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Globalization: Fromdomination to resistanceRay KielyVersion of record first published: 25 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Ray Kiely (2000): Globalization: From domination toresistance, Third World Quarterly, 21:6, 1059-1070

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Third World Quarterly, Vol 21, No 6, pp 1059–1070, 2000

FEATURE REVIEW

Globalization: from domination toresistanceRay Kiely

Globalisation and the Postcolonial WorldAnkie HoogveltBasingstoke: Macmillan, 1997pp 291 £12.99

Understanding Globalization: The Social Consequences of Political, Econ-omic and Environmental ChangeRobert SchaefferLanham, MD: Rowman and Little� eld, 1997pp 360 $21.95

Capitalism in the Age of GlobalizationSamir AminLondon: Zed, 1997pp 158 £12.95

Globalization: A critical IntroductionJan Aart ScholteBasingstoke: Macmillan, 2000pp 361 £14.99bp

Vanishing Borders: Protecting the Planet in the Age of GlobalizationHilary FrenchLondon: Earthscan, 2000pp 257 £14.95

Globalization and the Politics of Resistanceedited by Barry K GillsBasingstoke: Macmillan, 2000pp 321 £45

Ray Kiely is in the Department of Cultural Studies,University of East London,Docklands Campus, 4–6 UniversityWay, Off Royal Albert Way, London E16 2RD, UK. E-mail: R. B. Kiely@uel.ac.uk.

ISSN 0143-6597 print; 1360-2241 online/00/0601059-12 Ó 2000 Third World Quarterly

DOI: 10.1080/01436590020012043 1059

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Localization: A Global ManifestoColin HinesLondon: Earthscan, 2000pp 290 £10.99

Globalization and its Criticsedited by Randall D GermainBasingstoke: Macmillan, 2000pp 292 £19.50

The Political Economy of Globalizationedited by Ngaire WoodsBasingstoke: Macmillan, 2000pp 230 £45

The Globalization Syndrome: Transformation and ResistanceJames H MittelmanPrinceton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000pp 286 £11.50

Jan Scholte’s book opens with the line ‘Not another book on globalisation!’ (pxiii). Much the same could be said for this review article, as it takes in 10 of themost recent books about the subject. Reading through the books one comesacross considerable repetition (often the same writers crop up in more than onebook) and I sometimes share Scholte’s concerns. At the same time, there is muchin these books to be recommended, as the term still lacks clarity, and thereremains considerable debate over what exactly is novel about globalization.Moreover, these books demonstrate that there is a gradual shift in emphasis inwork about globalization, and at last considerable attention is being paid to whatRichard Falk among others (in Gills’ Chapter Four) calls ‘globalization frombelow’.

This article can hardly do justice to the 10 books under review. Rather thanattempt a full-scale analysis of each of these it will focus more narrowly on twothemes. First, on de� nitions and some of the contested features of ‘actuallyexisting globalization’. Here I want to concentrate on the question of therelationship between globalization and geography, questioning the notion thatthings (capital, media images, and so on) now move so quickly that either wehave seen the triumph of neoliberalism or resistance to (neoliberal or postmod-ern) globalization, is futile. Space remains central to any understanding ofglobalization,1 and while in some respects this shows that there are stronggrounds for pessimism, I hope to show that this also gives grounds for hope, andthat ‘actually existing globalization’ can be resisted. The demonstrations inSeattle and elsewhere in 1999– 2000,2 as well as recent strikes and unrest in(among others) Argentina, South Africa, Nigeria, Ecuador, Brazil and SouthKorea, show that globalization from above has not been passively accepted, andthat we must also talk about globalization from below.3 At the same time, thetemptation to uncritically celebrate resistance—easy to do in these supposedly

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apolitical times—must itself be resisted, and some sort of critical appraisal isneeded. The main weakness of much of this resistance is a crude polarization ofthe ‘progressive local’ from the ‘reactionary global’, and this comes across insome of the books under review (and is rightly criticized in others). I want tosuggest that a progressive politics of globalization is more complicated than that.The question of resistance and alternatives will therefore be looked at throughthe lens of Seattle, and the questions these books pose will be viewed in the lightof these events.

