Saskia-Sassen-Globalization-or-denationalization-2003, stosunki miedzynarodowe, polityka, EU
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relied even more heavily on their fellow tribesmen of the al-Jumailah from the Ramadi area, recruiting them to the units of the Republican Guard which had the principal duty of guarding the regime. 6 C.Tripp, A History of Iraq (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2002), pp. 148-167,175-192. 7 Hani al-Fakaiki, Awkar al-Hazima: tajribati fi Hizb al-Ba`th al-`Iraqi [Dens of defeat: my experience in the Iraqi Ba`th Party] (London: Riad El-Rayyis Books, 1993); `Aziz al-Hajj, Dhakirat al-Nakhil [The memory of the palm tree] (Beirut: Al-Mu’assasa al-`Arabiyya li-l-Dirasat wa-l-Nashr, 1993). 8 D. McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds (London: IB Tauris,1996), pp. 324- 332. 9 A.Baram, ‘Neo-Tribalism in Iraq: Saddam Hussein’s tribal policies 1991-96’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 29 (1997), pp. 1-31. 10 Craig S. Smith,‘Groups Outline Plans for Governing a Post-Hussein Iraq’, New York Times, 18 December 2002. 11 ‘The Long Road to Democracy’, The Guardian, 16 December 2002; Cameron Barr, ‘Iraqi exiles want US in—and then out’, Christian Science Monitor , 16 Decem- ber 2002. This essay is one of a number that will be posted on the SSRC website “Imagining I ra q .” Please visit conconflicts.ssrc . o r g soon to read essays by Kamil Mahdi, Robert Singh, Joy Gordon, Isam Al-Khafaji, Nadje Al-Ali and others. Globalization or Denationalization? By Saskia Sassen Saskia Sassen, Chair of the SSRC Committee on Information Technology and International Cooperation, gave the following keynote address to the concluding conference of the Council’s International Predissertation Research Fellowship Program. I t is an honor and a pleasure to have the opportunity to discuss the theoretical and methodological difficulties of studying and interpreting a variety of dynamics usually grouped under the term globalization. What is it we are seeking to name with the term global- ization? At the heart of whatever shape the answer might take lies the formation of global institutions and processes, such as the World Trade Organization, global financial m a r ke t s , the new cosmopolitanism, the War Cri m e s Tribunals: these operate at a scale we usually associate with the term globalization. But there is a second set of processes that does not neces- sarily scale at the global level as such.These are processes that take place deep inside territories and institutional domains that have largely been constructed in national terms in mu c h , though by no means all, of the wo r l d . What make s these processes part of globalization even though localized in n a t i o n a l , indeed sub-national settings, is that they invo l ve t r a n s b o u n d a ry networks and new types of transboundary f o rmations that connect multiple local or “ n a t i o n a l ” processes and actors. Examples are cross-border networks of a c t ivists invo l ved in specific localized struggles with an explicit or implicit global agenda; p a rticular aspects of the work of states, e. g . , c e rtain monetary and fiscal policies, which are critical to the constitution of global markets and cross-border flows of capital and are getting implemented in a growing number of countri e s ; the use of intern a t i o n a l human rights instruments in national courts;non-cosmopol- itan forms of global politics and imagi n a ries that re m a i n deeply attached or focused on localized issues and struggles, yet are part of global lateral networks containing mu l t i p l e other such localized efforts. We are, t h e n , not only dealing with the now widely re c ognized fact of multiple globalizations (e. g . , A p p a d u r a i 1996; Eichengreen 2002; Aman 1998), only some of which are constitutive of the neoliberal corporate economic global- ization that has received most of the attention. We are also dealing with the question of the va rious scales at which global processes get constituted, ranging from supranational and global,to sub-national.Recognizing that the global does not scale only at the global level introduces intere s t i n g analytic challenges and opportunities for social scientists. It signals that we can use some of our old tools and data sets but through new conceptual architectures. Here I want to focus particularly on the second type of dynamic.This one has received less attention from the main- stream scholarship on globalization and is far less likely to be conceptualized or recognized as part of globalization, yet has the potential to offer a far more fruitful angle on cert a i n kinds of questions about globalization. I.The Sub-national: A Site for Globalization? A focus on such nationally based processes and dynamics re q u i res methodologies and theorizations that engage not only the global scale but also the sub-national scale as components of global processes. Working with sub-national scales makes it possible to use long-standing research tech- niques,from quantitative to qualitative, in the study of global