God and Globalization, Volume II: The Spirit and the Modern Authorities

Christian Century, Dec 12, 2001 by Douglas A. Hicks

God and Globalization, Volume II: The Spirit and the Modern Authorities.

Edited by Max L. Stackhouse with Don S. Browning. Trinity Press International, 254 pp., $35.00.

AS THE AUTOMOBILE has been the vehicle and symbol of American mobility, the airplane has been the vehicle and symbol of global mobility. If a person can afford the airfare, he or she can fly from one world capital to any other in even less time than it takes to drive from New York to Los Angeles.

On September 11, terrorists turned that symbol into a weapon against globalization itself. Although Americans continue to see the catastrophic events as an attack on the U.S.--and, of course, it was--as many as a fourth of the victims were citizens of other countries. They hailed from over 80 countries, and most worked together peaceably and efficiently in the center of world trade. And, according to a chaplain at "ground zero," the victims' families communicate their grief in over 150 languages.

Yet the recent terrorism was not only an attack on globalization; it was also an expression of it. That is, the cells of the al-Qaeda network depend on the same international technological, economic and travel infrastructure that has fueled globalization's more positive features. The devastating events and their aftermath highlight this reality: globalization has many faces, many dimensions. Some are good. Others are bad. And what's good for some people may well be bad for others.

Given the multipronged nature of the phenomenon, it should be no surprise that books on globalization often sound more like a Tower of Babel than a coherent conversation. Is globalization chiefly about the economy? Trade? Technology? Telecommunications and the Internet? Human fights? Culture? A new consciousness of being a world citizen?

Depending on whom you ask, the agents of globalization vary widely: multinational corporations like General Motors, Nike and Coca-Cola (the largest employer in sub-Saharan Africa); the United Nations and the thousands of nongovernmental organizations; the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization; or CNN and Disney. Some commentators have also cited international crime networks. Now we must include al-Qaeda.

For most social scientists, the debate over the meaning of globalization focuses on whether it is centrally and fundamentally an economic process. This predominant view sees advances in computing, telecommunications and travel largely in terms of economic transformation. It regards globalization as the liberalization of markets that enable free trade. An accompanying, often-unquestioned assumption is that democratic reforms go hand in hand with "marketization." Other social scientists have resisted the exclusive focus on the economic process as well as the overly benign interpretation of its effects.

Robert Gilpin's ambitious and thorough treatise fits within this debate. Gilpin, emeritus professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, acknowledges that his own sympathies lie with free trade, but he differs with those who would explain the world in wholly economic terms.

Global Political Economy acknowledges the potential of multinationals to influence political as well as economic life. According to Forbes magazine, the largest multinational corporations, such as General Motors, Ford and Mitsubishi, enjoy total sales that exceed the gross domestic product of all but the most productive nations in the world. Other economic dimensions, notably the staggering levels of global finance (e.g., foreign currency exchange totaling $1.5 trillion per day), dwarf even global trade of products.

Combining political and economic analysis, Gilpin's own "state-centric" realism is a welcome expansion of narrower economic interpretations. He argues that the state, like the market, remains a principal institution. He also cautions against overestimating the power of multinational corporations; most economic transactions still occur within nations and not across nations.

Gilpin poses a fundamental question: "Is the purpose of economic activity to benefit individual consumers, to promote certain social welfare goals, or to maximize national power?" He rejects the standard economic view (benefit individual consumers) by emphasizing the political goal of maximizing national power.

Gilpin pays less direct attention to the "social welfare goals" of nations or the world. For instance, problems of inequality and poverty are almost invisible in the text. He mentions briefly the recent "antiglobalization" protesters, but he does not take them seriously. Since he takes a realist position in analyzing how powerful institutions compete, negotiate and cooperate, people with neither political nor economic access are not actors in his account. While his analysis is not nearly as narrow or dogmatic as those of unbridled proponents of the free market, he is open to the same criticism: he leaves it to fate--or at least to the market and the state--to resolve problems like poverty.