eYcacious interventions

Notes

1 Thanks to Denis Wall for editorial assistance and to Julie Custeau for her ever-astute guidance and unfailing support of everything that I do The works reviewed hereinclude Bauman Zygmunt 1998 Globalization the human consequences (New York ColumbiaUniversity Press) hereafter THC Bourdieu Pierre 1998 Acts of resistance against the tyranny

346 review essay

of the market (New York The New Press) hereafter AOR Gray John 1998 False dawnthe delusions of global capitalism (London Granta Books) hereafter FD Giddens Anthony2000 Runaway World (New York Routledge) hereafter RW and LaFeber Walter 1999Michael Jordan and the new global capitalism (New York W W Norton amp Company) here-after NGC

2 1946 p 73 See Cassidy (1997) The recent highly organized public protests in Davos Seattle

and Washington lend support to this prediction4 For an historical perspective on the semantic polyvalence if not polysemy of

ldquoglobalizationrdquo over the Longue Dureacutee see Moore (1997)5 As Giddens puts it ldquoThe global spread of the term [globalization] is evidence of

the very developments to which it refersrdquo (RW p 3)6 See Bourdieursquos AOR p 427 Gray later asserts however that ldquoThe leverage of sovereign states over business

may actually be greater in some respects today than it has been in the pastrdquo (FD p 67) In which respects Gray does not say Nor does he oVer any evidence to but-tress what must be classi ed as like so many of the statements comprising FD purespeculation (or what might be euphemized as ldquoarm-chair economicsrdquo)

8 See the intriguing if tentative results of an international project comparing thefuture of nationally embedded capitalism in the global economy in Streeck and Yamamura(2000)

9 For an illuminating historical treatment of the rei cation of technology see Marx(1997)

10 Gray argues further that the eVects of these forces are irrevocable and irreversibleThe regrettable and wrong-headed policy choices made by the Thatcher administrationnow constitute the ineluctable reality of the Blair government Gray goes on to arguethe same for the neo-liberal turn taken by New Zealand Grayrsquos argument is contra-dicted however by rst the palpably intentional adoption of neo-liberal tenets on thepart of the Blair government (not least its elimination of Article Four hitherto the cor-nerstone of Labour politics) and second by the recent election of a Labour governmentin New Zealand whose popularity in the polls in 1990 was just 2 percent a Labourgovernment that is moreover authentically committed to rebuilding and underwritingits social institutions See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 11 Even the Economistadmitted no doubt plaintively that ldquoglobalization is not irreversiblerdquo (see Smith andMoran [2000 p 70])

11 Gray is confused about the power of the American model Of ldquohyperglobaliza-tion a corporate utopiardquo Gray writes ldquoIt represents an historical transformation thathas no end-state and which is subverting American capitalism as well as its rivals as aprocess leading to the universal acceptance of American free marketsrdquo (FD p 67)

12 In contradistinction to Giddensrsquo slim but instructive A Brief but Critical Introductionto Sociology

13 Fitzgerald made this prediction in a personal letter to the novelist and criticEdmund (Bunny) Wilson

14 de Medici and de Medici (1986 pp 17ndash20)15 For an empirically rich and theoretically supple analysis of the local experience

of McDonaldrsquos throughout east Asia refer to Watson et al (1997) This volume of ethno-graphic accounts makes particularly plain the ways in which McDonaldrsquos as a transna-tional corporation has allowed itself via a local ownership structure to adapt to theexigencies and idiosyncrasies of local cultures Even while McDonaldrsquos market share reclinedin the United States during the 1990s it continued to grow in foreign markets includ-ing but not limited to east Asia

16 See Marcus (1995) on the advantages of conducting multi-site ethnography inofthe world system

17 Bourdieu (1987 p 184)

review essay 347

18 One nal word of warning regarding NGC the strength and weakness of thisbook are one in the same NGC is unique in that it tries to marry the history of bas-ketball with the history of the American economy A short book it suYciently coversneither task Basketball fans in particular should look elsewhere for a treatment of boththe NBA and the career of Michael Jordan See instead the eminently readable andinformative Halberstam (1999) and in keeping with the line of argument pursued aboveJordan (1998)

19 This is what Mathiesen (1997) aptly coined the Synopticon20 Gerbner and Gross (1976) quoted in THC p 5321 This question if broadened in scope is arguably the most important question

sociologists can pose Period Substitute ldquosocietyrdquo for ldquoglobalizationrdquo and the analyticpotential of the question comes into bold relief

22 Compare the putative reality of the nancial market with the following breath-less declaration ldquoIn short against all the prophets of misery who want to convince youthat your destiny is in the hands of transcendent independent indiVerent powers suchas the lsquo nancial marketsrsquo or the mechanisms if lsquoglobalizationrsquo I want to declare withthe hope of convincing you that the future your future which is also our future thatof all Europeans depends a great deal on you as Germans and trade unionistsrdquo (AORp 69)

23 For his own analysis cum criticism of the ldquojournalistic eldrdquo see Bourdieu (1998)for Bourdieursquos take on the role of intellectuals in diVusing the new global vulgate seeBourdieu and Wacquant (1999a 1999b)

24 I say presumably because Bourdieu at no point in AOR elaborates this programFor an original and compelling criticism of Bourdieursquos sociological theory and methodsee Griller (1996)

25 See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992 pp 104ndash5) Whether or not the global eldis coterminous with what Bourdieu calls the eld of power (a kind of meta- eld) is aninteresting question

26 If I am harder on Bourdieu than the other authors under review (which is arguable)it is due rst to the inconsistency that obtains between his previous scholarly work andhis present political critique and second and most important because his ostensibly lib-eral critique unwittingly and insidiously reproduces the neo-liberal discourse he seeks tosubvert

27 Not coincidentally the so-called ldquothird wayrdquo also advocated by Bill Clinton islargely inspired by Anthony Giddensrsquo book of the same name Space does not permitan analysis of Giddensrsquo contribution to practical politics here Blair and Schroederrsquos man-ifesto is reprinted in the spring 2000 edition of Dissent pp 51ndash65

28 Small wonder Gray who makes the same recommendation demonizes the Thatcheradministration on the one (left) hand while he serves as an apologist for the presentBlair government on the other (right) hand

29 See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 2030 Ibid31 See Sassen (2000 pp 164ndash65)32 For example the entire corpus of Theda Skocpal33 Wallerstein (2000 p 307)34 An apt example of the compartmentalist way of thinking about the state is Daniel

Bellrsquos famous remark that the nation-state is at once too small and too large to ade-quately address most of the problems it faces

35 1946 p 1236 Which in the case of Bourdieu in particular is all the more ironic for its theo-

retical inconsistency with his overall sociological-epistemological project37 Why after all is ldquoglobalizationrdquo now on everyonersquos lips in academe Might it

have something to do as a colleague of mine astutely theorizes because the educatedand professional middle-classes including university professors of Western nations are