processes.It also g ives us a bridge for using the wealth of data produced in area studies. In both cases it is crucial to situate these in conceptual arc h i t e c t u res that are not quite those held by the researchers who generated these research tech- niques and data sets.Their efforts mostly had little to do with 15 globalization as we use this term today. One task this entails is the decoding of what is still represented or experienced as “national” when it may in fact have shifted away from what had historically been considered national. Studying the global, then, entails not only studying that which is explicitly global in scale, but also the multiplication of cross-border interconnections among locally scaled events and conditions. Further, it entails recognizing that many of the globally scaled dynamics, such as the global capital m a r ke t , a re actually partly embedded in the national and m ove between global scales, such as electronic financial m a r ke t s , and locally embedded conditions, such as the concentrations of va riously place-bound re s o u rces that constitute a financial center. Let me focus on two instances that serve to illustrate some of the conceptual, m e t h o d o l ogical and empirical issues in this type of study. One of these instances concerns the role of place in many of the circuits constitutive of economic glob - a l i z a t i o n . U n bundling globalization in terms of mu l t i p l e specialized cro s s - b o rder circ u i t s , rather than simply re p re- senting it in terms of master categories such as global markets,allows us to introduce places and their distinct loca- tions on particular types of specialized circuits. Global cities, for example, a re places where multiple of these global circuits intersect and thereby make these cities strategic and deeply reshape them. A second of these instances, partly connected to the first, is the role of the new interactive technologies in re p o s i- tioning the local,thereby inviting us to a critical examination of our understanding of the local.Through these new tech- nologies, a financial services firm housed in one or another city becomes a micro e nv i ronment with continuous global span. But it is not only these types of firms that do so:also a re s o u rce-poor organization or household can become a m i c ro e nv i ronment with global span. These micro e nv i ro n- ments can be oriented to other such micro e nv i ro n m e n t s located far away, t h e re by destabilizing both the notion of context often imbricated in that of the local, and the notion that physical proximity is one of the attributes or markers of the local. F u rt h e r, t h rough these interactive technologi e s , especially as implemented in the Intern e t , we can see the possibility of a new type of politics of places located on global networks.This is a form of global politics that runs not through global institutions, but through local ones. The next two sections briefly elaborate on each of these instances. processing zones,“silicon valleys,” off-shore banking centers, and major internationalized and export - o riented industri a l districts. Including these kinds of strategic places in the analysis of economic globalization is not without conceptual conse- quences.Economic globalization has mostly been conceptu- alized in terms of the national-global duality where the latter gains at the expense of the former. And it has largely been conceptualized in terms of the internationalization of capital, and then only the upper circuits of capital. I n t ro d u c i n g places in an analysis of economic globalization allows us to reconceptualize the latter partly in terms of spatially specific, c o n c rete economic complexes and pro c e s s e s . A focus on such places deconstructs the nation-state into a va riety of sub-national components, some profoundly articulated with the global economy and others not. It also signals the declining significance of the national economy as a unitary category—always more an aspiration than a full reality. 1 W hy does it matter to re c over place in analyses of the global economy, p a rticularly place as constituted in major cities? Because it allows us to see the multiplicity of economies and work cultures in which the global informa- tion economy is embedded. It also allows us to recover the c o n c re t e, localized processes through which globalization exists and to argue that many of the ethnic economies and low-wage labor markets in large cities are as much a part of globalization as is international finance. Finally, focusing on cities allows us to specify a geography of strategic places at the global scale, places bound to each other by the dynamics of globalization. I refer to this as a new geogr a p hy of centrality, and one of the questions it engenders is whether this new transnational geogr a p hy also is a space for the f o rmation of new types of transnational political, s o c i a l , c u l t u r a l , s u b j e c t ive dynamics. I n s o far as my economic analysis of the global city recovers the broad array of jobs and work cultures that are part of