Patrick Hayden’s research while affiliated with University of St Andrews and other places

As we discussed in the Introduction, social and political events following the Second World War generated a wave of anti-utopian reactions and, by the 1970s, unleashed a widespread demise of utopia narrative. The demise of utopia narrative does, however, stretch back farther than the late twentieth century, and is complexly entwined with critical traditions of socio-political thought — though often tinted by misunderstanding and ill-advised denigration. Hence, we believe that a brief reflection on the broader historical trend of critique and utopianism is necessary at the conclusion of this book. While utopianism can of course be traced back to classical Greece, as Rorty (1999) suggests it came to prominence as a central feature of modernity, spurred on by the political-religious debates of the sixteenth century, the ideals of Renaissance humanism, and the conquest of the Americas. Utopianism figured in many of the Enlightenment discourses concerning the improvement of humanity through civilization, which informed the Atlantic revolutions and the aspiration of emancipating society through the political action of free and equal citizens. The fusion of critique and social hope reached its most romantic heights in the work of the European utopian socialists of the early nineteenth century. Saint-Simon, Fourier, Cabet, Owen, Babeuf, Morris, and others developed visionary plans for the reconstruction of society on the principles of equality, social progress, harmonious collaboration, and communal production and distribution — principles which later reverberated through the Revolutions of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871 (Geoghegan, 1987, pp. 8–21).

How should human communities — and ultimately, perhaps, the community of humanity — be created anew, in the sense of ‘anticipating’ and imagining ‘that which does not yet exist’ (Deleuze, 1994, p. 147)? This question lies at the heart of utopianism. To be utopian, we suggest, is the stuff of politics, and it first involves subjecting the politics of the present to critique. Secondly, it involves imagining human communities that do not yet exist and, thirdly, it involves thinking and acting so as to prevent the foreclosure of political possibilities in the present and future. The perspective adopted in this book is that the question of how to anticipate and imagine communities that ‘do not yet exist’ animates many critical socio-political engagements with contemporary globalization.

This accessible text provides a comprehensive overview of globalization and its consequences from the perspective of social and political critical theory. Thematic chapters provoke student inquiry and the book shows how the views of critical theorists are crucial to understanding the global processes shaping the world today. © Patrick Hayden and Chamsy el-Ojeili 2006. All rights reserved.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide critical tools for, and background to, the chapters ahead. Part of this involves examining globalization’s historical dimension, which is vital in thinking about the specificity of the contemporary globalizing moment. In theoretical terms, we want to argue for the utility of critical theory as a way of approaching globalization, and critical theories of social change and analyses of modernity and development, which are linked in a number of crucial ways to discussions of globalization, are helpful in understanding the complexity of globalizing transformations. Above all, we insist on the inescapability of theorizing, and maintain that the imaginative and lively variety of critical theoretical approaches canvassed here shed significant light on globalization.

Economic globalization is without doubt the most commented upon, debated, and controversial of topics within the literature on globalization. Economic globalization appears spectacular, and its consequences seem most tangible. In fact, it often seems that economic globalization is the driving force behind the various changes bound up with culture and politics in the contemporary world, as well as being the principal concern of the alternative globalization movement. Consequently, it is often suggested that contemporary globalization is a historical moment in which the economic attains autonomy from, and exerts its weight upon, other spheres such as politics, society, and culture. In this chapter we examine how this purported economic autonomy is, above all, tied up with questions of inequalities in wealth and power – between MNCs and citizens, between countries in the North and countries in the South, between the connected and the unconnected, and between employers and employees.

Perhaps the most common claim associated with the literature around globalization is the assertion that globalization entails the demise of the nation-state, summarized in notions such as an emerging ‘borderless world’ and a ‘hollow state’ (Cohen and Kennedy, 2000). The power and mobility of global finance and multinational corporations, the cultural fragmentation of national populations, the emergence of powerful agents of governance at supra-national and local levels, citizen disaffection from electoral politics, and the growth of global civil society, are all viewed as wearing away at the power or efficacy of the state. In addition, a crucial problem pointed to by critics of globalization is that, as Martin and Schumann (1998: 211) put it, economics appears to be devouring politics. At the same time, many commentators find signs that growing world interconnectedness is bringing with it new and encouraging political tendencies that promise to invigorate democracy and cosmopolitanism. The questions of the fate of the political and of democracy in a globalizing world are, then, the pivotal considerations of this chapter.

In Chapter 2, we noted that social scientists regard the study of social change as one of their central vocations. This not only involves delineating and analyzing extant and emerging institutions and processes of social transformation, but also thinking about the role of social movements. In what follows, we will examine a central contemporary social movement – the alternative globalization movement (AGM). This movement has been touted by some as a ‘second superpower’ announcing the return of people onto the stage of history (Yuen, 2004), and interpreted by others as a threat to the gains of contemporary globalization, and as violent, irrational, and reactive. Much of the preceding chapters have dealt with claims about, and critiques of globalization offered by the alternative globalization movement, but it is important to more closely analyze the movement as a movement. Our discussion of the AGM will range across a variety of issues, debates, dilemmas, organizations, and key figures of what is in truth a complex ‘movement of movements’. However, we will emphasize the return of a form of socialist contestation with the AGM, although there are some important points of differentiation between the AGM and socialism. Finally, we address the movement as an important utopian moment within contemporary globalization and, therefore, as the reappearance of utopian ‘thinking beyond’.

As we have noted in Chapter 2, the contemporary period is often viewed as marked by a ‘cultural turn’. Meanings, language, identity, and the proliferation of media are all seen as crucial issues that mark our postmodern, global condition. This cultural turn is signalled by Marxist Fredric Jameson’s (2000) claim that today even the economic has become cultural. Clearly, cultural questions are central and pressing in discussions of globalization: as Tomlinson (1999: 1) argues, ‘Globalization lies at the heart of modern culture; cultural practices lie at the heart of globalization’.