GSGS 2000: Intro + GCCS

Nation

Group of people sharing an identity or culture

State

Political identity

Epistemic Hierarchies

Ranking that assigns greater authority or validity to certain types of knowledge or expertise over others

Assemblage

Congregation of social practices, material infrastructure, cultural practices, political institutions, and power dynamics that shape the global

Tsing’s Ideas

• Recognize that globalization does not happen in the same way, everywhere, at all times. Some movements are bigger than others due to historical and contextual reasons

• Friction occurs during globalization due to differences in ideas, cultural practices, politics, etc. making globalization a rough process where projects oftentimes meet resistance and pushback

Friction

encounters across different cultures are awkward, unequal, creative, and often contingent

• Misdirection, misfire, contradiction, redirection

Engaged Universals

aspirations, not given truths that transform across different groups and create domains of contestation 

• ie. Human rights and differing definitions of what constitutes as one, how it is carried out

Political Subjectivities

How people relate to governance and authority, used by polititians to shape our individual views

Fault-line Conflicts

Micro scale conflicts between neighboring states from different civilizations, usually for control over territory or each other

Core-State Conflicts

Macro scale conflicts between global powers for control over different international institutions, money, or power

Huntingtons Civilizations

Western, Confucian, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American, Possibly Africa

Said’s Critique of Huntington

• Us vs them logic

• Reliance on seductive, second hand sources, and orientalist tropes

• Generalization of cultures

• Risks turning cultural difference into self-fulfiling prophecy

Integration and Peripheralization

A division of the world into producers of finished products and producers of raw materials

Embedded Liberalism

Economies in the north need to ensure national economic protection in order to ensure stability, protectionist society, still keep open some systems in order to facilitate international trade and overall relations

NIEO

New International Economic Order

• Came about since the global south was not originally included in international economic relations (new world order), occurred after rapid decolonization post WWII

• Gave access to global north markets, gave more equitable power, and provides aid to offset impact of colonialism

Bretton Woods Internationalism

Emphasis on national economic protection and global north countries ensuring political stability through actively shaping their own economies

• Global South mostly not included, organized to be dependent on global north

Neoliberalism

• Emphasis on individual entrepreneurial freedoms

• Strong private property rights, free markets, free trade

• Role of the state: Create framework for market and private property through military, defense, legal structures, and new market creation

  • Idea that interference from the state will only throw off market effectiveness

Precariat

Irregular/insecure forms of labor (interns, uber drivers, retail, call centers, etc.)

• Globalization drew women into work, but tends to be in the precariat 

Transnational Capitalist Class

Global ruling class emerging from economic globalization, comprising of elites who manage transnational corporation, used to promote capitalist interests beyond national borders

• Unified goals

• Global interests

• Interlocking positions

TCC: Corporate fraction

TNC executives and their local affiliates

TCC: State fraction

Globalizing bureaucrats and politicians

TCC: Technical fraction

Globalizing professionals, those that possess the necessary skillset to carry out TCC operations

TCC: The consumerist fraction

Merchants and the media

Critiques of the TCC Concept

• Overstate unity among elites

• Underestimate nation-state power

• Flatten hierarchies inside the TCC

• Sideline historical reasons behind globalization

• Structural determinism

GATT

Global Agreement in Tariffs and Trade: Focused on economic interdependence, if global economies were connected they would not want to go to war

• 1950’s: GATT was dismantled and replaced by WTO

MNC’s and Denationalization

National boundaries becoming less relevant due to MNC’s

Renegade regime regulation

Economic or corporate activity that violates international norms

Secrecy havens

countries or territories that allow businesses to conceal ownership of assets, not pay taxes, etc.

Flags of Convenience

Registering corporation in a specific country to benefit from the laws and regulations; usually solely on paper

MNC Corporate Structure

Designed to limit upward and vicarious (holding executives accountable for employee errors) liability

We in the box

Staying away from a eurocentric, limited perspective and acknowledging the ‘we’ is not a universal experience

Globalization

The process through which goods, services, people, capital, information, and ideas move across national borders

MNC’s/TNC’s

Large corporations that span over multiple countries

• Foster economic growth

• Reinforce hierarchies/income inequality

Huntingtons Clash of Civilizations

Cultural commonality is a prerequisite for economic integration and it is impossible to work with nations that are different. These conflicts are inevitable and will occur across ‘fault lines’ where two civilizations interact.

Civilizations

the broadest group of cultural identities, where Huntington argues we should look

• Broader than the idea of a nationstate

Paradigm

Framework of ideas, assumptions, methods, and standards that shape how people understand and study a particular subject or field

5 Fundamental Assumptions of Nationalism

1. All humans are naturally divisible into groups (nations)

2. These nations share some inherent essence (ethnicity, language, religion, etc.)

3. This Essence/Group does not change over time

4. Each group arises on a piece of land that is their national/originary homeland

5. The only way that this nation of people can ensure their own wellbeing is to have a state that encompasses these people (and only them) on their national homeland