the global economy, though typically not marked as such, it allows me to examine the possibility of these new dynamics. a) The material practices of globalization. I think of the mainstream account of economic globaliza- tion as a narr a t ive of ev i c t i o n . Key concepts in that a c c o u n t — g l o b a l i z a t i o n , i n f o rmation economy, and telem- atics—all suggest that place no longer matters and that the only type of wo r ker that matters is the highly educated professional. It is an account that privileges the capability for global transmission over the material infrastru c t u re that makes such transmission possible; information outputs over the wo r ke rs producing those outputs, f rom specialists to secretaries; and the new transnational corporate culture over the multiplicity of work culture s , including immigr a n t cultures,within which many of the “other”jobs of the global i n f o rmation economy take place. In bri e f, the dominant n a rr a t ive concerns itself with the upper circuits of capital; II. Place in a Global and Digital Economy One of the organizing themes in much of my work on globalization is that place is central to the multiple circuits through which economic globalization is constituted. One strategic type of place for these developments, and the one focused on here, is the city, which is now often defined as an urban re gi o n . Other such strategic places are export 16 and particularly with the hypermobility of capital rather than with that which is place-bound. Massive trends towards the spatial dispersal of economic a c t ivities at the metro p o l i t a n , national and global level are indeed ev i d e n t , but they re p resent only half of what is happening. Alongside the well-documented spatial dispersal of economic activ i t i e s , we see new forms of terri t o ri a l centralization of top-level management and control opera- tions. National and global markets as well as globally inte- grated operations require central places where the work of globalization gets done. F u rt h e r, i n f o rmation industri e s re q u i re a vast physical infrastru c t u re containing strategi c nodes with hyperconcentrations of facilities.Finally, even the most advanced information industries have a work process— that is,a complex of workers,machines and buildings that are more place-bound than the imagery of information outputs suggests. Centralized control and management over a geogr a p h i- cally dispersed array of economic operations does not come about inevitably as part of a “world-system.” It requires the p roduction of a vast range of highly specialized serv i c e s , t e l e c o m munications infrastru c t u re, and industrial serv i c e s . These are c rucial for the va l o rization of what a re today leading components of c a p i t a l . An emphasis on place and p roduction does not confine the analysis to the power of large corpo- rations over gove rnments and e c o n o m i e s . It also focuses on the range of activities and organizational a rrangements necessary for the implementation and maintenance of a global network of factories,service operations and markets; these are all processes only partly encompassed,if at all, by a focus on the power of transnational corp o r a t i o n s .T h e re by we recover the infrastructure of activities, firms and jobs— including jobs and firms we never think of as being part of globalized sectors—that is necessary to run the adva n c e d corporate economy.These are all part of the practice of global control: the work of producing and reproducing the organi- zation and management of a global production system and a global marketplace for finance, both under conditions of economic concentration. Global cities are centers for the servicing and financing of i n t e rnational trade, i nve s t m e n t , and headquarter opera- tions—wherever these might be located.That is to say, the multiplicity of specialized activities present in global cities a re crucial in the va l o ri z a t i o n , indeed ove rva l o rization of leading sectors of capital today. And in this sense they are s t r a t e gic production sites for today ’s leading economic sectors.This function is reflected in the ascendance of these activities in their economies. Elsewhere I have posited that what is specific about the shift to services is not merely the growth in service jobs, but, most importantly, the growing service intensity in the organization of advanced economies: firms in all industries, from mining to wholesale, buy more a c c o u n t i n g , l e g a l , a d ve rt i s i n g , i n s u r a n c e, f i n a n c i a l , a n d economic forecasting services today than they did twe n t y years ago. Whether at the global or regional level, cities are adequate and often the best production sites for such special- ized serv i c e s . The rapid growth and dispro p o rt i o n a t e concentration of such services in cities signals that the latter have re-emerged as significant production sites after losing this role in the period when mass manu fa c t u ring was the dominant sector of the economy. The extremely high