CHAPTER 1 GLOBALIZATION I LIQUIDS, FLOWS, AND STRUCTURES

       Some of the Basics

       From Solids to Liquids (to Gases)

       Flows

       Heavy, Light, Weightless

       Heavy Structures that Expedite Flows

       Heavy Structures as Barriers to Flows

       The Winners and Losers of Global Flows

       Thinking about Global Flows and Structures

       Chapter Summary

Globalization¹ is increasingly omnipresent. We are living in a – or even the – “global age” (Albrow 1996; Deflem 2016; Kershaw 2019). Globalization is clearly a very important change; it can even be argued (Bauman 2003) that it is the most important change in human history. This is reflected in many domains, but particularly in social relationships and social structures,² especially those that are widely dispersed geographically. “In the era of globalization… shared humanity face[s] the most fateful of the many fateful steps” it has made in its long history (Bauman 2003: 156, italics added).

The following is the definition of globalization³ to be used in this book (note that all of the italicized terms will be discussed in this chapter):

globalization is a planetary process or set of processes involving increasing liquidity and the growing multidirectional flows of people, objects, places and information as well as the structures they encounter and create that are barriers to, or expedite, those flows …⁴

      In contrast to many other definitions of globalization, this one does not assume that greater integration is an inevitable component of globalization. That is, globalization can bring with it greater integration (especially when things flow easily), but it can also serve to reduce the level of integration (when structures are erected that successfully block flows). For example, increasingly global flows recently led to the so-called Brexit, where British voters rejected greater integration with the European Union. The global spread of COVID-19 has led to some (perhaps temporary) barriers placed on the movement of people and goods between countries.

SOME OF THE BASICS

      In spite of the focus in this book on globalization, there are many scholars who do not accept the idea that we live in a global age (see Chapter 2). Nevertheless, this book embraces, and operates from, a “globalist” perspective (Hirst et al. 2015) – globalization is a reality. In fact, globalization is of such great importance that the era in which we live should be labeled the “global age.”

Debates about globalization are one of the reasons that there is undoubtedly no topic today more difficult to get one’s head around, let alone to master, than globalization. However, of far greater importance are the sheer magnitude, diversity, and complexity of the process of globalization which involves almost everyone, everything, and every place and each in innumerable ways. (The concept of globality refers to the condition [in this case omnipresence] resulting from the process of globalization [Kühnhardt and Mayer 2019].)

      For example, this book is being written by two Americans; our editor, managing editor and copy-editor are in England; reviewers are from four continents; the book is typeset in India; the book is printed in the USA and distributed by the publisher throughout much of the world; and you might be reading it today on a plane en route from Vladivostok to Shanghai. Further, if it follows the pattern of many of our other books, it may well be translated into Russian, Chinese, and many other languages. This book is also available for download onto wireless devices of all kinds. This would make the book highly liquid since it would be possible for it to be accessed anywhere in the world at any time.

      Before proceeding to the next section, a note is needed on the use of metaphors (Brown 1989), which will occupy a prominent place in the ensuing discussion. A metaphor involves the use of one term to better help us understand another term. Thus in the next section, we will use the metaphor of a “solid” to describe epochs before the era of globalization. Similarly, the global world will be described as being “liquid.” The use of such metaphors is designed to give the reader a better and a more vivid sense of the global age and how it differs from prior epochs.

FROM SOLIDS TO LIQUIDS (TO GASES)

      SOLIDS

      Prior to the current epoch of globalization (and as we will see, to most observers there was a previous global epoch [see Chapter 2], if not many previous epochs, of globalization), it could be argued that one of the things that characterized people, things, information, places, and much else was their greater solidity. That is, all of them tended to be hard or to harden (metaphorically, figuratively, not literally, of course) over time and therefore, among other things, to remain largely in place. As a result, people either did not go anywhere or they did not venture very far from where they were born and raised; their social relationships were restricted to those who were nearby. Much the same could be said of most objects (tools, food, and so on) which tended to be used where they were produced. The solidity of most material manifestations of information – stone tablets, newspapers, magazines, books, and so on – also made them at least somewhat difficult to move very far. Furthermore, since people didn’t move very far, neither did information. Places were not only quite solid and immoveable, but they tended to confront solid natural (mountains, rivers, oceans) and humanly constructed (walls, gates) barriers