Structures of globalization: the continued importance of space

Scholte’s excellent critical introduction discusses � ve ways in which the termglobalization has been used (pp 15–17, 44– 46). It has often been used as asubstitute for (i) internationalization; (ii) liberalization; (iii) universalization; (iv)Westernization; (v) deterritorialization. He argues that the � rst four usages areunsatisfactory, mainly because they fail to point to anything novel or distinctiveabout the current era. These de� nitions—and the reasons for rejecting them—therefore deserve wider consideration.

Globalization has been de� ned as an increase in interaction and interdepen-dence between people in different countries. This has led to a debate between‘hyper-globalizers’ and their critics over the extent of cross-border relationsbetween countries, such as that of trade and capital � ows.4 While there havebeen increases in cross-border exchanges in recent years, it is far from clear thatthis phenomenon is new. Indeed, as Hirst and Thompson have argued (see alsoDunning in Woods), the late nineteenth and early twentieth century sawcomparable (and sometimes higher) levels of cross-border migration, foreigninvestment, � nance and trade.5 Moreover, the notion that interaction is new canoften take the form of an implicit Eurocentrism. For many parts of the world,and especially the former Third World, being in� uenced (or more bluntly,dominated) by distant places is hardly a novel experience, as the history ofcolonialism demonstrates.6 Clearly then for globalization to be really distinctiveit must mean more than simply enhanced internationalization.

The same can also be said for the second, third and fourth usages. Thus, inthe case of liberalization, there is evidence supporting this de� nition—inparticular, reductions in trade barriers such as tariffs and import controls. Butunderstanding globalization in this way is similarly ahistorical, as there wereearlier periods of widespread liberalization, such as the third quarter of thenineteenth century. In the case of universalization, this is used to talk of agenuinely worldwide culture. Again, while there may be an increase in theamount of global cultural phenomena, the spread of some aspects of a globalculture is hardly new—thus we have world religions and commodities thatpredate the contemporary era. Finally, Westernization may again point to somecharacteristics of the current era, but it is hardly new, as the histories ofcolonialism and imperialism show.

Scholte then goes on to argue that globalization entails ‘deterritorialization’.By this he means ‘a recon� guration of social space’ (p 46). In a territorial world,‘people normally have most of their interactions and af� liations with others whoshare the same territorial space’ (p 47). This may be at the level of the local

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village or it may be in the same country. What is novel about the global era isthat we have witnessed ‘a proliferation of social connections that are at leastpartly—and often quite substantially—detached from [such] a territorial logic’ (p47). Scholte provides us with a list of global activities in the areas of communi-cations, markets, production, money, � nance, organizations, social ecology andconsciousness. In discussing these examples he is careful to distinguish what isactually novel and global about these practices. Thus, ozone depletion ‘existseverywhere on earth at the same time, and its relative distribution acrossdifferent parts of the world shifts without regard to territorial distances orborders’ (pp 47– 48; see also French, pp 90–105). New communications tech-nologies such as satellite television and the internet have meant that (some)people interact or receive images, texts and so on regardless of territorial space.In addition there exist global markets for particular products; global productionnetworks in which different stages of a product are sited at various locations;global � nance such as round-the-clock foreign exchange transactions; globalenvironmental destruction such as global warming; global organizations such asthe World Trade Organization (WTO); and a global consciousness in which manyof us increasingly think in terms of a global village.

Perhaps central to the novelty of globalization is the notion of ‘time–spacecompression’.7 What is novel about globalization is not the (admittedly growing)interconnectedness of the world, but the speed of those interconnections. Scholte(p 48) thus argues that:

Globality (as superterritoriality) describes circumstances where territorial space issubstantially transcended. Phenomena like Coca-Cola and faxes ‘touch down’ atterriorial locations, but they are also global in the sense that they can extendanywhere in the world and can unite locations anywhere in effectively no time. Thegeography of, for instance, Visa credit cards and world service broadcasts has littleto do with territorial distances, and these transborder � ows—that is, relations thattranscend territorial frontiers—largely escape controls at state boundaries. Likewise,where, using speci� c and � xed territorial coordinates, could we situate SpecialDrawing Rights (SDRS), the Rushdie affair, the magazine Elle, the debt of theBrazilian government, karaoke, the production of a Ford automobile, and the law� rm Clifford Chance?

