2 - Promises and hopes

Summary

During the heady days that followed China's entry into world markets and the conclusion of the Cold War during the early 1990s, the term “globalization” appeared to define the era. For many it was a relatively new word and was suddenly to be found everywhere (Cyr 2001).

As already noted, globalization can be defined narrowly or broadly. Almost all the definitions, however, imply or indeed assert that states and societies are, or perhaps were, being increasingly submerged within global systems and networks. Within this context there is both a broadening and an acceleration of economic processes. All in all, to borrow from an important analytical essay, globalization has four dimensions. It rests upon the increasing extensiveness of interactions, exchanges, connections and relations so that they span and incorporate areas of the world that were once largely isolated, the increasing intensity of those interactions, exchanges, connections and relations, the rising speed or velocity of those interactions, exchanges, connections and relations, and their growing impact upon communities and societies (Held et al. 2004: 69).

As a consequence of changes over recent decades in the character of these four different dimensions and interconnectedness more broadly, small-scale shocks and events in one country or region can have very serious repercussions across the globe (Manzi 2019: 471). For example, given the extended character of supply chains, events in perhaps a small part of China could have a dramatic impact upon the availability and use of mobile phones in the USA or Europe. And, as the 2008 financial crisis demonstrated, there was a sequential chain of events as consumer credit was made widely available in the USA: property prices peaked, individuals faced increasing challenges repaying bank loans, thereby placing the financial instruments created on the basis of those loans in jeopardy, and this in turn led to a credit crunch triggering severe global repercussions.

Arguably, as this implies, the concept of globalization involves more than increases in the volume of trade, exchange and investment but it also entails a fundamental shift to a “new economic structure” (Hirst & Thompson 2004: 99). Another definition makes the same point but goes further, representing globalization as an even more radical shift. It is “a material and ideational phenomenon or process which reduces the spatial distance between distinct geographical regions.