Transnationalism and Anti-Globalism: How Right-Wing Populism Appropriated a Leftist Critique

Transnationalism and Anti-Globalism
Johannes Voelz
College Literature, Volume 44, Number 4, Fall 2017, pp. 521-
526 (Article)
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
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COLLEGE LITERATURE: A JOURNAL OF CRITICAL
LITERARY STUDIES 44.4 Fall 2017
Print ISSN 0093-3139 E-ISSN 1542-4286
© Johns Hopkins University Press and West Chester University
2017
TRANSNATIONALISM AND ANTI-GLOBALISM
JOHANNES VOELZ

The recent resurgence of nationalism in the United States finds
expression in a whole vocabulary, made up of slogans, rallying
cries, and buzzwords. Most prominent among them may be
“Make
America Great Again” and “America First,” but there is another
buzzword—anti-globalism—which is particularly suggestive of
the
conundrum transnationalism faces in the Age of Trump. The
term
anti-globalism results from an act of rhetorical appropriation
and
resignification, and as I want to suggest, the idea of
transnationalism
plays an important role in this repackaging effort.
Anti-globalism recalls the anti-globalization movement of the
1990s and early 2000s, but this resonance brings out the
differences
rather than similarities between the two: where anti-
globalization
was concerned with a critique of the economic system, anti-
global-
ism attacks what is perceived as a larger ideology of globalism
that
allegedly promotes free trade as well as cultural and racial
mixing.
From the view of the leftist anti-globalization movement,
globaliza-
tion was driven by the institutions that backed the Washington
Con-
sensus (such as the International Monetary Fund, the World
Bank,
and the US Treasury), global corporations that exploited the
waning
sovereignty of nation-states, and national governments that
colluded

with the forces of global capital, for instance by entering into
inter-
national free trade agreements, such as the North American Free
522 COLLEGE LITERATURE | 44.4 Fall 2017
Trade Agreement. The targets of that earlier movement were
there-
fore the profiteers and structures of economic globalization.
This economic understanding of globalization opened up a space
for alternative conceptions of globalization that could compete
with
the economic version. It is no coincidence, therefore, that it was
also
in the late 1990s and early 2000s that the academic field of
Amer-
ican Studies turned to the transnational as an emerging
paradigm.
American Studies entered its transnational phase by engaging in
profound soul-searching about the possibilities of altering the
object
of study seemingly prescribed by the field’s name (see, for
instance,
Janice Radway’s 1998 Presidential Address at the American
Studies
Association, titled “What’s in a Name?”). Although rather
diverse
manifestos appeared in quick succession, there emerged a
consensus
that sticking to the nation form was a sign of ideological
backward-
ness, whereas transcending the nation held out the potential for

pro-
gressive change. From the get-go, transnational American
Studies
aimed to transcend the nation on two different conceptual
planes:
first, on the level of methodology, where transnationalism in
essence
meant adopting a particular perspective; second, on the level of
the
object of study, where transnationalism referred to phenomena
that
went beyond the limits of the nation. This blending of method
and
object of study meant in effect that the transnational wasn’t
some-
thing one could neutrally observe, describe, and chart. Rather,
studying the transnational meant affirming the transnational.
This
is because the approval for the new method jumped over, as it
were,
to an approval of the phenomena studied. If, in other words, the
transnational perspective of scholars was greeted as the
successful
overcoming of critical parochialism, then phenomena
embodying
the transnational were themselves to be commended. This valua-
tion guided the choice of what was to be studied: Preferred
objects
included oppositional social movements that traversed national
boundaries, aesthetic forms that traveled beyond the confines of
the
nation, and ideas that circulated in similarly unbounded ways
(clearly,
this list is not meant to be comprehensive). In short,
transnational
American Studies provided the opportunity to salvage a

“globaliza-
tion from below” (to use a phrase popular with the anti-
globalization
movement), and to favorably contrast it to both nationalism and
eco-
nomic globalization (or “globalization from above”).
One of the problems faced—but rarely addressed—by propo-
nents of transnationalism emerged from this differentiation of
eco-
nomic and cultural globalization. Did the idea that these two
forms
of globalization are principally different really hold up? Didn’t
both
Johannes Voelz | CRITICAL FORUM 523
visions of globalization rely on some of the very same images:
flows
(of goods, people, ideas) as something natural, borders and
bound-
aries as artificial? Wasn’t there, in fact, a deep affinity between
the
longing for cultural transnationalism and the ideology of
economic
globalization, despite the political differences that seemed to
keep
them both neatly separated? I have argued elsewhere that
conceptu-
ally (though not politically) transnational American Studies is
indeed
indebted to economic globalization, and that it is nonetheless
advis-
able to pursue the project of transnationalism, albeit in a self-

re-
flexive manner (Voelz 2011). But rather than revisiting this
debate
at this point, suffice it to say that the question of
transnationalism’s
oppositional purity emerged from the somewhat tenuous
conceptual
framework shared by the anti-globalization movement and
transna-
tional Americanists: globalization, according to this framework,
had
an economic and a cultural aspect, which were to be seen as
opposed
to one another.
Quite some time has passed since the early 2000s. By now, aca-
demic transnationalism in American literary and cultural stud-
ies has been solidly institutionalized. Think only of the Journal
of
Transnational American Studies, the recent Cambridge
Companion to
Transnational American Literature, edited by Yogita Goyal
(2017), or
the founding of the “Obama Institute for Transnational
American
Studies” at the University of Mainz, Germany. Meanwhile, pre-
dictably, the hype that initially attended the “transnational turn”
has faded rather quickly. The anti-globalization movement, on
the
other hand, has largely run out steam, mostly because center-
left
parties across North America and Europe failed to support it;
they
embraced neoliberal reforms instead, a decision which has cost
many
of them a good share of their votes. (One could add that the

move-
ment only petered out after the demise of Occupy, or that, in
fact,
it has survived in places like Spain, where Podemos has
managed
to transform the protest against neoliberal globalization into
party
politics—but these are nuances that don’t change the big
picture.)
Along with the overall decline of anti-globalization came the
rise of
anti-globalism (itself a movement of transnational scope), and
thus
the seemingly miraculous transformation of a left-wing into a
right-
wing movement.
How in the world could that happen? In moving the critique
of globalization across the political spectrum, anti-globalists
have
rejected the foundational premise of anti-globalization and
academic
transnationalism: they refuse to differentiate between two
differ-
ent kinds of globalization, be they “from below and from
above,”
“cultural and economic,” or simply “good and bad.” As London-
based
blogger Jacob Stringer has aptly summarized it on
opendemocracy.
net: “[Anti-]Globalisation refers to certain processes in the

interests
of corporate trade. [Anti-]Globalism refers to a global outlook,
bor-
ders too open, a feared mingling of cultures, implied dangerous
liai-
sons with aliens” (March 26, 2017). Anti-globalists, in other
words,
have tied the critique of economic globalization to xenophobia,
rac-
ism, and a disdain for global elites, and have thus
conceptualized
economic and cultural globalization as hanging together.
Anti-globalists’ longing for cultural isolationism, it must be
admitted, has rendered the economic dimension of anti-
globalism
strikingly toothless. It is as if they offered cultural anti-
globalism as
a solution to the problems caused by global capitalism: their
implied
economic platform seems to be limited to the call for
protectionism
(the economic dimension of “America First!”) and the hope for
more
high-paying manufacturing jobs. In Strangers in Their Own
Land,
sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild (2016) has recently shown
just
how deeply the Tea Party members and Trump supporters she
inter-
viewed in Louisiana are invested in the free market, and how
much
they detest the welfare state. Their critique of economic
globaliza-
tion spares multinational corporations (even if these
corporations,

like the petrochemical companies in Louisiana, ruin the
environ-
ment and cause a virtual cancer epidemic) because they are seen
as
the older siblings of small businesses run by local
entrepreneurs.
Though the anti-globalists’ mix of economic and cultural anti-
glo-
balism may be rife with logical faults and moral deficiencies,
their
triumph should not be simply dismissed as racist and
xenophobic
(though it is that, too). Instead, their rise should prompt
scholars
of transnationalism to reflect on the involvement of the idea of
the
transnational in the political struggle that divides the United
States
and, increasingly, other countries in which right-wing populism
has taken hold. In this context, it becomes newly significant
that
transnational Americanists have tended to politically identify
with
the transnational formations they study and that they have thus,
as
described earlier, conflated method and object of study. As a
result
of this conflation, academic transnationalism has come to
embody
the idea of globalism targeted by the anti-globalist agenda.
Econom-
ically, transnationalism encapsulates the privileged status of a
global
elite (here, transnationalism refers to the scholars) and
culturally, it

raises fears of migration, hybridity, and the demise of white
hege-
mony (here, transnationalism refers to the phenomena studied).
Seen in this light, the idea of globalism embodied by
transnational
Johannes Voelz | CRITICAL FORUM 525
American Studies becomes a tailor-made point of attack for
what
John Judis, in The Populist Explosion (2016), has described as
the tri-
angular scapegoating of right-wing populism. Right-wing
populism
is triangular in that it claims to defend “the people” against two
per-
ceived enemies: the elites (situated above) and undeserving
“others”
(situated below).
The challenge of anti-globalism, then, is not only that it rejects
transnationalism’s starting premise of the two kinds of
globaliza-
tion, but, more crucially, that it brings to light the degree to
which
transnationalism is itself involved in the divisive struggle
currently
rocking the United States. This challenge, I think, can be seen
as
a welcome opportunity to generate a new kind of knowledge
from
within transnational American Studies. It calls for an approach
that
is more self-reflexive than the identificatory stance taken by