Globalization thus entails the recon� guration of space. However, this does notmean the elimination of local spaces. Time–space compression is not the sameas time–space destruction.8 There is a tendency to exaggerate the degree ofmobility in the global order, and this can lead to a rei� cation of the global. WhatI mean by this is that globalization can be perceived as an established fact whichis somehow beyond human agency and is therefore impossible to change (seeGermain, Chapter Two). This approach to globalization can take a number offorms. Tony Blair and Bill Clinton have stated (but clearly not argued) thatglobalization is a fact of life, and that there is no alternative. This fatalism canalso be found in the postmodern turn in the social sciences. Thus, if we cannot� nd the source or origins of a particular global phenomenon (such as those citedabove), it is dif� cult to establish a coherent political alternative. Fredric Jamesonhas argued that, while we may identify some of the symptoms of global malaise

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(war, hunger, famine, and so on), it is far more dif� cult to identity the causes.The world now moves so rapidly that ‘people are unable to map (in their minds)either their own position or the urban totality in which they � nd themselves.’19

While Jameson has stopped short of embracing the political (or apolitical)implications of this statement,10 Baudrillard, among others, has argued thatgeography, history and politics have disappeared in a meaningless hyper-mediated void.11 We are so saturated by fast moving media images that there isno longer any meaning, nor do we have the urge to � nd one. This positionreduces us to being mere extensions of new communications technologies,incapable of making meaning from mediated experiences. Moreover, it assumesthat ‘we’ all have equal access to the media images produced by the newtechnologies, which is clearly not the case.12

While political economists do not make such wild claims, they too are oftenguilty of exaggerating the extent of mobility—in this case, of capital. Thus,‘neo-Marxists’ such as Frobel, Heinrichs and Kreye attempted to explain the riseof the East Asian newly industrializing countries by reference to the relocationof transnational capital in search of cheap labour. ‘Neoliberals’ explained thisphenomenon by reference to a comparative advantage in cheap labour.13 Whilethe two positions differed on the implications, their assumptions—a hyper-mobile capital bypassing the outmoded nation-state—were similar. However,both approaches failed to see how nation-states in East Asia were central to theirsuccessful industrialization processes—for instance by disciplining capital asmuch as labour through export incentives, selected credit arrangements andcontrols over capital export.14 The late 1990s recession has sometimes beenpresented as the end of statist Asian capitalism against free market Anglo-American capitalism. While there is some truth to this position, it still does notmean the end of the nation-state in East Asia, as the economic downturn was inpart caused by state deregulation. Malaysia, among others, has shown that it isstill possible to impose capital controls with considerable success.

Moreover, the evidence for a footloose hyper-mobile capital is unconvincing,and productive (and for that matter � nancial) capital continues to concentrate incertain favoured locations. As a number of the contributions under review makeclear (see Dunning in Woods, Chapter Two, Hoogvelt, Chapter Four), capitalinvestment is still heavily concentrated in selected parts of the ‘First World’ anda few newly industrializing countries from the old Third World. Indeed, the late1990s saw a fall in the already low proportion of global foreign direct investment(FDI) going to the ‘developing world’. This is likely to change as East Asia (themajor recipient of (FDI) from the ‘developing world’) slowly recovers fromrecession, but the prospects for the poorest parts of the world are not good.15

This concentration of investment occurs because certain locations providestronger attractions for capital. These include networks of suppliers whoselocational proximity may have increased in ‘post-Fordist’ industries, wheresupplies must arrive ‘just in time’; skilled labour; technological know-how;infrastructural facilities; and market access.16

In one respect this concentration of capital investment gives considerablegrounds for pessimism. The world in which we live is a highly unequal one andinequalities are intensifying. As Hoogvelt (pp. 84–89; see also Amin, Chapter

