CHAPTER 1
Globalization: Conceptualization, Origins, and History

1. Conceptualizing Globalization
   1. From "Solids" to "Liquids"
   2. "Flows"
   3. "Heavy" and "Light"
   4. "Heavy" Structures that Expedite "Flows"
   5. "Heavy" Structures as Barriers to "Flows"
   6. Subtler Structural Barriers
2. Origins and History of Globalization
   1. Hardwired
   2. Cycles
   3. Phases
   4. Events
   5. Broader, More Recent Changes
3. Chapter Summary

Globalization is increasingly omnipresent. We are living in a - or even the - "global age" (Albrow 1996; Deflem 2016). Globalization is clearly a very important change; it can even be argued (Bauman 2003) that it is the most important change in human history. This is reflected in many domains, but particularly in social relationships and social structures, especially those that are widely dispersed geographically. "In the era of globalization . shared humanity face[s] the most fateful of the many fateful steps" it has made in its long history (Bauman 2003: 156, italics added).

The following is the definition of globalization to be used in this book (note that all of the italicized terms will be discussed in this chapter and will inform the remainder of this book):

Globalization: Planetary process(es) involving increasing liquidity and growing multidirectional flows, as well as the structures they encounter and create.

Globalization is a planetary process or set of processes involving increasing liquidity and the growing multidirectional flows of people, objects, places and information as well as the structures they encounter and create that are barriers to, or expedite, those flows.

In contrast to many other definitions of globalization, this one does not assume that greater integration is an inevitable component of globalization. That is, globalization can bring with it greater integration (especially when things flow easily), but it can also serve to reduce the level of integration (when structures are erected that successfully block flows). For example, increasingly global flows recently led to the so-called Brexit, where British voters rejected greater integration with the European Union.

A term that is closely related to globalization is transnationalism (Khagram 2012), or "processes that interconnect individuals and social groups across specific geo-political borders" (Giulianotti and Robertson 2007: 62). A related concept is transnationality, or "the rise of new communities and formation of new social identities and relations that cannot be defined through the traditional reference point of nation-states" (Robinson 2007: 1199-1201).

Transnationalism: Processes that interconnect individuals and social groups across specific geopolitical borders.

Transnationality: The rise of new communities and formation of new social identities and relations that cannot be defined as nation-states.

Globalization and transnationalism are often used interchangeably, but transnationalism is clearly a more delimited process than globalization. Transnationalism is limited to interconnections that cross geopolitical borders, especially those associated with two or more nation-states. An example is Mexican immigrants in the United States sending remittances home to family members in Mexico. Globalization includes such connections, but is not restricted to them, and encompasses a far wider range of planetary processes (e.g. direct relationships between people in many places in the world networking via the Internet). Further, geopolitical borders are only one of the barriers encountered, and often overcome, by globalization. Some phenomena, such as migration and the changing structures of families, are better thought of as transnational than as global. Transnationalism is most often used in thinking about, and research on, immigrants who move from one country to another, but who continue to be involved in various ways with the country from which they came (Faist 2012; Portes 2001).

The case of baseball is useful in clarifying the distinction between globalization and transnationalism (Kelly 2007). Baseball is a transnational sport because many of its fundamentals - techniques, strategies, and so on - and players have circulated across the borders of a small number of nations, especially Japan, Taiwan, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and, of course, the United States. However, it is not global because it has not flowed to a large portion of the world.

In contrast, soccer would be much more clearly a global sport because it exists in virtually every area of the world. For example, over 200 of the world's nations are members of a global organization, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (). Another example of globalization in the realm of sports is the summer (and winter) Olympics, sponsored by the International Olympic Committee (), in which about the same number of nations participate.

Of course, each concept can also be useful for describing different aspects of the same topic, such as the labor movement. Alliances in the labor movement - such as those between US workers, Honduran labor unions, and the Bridgestone-Firestone workers in Liberia - are best conceptualized as transnational because they involve specific linkages across national borders. However, the labor movement is facilitated by Global Union Federations and makes use of Global Framework Agreements that promote universal norms in order to be effective (Evans 2014). Accordingly, global and transnational processes can operate simultaneously and interact in unique ways.

CONCEPTUALIZING GLOBALIZATION

In spite of the focus in this book on globalization, there are many scholars who do not accept the idea. Nevertheless, this book embraces and operates from a "globalist" perspective (Hirst and Thompson 1999) - globalization is a reality. Debates about globalization are one of the reasons that there is perhaps no topic today more difficult to get one's head around, let alone to master, than globalization. However, of far greater importance is the sheer magnitude, diversity, and complexity of the process of globalization, which involves almost everyone, everything, and every place, in innumerable ways. (The concept of globality refers to the condition [in this case omnipresence] resulting from the process of globalization [Scholte 2004; Wilson 2012].)

Globality: Omnipresence of the process of globalization.

Metaphor: Use of one term to help us better understand another.

Before proceeding to the next section, a note is needed on the use of metaphors (Brown 1989), which will occupy a prominent place in the ensuing discussion. A metaphor involves the use of one term to help us better understand another. Thus, in the next section, we will use the metaphor of a "solid" to describe epochs before the era of globalization. Similarly, the global world will be described as being "liquid." The use of such metaphors is designed to give the reader a better and a more vivid sense of the global age and how it differs from prior epochs.

From "Solids" to "Liquids"

Prior to the current epoch of globalization (as we will see in the second part of this chapter, most observers believe that there was a previous epoch, if not many previous epochs, of globalization), it could be argued that one of the things that characterized people, things, information, places, and much else was their greater solidity. That is, all of them tended to be hard or to harden (metaphorically and figuratively, not literally) over time, and therefore - among other things - to remain largely in place. As a result, people either did not go anywhere or they did not venture very far from where they were born and raised; their social relationships were restricted to those who were nearby. Much the same could be said of most objects (tools, food, etc.), which tended to be used where they were produced. The solidity of most material manifestations of information - stone tablets, newspapers, magazines, books, and so on - also made them at least somewhat difficult to move very far. Furthermore, since people didn't move far, neither did information. Places were not only quite solid and immoveable, but they tended to confront solid natural (mountains, rivers, oceans) and artificial (walls, gates) barriers that made it difficult for people and things to exit or to enter.

Solidity: People, things, information, and places "harden" over time and therefore have limited mobility.

Above all, solidity describes a world in which barriers exist and are erected...