Universidad Colegio Mayor de Cundinamarca

International Political Economy

Luis Felipe Camacho Carvajal, PhD.

Contend
• Next Week
Lectura Capitulo 11 p. 124 – 134. De, Herz (2021).
Seguridad. Capitulo 12 p. 124 – 134. De, Kacowics
(2021) negociaciones, resolución de conflictos y paz
introduccion-a-las-relaciones-internacionales.pdf
(ibero.mx)
 Where did start the interest for Globalization?
• Phenomena that drove globalization studies:
• Emergence of a globalized economy involving new systems of
production, finance and consumption and worldwide economic
integration.
• New transnational or global cultural patterns, practices and flows,
and the idea of ‘global culture(s)’.
• A global political processes, the rise of new transnational
institutions, and the spread of global governance and authority
structures of diverse sorts.
• Unprecedented movement of peoples around the world (involving
new patterns of transnational migration and tourism)
• New social hierarchies, forms of inequality, and relations of
domination around the world and in the global system as a whole
 Globalization´s research agenda
Variety of topics Disciplines vision towards globalization
• Transnational sexualities, • ethnic,
• to global tourism, • women’s studies,
• changes in the state, • literature,
• the restructuring of work, • the arts,
• transnational care-giving, • language and cultural studies,
• globalization and crime, • the social sciences,
• the global media,
• history,
• Creative industries,
• law,
• Ecology and sustainability
• business administration,
• Green economy,
• And so on. • natural and applied sciences.
 Theories of Globalization
• Globalization has become what we refer to as an essentially contested
concept mainly due the highly conflictive nature of the process.
• Diverse actors have associated globalization with
• expanding worldwide inequalities,
• new modes of exploitation and domination,
• displacement,
• marginalization,
• ecological holocaust and anti-globalization.
• Others have trumpeted the process as
• creating newfound prosperity,
• freedom,
• emancipation and democracy
 Theories of Globalization
• Main questions:
• when does globalization begin?’
• Is the core of the globalization process economic, political
or cultural?
• How do we understand the economic, political and
cultural proceses which gravitate around the center
of what we call globalization?
• How do we theorize this phenomenon
(Globalization) as a process or a condition?
 Theories of Globalization
• Most teorists of globalization would agree on:
• The pace of social change and transformation worldwide seems to have
quickened dramatically in the latter decades of the twentieth century
• This social change is related to increasing connectivity among peoples and
countries worldwide
• The effects of globalization are ubiquitous, and that different dimensions
of globalization (economic, political, cultural, etc.) are interrelated, ergo,
that globalization is multidimensional.
• There is a broader theoretical traditions and perspectives such as Marxism,
Weberianism, functionalism, postmodernism, critical and feminist theory,
and involve a number of distinct approaches to social inquiry, such as
cultural studies, international relations, post-colonial studies, literature
and so on. All of them have made their own and distinctive contribution
to the theories of globalization
 Theorical discourses of Globalization
• World-system theory (Wallerstein)
• Theories of global capitalism (Sklair)
• The network society (Castells).
• Theories of space, place and globlalization (Sassen)
• Theories of Transnationality and Transnationalism
(Robinson)
• Modernity, Postmodernity and Globalization (Robertson)
• Theories of Global Culture (Ritzer: McDonaldization)
 World-system theory (Wallerstein)
• “A key structure of the capitalist world-system is the
division of the world into three great regions, or
geographically based and hierarchically organized tiers.
The first is the core, or the powerful and developed
centres of the system, originally comprised of Western
Europe and later expanded to include North America and
Japan. The second is the periphery, those regions that have
been forcibly subordinated to the core through colonialism
or other means, and in the formative years of the capitalist
world-system would include Latin America, Africa, Asia, the
Middle East and Eastern Europe. Third is the semi-
periphery, comprised of those states and regions that were
previously in the core and are moving down in this
hierarchy, or those that were previously in the periphery
and are moving up. Values fl ow from the periphery to the
semi-periphery, and then to the core, as each region plays
a functionally specific role within an international division
of labour that reproduces this basic structure of
exploitation and inequality” (Pag. 129).
 Theories of global capitalism (Sklair)
• “… a ‘theory of the global system’, at the core of which are
‘transnational practices’ (TNPs) as operational categories for
the analysis of transnational phenomena. These TNPs
originate with non-state actors and cross-state borders. The
model involves TNPs at three levels: the economic, whose
agent is transnational capital; the political, whose agent is a
transnational capitalist class (TCC); and the cultural-
ideological, whose agent is cultural elites. Each practice, in
turn, is primarily identifi ed with a major institution. The
transnational corporation is the most important institution for