many
scholars of transnationalism so far. Rather than starting from
the
presumption that studying transnational formations means
helping
to fight the good fight, transnational American Studies could
begin to
chart how the transnational itself has become a currency, or
capital,
in the struggle for symbolic advantages in a starkly divided
society.
This isn’t to devalue the study of transnational formations, but
rather to come to realize that embracing and valuing the
transna-
tional is a maneuver that helps secure symbolically
advantageous
positions. This is the case both in the academic field of
American
Studies, which has long been organized around a moral
economy of
political engagement, and in the larger public sphere of the
United
States. The idea (taken from Bourdieu) is not that we
consciously
try to amass as much symbolic capital as possible—as if we
were
rational-choice actors in the field of symbolic capital—but
instead
that trying to carve out for ourselves a recognized position in
the
field of transnational American Studies is what it means to
“have
an investment in the game” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 98).
The same goes for the other side of the divide: the embrace of
anti-globalism speaks to the specific value of the ideas and

princi-
ples captured by the term transnationalism in the broader
political
discourse of the United States. Here, too, the currency of the
idea
of transnationalism has a particular valuation. The fact that we
may
think of this value as “negative” when used by anti-globalists
begins
to suggest that taking stock of transnationalism as a currency
helps
us capture its political existence. I am suggesting, in other
words,
to incorporate a self-reflexive and relational sociology of the
trans-
national into the program of transnational American literary and
cultural studies.
One of the welcome ramifications of such an extension of
Amer-
icanist transnationalism, it seems to me, would be to overcome
the
harmful dualism of nation and trans-nation. Ultimately, this
dualism
suggests that by turning to the transnational, we will have to
learn
to stop worrying about the nation-state. But Trump’s rise to
power
should make it apparent that American Studies needs to be able
to provide explanations of what goes on inside the United
States.
The truly surprising suggestion to be taken away from the rise

of
anti-globalism is this: a self-reflexively and relationally
revamped
transnational American Studies may provide a necessary tool for
coming to terms with the nationalist resurgence.
WORKS CITED
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loïc Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to
Reflexive Sociol-
ogy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Goyal, Yogita, ed. 2017. The Cambridge Companion to
Transnational American
Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 2016. Strangers in their Own Land:
Anger and
Mourning on the American Right. New York: The New Press.
Judis, John. 2016. The Populist Explosion: How the Great
Recession Transformed
American and European Politics. New York: Columbia Global
Reports.
Ebook.
Radway, Janice. 1999. “What’s in a Name? Presidential Address
to the
American Studies Association, 20 November, 1998.” American
Quarterly
51.1: 1–32.
Stringer, Jacob. “Why did anti-globalisation fail and anti-
globalism suc-
ceed?” Open Democracy. March 26, 2017. Opendemocracy.net.
Last vis-

ited: May 28, 2017.
Voelz, Johannes. 2011. “Utopias of Transnationalism and the
Neoliberal
State.” In Re-Framing the Transnational Turn in American
Studies, edited
by Winfried Fluck, Donald E. Pease, and John Carlos Rowe.
Hanover,
NH: University Press of New England.
JOHANNES VOELZ is Heisenberg-Professor of American
Studies,
Democracy, and Aesthetics at Goethe-University Frankfurt,
Ger-
many. He is the author of Transcendental Resistance: The New
Amer-
icanists and Emerson’s Challenge (UP New England, 2010) and
The
Poetics of Insecurity: American Fiction and the Uses of Threat
(Cambridge
UP, forthcoming 2017).
Week 11 Submit Final Research Paper
This assignment will help you to:
1. analyze and discuss works of fiction;
2. use appropriate literary terms to discuss a selection;
3. write critical essays using patterns of development
4. introduced and practiced in English 101; and
5. compose an acceptable research paper.
Research Paper Guidelines
Academic Integrity Policy:
Any student who plagiarizes any part of his or her work will, at
a minimum, automatically receive a 0 for the assignment.
Students should be aware of the Student Academic Integrity

policy described in the
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they will be subjected to disciplinary sanctions listed in the
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excerpts and working collaboratively with other students.
Students are expected to work independently, to generate and
express their own ideas about the literature, and to cite those
ideas that they have borrowed from others or are using as
supportive evidence.
Rubric
Research Paper Final draft
Research Paper Final draft
Criteria
Ratings
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Heading,font, length, other
Essays must be in Times New Roman (12pt)
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proofreading
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conclusion
100 pts
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This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeSupporting
evidence- the essay contains direct quotes in each body
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required). These quotes are introduced correctly, support a
specific part of the thesis statement, cited correctly, and are
included in the works cited page. All of the quotes included
must also be from a scholarly source
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that they have made suggested changes from the rough draft
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Total Points: 300

=
Week 7/8: Annotatated WC
Example (see this weeks' module
The theme of your research paper later in the semester will
involve the themes in
Their Eyes are Watching God
You must include 2 of the outside sources that you are planning
to use for research paper.
For this assignment only you may use first person in the
annotation.
You need a minimum of 5 outside/secondary sources for both
the rough and final draft. If you need to add additional sources
for the final draft that is acceptable.
Your outline will have two parts:
Traditional Work cited entry: example
Lamott, Anne.
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.
Anchor Books, 1995.
Annotation:
Each annotation should have a minimum of five sentences. You
must explain what the article is about and how it fits your thesis
for your upcoming research paper.
Lamott's book gives advice on how to make time and skills to
be a professional author
She discusses organization and time management. These will
provide support for two of my thesis points. This source will
provide additional evidence of the obstacles facing a modern
writer I plan to use some of the anecdotes from her newspaper

work as well.
Research Paper Tips
Below are some helpful guidelines if you are rusty on writing
research papers or just need an extra boost to get started.
1) All of the research material you could ever need is available
through BPCC's library. Start
here
Links to an external site. and try searching through
the different databases. Most of the databases also have built-in
tools to help you make correct MLA citations.
2) Structure your paper correctly! Here are the basics:
*An introduction of at least five sentences (hopefully more) that
gives relevant background about the work, author, time period -
whatever is useful. The intro should end with your thesis
statement.
* Body paragraphs should always begin with a topic
sentence, which means a sentence that gives the paragraph's
central idea like a newspaper headline does. Do NOT begin
your body paragraphs with plot points or questions.
*Transitions at the ends of body paragraphs to link them to the
next paragraph's idea.
*A conclusion of at least five sentences to sum up all of the
main ideas in the paper.
3) Every body paragraph should have a brief quotation from the
novel to make your point, and then a brief quotation from an
outside source to back you up. No more, no less. EVERY
quotation should have a short phrase introducing it (the phrase
often contains the writer's name and/or title of the piece).
We never just begin a sentence with a quotation.
4) Make sure that your thesis makes some kind of firm argument
about the novel's underlying meaning/message/theme. Your
thesis should not state a fact about the novel or simply say how

good it is.
5) Your paper should be organized. I recommend writing a
three-part thesis (Example: Shakespeare's Hamlet is a
traditional tragedy because of its irony, use of hubris, and
model of the tragic hero). Now, I take each of those three ideas
and I make it into a section of my paper. Each section probably
includes three or more paragraphs, and I put a transition at the
end before moving on to the next section. So to be clear, I'd
write a multi-paragraph section about irony in Hamlet then
transition, then I'd write a multi-paragraph section about hubris
in Hamlet and transition, and then I'd write a multi-paragraph
section about the tragic hero in Hamlet.
6) Write in as formal a tone as possible. Use your best and
most sophisticated vocabulary. Do not use contractions, first
person, abbreviations, slang, or short choppy sentences.
7) As stated above, your paper should have a three-part thesis
and thus, three sections. Notice that you also must have at least
three outside sources, so it might be a good idea to try to find
one source that supports each of your three main ideas.
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ArticleGlobalisation, Globalism and CosmopolitanismMarianna
Papastephanou
Globalisation, Globalism and
Cosmopolitanism as an Educational Ideal
M
P
University of Cyprus
Abstract
In this paper, I discuss globalisation as an empirical reality that
is in a complex relation
to its corresponding discourse and in a critical distance from the
cosmopolitan ideal. I argue
that failure to grasp the distinctions between globalisation,
globalism, and cosmopolitanism
derives from mistaken identifications of the Is with the Ought
and leads to naïve and

ethnocentric glorifications of the potentialities of globalisation.
Conversely, drawing the
appropriate distinctions helps us articulate a more critical
approach to contemporary cultural
phenomena, and reconsider the current place and potential role
of education within the
context of global affairs. From this perspective, the antagonistic
impulses cultivated by
globalisation and some globalist discourse are singled out and
targeted via a radicalization
of educational orientations. The final suggestion of the article
concerns the vision of a more
cosmopolitically sensitive education.
Keywords: globalisation, nation-state, identity, antagonism,
hybridity, Bauman,
Giddens, Kristeva, Dewey
Introduction
As early as 1916, John Dewey wrote:
Every expansive era in the history of mankind has coincided
with the
operation of factors which have tended to eliminate distance
between
peoples and classes previously hemmed off from one another.
Even the
alleged benefits of war, so far as more than alleged, spring from
the fact
that conflict of peoples at least enforces intercourse between
them and
thus accidentally enables them to learn from one another, and