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

review essay 343

and Baumanmdashunwittingly buttresses the discourse of neo-liberalism byutterly ignoring the active role played by the state in ushering in anostensible new world disorder in which the state appears as a shadowof its former self at best a hapless and unwilling conspirator accordedlittle responsibility Bourdieursquos Acts of Resistance as with the other titlesunder review here quickly establishes its liberal credentials through itslament for a safer more secure and certain world (sicherheit) in whichthe state and the citizen and one suspects the progressive intellectualeach mattered Those nominal credentials however mask and insidi-ously support the state in its new corporatist guise26 Take for instancethe manifesto co-authored by prime ministers Tony Blair and GerhardSchroeder entitled ldquoThe Third WayDie Neue Mitterdquo27 Therein the min-isters declare

In a world of ever more rapid globalization and scienti c changes we needto create the conditions in which existing businesses can prosper and adaptand new businesses can be set up and grow Our aim is to modern-ize the welfare state not dismantle it Flexible markets must be combinedwith a newly dened role for an active state The state must become an activeagent for employment not merely the passive recipient of the casualties ofeconomic failure (emphasis mine)28

If ldquoglobalizationrdquo did not exist the state would have invented itOr consider to choose another recent example the passing of a new

bill in Britain which rede nes terrorism as ldquoThe use of serious violenceagainst persons or property or the threat to use such violence to intim-idate or coerce a government the public or any section of the publicfor political religious or ideological endsrdquo29 Borrowed verbatim fromthe American FBI this new bill was passed in British parliament inMarch 2000 by 210 votes to one Among other purposes the bill willserve as a deterrent to activists who would campaign publicly againstglobalization and multinational corporations as thousands recently didon ldquoMay Dayrdquo in Britain According to a British GM food activistldquoThe government is creating a private security service for transnationalcorporationsrdquo 30 To Bourdieu et al this is simply another example ofthe puppet that is the new nation-state orchestrated from above andafar by those indomitable nancial markets

To the sociologist Saskia Sassen however it is a case in point of thestatersquos active and voluntary complicity in the construction and not leaststrategic invocation of ldquoglobalizationrdquo Sassen contends that far frombeing passive and merely reactive under the sway of globalizationldquonational rms and national institutions have participated in the processrdquo

344 review essay

Sassen moreover rejects the notion that the global economy is ldquosome-how lsquoout therersquordquo forcing a nation and its corporations to change theirpractices Rather Sassen argues forcefully that the global economy hasbeen created by national industries with the assistance of their ownnationrsquos legislative and regulatory bodies In so doing Sassen pushes thede nition of the global economy beyond the production distributionand consumption of goods and services to encompass a worldwide sys-tem of governance and power within a ldquonew frontier zonerdquo which

is not merely a dividing line between the national economy and theglobal economy It is a zone of politico-economic interactions that pro-duce new institutional forms and alter some of the old ones Nor is this encounterbetween the global and the national just a matter of reducing regulations or the role ofgovernment generally simply to posit as is so often done that economic glob-alization has brought with it declining signi cance of the national state toutcourt misses some of the ner points of this transformation (emphasis mine)31

Pace Sassen and others who argue convincingly for the need to ldquobringthe state back inrdquo32 to our analyses the failure to recognize the trans-formation of the nonetheless active role of the nation-state is a symp-tom of a much broader failure of the sociological imagination bear inmind that the works discussed above are by some of the eldrsquos mostprominent gures Despite their admirably meliorist intentions theseworks each serve to invest ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollaries ie mar-ket and technological ldquoforcesrdquo with a ldquothingnessrdquo and an eYcacy itdoes not cannot possess This tendency stems I think from the nolonger tenable theoretical assumption that modernity consists of the compartmentalization of reality into three distinct domains (1) Market(economy) (2) State (polity) and (3) Civil Society (culturepublic sphere)It is arguable whether this tripartite heuristic was ever analytically use-ful but the problem it poses for sociologists now is a diVerent one forthis heuristic has assumed the status of a dead metaphor that of hardreality According to Wallerstein this theorem of separateness and mutualexclusivity a mere two hundred years old is now so deeply rooted inour consciousness and linguistic tools that we nd it almost impossibleto formulate sentences much less cogent analytic arguments free of thisthreefold monster33 Thus rei ed these epistemologic tools no longerserve us They instead predispose us to see each sphere in terms onlyof expansion (as in the case of the market) or retraction (as in the rolesof the state and the public sphere) rather than the simultaneous seman-tic and ontological transformation of all three34 Returning to Cassirer

review essay 345

But this problem itself appears spurious as soon as we realize that the dis-tinctions which here are taken for granted the analysis of reality in termsof things and processes permanent and transitory aspects objects andactions do not precede language as a substratum of given fact but thatlanguage itself is what initiates such articulations and develops them inits own sphere35

As Wallerstein adroitly notes these unconscious rei cations obscuremuch of reality from the scholars who unre exively deploy them36 Thereis however still more at work than this For all the attention I havedevoted to disentangling the discourse of ldquoglobalizationrdquo we must notlose sight of the many decisions actions and consequences intentionalor not that loosely comprise the ever-shifting reality of globalizationwithin which our analytic discourse is developed and deployed Chiefamong these in this context are the sense and the reality of profounddislocation displacement and disengagement that aVect sociologists asmuch as anyone else37 Our theories and methods bear the indelibleimprint of the world we seek to comprehend

A renovated sociological imagination of globalization must steer clearof the grand theorizing rehearsed by the works reviewed here withoutsimultaneously lapsing into the abstracted empiricism that infects mostof the technical work on globalization38 To avoid these twin pitfalls wewill need to develop an entirely new vocabulary grounded in directempirical engagement with our new globalizing reality Examples ofthis new approach are already under way They include so far Marcusrsquocall for multi-sited ethnography Sassenrsquos work toward cultivating anethnographic approach to studying the way the global is instantiatedwithin local urban spaces and Duneierrsquos ldquoextended place methodrdquo39

The considerable potential of these approaches notwithstanding the soci-ological apprehension of globalization will require rst and foremost acollective eVort on the part of variously situated scholars to wit a globalnetwork consisting of several local nodes in which substantive con ictand cooperation may freely occur What the late Bill Readings calleda community of ldquodissensusrdquo40 Absent these eVorts our meliorist inten-tions have little chance of ever becoming eYcacious interventions

Notes

1 Thanks to Denis Wall for editorial assistance and to Julie Custeau for her ever-astute guidance and unfailing support of everything that I do The works reviewed hereinclude Bauman Zygmunt 1998 Globalization the human consequences (New York ColumbiaUniversity Press) hereafter THC Bourdieu Pierre 1998 Acts of resistance against the tyranny