numbers of these types of firms in the downtown districts of cities are the spatial expression of this logi c. The widely accepted notion that agglomeration has become obsolete when telecommunication adva n c e s should allow for maximum dispersal is only partly correct. It is,I argue, precisely because of the territorial dispersal facili- tated by telecommunication advances that the import a n c e and share of central corporate functions have expanded immensely. For specific reasons I cannot dwell on here this expansion of central functions has largely, though not exclu- s ive l y, m a t e rialized in the form of expanded terri t o rial agglomerations of specialized serv i c e s . This is not a mere continuation of old patterns of agglomeration, but rather, one could posit, a new logic for agglomeration. I n f o rmation technologies are ye t another factor contri buting to the n ew logic for agglomeration. T h e s e t e c h n o l ogies make possible the g e ographic dispersal a n d s i mu l t a- neous integration of many activities. But the distinct conditions under which such facilities are available have promoted centralization of the most advanced u s e rs in the most advanced telecommunications centers (Castells 1996; Graham and Aurigi 1997). A focus on the work behind command functions, on the actual production process in the finance and services complex, and on global market places has the effect of incorporating the m a t e rial facilities underlying globalization and the whole infrastructure of jobs typically not marked as belonging to the corporate sector of the economy. This gives us an economic configuration ve ry different from that suggested by the concept of information economy. We re c over the material conditions,production sites,and place-boundedness that are also p a rt of globalization and the inform a t i o n economy. An unexpectedly broad range of types of firms, types of wo r ke rs , types of work culture s , and types of re s i d e n t i a l m i l i e u x , t u rn out to be part of globalization pro c e s s e s though they are neither recognized, represented,or valorized as such. In this regard, this new type of urban economy is highly pro bl e m a t i c. This is perhaps particularly evident in global cities and their regional counterparts.It sets in motion Even the most advanced informa- tion industries have a wo r k p rocess—that is, a complex of wo r ke rs , machines and bu i l d i n g s that are more place-bound than the image ry of inform a t i o n outputs suggests. 17 indeed often reflecting the characteristics of the latter. But cities that are strategic sites in the global economy tend, in part, to disconnect from their region.This conflicts with a key proposition in traditional scholarship about urban s y s t e m s , n a m e l y, that these systems promote the terri t o ri a l i n t e gration of re gional and national economies. A l o n g s i d e these new global and regional hierarchies of cities is a vast territory that we need to specify or re-specify theoretically and empirically. Beginning in the 1980s and continuing today we also see a new geography of centrality and marginality inside global c i t i e s . The dow n t owns of cities and metropolitan bu s i n e s s c e n t e rs re c e ive massive investments in real estate and telecommunications,while low-income city areas are starved for resources.Highly educated workers see their incomes rise to unusually high levels while low- or medium-skilled wo r ke rs see theirs sink. Financial services produce super- profits while industrial services barely survive. These trends a re ev i d e n t , with different levels of intensity, in a grow i n g number of major cities in the developed world and increas- ingly in some of the developing countries that have been integrated into the global economic system. The city has indeed emerged as a site for new claims: by global capital which uses the city as an “organizational commodity,” but also by disadvantaged sectors of the urban population, f requently as internationalized a presence in large cities as capital. a whole series of new dynamics of inequality. The new growth sectors—specialized services and finance—contain capabilities for profit making vastly superior to those of more traditional economic sectors.The latter are essential to the operation of the urban economy and the daily needs of resi- d e n t s , but their surv ival is threatened in a situation where finance and specialized services can earn super-profits. 