thereby to
expand their horizons. Travels, economic and commercial
tendencies,
have at present gone far to break down external barriers; to
bring peoples
and classes into closer and more perceptible connection with
one another.
It remains for the most part to secure the intellectual and
emotional
significance of this physical annihilation of space. (Dewey,
1993, p. 110)
Today, although the relevant empirical phenomena have
advanced in incredible
ways and paces, the intellectual and emotional significance has
not been debated
534
Marianna Papastephanou
exhaustively, let alone secured. The economic and commercial
tendencies that
Dewey noticed have now taken the form of a shift of the
population to the tertiary
sector of economy, i.e. services, commerce, transport, etc.
(Habermas, 1998, p. 308),
what is often seen as knowledge economy, and an

unprecedented flow of informa-
tion across the globe. These facts—and many more—constitute
the phenomenon of
globalisation, which has become the object of globalist studies.
In this paper, after exploring the connection of globalisation
and globalism
meta-theoretically, I discuss some tendencies in the globalist
examination of the
factual, intellectual and emotional significance of globalisation
and show how they
affect educational theory. A critical assessment of these
tendencies leads me to sugges-
tions regarding the direction globalism and the theorization of
the cosmopolitan
pedagogical ideal must take.
Globalisation
Globalisation is an empirical phenomenon that has been
primarily felt as a structural
transformation of the world economic system operating in a
complex dialectics with
time and space compression effected by advances in technology
and communication.
Politically, globalisation is playing a major role in issues of
state sovereignty, world-
order, extra-state policies and administration practices.
Culturally, it is intervening
dramatically in the (re)shaping of identities and self-
conceptions, the premises of
human encounter and exchange of world-interpretations and the
frame of diverse
sensitivities, creativities and responses to aesthetic experience.

As a result of its
multi-dimensionality and the chaotic force of its effects,
globalisation denotes the
‘indeterminate, unruly and self-propelled character of world
affairs: the absence of
a centre, of a controlling desk, of a board of directors’
(Bauman, 1998, p. 38).
Theoretical responses to the facts of globalisation vary and
often conflate empirical
reality and rhetorical myth. The line distinguishing the two is
fuzzy since our access
to empirical reality is always linguistically and culturally
mediated but this should
not lead us to blurring the distinction itself. To see
Globalisation as a ‘discursively
constructed master discourse of uncontrollable global market
forces’ (Janice Dudley,
cf. Porter & Vidovich, 2000, p. 451) ignores the material effects
of globalisation
and their extra-linguistic factual character. That this character
is thematized and
known to us through our linguistically mediated interactions (a
chiefly epistemo-
logical matter) should not obscure the fact that globalisation
occurs as a set of
actualities that radicalize and accentuate older phenomena of
cross-cultural human
contact. Such a set may be entangled in a complex dialectics
with its discursiveness,
as its narrativity, its representation and the imaginary
investments they create play
an important ideological role in that very consolidation and
promotion of globali-
zing effects and the construction of the particular symbolic
sphere that nurtures

globalisation. Globalisation often becomes an ideological
device that states and
governments employ as an excuse for imposing certain policies
that would otherwise
fail to gain public acceptance or support. But it would be
erroneous to conclude
that the admission of the ideological role globalisation plays
should lead us some-
how to deny its reality. It could even be politically dangerous
since the political
Globalisation, Globalism and Cosmopolitanism
535
significance of a discursive construction differs from that of a
detectable reality and
focusing on the former would engender one-sided
interpretations overlooking the
need to deal with the latter. In any case, as Giddens writes,
… a few years ago, there was some doubt, particularly on the
left, about
whether globalization was a reality. The unpersuaded would
write
‘globalization’ in inverted commas, to demonstrate their
essential scepticism
about the idea. This controversy has moved on. Discussion

continues
about how best to conceptualize globalization, but few would
any longer
deny its influence—as signalled by the role of global financial
markets,
new developments in electronic communication and geopolitical
transitions [ … ]. Discussion of globalization is no longer
concentrated on
whether or not it exists, but on what its consequences are
(Giddens,
2001, p. 3).
In this respect, I argue, the idea that ‘globalization is best
understood as a kind of
imaginary
’ (Smith, 1999, p. 2) should rather correspond to globalism than
the
latter’s object of inquiry. For, the facticity of globalisation is
one thing but the
thematization
of this facticity is quite another.
For many thinkers, especially Third Way advocates, the impact
of globalisation
‘has been compared to that of the weather; a “self-regulating,
implacable Force of
nature” about which we can do nothing except look out of the
window and hope

for the best’ (Andrews, 1999, p. 1). But also critics of the Third
way such as
Bauman diagnose the same quality. ‘Globalization is not about
what we all or at
least the most resourceful and enterprising among us wish or
hope
to do
. It is about
what is
happening to us all
. It explicitly refers to the foggy and slushy “no man’s
land” stretching beyond the reach of the design and action
capacity of anybody in
particular’ (Bauman, 1998, p. 39). These meteorological
metaphors that have been
employed by many theorists to illustrate the unanticipated and
unintended character
of globalisation prove indirectly the facticity of this
phenomenon and the need for
a nuanced conceptual treatment of globalisation and its
discursive thematization.
Given such a chaotic multiplicity and lack of determinate
responsibility or liability,
it is no wonder that the causes and consequences of
globalisation, ‘let alone the
new political arrangements and kinds of democracy—
cosmopolitan, realist, liberal,

radical—that should respond to globalization are debated and
contested’ (Isin &
Wood, 1999, p. 92). To render the distinction between empirical
reality and its
theorization more operative, I suggest that we reserve the term
‘globalization’ for
the description of the intensification of global
interconnectedness and use the term
‘globalism’ for the discursive treatment and analysis of the
empirical phenomenon.
Globalisation as an empirical phenomenon involves various
practices—some of
which are discursive—and states of affairs. But the discourse
about globalisation,
i.e. its thematization, should be examined separately, at least
for methodological
purposes, and under a different heading: the term I suggest is
‘globalism’. To use
an example, it is part of globalisation that a multinational
company operating in a
Western state may cause an ecological disaster that will affect
primarily the clima-
tological conditions of some remote countries or perhaps even
the whole planet.
536

The debate on this phenomenon, however, belongs to a
particular discourse that
we may call globalist.
Globalism
Following Isin & Wood, we may regard globalism as a
discourse that constitutes
globalisation as an object (Isin & Wood, 1999, p. 92).
Therefore, globalism is not
a process or a set of realities independent from researchers.
1
It is a ‘discourse in
which the very idea of globalization is articulated,
disseminated, justified, debated,
in short, constituted as an object of reflection and analysis’
(Isin & Wood, 1999,
p. 94).
Globalist discourse operates at many levels deploying a large
variety of descrip-
tive, evaluative and normative judgements—most frequently in
a syncretic and
eclectic fashion. But one may synthesize some of the
approaches so as to group
them in three main categories of responses to globalisation.
1. The

first
category includes the positions that express deep concern about
globalisa-
tion as a new form of domination propelled by a
‘homogenization’ principle.
2. The
second
comprises those that have a more positive and optimistic
outlook resting
on what I would call a ‘global diversity thesis’.
3. The
third
involves positions that share the pessimism of the first category
but explain
it via a description that acknowledges more subtle
differentiations and accepts the
dual nature of globalisation.
The first and third focus on the concentration of power whereas
the second on its
dispersal. One may associate the first with Eric Hobsbawm, the
second with Feath-
erstone, Giddens and Appadurai and the last with Bauman. (It

should be noted
here that there is nothing ‘essential’ about the association of the
above thinkers
with the corresponding positions on globalisation.
Categorizations of the above
kind serve methodological purposes and can become easily
relativized by the
polemical shifts that often guide theoretical discussions. For
instance, Giddens’s
approach can be largely associated with the ‘global diversity
thesis’ but when he
confronts the glorifications of globalisation that derive from the
conservative inter-
nationalist camp he adopts a far more sceptical and critical
outlook. Therefore, like
all generalizations, the above segregation of positions is subject
to the vagaries of
deliberation.)
1. Hobsbawm deplores the fact that globalisation puts
heterogeneity and particularity
under threat by imposing a single dominant culture as the model
of all operations.
Globalisation is ‘a state of affairs in which the globe is the
essential unit of operation
of some human activity, and where this activity is ideally
conducted in terms of
single, universal, systems of thought, techniques and modes of
communication.
Other particularities of those who engage in such activities, or
of the territories in
which they are conducted, are troublesome or, at best,
irrelevant’ (Hobsbawm,
1998, p. 1).

537
2. The opposite holds for Featherstone who ‘calls into question
the homogenization
thesis, arguing that globalization often results in indigenization
and syncretization of
global symbols and hybridization of various local symbols’
(Isin & Wood, 1999, p.
105). To him, complexity is the most important feature of
globalisation. He argues
that a paradoxical consequence of that phenomenon and the
awareness of ‘finitude
and boundedness of the planet and humanity, is not to produce
homogeneity but to
familiarize us with greater diversity, the extensive range of the
local cultures’ (cf.
Porter & Vidovich, 2000, p. 451). Giddens singles out and
focuses on another
positive effect of globalisation, namely, the freedom that stems
from the enlarge-
ment of the economic, political and cultural horizons of people.
Thus, he considers
globalisation a ‘transformation of space and time in which the
development of
global systems and networks reduces the hold of local
circumstances over people’s
lives’ (Porter & Vidovich, 2000, p. 449).

