Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
globalization's more destructive practices. Often their alternative
anti-globalization messages were cast in anti-development discourse
(see Chapter 2.2).
•
Geographical globalization
The re-ordering of world-national-local
scales and 'livelihood' spaces has replaced national systems with
overarching, interstate practices, cross-border transnational prac-
tices, and re-configured institutional organizations in an increas-
ingly borderless world.
Continuing to characterize these various global dimensions is an acceler-
ated internationalization of societal processes. At their heart is a neoliberal
capitalist process that David Harvey (2005: 3) points out brings unbridled
'creative destruction' which not only challenges state sovereignty but also
'divisions of labor, social relations, welfare provisions, technological
mixes, ways of life and thought, reproductive activities, attachments to
land and habits of the heart'. Also causing crises and unpredictability in
global monetary affairs is a frenetic international financial system which
is insider-controlled and managed. It is deregulated to the point of being
out of control, and influenced as much by new 'soft-capitalist' practices
and their discourses (Thrift, 2005) as it is by 'hard capitalist' financial
market signals and national economic growth assessments.
Most well known as a globalizing force, because of its unequivocal
acceptance by more affluent youth worldwide and by those without
landline phone services in the global South, is the 'cell phone/mobile
revolution'. Together with the rapidly increasing use of microcomput-
ers and new information technologies, these technological innovations
are being more intensively undertaken in a manner Harvey (1990) has
characterized as 'time-space compression'. A final point that differen-
tiates this era from earlier capitalist phases is the increasing involve-
ment (and interpretation) of
culture
as a factor of production and as a
major force in bringing about hybridization and fusion in many current
global practices, such as music, art, self-identification, food, commerce,
and consumer markets worldwide (Shrestha and Conway, 2005).
89
The Future of Fair Globalization
In 2004, the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization
presented their report on Fair Globalization to the International