346 review essay

of the market (New York The New Press) hereafter AOR Gray John 1998 False dawnthe delusions of global capitalism (London Granta Books) hereafter FD Giddens Anthony2000 Runaway World (New York Routledge) hereafter RW and LaFeber Walter 1999Michael Jordan and the new global capitalism (New York W W Norton amp Company) here-after NGC

2 1946 p 73 See Cassidy (1997) The recent highly organized public protests in Davos Seattle

and Washington lend support to this prediction4 For an historical perspective on the semantic polyvalence if not polysemy of

ldquoglobalizationrdquo over the Longue Dureacutee see Moore (1997)5 As Giddens puts it ldquoThe global spread of the term [globalization] is evidence of

the very developments to which it refersrdquo (RW p 3)6 See Bourdieursquos AOR p 427 Gray later asserts however that ldquoThe leverage of sovereign states over business

may actually be greater in some respects today than it has been in the pastrdquo (FD p 67) In which respects Gray does not say Nor does he oVer any evidence to but-tress what must be classi ed as like so many of the statements comprising FD purespeculation (or what might be euphemized as ldquoarm-chair economicsrdquo)

8 See the intriguing if tentative results of an international project comparing thefuture of nationally embedded capitalism in the global economy in Streeck and Yamamura(2000)

9 For an illuminating historical treatment of the rei cation of technology see Marx(1997)

10 Gray argues further that the eVects of these forces are irrevocable and irreversibleThe regrettable and wrong-headed policy choices made by the Thatcher administrationnow constitute the ineluctable reality of the Blair government Gray goes on to arguethe same for the neo-liberal turn taken by New Zealand Grayrsquos argument is contra-dicted however by rst the palpably intentional adoption of neo-liberal tenets on thepart of the Blair government (not least its elimination of Article Four hitherto the cor-nerstone of Labour politics) and second by the recent election of a Labour governmentin New Zealand whose popularity in the polls in 1990 was just 2 percent a Labourgovernment that is moreover authentically committed to rebuilding and underwritingits social institutions See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 11 Even the Economistadmitted no doubt plaintively that ldquoglobalization is not irreversiblerdquo (see Smith andMoran [2000 p 70])

11 Gray is confused about the power of the American model Of ldquohyperglobaliza-tion a corporate utopiardquo Gray writes ldquoIt represents an historical transformation thathas no end-state and which is subverting American capitalism as well as its rivals as aprocess leading to the universal acceptance of American free marketsrdquo (FD p 67)

12 In contradistinction to Giddensrsquo slim but instructive A Brief but Critical Introductionto Sociology

13 Fitzgerald made this prediction in a personal letter to the novelist and criticEdmund (Bunny) Wilson

14 de Medici and de Medici (1986 pp 17ndash20)15 For an empirically rich and theoretically supple analysis of the local experience

of McDonaldrsquos throughout east Asia refer to Watson et al (1997) This volume of ethno-graphic accounts makes particularly plain the ways in which McDonaldrsquos as a transna-tional corporation has allowed itself via a local ownership structure to adapt to theexigencies and idiosyncrasies of local cultures Even while McDonaldrsquos market share reclinedin the United States during the 1990s it continued to grow in foreign markets includ-ing but not limited to east Asia

16 See Marcus (1995) on the advantages of conducting multi-site ethnography inofthe world system

17 Bourdieu (1987 p 184)

review essay 347

18 One nal word of warning regarding NGC the strength and weakness of thisbook are one in the same NGC is unique in that it tries to marry the history of bas-ketball with the history of the American economy A short book it suYciently coversneither task Basketball fans in particular should look elsewhere for a treatment of boththe NBA and the career of Michael Jordan See instead the eminently readable andinformative Halberstam (1999) and in keeping with the line of argument pursued aboveJordan (1998)

19 This is what Mathiesen (1997) aptly coined the Synopticon20 Gerbner and Gross (1976) quoted in THC p 5321 This question if broadened in scope is arguably the most important question

sociologists can pose Period Substitute ldquosocietyrdquo for ldquoglobalizationrdquo and the analyticpotential of the question comes into bold relief

22 Compare the putative reality of the nancial market with the following breath-less declaration ldquoIn short against all the prophets of misery who want to convince youthat your destiny is in the hands of transcendent independent indiVerent powers suchas the lsquo nancial marketsrsquo or the mechanisms if lsquoglobalizationrsquo I want to declare withthe hope of convincing you that the future your future which is also our future thatof all Europeans depends a great deal on you as Germans and trade unionistsrdquo (AORp 69)

23 For his own analysis cum criticism of the ldquojournalistic eldrdquo see Bourdieu (1998)for Bourdieursquos take on the role of intellectuals in diVusing the new global vulgate seeBourdieu and Wacquant (1999a 1999b)

24 I say presumably because Bourdieu at no point in AOR elaborates this programFor an original and compelling criticism of Bourdieursquos sociological theory and methodsee Griller (1996)

25 See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992 pp 104ndash5) Whether or not the global eldis coterminous with what Bourdieu calls the eld of power (a kind of meta- eld) is aninteresting question

26 If I am harder on Bourdieu than the other authors under review (which is arguable)it is due rst to the inconsistency that obtains between his previous scholarly work andhis present political critique and second and most important because his ostensibly lib-eral critique unwittingly and insidiously reproduces the neo-liberal discourse he seeks tosubvert

27 Not coincidentally the so-called ldquothird wayrdquo also advocated by Bill Clinton islargely inspired by Anthony Giddensrsquo book of the same name Space does not permitan analysis of Giddensrsquo contribution to practical politics here Blair and Schroederrsquos man-ifesto is reprinted in the spring 2000 edition of Dissent pp 51ndash65

28 Small wonder Gray who makes the same recommendation demonizes the Thatcheradministration on the one (left) hand while he serves as an apologist for the presentBlair government on the other (right) hand

29 See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 2030 Ibid31 See Sassen (2000 pp 164ndash65)32 For example the entire corpus of Theda Skocpal33 Wallerstein (2000 p 307)34 An apt example of the compartmentalist way of thinking about the state is Daniel

Bellrsquos famous remark that the nation-state is at once too small and too large to ade-quately address most of the problems it faces

35 1946 p 1236 Which in the case of Bourdieu in particular is all the more ironic for its theo-

retical inconsistency with his overall sociological-epistemological project37 Why after all is ldquoglobalizationrdquo now on everyonersquos lips in academe Might it

have something to do as a colleague of mine astutely theorizes because the educatedand professional middle-classes including university professors of Western nations are

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

344 review essay

Sassen moreover rejects the notion that the global economy is ldquosome-how lsquoout therersquordquo forcing a nation and its corporations to change theirpractices Rather Sassen argues forcefully that the global economy hasbeen created by national industries with the assistance of their ownnationrsquos legislative and regulatory bodies In so doing Sassen pushes thede nition of the global economy beyond the production distributionand consumption of goods and services to encompass a worldwide sys-tem of governance and power within a ldquonew frontier zonerdquo which

is not merely a dividing line between the national economy and theglobal economy It is a zone of politico-economic interactions that pro-duce new institutional forms and alter some of the old ones Nor is this encounterbetween the global and the national just a matter of reducing regulations or the role ofgovernment generally simply to posit as is so often done that economic glob-alization has brought with it declining signi cance of the national state toutcourt misses some of the ner points of this transformation (emphasis mine)31

Pace Sassen and others who argue convincingly for the need to ldquobringthe state back inrdquo32 to our analyses the failure to recognize the trans-formation of the nonetheless active role of the nation-state is a symp-tom of a much broader failure of the sociological imagination bear inmind that the works discussed above are by some of the eldrsquos mostprominent gures Despite their admirably meliorist intentions theseworks each serve to invest ldquoglobalizationrdquo and its corollaries ie mar-ket and technological ldquoforcesrdquo with a ldquothingnessrdquo and an eYcacy itdoes not cannot possess This tendency stems I think from the nolonger tenable theoretical assumption that modernity consists of the compartmentalization of reality into three distinct domains (1) Market(economy) (2) State (polity) and (3) Civil Society (culturepublic sphere)It is arguable whether this tripartite heuristic was ever analytically use-ful but the problem it poses for sociologists now is a diVerent one forthis heuristic has assumed the status of a dead metaphor that of hardreality According to Wallerstein this theorem of separateness and mutualexclusivity a mere two hundred years old is now so deeply rooted inour consciousness and linguistic tools that we nd it almost impossibleto formulate sentences much less cogent analytic arguments free of thisthreefold monster33 Thus rei ed these epistemologic tools no longerserve us They instead predispose us to see each sphere in terms onlyof expansion (as in the case of the market) or retraction (as in the rolesof the state and the public sphere) rather than the simultaneous seman-tic and ontological transformation of all three34 Returning to Cassirer

review essay 345

But this problem itself appears spurious as soon as we realize that the dis-tinctions which here are taken for granted the analysis of reality in termsof things and processes permanent and transitory aspects objects andactions do not precede language as a substratum of given fact but thatlanguage itself is what initiates such articulations and develops them inits own sphere35

As Wallerstein adroitly notes these unconscious rei cations obscuremuch of reality from the scholars who unre exively deploy them36 Thereis however still more at work than this For all the attention I havedevoted to disentangling the discourse of ldquoglobalizationrdquo we must notlose sight of the many decisions actions and consequences intentionalor not that loosely comprise the ever-shifting reality of globalizationwithin which our analytic discourse is developed and deployed Chiefamong these in this context are the sense and the reality of profounddislocation displacement and disengagement that aVect sociologists asmuch as anyone else37 Our theories and methods bear the indelibleimprint of the world we seek to comprehend

A renovated sociological imagination of globalization must steer clearof the grand theorizing rehearsed by the works reviewed here withoutsimultaneously lapsing into the abstracted empiricism that infects mostof the technical work on globalization38 To avoid these twin pitfalls wewill need to develop an entirely new vocabulary grounded in directempirical engagement with our new globalizing reality Examples ofthis new approach are already under way They include so far Marcusrsquocall for multi-sited ethnography Sassenrsquos work toward cultivating anethnographic approach to studying the way the global is instantiatedwithin local urban spaces and Duneierrsquos ldquoextended place methodrdquo39

The considerable potential of these approaches notwithstanding the soci-ological apprehension of globalization will require rst and foremost acollective eVort on the part of variously situated scholars to wit a globalnetwork consisting of several local nodes in which substantive con ictand cooperation may freely occur What the late Bill Readings calleda community of ldquodissensusrdquo40 Absent these eVorts our meliorist inten-tions have little chance of ever becoming eYcacious interventions

Notes

1 Thanks to Denis Wall for editorial assistance and to Julie Custeau for her ever-astute guidance and unfailing support of everything that I do The works reviewed hereinclude Bauman Zygmunt 1998 Globalization the human consequences (New York ColumbiaUniversity Press) hereafter THC Bourdieu Pierre 1998 Acts of resistance against the tyranny

346 review essay

of the market (New York The New Press) hereafter AOR Gray John 1998 False dawnthe delusions of global capitalism (London Granta Books) hereafter FD Giddens Anthony2000 Runaway World (New York Routledge) hereafter RW and LaFeber Walter 1999Michael Jordan and the new global capitalism (New York W W Norton amp Company) here-after NGC

2 1946 p 73 See Cassidy (1997) The recent highly organized public protests in Davos Seattle

and Washington lend support to this prediction4 For an historical perspective on the semantic polyvalence if not polysemy of

ldquoglobalizationrdquo over the Longue Dureacutee see Moore (1997)5 As Giddens puts it ldquoThe global spread of the term [globalization] is evidence of

the very developments to which it refersrdquo (RW p 3)6 See Bourdieursquos AOR p 427 Gray later asserts however that ldquoThe leverage of sovereign states over business

may actually be greater in some respects today than it has been in the pastrdquo (FD p 67) In which respects Gray does not say Nor does he oVer any evidence to but-tress what must be classi ed as like so many of the statements comprising FD purespeculation (or what might be euphemized as ldquoarm-chair economicsrdquo)

8 See the intriguing if tentative results of an international project comparing thefuture of nationally embedded capitalism in the global economy in Streeck and Yamamura(2000)

9 For an illuminating historical treatment of the rei cation of technology see Marx(1997)

10 Gray argues further that the eVects of these forces are irrevocable and irreversibleThe regrettable and wrong-headed policy choices made by the Thatcher administrationnow constitute the ineluctable reality of the Blair government Gray goes on to arguethe same for the neo-liberal turn taken by New Zealand Grayrsquos argument is contra-dicted however by rst the palpably intentional adoption of neo-liberal tenets on thepart of the Blair government (not least its elimination of Article Four hitherto the cor-nerstone of Labour politics) and second by the recent election of a Labour governmentin New Zealand whose popularity in the polls in 1990 was just 2 percent a Labourgovernment that is moreover authentically committed to rebuilding and underwritingits social institutions See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 11 Even the Economistadmitted no doubt plaintively that ldquoglobalization is not irreversiblerdquo (see Smith andMoran [2000 p 70])

11 Gray is confused about the power of the American model Of ldquohyperglobaliza-tion a corporate utopiardquo Gray writes ldquoIt represents an historical transformation thathas no end-state and which is subverting American capitalism as well as its rivals as aprocess leading to the universal acceptance of American free marketsrdquo (FD p 67)

12 In contradistinction to Giddensrsquo slim but instructive A Brief but Critical Introductionto Sociology

13 Fitzgerald made this prediction in a personal letter to the novelist and criticEdmund (Bunny) Wilson

14 de Medici and de Medici (1986 pp 17ndash20)15 For an empirically rich and theoretically supple analysis of the local experience

of McDonaldrsquos throughout east Asia refer to Watson et al (1997) This volume of ethno-graphic accounts makes particularly plain the ways in which McDonaldrsquos as a transna-tional corporation has allowed itself via a local ownership structure to adapt to theexigencies and idiosyncrasies of local cultures Even while McDonaldrsquos market share reclinedin the United States during the 1990s it continued to grow in foreign markets includ-ing but not limited to east Asia

16 See Marcus (1995) on the advantages of conducting multi-site ethnography inofthe world system

17 Bourdieu (1987 p 184)

review essay 347

18 One nal word of warning regarding NGC the strength and weakness of thisbook are one in the same NGC is unique in that it tries to marry the history of bas-ketball with the history of the American economy A short book it suYciently coversneither task Basketball fans in particular should look elsewhere for a treatment of boththe NBA and the career of Michael Jordan See instead the eminently readable andinformative Halberstam (1999) and in keeping with the line of argument pursued aboveJordan (1998)

19 This is what Mathiesen (1997) aptly coined the Synopticon20 Gerbner and Gross (1976) quoted in THC p 5321 This question if broadened in scope is arguably the most important question

sociologists can pose Period Substitute ldquosocietyrdquo for ldquoglobalizationrdquo and the analyticpotential of the question comes into bold relief

22 Compare the putative reality of the nancial market with the following breath-less declaration ldquoIn short against all the prophets of misery who want to convince youthat your destiny is in the hands of transcendent independent indiVerent powers suchas the lsquo nancial marketsrsquo or the mechanisms if lsquoglobalizationrsquo I want to declare withthe hope of convincing you that the future your future which is also our future thatof all Europeans depends a great deal on you as Germans and trade unionistsrdquo (AORp 69)

23 For his own analysis cum criticism of the ldquojournalistic eldrdquo see Bourdieu (1998)for Bourdieursquos take on the role of intellectuals in diVusing the new global vulgate seeBourdieu and Wacquant (1999a 1999b)

24 I say presumably because Bourdieu at no point in AOR elaborates this programFor an original and compelling criticism of Bourdieursquos sociological theory and methodsee Griller (1996)

25 See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992 pp 104ndash5) Whether or not the global eldis coterminous with what Bourdieu calls the eld of power (a kind of meta- eld) is aninteresting question

26 If I am harder on Bourdieu than the other authors under review (which is arguable)it is due rst to the inconsistency that obtains between his previous scholarly work andhis present political critique and second and most important because his ostensibly lib-eral critique unwittingly and insidiously reproduces the neo-liberal discourse he seeks tosubvert

27 Not coincidentally the so-called ldquothird wayrdquo also advocated by Bill Clinton islargely inspired by Anthony Giddensrsquo book of the same name Space does not permitan analysis of Giddensrsquo contribution to practical politics here Blair and Schroederrsquos man-ifesto is reprinted in the spring 2000 edition of Dissent pp 51ndash65

28 Small wonder Gray who makes the same recommendation demonizes the Thatcheradministration on the one (left) hand while he serves as an apologist for the presentBlair government on the other (right) hand

29 See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 2030 Ibid31 See Sassen (2000 pp 164ndash65)32 For example the entire corpus of Theda Skocpal33 Wallerstein (2000 p 307)34 An apt example of the compartmentalist way of thinking about the state is Daniel

Bellrsquos famous remark that the nation-state is at once too small and too large to ade-quately address most of the problems it faces

35 1946 p 1236 Which in the case of Bourdieu in particular is all the more ironic for its theo-

retical inconsistency with his overall sociological-epistemological project37 Why after all is ldquoglobalizationrdquo now on everyonersquos lips in academe Might it

have something to do as a colleague of mine astutely theorizes because the educatedand professional middle-classes including university professors of Western nations are

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

review essay 345

But this problem itself appears spurious as soon as we realize that the dis-tinctions which here are taken for granted the analysis of reality in termsof things and processes permanent and transitory aspects objects andactions do not precede language as a substratum of given fact but thatlanguage itself is what initiates such articulations and develops them inits own sphere35

As Wallerstein adroitly notes these unconscious rei cations obscuremuch of reality from the scholars who unre exively deploy them36 Thereis however still more at work than this For all the attention I havedevoted to disentangling the discourse of ldquoglobalizationrdquo we must notlose sight of the many decisions actions and consequences intentionalor not that loosely comprise the ever-shifting reality of globalizationwithin which our analytic discourse is developed and deployed Chiefamong these in this context are the sense and the reality of profounddislocation displacement and disengagement that aVect sociologists asmuch as anyone else37 Our theories and methods bear the indelibleimprint of the world we seek to comprehend

A renovated sociological imagination of globalization must steer clearof the grand theorizing rehearsed by the works reviewed here withoutsimultaneously lapsing into the abstracted empiricism that infects mostof the technical work on globalization38 To avoid these twin pitfalls wewill need to develop an entirely new vocabulary grounded in directempirical engagement with our new globalizing reality Examples ofthis new approach are already under way They include so far Marcusrsquocall for multi-sited ethnography Sassenrsquos work toward cultivating anethnographic approach to studying the way the global is instantiatedwithin local urban spaces and Duneierrsquos ldquoextended place methodrdquo39

The considerable potential of these approaches notwithstanding the soci-ological apprehension of globalization will require rst and foremost acollective eVort on the part of variously situated scholars to wit a globalnetwork consisting of several local nodes in which substantive con ictand cooperation may freely occur What the late Bill Readings calleda community of ldquodissensusrdquo40 Absent these eVorts our meliorist inten-tions have little chance of ever becoming eYcacious interventions

Notes

1 Thanks to Denis Wall for editorial assistance and to Julie Custeau for her ever-astute guidance and unfailing support of everything that I do The works reviewed hereinclude Bauman Zygmunt 1998 Globalization the human consequences (New York ColumbiaUniversity Press) hereafter THC Bourdieu Pierre 1998 Acts of resistance against the tyranny

346 review essay

of the market (New York The New Press) hereafter AOR Gray John 1998 False dawnthe delusions of global capitalism (London Granta Books) hereafter FD Giddens Anthony2000 Runaway World (New York Routledge) hereafter RW and LaFeber Walter 1999Michael Jordan and the new global capitalism (New York W W Norton amp Company) here-after NGC