3. Giddens’ approach appears one-sided when compared to
Bauman’s position. Bau-
man associates the above kind of freedom with the potentialities
of a small percent-
age of the population worldwide. ‘The global network of
communication, acclaimed
as the gateway to a new and unheard of freedom, is clearly very
selectively used; it
is a narrow cleft in the thick wall, rather than a gate’ (Bauman,
1998, p. 44). The
sway of a localizing trend triggers a new social division and
hierarchy. The knowl-
edge economy that cancels old modes and relations of
production, as well as the
movement of the footloose élites and their sense of time are
such that secure for the
rich an unprecedented independence from the poor. Those are
now even removed
from the sight of the privileged classes and become so tied to
their local circum-
stances that social mobility seems no longer to be a feasible life
option for them.
Habermas’s analysis converges with Bauman’s on this point. As
Habermas writes,
‘pauperized groups are no longer able to change their social
situation by their own
efforts’ (1998, p. 315). Overall, the third large category of
positions we notice in
globalist discourse provides a comprehensive and nuanced
reading of globalisation
but concentrates on a diagnosis of negative global effects. I will
return to the
positions that have consolidated in globalist discourse
thematically after I examine
how educational theory has responded to them by generating

what I would call
‘educational globalism’.
The main positions of general globalism are traceable and
informative in educa-
tional globalism too. Additionally, within it, one may discern
perspectives from
which the relation of education and globalisation can be
examined. One perspective
is concerned with research in ways by which practices,
institutions, discourses and
structures of education have been affected by globalisation.
Another places more
emphasis on ways by which educational policies express and
respond to the pres-
sures of globalisation (Rizvi & Lingard, 2000, p. 421), i.e. on
how education
actively engages with the facts of globalisation and often with
the promotion of
globalizing effects. A third perspective, which appears as yet
underdeveloped,
explores ways by which education should try to counterbalance
the negative effects
of globalisation and extend the potentialities of it for all in a
democratic fashion.
Most authors have dealt with the first two points in a diagnostic
mode. [With
538

respect to this last point, cosmopolitanism can contribute a lot
having first being
defined in an appropriate way.]
What underlies most approaches, however, is the same feeling
of unease, power-
lessness and bewilderment that characterizes general globalism.
As Gregory Heath
remarks, ‘education sits in an unfamiliar and interesting
position in the face of
globalisation. This is new territory for education, its institutions
and practitioners’
(2002, p. 37). Patrick Fitzsimons comments that, regarding
globalisation, ‘exactly
how education is involved or what it can or should do, is not
quite as clear’ (2000,
p. 505). Overall, education seems to be unsure of its direction
regarding globalisation
and this is often attributed precisely to the tensions between the
global and the local
and unity and difference that mark globalist discourse
(Fitzsimons, 2000, p. 520).
A Critique of Globalist Positions
The position I defend in relation to the theorization of
globalisation, which under-
lies the suggestions in the educational frame that will follow, is
deontological. By
this I mean that my approach is primarily concerned with the

imperatives and the
impact of globalisation regarding the ethical dimension of
intersubjectivity rather
than with the economic growth or techno-informational progress
it may facilitate.
Issues such as productivity, efficiency and profit enter the
picture of a deontological
approach only when and if they answer the question: for whom?
Who or which
group of people benefit from globalisation? How are justice and
equality affected?
What seems to be happening to diversity and cultural plurality
in a globalized
world? How does the Is of globalisation relates to the Ought of
the vision of better
conditions for all biota?
Therefore, I shall concentrate on how globalisation is viewed as
affecting unity
and plurality, social and international justice, and emancipatory
enrichment of
humanity and protection of natural life. I shall expound my
critique thematically
by focusing on the issues of (i) the nation-state and
territoriality, (ii) diversity and
homogeneity, (iii) identity and rootlessness and (iv) equality
and life options.
The Nation-state and Territoriality
The nation-state and its prospects constitute a crucial point of
contention within
globalism. Advocates of globalisation celebrate its challenging
impact on the modernist

construction of the nation-state because they associate with this
configuration the
terror of totality and homogeneity and treat it as a barrier to
‘cosmopolitanism’.
Detractors of globalisation (and of the corresponding
appreciative globalist theory)
defend the nation-state invoking a very wide spectrum of
arguments. For polemical
reasons, or due to lack of true engagement in the debate, many
thinkers who regard
globalisation positively draw a caricature of their opponents and
reduce the latter’s
defense of the nation-state to a conservative and reactionary
commitment to obso-
lete notions such as consanguinity, community ethos, and
cultural purism. ‘For
some, the de-realisation and de-territorialisation of place
associated with the
growth of globalisation and symbolic exchange results in a loss
of social meaning
539
and disruption of established senses of community and identity’
(Usher, 2002,
p. 48). This picture is accurate only for a small group of

globalist theorists and
within it there is room for a variety of positions, not all of
which could be considered
as motivated by conservative nationalist concerns. By contrast,
there are those who
defend the nation-state precisely because they see it as the last
bulwark of particu-
larity against the homogenizing flows of globalisation.
Additionally, there are thinkers
who offer the theoretical means for dissociating the nation-state
from the unity
versus
plurality binarism by unmasking operations of domination that
use diversity
and
totality equally effectively for their purposes but detrimentally
for people and nature.
Let us examine the issue of the nation-state more closely. It
may be true that
‘the establishment of any sovereign state required as a rule the
suppression of state-
formative ambitions of many lesser collectivities’ (Bauman,
1998, p. 40). But
accounts presenting the nation-state as a product of
homogenization at the expense
of the lives of millions of people by suppressing uprisings,
oppositional movements,

and so on (Isin & Wood, 1999, p. 93) are one-sided and
eurocentric. They are so
in the sense that they generalize the data that concern major
Occidental states to
cover all cases of territorial sovereignty on the planet without
taking into consideration
independence wars and anti-colonial movements. The reason
why I pinpoint this
has nothing to do with a defense of the nation-state or a belief
in its preservation.
It aims solely to draw attention to its double nature which
problematizes any effort
to render the nation-state a scapegoat on which we could project
the trials of moder-
nity and establish its overcoming as the new legitimating
metaphor of globalisation.
Another reason motivating some globalist theorists to allocate
globalisation’s
challenges of the nation-state immediately into the sphere of
progressivism is the
assumption that national territoriality is intimately bound up
with tribal instincts
that impede the just and equal treatment of alterity imposing
homogeneity. Glo-
balisation then is presented as the process that disarms
territoriality and allows
more diasporic and differentiated political configurations to
flourish. A concomi-
tant—and equally faulty assumption—is that cosmopolitanism is
a simple matter of
rootlessness. In turn, this idea leads to a mistaken identification
of globalized
managerialism and footloose entrepreneurs as ‘emerging
cosmopolitan classes’ (Isin
& Wood, 1999, 7). Both assumptions are reflected in the

following connection of
globalisation and postmodernism. ‘If globalization is contesting
the sovereignty of the
nation-state and making its boundaries permeable, giving rise to
various forms of
cosmopolitan citizenship, postmodernization is creating new
forms of social differ-
entiation, establishing new relationships between class and
citizenship’ (Isin &
Wood, 1999, p. 23). I will deal with the issue of rootlessness
and cosmopolitanism
later on but now I will turn to territoriality.
Contrary to the fashionable idea that the territorial principle of
political organization
emanates from a dormant tribalism, Bauman writes that it ‘does
not stem from the
natural or contrived tribal instincts alone (not even primarily)’
(1998, pp. 41–2)
and proves that its relation to globalisation is far more
complicated. Beneath the
surface gloss, and despite its threat to the nation-state,
globalisation encourages
forms of tribal territoriality for reasons of money and power.
The territorial principle
is being revived now because ‘global finance, trade and
information industry
540

depend for their liberty of movement and their unconstrained
freedom to pursue
their ends on the political fragmentation, the
morcellement
of the world scene’
(Bauman, 1998, p. 42). Thus, homogenizing and imperialist
forces use plurality in
a strategic way while destroying those aspects of that plurality
that would slow
down the ‘free movement of capital and limit market liberty’ (p.
42). ‘Far from
acting at cross-purposes and being at war with each other, the
political “tribalization”
and economic “globalization” are close allies and fellow
conspirators’ (p. 42).
In those circumstances, the task of a profound postmodernist
outlook would be,
I argue, to unveil the fact that in the complexities of
globalisation doubleness
borders with duplicity. This becomes more evident if we recall
that the debilitating
effects of globalizing processes on territorial sovereignty do not
affect all nation-
states equally. On the contrary, some powerful nations stand up
against extra-national
publics and stop the globalizing measures the latter impose so
long as they do not

serve the interests of the former. An obvious and relatively
recent example is ‘the
refusal of the United States to accept one of the few
international agreements
genuinely accepted by everyone else, namely, the commitment
to cut the emission
of greenhouse gases down to the required level. It has thus
single-handed sabotaged
a global measure’ (Hobsbawm, 1998, p. 3).
I would like to conclude this section by stressing that if
competitiveness damages
the significance intersubjectivity may acquire for our lives,
then, the nation-state,
by not being the only possible carrier of competitiveness,
cannot be the only cause of
oppression of alterity, culturally or socially. Recalling the cold
war, we realize the
fact that at that time the nodal points of coexistence and
competition were the
blocks of states rather than the states themselves (Bauman,
1998, p. 40). And in
the Fordist and post-Fordist landscapes, economy has gradually
shifted some of the
political initiative and control from the nation-state to extra-
national formations
while preserving and even exacerbating self-interested
antagonism
2
among nations

