Manfred B. Steger GLOBALIZATION - onMason

1 OXFORDUNIVERSITY PRESSM anfred B. StegerGLOBALIZATIONA Very short IntroductionOXPORDUNIVERSITY PRESSG reat Clarendon Street, Oxford o x 2 6 D pOxford University Press is a department of the University of furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship,and education by publishing worldwide inOxford New YorkAuckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town ChennaiDar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi KolkataKuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai NairobiSao Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo TorontoOxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Pressin the UK and in certain other countriesPublished in the United Statesby Oxford University Press Inc., New York Manfred B.

2 Steger 2003 The moral rights of the author have been assertedDatabase right Oxford University Press (maker)First published as a Very short introduction 2003 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriatereprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproductionoutside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,Oxford University Press, at the address aboveYou must not circulate this book in any other binding or coverand you must impose this same condition on any acquirerBritish Library Cataloguing in Publication DataData availableLibrary of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataData availableISBN 13: 978-0-19-280359-7 ISBN 10: 0-19-280359-X9 10 Typeset by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay, SuffolkPrinted in Great Britain byAshford Colour Press Ltd.

3 , Gosport, HampshireChapter 1 GLOBALIZATION : acontested conceptIn the autumn of 2001,I was teaching an undergraduate class onmodern political and social theory. Still traumatized by the recentterrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, mostof my students couldn't quite grasp the connection between theviolent forces of religious fundamentalism and the more secularpicture of a technologically sophisticated, rapidly globalizing worldthat I had sought to convey in class lectures and discussions. 'Iunderstand that " GLOBALIZATION " is a contested concept that refers tosometimes contradictory social processes,' a bright history major atthe back of the room quipped, "but how can you say that the TVimage of a religious fanatic who denounces modernity andsecularism from a mountain cave in Afghanistan perfectlycaptures the complex dynamics of GLOBALIZATION ?

4 Don't theseterrible acts of terrorism suggest the opposite, namely, thegrowth of parochial forces that undermine GLOBALIZATION ?'Obviously, the student was referring to Saudi-born Al Qaeda leaderOsama bin Laden, whose videotaped statement condemning theactivities of'international infidels' had been broadcast worldwideon 7 by the sense of intellectual urgency that fuelled my student'squestion, I realized that the story of GLOBALIZATION would remainelusive without real-life examples capable of breathing shape,colour, and sound into a vague concept that had become the1buzzword of our time. Hence, before delving into necessarymatters of definition and analytical clarification, we ought toapproach our subject in less abstract fashion.

5 I suggest we beginour journey with a careful examination of the aforementionedvideotape. It will soon become fairly obvious why adeconstruction of those images provides important clues tothe nature and dynamics of the phenomenon we have come tocall ' GLOBALIZATION '.Deconstructing Osama bin LadenThe infamous videotape bears no date, but experts estimate that therecording was made less than two weeks before it was timing of its release appears to have been carefully planned soas to achieve the maximum effect on the day the United Statescommenced its bombing campaign against Taliban and Al Qaeda('The Base') forces in Afghanistan. Although Osama bin Laden andhis top lieutenants were then hiding in a remote region of thecountry, they obviously possessed the hi-tech equipment needed torecord the statement.

6 Moreover, Al Qaeda members clearlyenjoyed immediate access to sophisticated information andtelecommunication networks that kept them informed - inreal-time - of relevant international developments. Bin Ladenmay have denounced the forces of modernity with great conviction,but the smooth operation of his entire organization was entirelydependent on advanced forms of technology developed in the lasttwo decades of the 20th further illustrate this apparent contradiction, consider thecomplex chain of global interdependencies that must have existedin order for bin Laden's message to be heard and seen by billions ofTV viewers around the world. After making its way from thesecluded mountains of eastern Afghanistan to the capital city ofKabul, the videotape was dropped off by an unknown courieroutside the local office of Al-Jazeera, a Qatar-based televisioncompany.

7 This network had been launched only five years earlier as21. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden addressing a global audience on 7 October state-financed, Arabic-language news and current affairs channelthat offered limited programming. Before the founding of Al-Jazeera, cutting-edge TV journalism - such as free-ranging publicaffairs interviews and talk shows with call-in audiences - simplydid not exist in the Arab world. Within only three years, however,Al-Jazeera was offering its Middle Eastern audience a dizzyingarray of programmes, transmitted around the clock by powerfulsatellites put into orbit by European rockets and Americanspace , the network's market share increased even further as aresult of the dramatic reduction in the price and size of satellitedishes.

8 Suddenly, such technologies became affordable, even forlow-income consumers. By the turn of the century, Al-Jazeerabroadcasts could be watched around the clock on all five 2001, the company further intensified its global reach whenits chief executives signed a lucrative cooperation agreementwith CNN, the leading news network owned by the giantmultinational corporation AOL-Time-Warner. A few monthslater, when the world's attention shifted to the war inAfghanistan, Al-Jazeera had already positioned itself as a trulyglobal player, powerful enough to rent equipment to suchprominent news providers as Reuters and ABC, sell satellite timeto the Associated Press and BBC, and design an innovative Arabic-language business news channel together with its other Americannetwork partner, by national borders and geographical obstacles,cooperation among these sprawling news networks had become soefficient that CNN acquired and broadcast a copy of the Osama binLaden tape only a few hours after it had been delivered to the Al-Jazeera office in Kabul.

9 Caught off guard by the incredible speed oftoday's information exchange, the Bush administration asked theQatari government to 'rein in Al-Jazeera', claiming that the swiftairing of the bin Laden tape without prior consultation wascontributing to the rise of anti-American sentiments in the Arab4world and thus threatened to undermine the US war , not only was the perceived 'damage' already done, butsegments of the tape - including the full text of bin Laden'sstatement - could be viewed online by anyone with access to acomputer and a modem. The Al-Jazeera website quickly attractedan international audience as its daily hit count skyrocketed to overseven can be no doubt that it was the existence of this chain ofglobal interdependencies and interconnections that made possiblethe instant broadcast of bin Laden's speech to a global audience.

10 Atthe same time, however, it must be emphasized that even thosevoices that oppose modernity cannot extricate themselves from thevery process of GLOBALIZATION they so decry. In order to spread theirmessage and recruit new sympathizers, antimodernizers mustutilize the tools provided by GLOBALIZATION . This obvious truth wasvisible even in bin Laden's personal appearance. The tape showsthat he was wearing contemporary military fatigues over traditionalArab garments. In other words, his dress reflects the contemporaryprocesses of fragmentation and cross-fertilization that globalizationscholars call 'hybridization' - the mixing of different cultural formsand styles facilitated by global economic and cultural exchanges. Infact, the pale colours of bin Laden's mottled combat dress betrayedits Russian origins, suggesting that he wore the jacket as a symbolicreminder of the fierce guerrilla war waged by him and other Islamicmilitants against the Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistanduring the 1980s.