2 1946 p 73 See Cassidy (1997) The recent highly organized public protests in Davos Seattle

and Washington lend support to this prediction4 For an historical perspective on the semantic polyvalence if not polysemy of

ldquoglobalizationrdquo over the Longue Dureacutee see Moore (1997)5 As Giddens puts it ldquoThe global spread of the term [globalization] is evidence of

the very developments to which it refersrdquo (RW p 3)6 See Bourdieursquos AOR p 427 Gray later asserts however that ldquoThe leverage of sovereign states over business

may actually be greater in some respects today than it has been in the pastrdquo (FD p 67) In which respects Gray does not say Nor does he oVer any evidence to but-tress what must be classi ed as like so many of the statements comprising FD purespeculation (or what might be euphemized as ldquoarm-chair economicsrdquo)

8 See the intriguing if tentative results of an international project comparing thefuture of nationally embedded capitalism in the global economy in Streeck and Yamamura(2000)

9 For an illuminating historical treatment of the rei cation of technology see Marx(1997)

10 Gray argues further that the eVects of these forces are irrevocable and irreversibleThe regrettable and wrong-headed policy choices made by the Thatcher administrationnow constitute the ineluctable reality of the Blair government Gray goes on to arguethe same for the neo-liberal turn taken by New Zealand Grayrsquos argument is contra-dicted however by rst the palpably intentional adoption of neo-liberal tenets on thepart of the Blair government (not least its elimination of Article Four hitherto the cor-nerstone of Labour politics) and second by the recent election of a Labour governmentin New Zealand whose popularity in the polls in 1990 was just 2 percent a Labourgovernment that is moreover authentically committed to rebuilding and underwritingits social institutions See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 11 Even the Economistadmitted no doubt plaintively that ldquoglobalization is not irreversiblerdquo (see Smith andMoran [2000 p 70])

11 Gray is confused about the power of the American model Of ldquohyperglobaliza-tion a corporate utopiardquo Gray writes ldquoIt represents an historical transformation thathas no end-state and which is subverting American capitalism as well as its rivals as aprocess leading to the universal acceptance of American free marketsrdquo (FD p 67)

12 In contradistinction to Giddensrsquo slim but instructive A Brief but Critical Introductionto Sociology

13 Fitzgerald made this prediction in a personal letter to the novelist and criticEdmund (Bunny) Wilson

14 de Medici and de Medici (1986 pp 17ndash20)15 For an empirically rich and theoretically supple analysis of the local experience

of McDonaldrsquos throughout east Asia refer to Watson et al (1997) This volume of ethno-graphic accounts makes particularly plain the ways in which McDonaldrsquos as a transna-tional corporation has allowed itself via a local ownership structure to adapt to theexigencies and idiosyncrasies of local cultures Even while McDonaldrsquos market share reclinedin the United States during the 1990s it continued to grow in foreign markets includ-ing but not limited to east Asia

16 See Marcus (1995) on the advantages of conducting multi-site ethnography inofthe world system

17 Bourdieu (1987 p 184)

review essay 347

18 One nal word of warning regarding NGC the strength and weakness of thisbook are one in the same NGC is unique in that it tries to marry the history of bas-ketball with the history of the American economy A short book it suYciently coversneither task Basketball fans in particular should look elsewhere for a treatment of boththe NBA and the career of Michael Jordan See instead the eminently readable andinformative Halberstam (1999) and in keeping with the line of argument pursued aboveJordan (1998)

19 This is what Mathiesen (1997) aptly coined the Synopticon20 Gerbner and Gross (1976) quoted in THC p 5321 This question if broadened in scope is arguably the most important question

sociologists can pose Period Substitute ldquosocietyrdquo for ldquoglobalizationrdquo and the analyticpotential of the question comes into bold relief

22 Compare the putative reality of the nancial market with the following breath-less declaration ldquoIn short against all the prophets of misery who want to convince youthat your destiny is in the hands of transcendent independent indiVerent powers suchas the lsquo nancial marketsrsquo or the mechanisms if lsquoglobalizationrsquo I want to declare withthe hope of convincing you that the future your future which is also our future thatof all Europeans depends a great deal on you as Germans and trade unionistsrdquo (AORp 69)

23 For his own analysis cum criticism of the ldquojournalistic eldrdquo see Bourdieu (1998)for Bourdieursquos take on the role of intellectuals in diVusing the new global vulgate seeBourdieu and Wacquant (1999a 1999b)

24 I say presumably because Bourdieu at no point in AOR elaborates this programFor an original and compelling criticism of Bourdieursquos sociological theory and methodsee Griller (1996)

25 See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992 pp 104ndash5) Whether or not the global eldis coterminous with what Bourdieu calls the eld of power (a kind of meta- eld) is aninteresting question

26 If I am harder on Bourdieu than the other authors under review (which is arguable)it is due rst to the inconsistency that obtains between his previous scholarly work andhis present political critique and second and most important because his ostensibly lib-eral critique unwittingly and insidiously reproduces the neo-liberal discourse he seeks tosubvert

27 Not coincidentally the so-called ldquothird wayrdquo also advocated by Bill Clinton islargely inspired by Anthony Giddensrsquo book of the same name Space does not permitan analysis of Giddensrsquo contribution to practical politics here Blair and Schroederrsquos man-ifesto is reprinted in the spring 2000 edition of Dissent pp 51ndash65

28 Small wonder Gray who makes the same recommendation demonizes the Thatcheradministration on the one (left) hand while he serves as an apologist for the presentBlair government on the other (right) hand

29 See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 2030 Ibid31 See Sassen (2000 pp 164ndash65)32 For example the entire corpus of Theda Skocpal33 Wallerstein (2000 p 307)34 An apt example of the compartmentalist way of thinking about the state is Daniel

Bellrsquos famous remark that the nation-state is at once too small and too large to ade-quately address most of the problems it faces

35 1946 p 1236 Which in the case of Bourdieu in particular is all the more ironic for its theo-

retical inconsistency with his overall sociological-epistemological project37 Why after all is ldquoglobalizationrdquo now on everyonersquos lips in academe Might it

have something to do as a colleague of mine astutely theorizes because the educatedand professional middle-classes including university professors of Western nations are

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

346 review essay

of the market (New York The New Press) hereafter AOR Gray John 1998 False dawnthe delusions of global capitalism (London Granta Books) hereafter FD Giddens Anthony2000 Runaway World (New York Routledge) hereafter RW and LaFeber Walter 1999Michael Jordan and the new global capitalism (New York W W Norton amp Company) here-after NGC