3
and individuals. The persistence of competitiveness and its
negative effects (that
we cannot take up here)
4
transcending the nation-state ought to put us on guard
vis-à-vis postmodern political optimism. Like other things,
imperialism takes a
new form too. It no longer conquers territories but preserves
and intensifies the
aggression and competitiveness that used to characterize the
nationalist claims of
superiority.
Diversity and Homogeneity
However, affirmative responses to globalisation do not herald
only the limitations
confronting the nation-state. They also discard the idea that the
New World order
promotes a Western-led homogenization as too simplistic and
argue that, though
Occidental influence is significant, ‘there is a degree of cultural
interpenetration,
hybridity and fluidity across different localities around the
globe’ (Isin & Wood,
1999, p. 94). Equated with either modernization or
Westernization, globalisation

becomes bereft of the multiplicity of its rationalities. Moreover,
within the frame
of globalisation-as-modernization the mobilization of encounter
and influence of
non-western cultures would be underestimated. For many
globalist theorists, ‘the
541
“global” and the “local” are not opposing but mutually
constituting elements of
globalization’ (Isin & Wood, 1999, p. 94).
For Bauman, on the other hand, this complexity and
interrelation of the global
and the local—what he calls ‘glo
ca
lization’—is precisely the vehicle of new modes
of domination and oppression of diverse others. Glo
ca

lization as the process of the
‘world-wide redistribution of sovereignty, power, and freedom
to act’ (Bauman,
1998, p. 42) divides the world into the tourists of the planet and
the vagabonds of
regions, i.e. those that ‘inhabit the globe’ and the others that
‘are chained to place’
(p. 45). Moreover, I believe, counterarguments to the positive
globalist outlook do
not emanate solely from different interpretations and appraisals
of the interconnec-
tion of the global and local. Doing justice to the qualitative
asymmetries of influence
among cultures is an additional motivation for turning a critical
eye on favourable
treatments of globalisation. ‘If globalization has to adjust to
local particularities, of
which “nations” are an important subvariety, particularities are
much more powerfully
affected by globalization and have to adjust to it or be
eliminated by it’
(Hobsbawm, 1998, p. 2). Hence, what is sidestepped by the
positive category of
globalist discourse is the fact that, in certain cases, the
difference in degree makes all
the difference in the world and the deflationist theorization of
modernization and
Westernization misdirects globalism.
Consider for instance the fact that to the critical and often
dismissive treatments
of globalisation through the employment of notions such as
‘Americanization’,
Westernization’, and ‘McDonaldization’ is counterpoised a set

of terms such as
‘diaspora’, ‘hybridity’, ‘
metissage
identities’ and so on. However, if one thinks over
the generality of the latter set of terms one cannot but notice
that they do not really
articulate processes that run truly counter the occidental
domination of cultural
influence. Contrasted to the concrete character of the terms
signifying one-sided
expansion and concentration of power, the generality and
vagueness of ‘diaspora’
and ‘hybridity’ speaks for a lack of analogous influence of non-
western cultures on the
western ones rather than a possibility for a more even-handed
reshuffling and dis-
persal of power. None of the defenders of the complexity of
cultural interpenetration
seems to have terms to offer that account for how the Western
world is influenced
by non-Western cultures—and that is no accident. The lack of
terms theorizing e.g.
‘Easternization’ is very telling regarding the asymmetries of
cultural interplay.
Also, the implicit assumption of some positive treatments of
globalisation that
cultural influence is a matter of free play in which people select
merrily what they
find attractive is politically insensitive and sociologically blind
to issues of power
and control. Capitalism with its subsystems of economy and

administration pene-
trates lifeworlds anchoring in them and often eroding them in
ways that go far
beyond the scope of cultural merry-go-rounds. Finally, we
should take into account
the qualitative differences that mark the reception of or,
adaptation to, otherness
by diverse cultures. Even when western cultures are influenced
by others this does
not occur with respect to what they really desire but with
respect to what they lack.
For instance, the ‘fastfoodization’ of foreign food we notice in
the western world
has added variety to western eating habits without contributing
significantly to
changes of western perceptions of time, labor, and lifestyle.
Eating Chinese or
542
Indian or Mexican food relates to cultural sufficiency, desire,
social position and
overall influence in ways that are strikingly different from those
surrounding the
introduction of fast food in the non-Western world. Fast food in
the latter world

goes hand in hand with a change in the conception of time, the
sense of worthy
activity and the assumptions about what is nutritious or healthy.
Identity and Rootlessness
Many globalists hope that the recognition of the fact that
subjectivities are con-
structions rather than essences will lead to eliminating or
complicating the neat
categorization of people that usually sparks off wars, violence,
exclusion and rac-
ism. It is true that phenomena of globalisation could be credited
with a reassertion
of fluid, diasporic, hybrid and contingent identities but this is
only one side of the
story. Only by way of a logical leap one could justify the
identification of fluidity
as such with its potential fruitful political interpretation. That is
to say, the
diasporic and the hybrid identity on their own do not determine
the conditions of
their political treatment or their cultural reception and ethical
significance. To give
an example, the relativized identity of footloose élites does not
appear very helpful
when they negotiate in the good old capitalist fashion about
their interests. Worse,
it does not seem to enter the picture when they display the
disarming innocence
of the unsuspecting with regard to their own, subtle or manifest,
complicities.
In this respect, rootlessness may be a disguise of a deep and

unreflective rootedness
in the Occidental culture of performativity, modernization and
profit. A closer look
shows that the hope that rootlessness is the royal route to
transcending a tyrannical
conception of identity is grounded in problematic and
ethnocentric premises. Let
us first examine an example of the attention rootlessness has
received. In certain
locations, the space-time compression results in globalized
senses of place. This
‘can lead to what Benko refers to as non-places, spaces “devoid
of the symbolic
expressions of identity, relations and history: examples include
airports, motoways,
anonymous hotel rooms, public transport”—and possibly even
cyberspace’ (cf.
Usher, 2002, p. 47). This phenomenon invites a careful
interpretation. In my
opinion, the anonymity of a hotel room, instead of rendering it a
non-place, is
precisely one of the features that root it in a particular culture
in relational distinc-
tion to non-anonymous space. The sense of normalcy it enjoys
because it is ours
empties it in our eyes of any content as we forget that its lack of
name is exactly
what makes it northwestern, i.e. ours and nobody else’s.
As to airports being non-places, once again, this idea mirrors
our ethnocentric
forgetfulness that efficiency, passports, security, regional or
racial origin and so on,
are still loaded with various cultural meanings. For instance, as
Habermas argues,
international flights, global stock market transactions, the

millennium, conferences
etc, are scheduled by the Christian calendar (1998, p. 307). I
believe that this
example proves that the identity of the supposed non-places,
which is not discernible
to us when we assume that history and culture are cancelled out
when convention-
ally standardized, is surely felt by those who follow our
conventions temporarily
and then return to their own. ‘World air travel is possible
because of a number of
543
arrangements which link all airports and airlines of the globe,
and which are
handled in a standardized manner everywhere and, in fact, with
the use of a single
language of communication for all essential technicians
anywhere in the world’
(Hobsbawm, 1998, p. 1). Thus, the so-called rootlessness and its
supposed mani-
festations speak more for the homogenizing effects of
globalisation and the euro-
centrism they encourage rather than the redemption of
pluralism. If there is freedom

from the constraints of identity, that freedom is for those others
who make the effort
to adjust to our normalized and eurocentrically anonymized
modes of existence.
Equality and Life Options
The approaches I have placed in the large category of
affirmative theorizations of
globalisation also converge in their appreciation of the new
opportunities for
improvement of people’s lives. ‘The movement of people,
money, and information
across national and cultural boundaries means that we now have
access to markets,
cultural practices, and products as never before. This access
clearly has the poten-
tial for enriching our lives by providing lifestyle and
employment options that were
once beyond our reach. [ … ] Even the remotest cultural
traditions are now readily
accessible to us’ (Rizvi & Lingard, 2000, p. 419). It is true that
politically pessimist
globalist discourses often downplay these opportunities or
unduly demystify them
as being a smoke screen. But the undue emphasis on prospects
for equality and
enlarged existential choice founders upon serious problems too.
These involve
issues such as for whom the employment options are truly
available, what happens
to cultures that are not very adaptable to the globalizing
rationale and to what
extent (and filtered through what) remote cultures are really

accessible.
Besides, any account of globalisation, precisely those which
purport to grasp the
complexities and paradoxes of the phenomenon, must pay
attention to the fundamental
inequalities that solidify or emerge from the course of
restratification (Bauman, 1998,
p. 43) effected through globalisation. As Habermas diagnoses,
‘the gap between the
living conditions of the employed, the underemployed, and the
unemployed is widen-
ing’ (1998, p. 315). Globalisation as, primarily, ‘a
redistribution of privileges and
deprivations, of wealth and poverty, of resources and
impotence’ (Bauman, 1998,
p. 43) widens the scope of choice for some and drastically
narrows it for some others.
Given that our times are marked ‘by the structural menace to the
welfarist
domestication of capitalism and by the revival of a
neoliberalism unhampered by
considerations of social justice’ (Habermas, 1998, p. 314),
5
equality is sacrificed
on the altar of performativity. A consequence of economic
globalisation and the
competitiveness it has imposed is the transformation and
reduction of the welfare
state mirrored in the fact that benefits drop, access to social
security is toughened

and pressure on the unemployed is increased (Habermas, 1998,
p. 315).
Educational Globalist Discourse
The dilemmas and tensions of globalism are noticeable in
educational theory too.
Some commentators concentrate on the complexities of the
global knowledge
544
economy and their impact on education directing their
endeavours in a theorization
of the new possibilities. Novel conceptions of spatiality, the
cyberspace, and diaspora
(Usher, 2002) as well as the features of knowledge economy
(Peters, 2002)
6
attract

the attention of theorists in a way that often refrains from
painting a gloomy
picture—or sometimes creates a picture that is even overtly
optimist.
Some others refer to the fact that globalisation threatens
traditional forms and
structures of pedagogy to render them obsolete (Heath, 2002).
Haynes (2002, p. 103)
contrasts the conception of the university ‘as a community of
academics engaged
in a range of traditions or practices’ with its conception as a
‘quasi-governmental
administrative entity’—a conception shaped by globalizing
procedures and the
tolerance or welcome they encounter in educational systems and
policies. The latter
conception should be combated because it reduces the university
to an organization
‘employing workers to value-add to customers intending to
maximise personal
economic rewards from future engagement in a more
competitive national economy’
(p. 103).
Others focus not so much on the threats confronting tradition
and community
but rather on what they view as an overwhelming tendency of
the globalized world
to treat education solely as a means to an end (Coxon, 2002, pp.
69–70). Education,
then, turned to a commodity (Bagnall, 2002, p. 81), becomes
‘instrumental to
goods which lie outside the realm of knowledge and rational or
critical understand-
ing’ (Heath, 2002, p. 38).

7
In this way, it is complicitous in the cultivation of
consumptive subjectivities (Fitzsimons, 2000, p. 519) and the
promotion of policies
that aim to ‘ensure the competitiveness of the national economy
in the face of
globalization’ disregarding the democratic deficits they involve
(Rizvi & Lingard,
2000, p. 421). Such deficits affect detrimentally, among other
things, gender sensitive
state policies and educational practices (Blackmore, 2000).
8
True, there is a positive side in the relation of globalisation and
education which
seems to relate chiefly to new modes of encouraging
multiculturalism, group dif-
ferentiated citizenship, diversity and cross-cultural encounters.
However, this
admission should not be overgeneralized and exaggerated lest
the negative side will
be obscured and covered up. Some educationalists have already
acknowledged that
the educational systems of the newer states emerging as a result
of recent developments
in world affairs ‘may be shaped by some degree by colonialism’
(Dale, 2000, p.
446). Bagnall argues that the internationalisation of higher
education may be seen

as ‘counter-ethical to the extent that it is irremediably cultural
hegemonic regard-
less of the efforts that are made to be sensitive and responsive
to the cultures into
which it is marketed’ (2002, p. 85). Others diagnose a
homogenizing linguistic
imperialism operating in educational systems worldwide
endangering linguistic
diversity and plurality (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2001; Phillipson,
2001). And, in spite of
the fact that the extent of global educational curricular
homogeneity is contestable,
it is evident that it imposes, at least to some degree, a kind of
world culture. This
favors unity rather than plurality since isomorphism of
curricular categories across
the world applies ‘irrespectively of national, economic, political
and cultural differences’
(Dale, 2000, p. 430). To summarize, globalisation regarding
education is guilty of
a promotion of unity over plurality through cultural imperialism
(Porter & Vidovich,
545
2000, p. 451) and the cultivation of antagonism.

9
Via market imperialism, it is
guilty of vocationalization of higher education, privatisation of
educational respon-
sibility and benefit, dependence of accountability on
educational outcomes and
‘competitive marketization of educational institutions and their
services’ (Bagnall,
2002, p. 78).
Overall, this kind of educational globalist critique of the
unethical consequences
of globalisation shares nothing—in most cases—with
reactionary or conservative
notions attached to narrow conceptions of value, identity and
cultural homogeneity. It
also reflects the concerns of the equivalent tendencies within
general globalism.
What is more important is that this educational critique displays
a very ‘healthy’
reaction to the connection of globalisation and competitiveness.
It seems to be well
aware of the fact that the system encourages self-regarding
rather than ethical conduct
through an assumption of ‘enlightened self-interest through
individual choice’
(Bagnall, 2002, pp. 81-2) and condemns it relentlessly.
‘Education has been seen
as the key factor in honing states’ competitive edge with respect
to each other’ (Dale,
2000, p. 441), which means that local diversity is promoted only
to the extent that

it is conducive to the goals of the market. Thus, situational
sensitivity serves a largely
Western, privatized, and ego-centred set of cultural values
(Bagnall, 2002, p. 86).
Due to a conflation of conflict and antagonism, postmodernism
often becomes a
secret accomplice of the market by associating dissent,
pluralism and competition.
The awareness ‘that highly competitive, unregulated, marketised
systems do not,
in fact, encourage educational (or any other “product”)
diversity, at least beyond a
particular minimal level’ (p. 82), should lead us to questioning
this hasty identifica-
tion of antagonism as the inexhaustible source of the new and
the unknown.
Suggestions
As I mentioned in my introductory comments, educational
philosophical globalism
performs diagnostic interventions rather than concrete and
deontological sugges-
tions for change. Or, it draws from the suggestions offered
within general glo-
balism. The latter has produced a wide spectrum of speculations
about the future
of the globalizing world, some of which have a clearly
normative character and
mirror the position one takes regarding the significance of
globalisation. I shall
examine some of these ideas (regardless of whether they have
been used in educa-
tion or not) in order to move to my own suggestions.

First of all, I believe, identity politics sometimes approximates
conservatism and
purism wishing cultures to remain as they are, supposedly
uncontaminated by
obtrusive otherness. It tries to arrest time and sees change as
violation and distor-
tion. The solutions it offers do not touch upon issues of power
but rather on issues
of communal bonds and preservation of the ‘spirit’ of
collectivities. More than
anything, the emphasis on the idea of community is no antidote
to globalisation
‘but one of its indispensable global corollaries simultaneously
products (
sic
) and
conditions’ (Bauman, 1998, p. 43).
Part of the postmodernist discourse that seems to be less
troubled by globalisa-
tion imagines a future in which diversity and hybridity will
effect new forms of
546

solidarity. Kristeva’s position seems to me to be exemplary of
this trend. Admitting
that one is strange to oneself creates a sense of solidarity among
us because ‘we all
belong to a future type of humanity which will be made entirely
of foreigners/strangers
who try to understand each other’ (1998, p. 323). To my mind,
this position betrays
overgeneralizations, is completely negligent of the complex
politics of difference
and normalizes the experiences of one as being those of all.
10
Worse, it not only
misses all the tensions and negative effects that material and
symbolic competitive-
ness produces but it even justifies them through a very
misguided and conservative
pragmatism. This is evident by the following. Kristeva mentions
cultural difference
as something we have to pay attention to but, as she adds, ‘still,
we are fully aware of
the risks that may come with such an attitude: ignorance of
contemporary economic
reality, excessive union demands, inability to take part in
international competition,
idleness, backwardness. This is why we need to be alert and
always remember the
new constraints of our technological world, of “causes and

effects”’ (1998, p. 329).
Kristeva’s main suggestion, however, reflects a psychoanalytic
rather than a socio-
political problematic—and a very dubious one—as the next
citation shows. ‘In
order to fight the state of national depression that we have in
France (and in other
countries as well) as a result of globalization and the influx of
immigrants, and also
in order to oppose maniacal reactions to this depression (such as
that of the
National Front), it is important to restore national confidence’
(p. 326). Here, the
association of national depression with globalisation and the
influx of immigrants
is negligent of other important factors. As for the idea of
restoring national confidence,
in its vagueness, it accommodates the worldwide pressures for
more competitive
nation-states instead of fighting them.
Other approaches along similar lines derive a ‘critical’ aspect of
globalisation
from the very lack of coherence and unity characterizing this
phenomenon. As I
have mentioned previously, this move takes a leap of thought
that is arbitrary and,
arguably, in underestimating the negative signs of globalisation,
it makes unwit-
tingly common cause with the market. A more sophisticated
variation of this theme
connects the unpredictability of globalizing realities with the
possibility for the
emergence of a critical localism (Fitzsimons, 2000). But as
Habermas argues, local
governmental measures ‘would bring about local advantages,

but would not change
the pattern of international competition between countries.
Economic globalisa-
tion, no matter how we look at it, destroys a historical
constellation in which, for
a certain period, the welfare state compromise was possible.
This compromise, to
be sure, is by no means the ideal solution of a problem inherent
to capitalism, but
it has after all succeeded in keeping the social costs within
accepted limits’ (1998,
p. 316).
Now, Habermas seems to opt for the opposite solution, i.e.
instead of critical
localism he defends the idea of differentiated international
publics. To him, welfare
functions may be rescued if transferred from the nation-state to
larger political
units that can catch up with transnationalized economy (1998, p.
317). A supra-
national politics catching up with markets would promote the
transformation of
the world into a community of solidarity placing the emphasis
on generalizable
interests.
547

However, this solution is also problematic for nothing
guarantees that these
publics will truly serve the interests of all people. Habermas
admits a similar
weakness when he writes that ‘the creation of larger political
units leads to defen-
sive alliances opposed to the rest of the world, but does not
change the mode of
competition between countries as such’ (p. 317). Hence he sets
the following
precondition that he hopes it will have a reforming effect on
human relations. ‘Only
under the pressure of the changing consciousness of citizens,
and of its impact on
the field of domestic affairs, may those collective actors
capable of acting globally
come to perceive themselves differently, that is, increasingly as
members of a
community that leaves them no choice but cooperation and
compromise’ (pp. 318–
9). Now, if we consider the role education plays in the shaping
and change of the
consciousness of future citizens, we realize that the need for
new pedagogical ideals
is compelling. These will undo the effects of dominant ideals
such as the individ-
ualist and the technicist that have elevated antagonism to a
major given of human
coexistence. I suggest, then, that we search for or construct
those ideals the edu-
cational cultivation of which will encourage a different way of
relating to otherness.
And here is where cosmopolitanism enters the picture.