2 b) New geographies of centrality and of marginality. The global economy in good part materializes in a world- wide grid of strategic places, uppermost among which are major international business and financial centers . We can think of this global grid as constituting a new economic geography of centrality, one that cuts across national bound- a ries and across the old North-South div i d e. It signals the emergence of a parallel political geogr a p hy, a transnational space for the formation of new claims by global capital. This new economic geography of centrality partly repro- duces existing inequalities but is also the outcome of a dynamic specific to current forms of economic grow t h . I t assumes many forms and operates in many terrains, from the distribution of telecommunications facilities to the structure of the economy and of employment. Global cities are sites for immense concentrations of economic power and command centers in a global economy, while cities that were once major manufacturing centers have suffered inordinate declines. The most powerful of these new geographies of centrality at the inter-urban level binds the major international finan- cial and business centers : N ew Yo r k , L o n d o n , To k yo, Pa ri s , F r a n k f u rt , Z u ri c h , A m s t e rd a m , Los A n g e l e s , S y d n ey, a n d Hong Kong, among others. But in the 1990s this geography came to include cities such as Sao Paulo, Bombay, Bangkok, Taipei, Shanghai and Mexico City. The intensity of transac- tions among these cities, p a rticularly through the financial m a r ke t s , transactions in serv i c e s , and investment has increased sharply, and so have the orders of magnitude.At the same time, t h e re has been a sharpening inequality in the concentration of strategic re s o u rces and activities betwe e n each of these cities and others in the same country. The pronounced orientation to the world marke t s evident in such cities raises questions about the articulation with their nation-states, their re gi o n s , and the larger economic and social structure in such cities. Cities are typi- cally deeply embedded in the economies of their re gi o n , III.A Politics of Places on Cross-border Circuits I have been particularly interested in the possibility of a new politics of traditionally disadvantaged actors operating in this new transnational economic geography.This is a poli- tics that lies at the intersection of two processes or condi- tions. One of these is the economic participation by disad- vantaged workers in the global economy—specifically those who hold the o t h e r jobs in the global economy — f ro m fa c t o ry wo r ke rs in export processing zones to janitors on Wall Stre e t . The second is the possibility of new types of politics among the disadvantaged arising out of this partici- pation. The centrality of place in a context of global pro c e s s e s e n g e n d e rs a transnational economic and political opening for the formation of new claims and,hence, for the constitu- tion of entitlements.This is the case most notably for rights to place, and,at the limit,in the constitution of “citizenship.” The city has indeed emerged as a site for new claims: by global capital which uses the city as an “ o r g a n i z a t i o n a l commodity,” but also by disadvantaged sectors of the urban p o p u l a t i o n , f requently as internationalized a presence in large cities as capital. The de-nationalizing of urban space and the formation of new claims centered in urban actors and involving contestation, raise the question:“Whose city is it?” I see this as a type of political opening that contains unifying capacities across national boundaries and sharp- ening conflicts within such boundari e s . Global capital and the new immigrant wo r k f o rce are two major instances of transnationalized actors that have unifying properties inter- nally and find themselves in contestation with each other 18 inside global cities.Global cities are the sites for the overval- o rization of corporate capital and the deva l o rization of d i s a d vantaged wo r ke rs . The leading sectors of corp o r a t e capital are now global in their organization and operations. And many disadvantaged wo r ke rs in global cities are fro m groups that have not fully identified with the national— women, immigrants, and people of color. Both find in the global city a strategic site for their economic and political operations. The possibility of cross-border politics among disadvan- taged g roups is facilitated by the Internet, and an emergent sense of globality. What I want to emphasize here is that local initiatives can become part of a global network of activism without losing the focus on specific local struggles ( e. g . , C l e aver 1998; Espinoza 1999; Ronfeldt et al. 1 9 9 8 ; Mele 1999).The Internet enables a new type of cross-border political activ i s m , one centered in multiple localities ye t intensely connected digitally. It is the speed and interconnec- tivity of the Internet that matter here. Activists can develop networks for circulating not only information (about envi- ro n m e n t a l , h o u s i n g , political issues, e t c.) but also political work and strategi e s , including on-line actions. T h e re are many examples of such new cross-border political work. For instance, SPARC, started by and centered on women, began as an effort to organize slum dwellers in Bombay to demand h o u s i n g . S PARC now has a network of such gro u p s throughout Asia, as well as some cities in Latin America and Africa.This has not stopped their focus on local conditions and their struggles with local governments, but it has given them the clout of being a global network. It represents one of the