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One) points out, the exploitation of the peripheries of the world system havebeen replaced by marginalization. From the point of view of the most powerfulin the world today, much of the former Third World is not needed, it is simplysurplus to requirements. One result has been an intensi� cation of inequality. In1960 the richest 20% of the world’s population was 50 times richer than theworld’s poorest 20%; by the mid-1990s the proportion was roughly 82:1.Moreover, in some parts of the world, and in particular sub-Saharan Africa, themajority of the population is poorer in absolute terms than it was 30 years ago.17

These depressing statistics clearly show that neoliberal optimism concerningthe bene� ts of a global free market is completely misplaced. Adjustmentpolicies—in part designed to make nation-states more competitive in the globaleconomy—have at best made little difference to the economic performance ofdeveloping countries, and at worst have made things considerably worse (seeMittelman, Chapter Five; Gills, Chapter Eighteen; Hoogvelt, Chapter Eight).However, the fact that capital is not hyper-mobile can also give grounds forsome optimism. Clearly, there are many cases of capital investing to takeadvantage of cheap, exploitable labour, or lack of regulation concerning safetyat work, the environment, and so on. But I have also argued that capital is notas mobile as hyper-globalizers sometimes imply. Therefore the notion thatglobalization automatically constitutes a race to the bottom, and that local andnational resistance is futile because capital can simply relocate abroad, is far toosimplistic. This is well argued by Garrett in Chapter Five of Woods. Hisargument that the welfare state is not doomed in a global era is applied largelyto the ‘advanced’ capitalist countries, and it may remain the case that globaliza-tion (at least in its neoliberal form) does in some ways undermine welfarism. Butthat doesn’t mean the inevitable end of the welfare state, neither does itnecessarily mean that all nation states from the former Third World are equallypassive in the face of global capitalism. To argue that it does is to reifyglobalization as an established, incontestable fact. A victory for the neoliberalagenda then becomes a self-ful� lling prophecy.

Globalization thus does not destroy the local or the national, but it leads tonew, particular relationships between them. Thus, some localities (and people)are more favoured in terms of receiving investment, in having access to the mostadvanced communications technologies, and in terms of access to consumergoods. Some places and people are more in control of globalizing processes thanothers; as Massey has argued, there is a distinct and unequal ‘power-geometry’to globalization.18 So, for example, while the effects of global warming maytranscend territory, it remains the case that it is certain localities that must takethe blame for the problem in the � rst place (see French, especially Chapter Six).Similarly, those in ‘cutting edge’ jobs in global cities like London, Tokyo andNew York have the capacity to shape globalizing processes in � nance, and enjoythe bene� ts in terms of life chances, while many in those same cities (andbeyond) are marginalized through the restructuring of labour markets.19 Ahospital in southwest Uganda, 400 miles from Kampala, recently acquired aconnection from a national telephone company. The hospital is located at thebottom of a valley and so the installation costs of at least two relay towers wereprohibitively high. Instead, the hospital opted for a satellite connection, but this

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had the effect of creating high operating costs, with calls costing around 30 timesthe call rates in the ‘advanced’ capitalist countries. A nurse held on to a phonecall for 10 minutes in order to � nd out the date and duration of her next trainingcourse. She then gave up and took the next mini-bus (a six hour ride) to thehospital. The cost of this round trip was the same as a � ve-minute phone call.20

Clearly, ‘time–space compression’ works differently for different groups insociety. Globalization has not eliminated unevenness or inequality and in manyways has intensi� ed them.

However, the very fact that globalization remains grounded in particularspaces gives room for some optimism. As Amoore et al argue in the Gillsvolume (Chapter Two), we must resist the notion that globalization is an externalforce, an over-determined reality. Thus, contra Blair, Clinton, the WTO, orfor that matter some postmodernists,21 actually existing globalization is notan established fact beyond the control of human beings. Resistance is notfutile.

Agency: resistance to globalization or globalization from below?