economic TNPs; the TCC for political TNPs; and the culture-
ideology of consumerism for transnational cultural-ideological
processes […] the idea of the TCC as a new class that brings
together several social groups who see their own interests in
an expanding global capitalist system: the executives of
transnational corporations; ‘globalizing bureaucrats,
politicians, and professionals’, and ‘consumerist elites’ in the
media and the commercial sector (Sklair 2000)” (Pag. 130)
• “Robinson theorizes an emergent transnational state (TNS)
apparatus” (Pag. 131).
 The network society (Castells)
• “Castells’ approach has been closely associated with the
notion of globalization as representing a new ‘age of
information’. In his construct, two analytically separate
processes came together in the latter decades of the
twentieth century to result in the rise of the network
society. One was the development of new information
technology (IT), in particular, computers and the Internet,
representing a new technological paradigm and leading to
a new ‘mode of development’ that Castells terms
‘informationalism’. The other was capitalist retooling using
the power of this technology and ushering in a new system
of ‘information capitalism’, what Castells and others have
alternatively referred to as the ‘new economy. This new
economy is: (1) informational, knowledge-based; (2)
global, in that production is organized on a global scale;
and (3) networked, in that productivity is generated
through global networks of interaction.” (Pag. 132).
 Theories of space, place and
globlalization (Sassen)
• “… Sassen’s study is grounded in a larger body of
literature on ‘world cities’ that view world-class cities as
sites of major production, finances or coordinating of the
world economy within an international division of labour,
and more recent research on ‘globalizing cities’ (see, e.g.,
Marcuse and van Kempen 2000). Sassen proposes that a
new spatial order is emerging under globalization based
on a network of global cities and led by New York,
London and Tokyo. These global cities are sites of
specialized services for transnationally mobile capital
that is so central to the global economy. This global
economy has involved the global decentralization of
production simultaneous to the centralization of
command and control of the global production system
within global cities.” (Pag. 134).
 Theories of Transnationality and
Transnationalism (Robinson)
• “Transnationalism is referred to more generally in the
globalization literature as an umbrella concept
encompassing a wide variety of transformative
processes, practices and developments that take place
simultaneously at a local and global level […] The
concepts of transnationality and transnationalism
have increasingly been given a broader interpretation
beyond immigration studies […] the transnational
mobility of more affluent sectors, such as professional
and managerial groups. Transnationality must be seen
as constructed through class and racial boundaries
and as a gendered process. Transnational social spaces
can extend into other spaces, including spaces of
transnational sexuality, musical and youth
subcultures, journalism, as well as a multitude of
other identities, ranging from those based on gender
to those based on race, religion or ethnicity.” (Pag.
137).
 Modernity, Postmodernity and
Globalization (Robertson)
• “‘Globalization as a concept refers both to the
compression of the world and the intensification of
consciousness of the world as a whole . . . both
concrete global interdependence and consciousness
of the global whole in the twentieth century’
(Robertson 1992: 8) (Pag. 138).
• “…as ‘time-space distanciation’, as the outcome of
the completion of modernization – he terms it ‘late
modernity’ – on the basis of the nation-state as the
universal political form organized along the four axes
of capitalism, industrialism, surveillance and military
power.” (Pag. 138).
• “… globalization signals the end of the ‘modern age’
and the dawn of a new historic epoch, the ‘global
age’ .” (Pag. 139).
 Theories of Global Culture (Ritzer:
McDonaldization)
• “… tend to emphasize globalizing cultural forms and fl ows,
belief systems and ideologies over the economic and/or
the political. Such approaches distinctively problematize
the existence of a ‘global culture’ and ‘making the world a
single place’ – whether as a reality, a possibility or a
fantasy. They emphasize the rapid growth of the mass
media and resultant global cultural fl ows and images in
recent decades, evoking the image famously put forth by
Marshall McLuhan of ‘the global village’. Cultural theories
of globalization have focused on such phenomena as
globalization and religion, nations and ethnicity, global
consumerism, global communications and the
globalization of tourism.” (Pag. 139).
• “… on the ‘global cultural economy’ refers to what he sees
as the ‘central problem of today’s global interactions’, the
tension between cultural homogenization and cultural
heterogenization. […] These flows generate distinct images
– sets of symbols, meanings, representations and values.”
(Pag. 140 -141).
 Define at least three
The first point for
the second exam
categories of comparison
must be done and make a comparative
individually. chart of all the
Must be delivered discourses of theories of
on the day of the globalization.
second exam.
¡¡Thank you!!!
Luis Felipe Camacho Carvajal,
PhD.
lfcamacho@unicolmayor.edu.co