2 1946 p 73 See Cassidy (1997) The recent highly organized public protests in Davos Seattle

and Washington lend support to this prediction4 For an historical perspective on the semantic polyvalence if not polysemy of

ldquoglobalizationrdquo over the Longue Dureacutee see Moore (1997)5 As Giddens puts it ldquoThe global spread of the term [globalization] is evidence of

the very developments to which it refersrdquo (RW p 3)6 See Bourdieursquos AOR p 427 Gray later asserts however that ldquoThe leverage of sovereign states over business

may actually be greater in some respects today than it has been in the pastrdquo (FD p 67) In which respects Gray does not say Nor does he oVer any evidence to but-tress what must be classi ed as like so many of the statements comprising FD purespeculation (or what might be euphemized as ldquoarm-chair economicsrdquo)

8 See the intriguing if tentative results of an international project comparing thefuture of nationally embedded capitalism in the global economy in Streeck and Yamamura(2000)

9 For an illuminating historical treatment of the rei cation of technology see Marx(1997)

10 Gray argues further that the eVects of these forces are irrevocable and irreversibleThe regrettable and wrong-headed policy choices made by the Thatcher administrationnow constitute the ineluctable reality of the Blair government Gray goes on to arguethe same for the neo-liberal turn taken by New Zealand Grayrsquos argument is contra-dicted however by rst the palpably intentional adoption of neo-liberal tenets on thepart of the Blair government (not least its elimination of Article Four hitherto the cor-nerstone of Labour politics) and second by the recent election of a Labour governmentin New Zealand whose popularity in the polls in 1990 was just 2 percent a Labourgovernment that is moreover authentically committed to rebuilding and underwritingits social institutions See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 11 Even the Economistadmitted no doubt plaintively that ldquoglobalization is not irreversiblerdquo (see Smith andMoran [2000 p 70])

11 Gray is confused about the power of the American model Of ldquohyperglobaliza-tion a corporate utopiardquo Gray writes ldquoIt represents an historical transformation thathas no end-state and which is subverting American capitalism as well as its rivals as aprocess leading to the universal acceptance of American free marketsrdquo (FD p 67)

12 In contradistinction to Giddensrsquo slim but instructive A Brief but Critical Introductionto Sociology

13 Fitzgerald made this prediction in a personal letter to the novelist and criticEdmund (Bunny) Wilson

14 de Medici and de Medici (1986 pp 17ndash20)15 For an empirically rich and theoretically supple analysis of the local experience

of McDonaldrsquos throughout east Asia refer to Watson et al (1997) This volume of ethno-graphic accounts makes particularly plain the ways in which McDonaldrsquos as a transna-tional corporation has allowed itself via a local ownership structure to adapt to theexigencies and idiosyncrasies of local cultures Even while McDonaldrsquos market share reclinedin the United States during the 1990s it continued to grow in foreign markets includ-ing but not limited to east Asia

16 See Marcus (1995) on the advantages of conducting multi-site ethnography inofthe world system

17 Bourdieu (1987 p 184)

review essay 347

18 One nal word of warning regarding NGC the strength and weakness of thisbook are one in the same NGC is unique in that it tries to marry the history of bas-ketball with the history of the American economy A short book it suYciently coversneither task Basketball fans in particular should look elsewhere for a treatment of boththe NBA and the career of Michael Jordan See instead the eminently readable andinformative Halberstam (1999) and in keeping with the line of argument pursued aboveJordan (1998)

19 This is what Mathiesen (1997) aptly coined the Synopticon20 Gerbner and Gross (1976) quoted in THC p 5321 This question if broadened in scope is arguably the most important question

sociologists can pose Period Substitute ldquosocietyrdquo for ldquoglobalizationrdquo and the analyticpotential of the question comes into bold relief

22 Compare the putative reality of the nancial market with the following breath-less declaration ldquoIn short against all the prophets of misery who want to convince youthat your destiny is in the hands of transcendent independent indiVerent powers suchas the lsquo nancial marketsrsquo or the mechanisms if lsquoglobalizationrsquo I want to declare withthe hope of convincing you that the future your future which is also our future thatof all Europeans depends a great deal on you as Germans and trade unionistsrdquo (AORp 69)

23 For his own analysis cum criticism of the ldquojournalistic eldrdquo see Bourdieu (1998)for Bourdieursquos take on the role of intellectuals in diVusing the new global vulgate seeBourdieu and Wacquant (1999a 1999b)

24 I say presumably because Bourdieu at no point in AOR elaborates this programFor an original and compelling criticism of Bourdieursquos sociological theory and methodsee Griller (1996)

25 See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992 pp 104ndash5) Whether or not the global eldis coterminous with what Bourdieu calls the eld of power (a kind of meta- eld) is aninteresting question

26 If I am harder on Bourdieu than the other authors under review (which is arguable)it is due rst to the inconsistency that obtains between his previous scholarly work andhis present political critique and second and most important because his ostensibly lib-eral critique unwittingly and insidiously reproduces the neo-liberal discourse he seeks tosubvert

27 Not coincidentally the so-called ldquothird wayrdquo also advocated by Bill Clinton islargely inspired by Anthony Giddensrsquo book of the same name Space does not permitan analysis of Giddensrsquo contribution to practical politics here Blair and Schroederrsquos man-ifesto is reprinted in the spring 2000 edition of Dissent pp 51ndash65

28 Small wonder Gray who makes the same recommendation demonizes the Thatcheradministration on the one (left) hand while he serves as an apologist for the presentBlair government on the other (right) hand

29 See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 2030 Ibid31 See Sassen (2000 pp 164ndash65)32 For example the entire corpus of Theda Skocpal33 Wallerstein (2000 p 307)34 An apt example of the compartmentalist way of thinking about the state is Daniel

Bellrsquos famous remark that the nation-state is at once too small and too large to ade-quately address most of the problems it faces

35 1946 p 1236 Which in the case of Bourdieu in particular is all the more ironic for its theo-

retical inconsistency with his overall sociological-epistemological project37 Why after all is ldquoglobalizationrdquo now on everyonersquos lips in academe Might it

have something to do as a colleague of mine astutely theorizes because the educatedand professional middle-classes including university professors of Western nations are

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

review essay 347

18 One nal word of warning regarding NGC the strength and weakness of thisbook are one in the same NGC is unique in that it tries to marry the history of bas-ketball with the history of the American economy A short book it suYciently coversneither task Basketball fans in particular should look elsewhere for a treatment of boththe NBA and the career of Michael Jordan See instead the eminently readable andinformative Halberstam (1999) and in keeping with the line of argument pursued aboveJordan (1998)

19 This is what Mathiesen (1997) aptly coined the Synopticon20 Gerbner and Gross (1976) quoted in THC p 5321 This question if broadened in scope is arguably the most important question

sociologists can pose Period Substitute ldquosocietyrdquo for ldquoglobalizationrdquo and the analyticpotential of the question comes into bold relief