key forms of critical politics that the Internet can make possible: a politics of the local with a big difference— these are localities that are connected with one another a c ross a re gi o n , a country or the wo r l d . The fact that the n e t work is global does not mean that eve rything has to happen at the global level. This is not the cosmopolitan route to the global.This is about the global as a multiplication of the local.These are types of sociability and struggle deeply embedded in people’s actions and activ i t i e s .T h ey are also forms of institution- building work that can ori ginate from localities and n e t works of localities with limited re s o u rces and fro m informal political actors. We see here the potential transfor- mation of women confined to domestic roles into key actors in global networks without having to give up their work and their roles in their communities. From being experienced as p u rely domestic, these “ d o m e s t i c ” settings are transform e d into microenvironments located on global circuits.The indi- viduals or groups involved do not have to become cosmo- politan in this pro c e s s ; t h ey may well remain domestic or local in their orientation,engaged with their households and local community stru g g l e s . And yet they may experi e n c e themselves as participants in emergent forms of globality, or, more concretely, in specific global social circuits.A commu- nity of practice can emerge that creates multiple lateral,hori- zontal communications, collaborations, solidarities, supports. This can enable local political or non-political actors to enter into cross-border politics. Large cities, and in some ways cybers p a c e, a re far more concrete spaces for social struggles than the national political system.They can accommodate non-formal political actors who can be part of the political scene much more easily than they can in national institutional channels. Nationally, poli- tics needs to run through existing formal systems: whether the electoral political system or the judiciary (taking state agencies to court). Non-formal political actors are rendered invisible in the space of national politics. Cities and cyber- space can accommodate a broad range of social struggles and facilitate the emergence of new types of political subjects because they do not have to go through the formal political s y s t e m . I n d ividuals and groups that have historically been excluded from formal political systems and whose struggles can be partly enacted outside those systems can find in global cities and in cyberspace an enabling environment both for their emergence as non-formal political actors and for their struggles. 3 n Saskia Sassen is the Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Her most recent books are New York:New Press 1999) and her edited book (New York and London:Rout- ledge 2002). Sassen’s was published as a fully updated edition in 2001. Endnotes 1 Even if , to a large extent, the national economy was a unitary category con- structed primarily in political discourse and policy, it has become even less of a fact in the last fifteen years. 2 These new inequalities in profit-making capacities of economic sectors,earnings capacities of households and prices in upscale and downscale markets have con- tributed to the formation of informal economies in major cities of highly developed countries.These informal economies negotiate between these new economic trends and regulatory frameworks that were engendered in response to older economic conditions. 3 For a fuller treatment of this issue, see the essays from a March 2002 conference on “Race and Ethnicity in a Global Context” in the Berkeley Journal of Sociology , 2002,Vol.46. References Cited Aman,A. C. Jr. 1998.“The Globalizing State:A Future-Oriented Perspective on the Public/Private Distinction, Federalism, and Democracy.” Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 31 (4):769:870. Appadurai, A. 1996. Modernity at Large . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Castells,M.1996. The Networked Society . Oxford:Blackwell. Cleaver, H.1998.“The Zapatista Effect:The Internet and the Rise of an Alter- native Political Fabric.” Journal of International Affairs (51) 2:621-640. Eichengreen, B. 2002.“The United States and the Global Economy.” In Craig Calhoun,et al.,eds. Understanding September 11 . New York:The New Press.Pp. 121- 138. Espinoza,V. 1999.“Social networks among the poor: inequality and integration in a Latin American city.” In B.Wellman,ed. Networks in the global village. Boulder, Co: Westview Press. Graham, S. and A.Aurigi.1997.“Virtual Cities,Social Polarization,and the Cri- sis in Urban Public Space.” Journal of Urban Technology (4) 1:19-52. Mele, C. 1999.“Cyberspace and Disadvantaged Communities:The Internet as a Tool for Collective Action.” In M.A. Smith and P. Kollock, eds. Communities in Cyberspace . London:Routledge. Pp. 264-289. Ronfeldt, D., J. Arquilla, G. Fuller, and M.Fuller. 1998. The Zapatista “Social Net - war”in Mexico . Santa Monica,Ca:RAND, MR-994-A. 19 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |