Whither Globalization? The Vortex of Knowledge and Ideology

Extract

Whither Globalization? The Vortex of Knowledge and Ideology. By James H. Mittelman. New York: Routledge, 2004. 152p. $105.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.

This book contains an accessible blend of previously published articles (revised) and new essays that examine the role of knowledge and ideology as the pivots of globalization's power in the twenty-first century. Expanding the central arguments of his previous study, The Globalization Syndrome (2000), James Mittelman defines globalization as “a triangulated structure” comprised of “the global division of labor and power, a new regionalism, and resistance politics” (p. 5). Shifting his analytic focus from issues in international political economy to the cultural production of identities, Mittelman locates his primary concern in this concise collection in the “subjective framework of globalization, namely, knowledge and ideology” (p. 3). Thus viewing globalization as a “cognitive map constituted by clusters of knowledge,” the author focuses particularly on the production of alternative forms of knowledge, ideas, and strategies of resistance to globalization—“alterglobalization” (p. 97).