There has been a revived interest in cosmopolitanism recently
that has created,
in my opinion, two major tendencies: one is to understand
cosmopolitanism in a
pragmatist way as mobility, rootlessness, openness to different
lifestyles and detach-
ment from the nation-state;
11
the other adds to it strong legal and ethical dimensions.
The former derives from a confused and under-theorized
equation of the everyday
use of the term with the philosophical one whereas the latter
attempts to reformu-
late the notion drawing from the philosophical tradition but
couching it in a more
adequate philosophical idiom. The former, light-hearted, sense
of cosmopolitanism
can be encountered in the work of many contemporary and
influential political
philosophers like Jeremy Waldron (2000) and to a lesser degree
even in Bruce
Ackerman (1994). The latter, deeper, sense of cosmopolitanism
can be found in
Nussbaum’s renegotiation of Stoicism and in neo-Kantian and
post-Kantian polit-
ical philosophies. The notion of cosmopolitanism I see as
compatible with the
above mentioned educational suggestion is this latter one, but as
I argue elsewhere,
it has first to address some serious criticisms, which here I shall
only briefly

summarize. First, it must distance itself from a ‘tourist’
conception of cosmopoli-
tanism. It must also show that it does not rest on obsolete
philosophical accounts
of the self i.e. accounts that give antagonism ontological
citizenship and establish
it as an inescapable human reality (Papastephanou, 2002). Then
it must prove that
it is not a secret accomplice of ethnocentrism and finally that it
does not express
the concerns of a paternalistic and elitist small group of
intellectuals (Lu, 2000).
What is important here is that only a reformulated conception of
cosmopolitanism
and its transference to educational goal-setting can address the
need for a change
of consciousness and frame it legally and ethically. The
relevance of the legal
dimension is demonstrated by the fact that all efforts to
counterbalancing the
negative side of globalisation founder upon a fundamental lack.
As Habermas
writes, ‘what is lacking is the emergence of a cosmopolitan
solidarity, less binding,
of course, than the civic solidarity that has emerged within
nation-states’ (1998,
548

p. 319). The ethical dimension concerns the fact that true
cosmopolitanism is not
just about openness to alternative ways of life but involves also
the duty to material
aid and transnational redistribution (Nussbaum, 2000).
In this context, it becomes apparent that, whereas globalisation
regarding edu-
cation concerns new global policies and the structural changes
of schooling they
are causing, the cosmopolitan pedagogical ideal should concern
the cultivation of
resistant, critical and reflective subjectivities. It should concern
the effort to mini-
mize the risks for individuals and cultures and maximize the
positive potentialities
of globalisation in a fairer way by encouraging non-competitive
feelings to others
and acknowledging that there are more than just negative duties
towards them.
Conclusion
A very powerful objection to what I have suggested above
would involve the
assumption that the cultivation of non-competitive attitudes is
unrealistic because
antagonism is—supposedly—intrinsic in human nature. Because
people are self-
centred beings, the excessive competitiveness we notice

nowadays among individuals
and nations is not a pathology but rather a side-effect of an
otherwise much desired
freedom of thought and action. However, one of the very few
points on which
postmodernist trends—and globalism that concerns us here—
converge is that post-
modern discourse is de-essentializing, although the implications
of this appear not
to be fully recognized yet. Had they been recognized, the
objection would have lost
its meaning. For, if there are no essential characteristics of
humanity, then no
possibility of becoming could be blocked from the start. A
rejection of assumptions
such as the antagonistic nature of people should become part of
anti-essentialism
as much as the questioning of identity, transcendentalism,
rationalism and absolute
truth. Consequently, a discourse or practice that relies tacitly on
the idea that
people are self-serving and interest-driven cannot be de-
essentialist or at least not
all the way. Some postmodernists are led astray by their
conflation of agonistics
with antagonism and their hasty glorification of conflict. By
omitting to draw the
necessary distinctions within conflict, they weaken its
explanatory power and tran-
scendentalize it by making it an almost mystical source of
innovation and progress.
They do so as they hope that in this way they protect
heterogeneity and lose sight
of the fact that antagonism is the worst enemy precisely of that
kind of cosmo-
politanism that recognizes and defends plurality. If the major

issue is to change the
consciousness of people, then education has a heavy burden,
because people often
become what they are taught that they are. Thus, in the
endeavour to problematize
external borders, many postmodernists forget that borders are
sometimes internal
and their overcoming presupposes a dismantling of the
binarisms (e.g. internal vs
external, nature vs culture etc.) that have grounded them. By
emphasizing so much
the overcoming of external borders we overlook the complex
interplay of internal
and external. Such an ‘internal’ border—philosophical,
psychological, and moral—is
the one created by the assumption of closed and competitive
subjectivities.
Habermas states that ‘the Hobbesian problem of how to create
and to stabilize
social order is too big a challenge, on the global scale as well,
for the capacity of
549
rational egotists to cooperate’ (1998, p. 319). Postmodernist

philosophers have
taken great pains to demonstrate that the rational egotists are
not exactly rational.
It remains now to demonstrate that they are not necessarily
egotists either. It is perhaps
then that the intellectual and emotional significance of the
physical annihilation of
space that Dewey mentioned will be secured.
Notes
1. It should be noted here that not only philosophers and
academics but many others
participate in the constitution of globalization as discourse, e.g.
government officials,
journalists, social movements, artists, managers, politicians,
etc.
2. ‘There can be little doubt that there has been an
intensification of economic competition
among nations, regions, and industries with dramatic changes in
state policies, markets,
and work’ (Porter & Vidovich, 2000, p. 453).
3. On how the international competitiveness places the nation-
states in a self-contradictory
position, see Habermas (1998, p. 316).
4. On the dangerous impact of competitiveness and the pursuit
of self-interest on gender issues,
see Blackmore (2000, pp. 480–1) and on personal relations
generally, see Haynes (2002, p. 108).
5. Many educationalists also see neoliberalism as the

underpinning logic of the most recent
wave of globalization (Fitzsimons, 2000, p. 505; Blackmore,
2000).
6. Knowledge economy ‘allegedly differs from the traditional
economy with an emphasis
on what I shall call the “economics of abundance”, the
“annihilation of distance”,
“deterritoralisation of the state”, the importance of “local
knowledge”, and “investment
in human capital” (and its embedding in processes)’ (Peters,
2002, p. 94).
7. ‘Not least of the ironies is that in the knowledge economy,
knowledge and its legitimation
is controlled by the consumers rather than the producers of
knowledge’ (ibid.).
8. As for the optimist view that schooling can now better
contribute to a meritocratic
stratification structure, it is debatable first and foremost due to
the philosophical
challenges the notion of meritocracy faces today.
9. Grubb uses the book
A Nation at Risk
(US Government Printing, 1983) as a source of
a major strand of new vocationalism in American education and
he writes that this book
epitomizes the insistent economic rhetoric of this strand of new
vocationalism ‘the great
threat to our country’s future was “a rising tide of mediocrity”

in the schools, causing
a decline in competitiveness with the Japanese, the South
Koreans, and the Germans’
(Grubb, 1996, p. 2).
10. This becomes more apparent when she writes (1998, p. 323),
‘whatever its ostracisms and
difficulties with foreigners, on American soil I feel foreigner
just like all the other foreigners’.
The problem here is the equation of all foreigners and their
feelings and experiences.
11. Consider, for instance, the following comment: ‘the new
professional-managerial groups
have become less concerned about national interests and turned
their back on the
nation-state: they display cosmopolitan tendencies’ (Isin &
Wood, 1999, p. 101).
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New Political Science, Volume 26, Number 1, March 2004
From Globalism to Globalization: The Politics of

Resistance1
Benjamin Arditi
National University of Mexico (UNAM)
Abstract The assumption of this article is that the “second great
transformation”
proposed by global actors parallels the one advanced by those
who resisted laissez-faire
capitalism in the 19th century. Both dispute the unilateral
imposition of a new planetary
order and endeavor to modify the rhythm and direction of
economic processes presented
as either fact or fate. In doing so, they effectively place the
question of the political
institution of this order on the agenda. I look briefly at the
familiar underside of
globalism and then move on to develop a tentative typology of
initiatives that set the tone
for a politics of globalization. These include radical and viral
direct action, the
improvement of the terms of exchange between industrialized
and developing countries,
the expansion of the public sphere outside national borders
through global networks, the
accountability of multilateral organizations, and the
advancement of democracy at a
supranational level. Participants in these initiatives take politics
beyond the liberal-
democratic format of elections and partisan competition within
the nation-state. They
exercise an informal supranational citizenship that reclaims—
and at the same time
reformulates—the banners of social justice, solidarity, and
internationalism as part of the
public agenda.