A rather belated recognition of agency in the literature on globalization isre� ected in the books under review. The books by Woods, Scholte, Schaeffer,Hoogvelt, Amin and Germain are primarily books about the structures ofglobalization from above, or actually existing globalization, but each stillcontains important chapters or sections on agency and resistance. While this issometimes only focused on the nation-state it remains a welcome development.The other four books under review go a step further in explicitly examiningresistance and ‘alternative globalizations’ (or localisms) in more detail. BarryGills’ edited collection is about resistance, and although a good deal of this bookis reprinted from a special issue of the journal New Political Economy, thetiming of publication is exemplary. These books, I suspect, are the � rst of manylooking at alternatives to neoliberal globalization in the light of events at Seattlein November–December 1999.22 Certainly much of the publicity which ac-companied these books (or at least those published in 2000) made explicitreference to those events.

What is so important about Seattle is that it has woken up many to the factthat global neoliberalism is not a fact of life, and that it has many dissenters.There is a tendency amongst many on ‘the Left’ throughout the world torecognize that, while neoliberal globalization intensi� es inequalities, there islittle alternative. Many have therefore embraced fatalism and the likes of Blairand Clinton, or turned inward to individualistic versions of identity politics.

None of this means that the protestors had a completely coherent set ofdemands, that the protestors always held progressive political positions, orindeed that there were not contradictions between the demands of differentgroups (see below for further discussion). However, what was progressive wasthe exposure of the vested interests that were at stake at the WTO meetings. TheWTO, formed in 1995 as a successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs andTrade, is committed to expanding the movement towards an international freemarket through the reduction of tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade. The

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Seattle meeting—which eventually collapsed without agreement—was intendedto initiate the Millennium Round in world trade, particularly focusing onagriculture, intellectual property rights and patents. Government and WTO

of� cials continually claim that global free trade represents the interests of thewhole of humanity, and continued inequality is a product of continued barriersto free trade.23 However, the claim that all countries (and peoples) can developby exercising their comparative advantage abstracts from the inequalities in-herent in market transactions, both within and between nations. As my dis-cussion above makes clear, investment does not � ow from areas of capitalabundance to locations where capital is relatively scarce. Instead, it tends toconcentrate in favoured locations. As Myrdal pointed out many years ago, aglobal free market would reinforce this process of concentration on the one hand,and marginalization on the other.24 Marginalization does not necessarily meanonly low quantities of investment—it may also mean low quality, in thattransnational companies may invest in labour intensive industries where lowlabour costs and poor working conditions constitute an advantage, or in order totake advantage of lack of environmental regulations—in these cases there is athreat of a race to the bottom. Proposed Trade Rights in Intellectual Property(TRIPs)—a central component of the talks—would have the effect of patentingtechnologies used in food and medicine production, and therefore further erodingthe power of the weak. For all these reasons, the case against the WTO iscompelling.25

However, while protest against a global neoliberal agenda is welcome, thereis a danger of uncritically celebrating resistance. There was a wide variety oforganizations and interests at Seattle, including labour organizations, women’sorganizations and, above all, direct action environmental organizations. In termsof radicalization, the environment is to the 1990s what Vietnam was to the 1960s(see Mittelman, Chapter Ten). However, there are tensions between differentenvironmentalists. While there may be agreement that economic growth andprogress should not be seen as one and the same thing, and neither should theybe considered ends in themselves, tensions persist.26 Is growth per se worthy ofrejection as it destroys the intrinsic value that deep ecologists associate withnature? Is eco-socialism a contradiction in terms as anarchist social ecologistsoften claim? Is technology in itself to be rejected as it destroys the environment,or should (some) be embraced as it has the potential to conserve and generateenergy—and of course link together transnational protest via the internet, as theanti-capitalist protests have shown? These questions can be related to theprotestors’ critique of globalization and the question of Third World develop-ment. Much of the critique echoes Sutcliffe’s account of three critical approachesto development: the polarisation, attainability and desirability critiques.27 Thepolarization view asserts that ‘actually existing globalization’ leads to underde-velopment, or at least uneven development; the attainability view argues that the‘modernization’ of the developing world is environmentally unsustainable; andthe desirability critique argues that ‘the West’ hardly constitutes a model for therest of the world and that alternatives should be found. These criticisms are notnecessarily mutually exclusive, but this depends on the emphasis given to eachof them. For we arrive back at questions concerning, eg zero growth, the

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utilization of technology, and the degree of integration into (or delinking from)the world economy, a question I return to below.

