Today it is rare to read a book, a journal article or a news item without encountering the word “globalization.” Scholars, politicians, policy-makers and the general public are all concerned with the meaning of globalization. It seems that the word “globalization” is frequently used to mean major transformations in the global system under the influence of what Polanyi (1944) called the “self-regulating market.” For example, the authors ofThe Case Against the Global Economy(Mander and Goldstein, 1996) discuss various issues concerning globalization from several perspectives, but with a specific reference to the market. They all agree that there is...

In the decade of the 1960s the world economy grew at the rate of 5.0 percent. In the 1970s the real growth rate dropped to 3.6 percent. By the 1980s the rate had dropped to 2.8 percent and continued this decline in the 1990s when it fell to 2.0 percent. In two decades capitalism lost 60 percent of its macroeconomic momentum (Thurow, 1996: 1-2). Through the 1990s the overall European unemployment rate remained in double digits while the Japanese economy has been stagnating for a decade. The recent capitalist convert, Russia, appears to be demodernizing to Third World levels, while...

In April, 2000, CEOs of leading Canadian corporations held their Summit 2000 meeting in Toronto. They are members of the Business Council on National Issues, a group which since the mid-1970s has led the way in articulating a political consensus for Canada’s corporate elite. The key conference document opens with a tribute to “Canadian values” – sharing, caring, environmentalism and the like – and sets about to ensure that these values will “triumph in a competitive world.” It insists that “global economic integration and the rapid advance of technology are changing the rules of competition for companies and countries alike.”...

Islamist capitalists build on the shifting features of the world economy and economic development while promoting the idea of diverting development away from its “Western” moorings. In Turkey, a growing number of engineers, business groups and industrialists are part of the pro-Islamic political movement. These Islamists constitute the country’s fastest growing capital groups. They do not represent an “anti-West” brand of radical Islam but are in fact perfectly aligned with the global capitalist system. The growing importance of these Muslim capitalists in politics reflects the transformation which has occurred in development patterns in Turkey since the 1980s.¹

If we are...

There is a widespread perception among people in all walks of life and in all parts of the world, that the pace of change today is very fast, and in many ways unexpected and beyond their control. Much of the blame for the sense of unease and insecurity is being put on processes and changes occurring at the “global” level. The ability to influence, let alone control, such changes is perceived to be beyond the capability of the individual person or community – and even, in many cases, the individual nation state. What kinds of processes and changes are causing...

There can be little doubt that the world political economy is increasingly integrated. World trade is expanding approximately twice as fast as the rate of growth of world production (Mussa 1993, p.373). Foreign exchange turnover, much of it speculative, now amounts to over atrilliondollars per day (Held, 1998: 15-16). Over 1160 bilateral investment treaties have been signed, two-thirds of them in the last ten years (Clarke and Barlow, 1997: 24). Since it was founded in 1995, the World Trade Organization has launched successive, ambitious negotiating rounds encompassing new, ostensibly “trade-related” fields like intellectual property rights and services. The...

Globalization is not a new phenomenon (Mies, 1986), but by the latter part of the twentieth century its impact had become increasingly significant and had taken new forms which undermine the autonomy of national governments (Mishra, 1999) in what Hoogvelt has described as “a period of ‘unembedded’ liberalism” (1997: 135). Moreover, consciously or unconsciously, this is a gendered phenomenon, both in its practices and outcomes: women, collectively, control fewer economic resources than men, and their relative economic status has, at best, remained stable or else has deteriorated during the emergence of the present phase of globalized capitalism (Ward, 1990; Backer,...

During the last decade observers and social scientists have pondered the implications of the increasingly dominant paradigm of neo-liberalism. This paradigm informs the policies of many countries, leading governments to slash social spending and destroy “safety nets” while privatizing public services and granting more freedom to international investments and international commerce. The debate is phrased in terms of “globalization” because of the growth of multinational corporations and the weakening of national sovereignty implied in international agreements such as the GAAT and NAFTA. Theorists emphasize the increased importance of such supranational institutions as the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade...

Over the years, particularly in the last two decades, one is confronted by disturbing headlines in newspapers and newscasts; “Common sense revolution sweeps Ontario;” “Famine spreads in Africa and ethnic strife is on the rise;” “Financial speculators scoop choice property in Thailand at bargain basement prices as property values are depressed after the stock-market collapse;” “Corporations make profits in unprecedented rates.”

Terms such as efficiency, competitive advantage, and structural adjustment are heard repeatedly throughout the world as corporate sponsored globalization sweeps the globe. A constant preoccupation seems to be to cater to the demands of corporations. The fear is that...