Ever since the market ceased to be a taboo and globalization
became a dominant
cognitive framework, the Left seems to have confined itself to a
principled
commitment toward the dispossessed and a continual call for
measures to
ameliorate inequality. Outside the mainstream, globaliphobic
groups—an ex-
pression I use as shorthand to designate the naysayer as well as
Beck’s “black,”
“green,” and “red” protectionists2—offer more militant, yet
scarcely innovative
responses. They conceive globalization as a purely negative
phenomenon, little
more than old capitalism dressed in new clothes. For them,
especially the red
and black globaliphobes, the assault on sovereignty spearheaded
by govern-
ments and multilateral agencies in the name of international
trade strengthens
the hand of the business and financial community, compromises
the autonomy
of domestic political decisions, and reinforces the submissive
status of less
1 I would like to thank Toshi Knell, Eric Mamer and two
anonymous reviewers for
New Political Science for their comments on an earlier draft of
this article.
2 Ulrich Beck, What is Globalization? (Cambridge: Polity Press,
2000). For Beck, “black”
protectionists mourn the loss of national values, the “green”
variety upholds the state as
the last line of defense against the international market’s assault

on environmental values,
while the “red” ones maintain their faith in Marxism and see
globalization as yet another
example of the class struggle.
ISSN 0739-3148 print/ISSN 1469-9931 online/04/010005–
2004 Caucus for a New Political Science
DOI: 10.1080/0739314042000185102
6 Benjamin Arditi
developed countries to the dictates of the major industrial
nations. Globali-
phobes are quite right about this, but they also think about the
phenomenon
from a reductionist perspective that confuses globalization with
what Beck calls
“globalism,” that is, “the ideology of rule by the world market,
the ideology of
neoliberalism.”3 In doing so, they neglect the range of
contending forces set into
motion by the process of globalization itself. The paradoxical
effect of this
confusion is that their diagnostic converges with that of the
neoliberal right: both
conceive globalization as a victory of liberalism, except that
each assigns
opposite values to it.
Yet the hegemony of the market and free trade is not quite the
same as the
victory of liberalism tout court. When one looks at the efforts to
recast the rules
and the institutional design of the international order that has

been emerging
from the ruins of the Berlin wall, the thesis of a liberal end of
history proves to
be somewhat premature. Globalism undermines Westphalian
sovereignty and
deepens inequality, but also has at least a potential for political
innovation as the
resistance to globalism opens the doors for an expansion of
collective action
beyond its conventional enclosure within national borders.
Notwithstanding the
unipolarity of the international order, the wide array of new
global warriors that
rally around the banner of the World Social Forum—“another
world is poss-
ible”—are assembling a politics that seeks to move the current
setting beyond
mere globalism. This intervention examines some of the
symptoms of this move.
The Underside of Globalism
Every age of great changes brings along an underside.
Nineteenth-century
industrialization unleashed a productive power on a scale
unknown before
while it simultaneously destroyed traditional communities,
virtually wiped out
the cottage industry of artisan production, and created a new
urban underclass.
Industrial society also saw the emergence of efforts to resist and
modify the
capitalist reorganization of the world. Globalization, with its
remarkable time–
space compression and its impact on our perception of
distance,4 presents us

with an underside too. It has three salient aspects: the deepening
gap between
rich and poor countries, the creation of a mobile elite and an
increasingly
confined mass, and the resurrection of more rigid and less
liberal models of
identity as a defensive reaction to the dislocations brought upon
by globalization
under the guise of globalism.
The first point has been discussed profusely.5 For the purpose
of our
3 Ibid., p. 9.
4 Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences
(Cambridge: Polity Press,
1998), pp. 16ff.
5 The figures of inequality are staggering. At the end of the
19th century, the difference
in the average income of the richest and the poorest country was
9:1. Things got much
worse since then. According to the UN, the income gap between
the richest 20% and the
poorest 20% of the planet in 1960 was 30:1, while in 1997 it
jumped to 74:1. The case of
Africa is even more daunting, as the average GNP of around
US$360 per person is below
the annual service of the foreign debt. In countries like Angola
and the Ivory Coast, it is
simply not payable, for it stands at 298% and 146% of their
GNP correspondingly.
Moreover, despite our extraordinary capacity to produce food,
every 3.6 seconds some-
where on the planet someone dies of hunger or for reasons

directly derived from it. That
makes 24,000 deaths per day. In the meantime, average
international aid from develop-
From Globalism to Globalization 7
argument, it suffices to point out that one does not need to be an
orthodox
communist or a Rousseau-style egalitarian to understand that a
minimum
threshold of equality is required to shore up governance and
level the field for
participants in the public sphere. The second aspect addresses a
sociological
issue. While moral indignation in the face of human suffering is
not enough to
reorient the global patterns of development towards greater
social justice and
solidarity, the persistence of exclusion confirms the coexistence
of two worlds or
life-experiences concerning globalization. These typically show
themselves, and
converge, in one place, border crossings, and around one issue,
mobility.
Advocates of globalism extol the virtues of the free transit of
capitals, goods,
services, and people. Without it, globalization faces a real and
perhaps unsur-
passable limit. That is why the World Trade Organization
(WTO) insists on this
free passage. However, migratory controls to stop the entry of
those fleeing from
poverty or persecution multiply. The freedom of the market, say
Zincone and

Agnew, entails a schizophrenic logic—positive for capital and
negative for
labor.6 The UN reports something similar: “The collapse of
space, time and
borders may be creating a global village, but not everyone can
be a citizen. The
global professional elite now face low borders, but billions of
others find borders
as high as ever.”7 Bauman builds on this to identify a novel
socio-political
division developing in the global order. If distance has ceased
to be an obstacle
only for the rich—since for the poor it never was more than a
shackle—this
creates a new type of division between the haves and the haves
not. The former
are tourists who travel because they can and want to do so,
while the latter are
vagabonds, people who move because the world around them is
unbearable,
more of a prison than a home.8 While the vagabond is the
nightmare of the
tourist, he says, they share something in that they are both
“radicalized”
consumers—they are embarked in a continual pursuit of
satisfaction fueled by
desire rather than by the object of desire—only that the former
is a “defective”
one. Thus, they are not mutually exclusive categories, both
because tourists
might become vagabonds and because one might occupy the
position of the
tourist in some domains and of the vagabond in others.
The third salient aspect of globalization arises from the
exponential increase

in the pace of political, technological, economic, or cultural
change. Its impact is
(Footnote continued)
ment countries has dropped from 0.33% of their GNI in 1990 to
0.23% in 2001, with
Denmark topping the list at 1.08% and the US positioning itself
at the bottom with just
0.11%. See United Nations, Human Development Report 1999
(Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999); UN, Human Development Report 2003,
http://www.undp.org/hdr2003/;
Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents (London:
Penguin Books, 2002); Jan
Nederveen Pieterse, “Global Inequality: Bringing Politics Back
In,” Third World Quarterly
23:6 (2002), pp. 1023–1046; Nancy Birdsall, “Life is Unfair:
Inequality in the World,”
Foreign Policy 111 (1998), pp. 76–93; Adam Zagorin, “Seattle
Sequel,” TIME, April 17, 2000,
p. 36; http://www.thehungersite.com; Giovanna Zincone and
John Agnew, “The Second
Great Transformation: The Politics of Globalization in the
Global North,” Space and Polity
4:2 (2000), pp. 5–21; W. Bowman Cutter, Joan Spero and Laura
D’Andrea Tyson, “New
World, New Deal: A Democratic Approach to Globalization,”
Foreign Affairs 79:2 (2000),
pp. 80–98; Barry K. Gills (ed.), Globalization and the Politics
of Resistance (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2000).
6 Zincone and Agnew, op. cit., p. 12.
7 Human Development Report 1999, p. 31.
8 Bauman, op. cit., pp. 20–24, 92–97.

8 Benjamin Arditi
undecidable. It can be lived as an opening up of possibilities for
emancipatory
projects or as a threat to identity and to the certainties of a more
familiar world.
When the latter gains the upper hand, people might turn to
aggressive forms of
nationalism, religious orthodoxy, tribalism, or messianic
leaders—none of which
are likely to enhance toleration—with the expectation of
restoring certainty. This
is not entirely new. The industrial revolution also undermined
the referents of
everyday life without offering cultural responses, at least not at
the beginning.
Marx and Engels describe the distinctive traits of the
dislocations brought upon
by capitalism in a well-known passage of the Manifesto. They
say:
Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted
disturbance of all social
conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the
bourgeois epoch
from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their
train of ancient and
venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-
formed ones become
antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into
air, all that is holy
is profaned.
Nationalism helped to counteract this “uninterrupted

disturbance” that un-
dermined identities and governmentality. Kahler argues that in
the 19th century,
especially after the expansion of the franchise, the emergence of
mass national-
ism had a political function, for it enabled states to forge strong
links with the
citizenry and to ensure their loyalty in an age of democracy.
Later, anticommu-
nism and the promise of economic prosperity replaced
nationalism as a political
programmed.9 Globalism has nothing comparable to offer, or
rather, as Debray
remarks, it seems to offer no other mystique than the prospect
of economic
growth.10 The latter is certainly desirable, at least if one
expects some form of
income distribution as its side effect, but it is probably not
enough to sway those
whose livelihood and identity are threatened by the rapid
reorganization of
labor markets and trade patterns. As suggested, the danger here
is the possible
appeal of projects that offer certainty at the expense of
toleration. The strong and
often violent revival of nationalism and the aggressive
affirmation of ethnic
identities illustrate an uncanny hardening of territorial and
cultural frontiers in
a global setting where the role of borders is supposed to have
waned. This is
complicated further by the rise of religious radicalism and by
the religious
coding of the global terrorism that became notorious after the
events of 9/11.
Since then, those hitherto known as freedom fighters became the

Transnationalism and Anti-Globalism: How Right-Wing Populism Appropriated a Leftist Critique

Transnationalism and Anti-Globalism: How Right-Wing Populism Appropriated a Leftist Critique

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