These differences become even more apparent when the case of organizedlabour is examined. The American Federation of Labor–Congress of IndustrialOrganizations (AFL–CIO) was a leading player in events at Seattle, and it has sincelaunched a Campaign for Global Fairness, emphasizing the need for workers andhuman rights to be linked to trade and investment decisions, internationalsolidarity, transnational accountability and the ‘freeing up’ of indebted nations.28

While this approach constitutes a massive advance over the business ‘trade unionimperialism’ of the cold war years,29 it is not necessarily as internationalist as it� rst appears. As the editors of Monthly Review point out, ‘the idea of globaliza-tion has often been promoted in such a way that the suggestion is that what haschanged is the fact that third-world economies and populations are gaining at theexpense of workers in the United States and other rich countries, as US plantsare shifted to the third world’,30 Just days before the IMF–World Bank meetingsin Washington in April 2000, the AFL–CIO held a rally opposing China’s entryinto the WTO. This call was made without consultation (admittedly a dif� culttask) with Chinese labour activists (in contrast to say the boycott of apartheidSouth Africa), and much of the concern appears to be that open economicrelations with China will promote the much feared ‘race to the bottom’ discussedabove (see also Gills’ introduction to his edited volume; and more generally,Stevis & Boswell in Gills, Chapter Ten).31

Organized labour’s involvement in the Seattle and subsequent protests maytherefore primarily be about the protection of jobs and fear of TNC exit to placesof cheaper labour. The concentration of capital in established areas suggests thatthe restructuring of the US and other ‘advanced’ economies is more a productof the restructuring of workplace organization and technological change, than oflarge-scale capital � ight (although this may occur in some sectors).32 Nonethe-less, the partial move to international solidarity, even if for partially mistakenand self-interested reasons, is to be welcomed. What is more problematic are thelinks between these interests and some of the other grievances at Seattle. Inparticular, the protection of jobs—for instance of car workers—does not � teasily with the agendas of deep ecologists for example. There are alwaystensions between social movements and often these may only be transcendeddirectly through struggle. However, there may be deeper problems in the case ofpost-Seattle movements, and this brings us back directly to the question of whatthe Gills collection calls the politics of resistance.

The move to a politics based around direct action is not surprising for tworeasons. First, there is an assumption that globalization has transcended thenation-state and so it is no longer worthy of attention. This appears to be onereason for the protestors’ attacks on global corporations, as opposed to the 1960sattacks on the imperialism of ‘advanced’ capitalist states. Second, and related tothe � rst point, there is a disregard of ‘traditional’ macro-politics because thereis a perceived ‘virtual futility of concentrating upon conventional electoralpolitics, given the extent to which principal political parties in constitutionaldemocracies have subscribed to a program and orientation that accepts theessential features of the discipline of global capital’ (Falk, in Gills, p. 50).

The problem with direct action movements is that the action itself is often

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regarded as suf� ciently political. In emphasizing non-hierarchy and symbolicprotest, disorganization, immediacy and sometimes irrationalism are fetishized,and the action itself is the politics.33 However, there is nothing intrinsicallyprogressive about direct action. Much the same could be said about resistance toglobalization (neoliberal or otherwise), and Amin (Chapter Four) and Schaeffer(Chapter Thirteen) remind us that some of the particularist responses to global-ization (or perceived Westernization) are far from welcome.34 An adequateconceptualization of current resistance to ‘globalization from above’ musttherefore go beyond mere celebration, or beyond Hoogvelt’s (pp. 235– 237)post-developmentalism, which refuses to make judgements about the politics ofsocial movements.35

The anti-capitalist protests are part of a long tradition of discontent with theoutcome of ‘actually existing development’.36 This romantic tradition can beboth progressive and reactionary at the same time—progressive as a critique ofthe powerful, reactionary in the positing of backward-looking utopias. Thecriticisms made of the movements towards a global free market economy are tobe welcomed. More problematic is a tendency to celebrate ‘the local’ at theexpense of ‘the global’. First, this leaves the nation-state and governmentinstitutions out of the picture altogether.37 However, such institutions arenecessary for a radical redistribution of wealth to occur—both within andbetween nations. It is only with such redistribution that genuine autonomy,participation, empowerment and self-determination (the things that direct actionprotest sees as paramount) can come about. An engagement with, rather than anescape from, formal macropolitics—and the interactions between global, na-tional and local—is vital for a sustained challenge to global neoliberalism.

