player. This is reflected, for example, in recent US actions involving its Mexican border with increased border patrols, backed-up by military units, use of more high-tech surveillance equipment (including drones), and the border wall. The globalists tend to see globalization as a relatively new phenomenon, but to the skeptics globalization is simply a new term for an old, even ancient, process through which various parts of the world relate to one another.
The spread of COVID-19 has exacerbated de-globalization and even converted some globalists to skeptics. As nations grappled with the pandemic, they closed borders, restricted air travel, and global trade came to a screeching halt. Headlines such as “The Post-Coronavirus World May be the End of Globalization” (Rapoza 2020) and “Coronavirus Shutdown: The End of Globalization and Planned Obsolescence” (Flores 2020) were commonplace. For many of these skeptics, it was globalization and its excesses that even made something like a global pandemic possible and worsened its effects. Reliance on global supply chains for food and medical equipment meant that some countries, even wealthy countries, had a difficult time securing protective gear or adequate food staples to meet demand.
Economically, the globalists emphasize such structures as multinational corporations (MNCs [Bonanno and Antonio 2012]), the transnational economy, and the emergence of a new global division of labor. Even amidst something as devastating as the global pandemic, multinational corporations continued operations, albeit on a smaller scale and expect to resume their global role as the pandemic fades. The skeptics counter that within the economy, there are few genuine MNCs – most continue to be based in their original national locations (e.g. Daimler in Germany and Toyota in Japan). Further, as mentioned above, the skeptics retain a focus on the nation-state and national economies. It is regional blocs of nations as well as specific nations – not MNCs – that engage in new forms of economic imperialism. In addition, the nation-state, especially powerful conglomerations of them (G-8, etc.), continue to regulate and exert great control over the global economy.
The response of the globalists is that while it is true that most MNCs retain their associations with the nation-states from which they emanated originally, that association has grown less important over time. For example, while General Motors’ vehicles were once produced exclusively in the US, its parts now come from all over the world and are assembled in markets across several continents.
The globalists also argue that the power or the weakness of the nation-state has nothing to do with the reality of globalization. Indeed, the nation-state, powerful or weak, is a key part of globalization. For example, the ability of the nation-state to control global flows of migrants – as well as drugs or human trafficking – ebbs and flows, but that has no bearing on the continued existence and reality of globalization or the fact that the nation-state is a player of note in it. The globalists also contend that while the continuing power of nation-states, singly and collectively, is undeniable, their ability to control economic markets is steadily declining and in some markets (e.g. financial markets) their control is already minimal.
Politically, the globalists emphasize multilateralism whereas the skeptics continue to focus on the roles of nationalism and intergovernmentalism. That is, the globalists see all sorts of relationships possible in a global world, such as the World Health Organization’s vital role in disseminating information about COVID-19 and curtailing its spread. Furthermore, many global relationships do not involve governments, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s involvement in fighting the pandemic. The skeptics argue, however, that the world continues to be dominated by relations within and between national governments. The rise of nationalist populism (see Chapter 5) has only served to reinforce the role of the state and its defense against globalization.
In terms of global order, the skeptics continue to emphasize the role of the international order of nation-states and international governance, while the globalists see a multi-layered global governance involving much more than simply nation-states (e.g. NGOs and INGOs). Further, the globalists see the increasing importance in this domain of the growth of global civil society, a global polity, and a cosmopolitan orientation to the world. All of these, as we will see, serve to reduce the role of nation-states and international governance.
Culturally, the globalists give great importance to the rise of a global popular culture, a culture that is common to large numbers of people and most, if not all, areas of the world. Skeptics reject the idea of a common global popular culture, including and especially one dominated by the US. To them, the whole idea of such a culture has been exaggerated. To whatever extent a common global popular culture existed, it has declined in recent years with the reassertion of national and regional cultural independence, and culture in general has grown increasingly varied and is shaped by many different sources with many different effects. For example, the Internet has been nationalized to a large degree and one could speak of a German, a Japanese, or – especially – a Chinese Internet.
In a related point, the globalists emphasize the decline of people who rigidly adhere to fixed political identities. Such a decline leaves people much more open to global popular culture. In contrast, the skeptics point, once again, to the more recent resurgence of nationalism and national identities. This is not only important in itself from the point of view of globalization, but strong national identities would serve to restrict the influence of a global popular culture.
We will have occasion to return to many of the issues debated by the globalists and the skeptics in the course of this book. However, it is important to state unequivocally at this point that, in the end, and in spite of the merit of some of the positions and criticisms of the skeptics, we conclude, unsurprisingly, that there is a set of processes and structures that can legitimately be labeled globalization. In that sense, this book, as mentioned in Chapter 1, adopts a globalist position on globalization, albeit one that is not insensitive to at least some of the arguments of the skeptics. A nuanced view, which avoids overly simplified caricatures, is required.
IS IT GLOBALIZATION, TRANSNATIONALIZATION, OR REGIONALIZATION?
In a related debate, some scholars argue that rather than globalization, we have transnationalism
Transnationalism: (Mitchell 2017) or regionalism (Holden 2016). Transnationalism refers to “processes that interconnect individuals and social groups across specific geo-political borders” (Giulianotti and Robertson 2007: 62). A related concept is transnationality, or “the rise of new communities and formation of new social identities and relations that cannot be defined through the traditional reference point of nation-states” (Robinson 2007).
Globalization and transnationalism are often used interchangeably, but transnationalism is clearly a more delimited process than globalization. Transnationalism is limited to interconnections that cross geo-political borders, especially those associated with two, or more, nation-states.2 An example is Mexican immigrants in the US sending remittances home to family members in Mexico. Globalization includes such connections, but is not restricted to them and encompasses a far wider range of planetary processes (e.g. direct relationships between people in many places in the world networking via the Internet). Further, geo-political borders are only one of the barriers encountered, and often overcome, by globalization. Some phenomena, labor unions for example, are better thought of as transnational than as global. That is, the relationship between labor unions in, for example, the US and Sweden is more important than are moves toward a global labor movement (see Chapter 15). Transnationalism is most often used in thinking about, and research on, immigrants who move from one country to another, but who continue to be involved in various ways with the country from which they came (Portes 2001b).
The case of baseball is useful in clarifying the distinction between globalization and transnationalism (Kelly 2007). Baseball is a transnational sport because