22 Compare the putative reality of the nancial market with the following breath-less declaration ldquoIn short against all the prophets of misery who want to convince youthat your destiny is in the hands of transcendent independent indiVerent powers suchas the lsquo nancial marketsrsquo or the mechanisms if lsquoglobalizationrsquo I want to declare withthe hope of convincing you that the future your future which is also our future thatof all Europeans depends a great deal on you as Germans and trade unionistsrdquo (AORp 69)

23 For his own analysis cum criticism of the ldquojournalistic eldrdquo see Bourdieu (1998)for Bourdieursquos take on the role of intellectuals in diVusing the new global vulgate seeBourdieu and Wacquant (1999a 1999b)

24 I say presumably because Bourdieu at no point in AOR elaborates this programFor an original and compelling criticism of Bourdieursquos sociological theory and methodsee Griller (1996)

25 See Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992 pp 104ndash5) Whether or not the global eldis coterminous with what Bourdieu calls the eld of power (a kind of meta- eld) is aninteresting question

26 If I am harder on Bourdieu than the other authors under review (which is arguable)it is due rst to the inconsistency that obtains between his previous scholarly work andhis present political critique and second and most important because his ostensibly lib-eral critique unwittingly and insidiously reproduces the neo-liberal discourse he seeks tosubvert

27 Not coincidentally the so-called ldquothird wayrdquo also advocated by Bill Clinton islargely inspired by Anthony Giddensrsquo book of the same name Space does not permitan analysis of Giddensrsquo contribution to practical politics here Blair and Schroederrsquos man-ifesto is reprinted in the spring 2000 edition of Dissent pp 51ndash65

28 Small wonder Gray who makes the same recommendation demonizes the Thatcheradministration on the one (left) hand while he serves as an apologist for the presentBlair government on the other (right) hand

29 See the Guardian Weekly May 11ndash17 2000 p 2030 Ibid31 See Sassen (2000 pp 164ndash65)32 For example the entire corpus of Theda Skocpal33 Wallerstein (2000 p 307)34 An apt example of the compartmentalist way of thinking about the state is Daniel

Bellrsquos famous remark that the nation-state is at once too small and too large to ade-quately address most of the problems it faces

35 1946 p 1236 Which in the case of Bourdieu in particular is all the more ironic for its theo-

retical inconsistency with his overall sociological-epistemological project37 Why after all is ldquoglobalizationrdquo now on everyonersquos lips in academe Might it

have something to do as a colleague of mine astutely theorizes because the educatedand professional middle-classes including university professors of Western nations are

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

348 review essay

beginning to bear the brunt of its ldquoforcerdquo Giddens remarks about the scope of global-ization suggest as much ldquoIts eVects [of globalization] are felt just as much in westerncountries as elsewhere Many of us feel in the grip of forces over which we have nocontrolrdquo (RW p 12)

38 For example Chase-Dunn et al (2000) or for that matter well-nigh any articleon globalization published in the American Sociological Review

39 Marcus (1995) Duneier (2000 pp 344ndash45)40 Readings (1996)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1990 ldquoThe romance of resistance tracing formations of power throughBedouin womenrdquo in American Ethnologist 17 pp 101ndash31

Barber Benjamin R 1996 Jihad vs McWorld how globalism and tribalism are reshaping theworld New York Ballantine Books

Bourdieu Pierre 1987 Chose dites Paris Editions Minuitmdashmdashmdash 1998 On television New York The New PressBourdieu Pierre and Loiumlc RD Wacquant 1992 An invitation to reexive sociology Chicago

University of Chicago Pressmdashmdashmdash 1999a ldquoTriumph of the global vulgaterdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp 69ndash78mdashmdashmdash 1999b ldquoOn the cunning of imperialist reasonrdquo in Theory Culture amp Society 16(1)

pp 41ndash58Cassidy John 1997 ldquoThe next thinker the return of Karl Marxrdquo in New Yorker October

pp 20ndash27Cassirer Ernst 1946 Language and myth Trans by Susanne K Langer New York Harper

and BrothersChase-Dunn Christopher Kawano Yukio and Benjamin D Brewer 2000 ldquoTrade glob-

alization since 1795 waves of integration in the world-systemrdquo in American SociologicalReview 65 pp 77ndash95

Duneier Mitchell 1999 Sidewalk New York Farrar Strauss and GirouxFrank Thomas C 1999 ldquoCold kicking it with the cult-studsrdquo in The BaTHORNer 12 pp

3ndash12 80ndash84 Gerbner George and Larry Gross 1976 ldquoLiving with television the violence pro lerdquo

in Journal of Communication 26 pp 173ndash98Griller Robin 1996 ldquoThe return of the subject The methodology of Pierre Bourdieurdquo

in Critical Sociology 22(1) pp 3ndash28Halberstam David 1999 Michael Jordan the making of a legend New York KnopfJameson Fredric and Masao Miyoshi eds 1998 The cultures of globalization Durham

NC Duke University PressJordan Michael 1998 For the love of the game my story New York KnopfLukacs Georg 1971 History and class consciousness studies in Marxist dialectics Trans by

Rodney Livingstone Cambridge MIT PressMarcus George E 1995 ldquoEthnography inof the world system the emergence of multi-

sited ethnographyrdquo in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 pp 95ndash117Marx Leo 1997 ldquoTechnology the emergence of a hazardous conceptrdquo in Social Research

64(3) pp 965ndash88Mathieson Thomas 1997 ldquoThe viewer society Michel Foucaultrsquos lsquoPanopticonrsquo revis-

itedrdquo in Theoretical Criminology pp 215ndash34de Medici Marino and Nicola de Medici 1986 ldquoForeign intervention Europe invades

Americardquo in Public Opinion 9 pp 17ndash20Moore Jason W 1997 ldquoCapitalism over the Longue Dureacutee a review essayrdquo in Critical

Sociology 23(3) pp 103ndash16

review essay 349

Readings Bill 1996 The University in Ruins Cambridge Harvard University PressSassen Saskia 2000 ldquoExcavating power in search of frontier zones and new actorsrdquo

in Theory Culture amp Society 17(1) pp 163ndash70Smith Jackie and Timothy Patrick Moran 2000 ldquoWTO 101 myths about the World

Trade Organizationrdquo in Dissent spring pp 66ndash70 Streeck Wolfgang and Kozo Yamamura 2000 ldquoGerman and Japan the future of

nationally embedded capitalism in a global economymdashoutline of a research pro-ject Unpublished paper

de Tocqueville Alexis 1990 [1840] Democracy in America (volume II) New York VintageClassics

Watson James L (ed) 1997 Golden arches east McDonaldrsquos in east Asia Stanford StanfordUniversity Press

Wallerstein Immanuel 2000 ldquoWhere should sociology be headingrdquo in ContemporarySociology 29(2) pp 306ndash308

Williams Raymond 1960 Culture and society 1780ndash1950 London Chatto amp Windus