Second, and � nally, there is no evidence to suggest that the local is intrinsi-cally more progressive than the global. This is the main problem with Hines’book. Although this work usefully criticizes much of the features of ‘actuallyexisting globalization’, its alternative of prioritizing the local is unconvincing.Refocusing the global economy around local markets is simply another versionof de-linking (see Nederveen Pieterse, in Gills), and as such it abstracts from thepower relations that exist within speci� c localities, not least those around localmarkets. So, for example, Hines (p. 215) argues that there should be ‘are-balancing of power and control away from TNCs (fostered by the trade rulesof the WTO) and towards national control over the setting of food securitypriorities’. However, on its own national (or local) food self-suf� ciency guaran-tees little if people cannot command suf� cient entitlements (to land or money).In fairness, Hines does talk of redistribution and even land reform, but hesuggests that these will not occur because of the demands of global competitive-ness (p. 216). This implies that de-linking will somehow enable reform to takeplace, an argument that completely ignores local vested interests such as thepower of local landowners. An argument that promotes the local at the expenseof the global in such a black and white way ignores the class, gender and ‘race’inequalities that exist within particular localities. A progressive resistance to‘actually existing (neoliberal) globalization from above’ is not localization perse, but a different kind of globalization, which aims to reduce inequalities whilepreserving (some) local differences.

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Notes1 I argue this in more detail in R Kiely ‘Globalisation, (post) modernity and the ‘third world’, in R Kiely &

P Mar� eet (eds), Globalisation and the Third World, London: Routledge, 1998; and R Kiely ‘Globalisation:established fact or uneven process?’, in S Ismael (ed), Globalisation: Policies, Challenges and Responses,Calgary: Detselig, 1999.

2 I write before the IMF and World Bank meetings in Prague in September 2000. However, I write withcon� dence that these meetings will be met with sizeable protest from ‘anti-capitalist demonstrators’.

3 There are many websites dedicated to both direct action protest and international labour solidarity. Twouseful ones are www.labournet.org and www.gn.apc.org. An excellent survey of these two forms of protestcan be found in K Moody, Workers in a Lean World, London: Verso, 1997.

4 See, for instance, K Ohmae, The Borderless World, London: Fontana, 1991; and P Hirst & G Thompson,Globalization in Question, Cambridge: Polity, 1996.

5 Hirst & Thompson, Globalization in Question, ch. 2.6 See further D Massey ‘A place called home?’, New Formations, 17, 1992, pp. 3–15; and R Kiely

‘Globalisation, (post) modernity’.7 This notion is probably most closely associated with D Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, Oxford:

Blackwell, 1989. See also A Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity Cambridge: Polity, 1991; D Sayer,Capitalism and Modernity, London: Routledge, 1991; and M Castells, The Rise of the Network Society,Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. People not concerned about current trends in the social sciences may also take apeak at the distinctly unfashionable Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), availablein various editions and collections.

8 See Kiely, ‘Globalisation, (post) modernity’, p. 4.9 F Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, London: Verso, 1991, p. 51.

10 See especially F Jameson ‘Globalization and strategy’, New Left Review 4 (2nd series), 2000, pp. 49–68.11 See, especially, J Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil, London: Verso, 1993.12 See further R Kiely ‘Globalisation: established fact’, pp. 58–60.13 The main neo-Marxist argument can be found in F Frobel, J Heinrichs & O Kreye, The New International

Division of Labour, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Neoliberal arguments can be found inD Lal, The Poverty of Development Economics, London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1983; and Ohmae,The Borderless World.

14 On the developmental state, see, among many others, G White (ed), Developmental States in East Asia,London: Macmillan, 1988; A Amsden, Asia’s Next Giant, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989; P Evans,Embedded Autonomy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995; and R Kiely, Industrialization andDevelopment: A Comparative Analysis, London: UCL Press, 1998.

15 As well as the books under review, see UNCTAD, World Investment Report, New York: United Nations, 1999.16 See further Hoogvelt chs 4 and 5 and R Kiely ‘Globalisation, post-Fordism and the contemporary context

of development’, International Sociology, 13(1), 1998, pp. 95–115.17 New Internationalist, 286, 1996, p. 16.18 D Massey, Space, Place and Gender, Cambridge: Polity, 1994, pp. 149–151.19 On global cities, see S Sassen, Globalization and its Discontents, New York: New Press, 1998; and Sassen,

Cities in a Global Economy, Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge, 2000.20 Cited in M Atkinson, ‘Poor need penicillin before Pentiums’, Guardian, 28 August, 2000.21 And indeed Clare Short, who seems happy that insulting protestors’ footwear—as opposed to entering into

an informed political debate—is suf� cient grounds for rejecting a political programme, or at least upholdingan unjust status quo.

22 There have been a few preliminary assessments of the Seattle demonstrations. See for instance, J St Clair‘Seattle diary: It’s a gas, gas, gas’, New Left Review, 238, 1999; ‘Interview with Lori Wallach’, ForeignPolicy, Spring 2000; J Charlton, ‘Taking Seattle’ International Socialism, 86, 2000; and ‘After Seattle: anew internationalism?’, Special Issue of Monthly Review, 52(3), 2000.

23 Arguments making the case for ‘unregulated’ free trade can be found on the World Trade Organisation’swebsite, www.WTO.org.

24 G Myrdal, Asian Drama, Vol 1, New York: Pantheon, 1957, p. 53.25 The most articulate critique of the WTO from among the Seattle protestors can be found in the ‘Interview

with Lori Wallach’.26 The best survey of the tensions in environmentalist thought can be found in D Pepper, Modern Environmen-

talism, London: Routledge, 1996.27 R Sutcliffe, ‘The place of development in theories of imperialism and globalization’, in R Munck & D

O’Hearn (eds), Critical Development Theory, London: Zed, 1999.28 See the website www.a�cio.org.29 See D Thompson & R Larson, Where were you Brother? An Account to Trade Union Imperialism, London:

War on Want, 1978.30 Monthly Review, 52(3), p. 4.

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31 M Hart-Landsberg, ‘After Seattle: strategic thinking about movement building; Monthly Review, 52(3),2000, pp. 105–109. See also A Amsden, ‘Ending isolation’, Dissent, Spring 2000.

32 See R Jenkins, ‘Divisions over the international division of labour’, Capital and Class, 22, 1984; R Jenkins‘Industrialization and the global economy’, in T Hewitt, H Johnson & D Wield(eds), Industrialization andDevelopment Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 34–35; and A Amsden, ‘Ending isolationism’.

33 See G McKay’s introduction to his edited DIY Culture, London: Verso, 1998. McKay himself seems torecognize the weaknesses (pp 11–12) but also sometimes sees them as attributes (p. 14).

34 This is not to deny that some nationalist movements have been caricatured by ‘the West’. See MustaphaKamal Pasha’s chapter on Islamic movements in Gills.

35 Post-development theory is critically discussed by R Kiely ‘The last refuge of the noble savage? A criticalassessment of post-development theory’, European Journal of Development Research, 11(1), 1999; and MWatts ‘Poverty and the politics of alternatives at the end of the millennium’, in J Nederveen pieterse (ed),Global Futures: Shaping Globalization, London: Zed, 2000.

36 See G Kitching, Development and Underdevelopment in Historical Perspective, London: Methuen, 1982;and M Cowen & R Shenton, Doctrines of Development, London: Routledge, 1996.

37 This point is not true of all organizations involved in Seattle, Euston or elsewhere. One important interestgroup that quite clearly makes demands on nation-states is Jubilee 2000. Nevertheless, there is an anti-statistbias in much of the direct action protests.

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