Globalization in Cities - Literature review Example

Globalization in Cities Order No: 178772 No: of pages – 6 Premium – 6530 “There is nothing more unsettling than the continual movement of something that seems fixed” (Deleuze 1995: 157) This is very true indeed where our world is concerned. Though it seems fixed, yet the amount of activity and changes that continually take place is something that is difficult to fathom. The world in all its entirety has shrunk to what Canadian writer and educator Marshall McLuhan terms as a “global village”, in the sense that everyone has access to almost any and everything and the world which was so much distanced and unreachable feels more like a community because every one feels more closer to one another. Speaking on the question of time, Thrift argues that ‘World cities must not be seen as a succession of bounded states, however heterogeneous, frozen in temporal aspic’, but rather as ‘always interactive and constantly in process’ (1998: 54–55). This Global aspect is very evident in various fields such as transport and communication, trade and commerce and not forgetting Economy. Different researchers have tried to explain the meaning of globalization in the broader sense and have come up with some astounding findings. When speaking on globalization McLuhan had this to say, “Globes make my head spin. By the time I locate the place, they’ve changed their boundaries”. (McLuhan et al, 1997) Sakia Sassen: “Cities In The World Economy”. Sakia Sassen, a sociologist, became quite famous for her work on the idea of the global city. (1991) In recent years, she has built upon this agenda and is now looked upon as a sort of cartographer of global capitalism, drawing lines and creating boundaries as a pathway to thinking about the interaction between nation states and the global economy. Going much further beyond the idea of the global city, which served as an interface between global and local, Sassen has been speculating for further “border zones”, “frontier zones”, “analytical borderlands” or “regulatory fractures”, that create or produce or are a product of the overlapping of National and International Geographical scales. In her research agenda, Sassen has set herself to opening up the lines of demarcation, which she portrayed as segregating distinct entities, such as the nation, the state and the global economy. According to Sassen, “zones or borderlands can be found, where geographical scales overlap and are distinct realms in themselves, demanding their own theoretical and empirical specification”. (Sassen, 2000a: 216): According to Sassen, both the national as well as the global are not scales that are mutually exclusive but “overlap and interact in ways that distinguish our contemporary moment”. (Page 215) Sassen’s keen observation shows that strategic (partial and specific) economic globalization creates new spatialities and temporalities that definitely affect the spatiotemporalites of nation states. Sassen is of the opinion, that though “each sphere, global and national, describes a spatiotemporal order with considerable internal differentiation” yet, both spheres have a “growing mutual imbrication with the other” and through strategic economic globalization, new spatialities and temporalities can be found. In other words, Sassen’s vision of globalization is scalar and when scales (boundaries) “overlap” each other, they are bound to create new zones which are in need of research. So with this theoretical speculation in focus, Sassen introduces another new area of study. This does not, however, does not do justice, since it does not take into consideration, the complexity of the world and it seems to be “too limited, timid and simplifying as the world is divided into categories and identities (i.e. areas) (see Murdoch, 1995, Dicken et al., 2001) Other researchers have a contrasting view to that of Sassen, whose main interest was in territories, boundaries and scales. According to them, globalization makes fluid such solidified thinking that revolves around movement and mobility, folds and networks and fluidity and flow. While space was thought to be immobile, dead, fixed and undialectical, time was considered to be full of richness, life, and dialectical. It was Foucault who is widely credited with foregrounding of space over time and is always cited as an origin to the “spatial turn” (Jameson, 1991) As a result of such an ontology, where all that is solid melts into thin air, is a clear indication that scales and boundaries are rejected totally because globalization and the world cities are too inter- mingled by the random demarcation carried out by both humans as well as non- humans and it does not make much sense. In such a scenario therefore, the ‘limits’ of a city is necessary, but if the “city is everywhere and in everything” (Amin & Thrift, 2002) 1, then where is the necessity for boundaries and limits? Therefore, such categories were limited and wrong. These ideas were not from Nature’s Taxonomy, but man- made impositions describing the “oneness or twoness” of boundaries. In recent years, Sassen’s idea of “frontier zones” (Sassen, 1999, 2000a, 2000b) has been developing, showing Sassen’s attempt at developing a new kind of “area studies” in her research of globalization. She has made a good attempt at directing us to investigate the spaces and times of different zones of commonality that are created when geographical scales overlap each other. View Point of Other Researchers on World Cities: Some researchers are of the opinion that world cities are “spatial non- conformities” (Law and Hetherington, 2000) …..”as having a fibrous, thread-like, wiry, stringy, ropey, capillary character, that is never captured by the notions of levels, layers, territories, spheres, categories, structures, systems”. (Latour, 1998:2) According to his argument, cities are hybrid, trans-local sites, which are criss- crossed by a network of lines, and the Geography as envisioned by Sassen has faded away, for the fact that if cities are considered open intensities, there is no inside or outside, where space and time are “out of joint”. A contemporary study made of World cities, began with Friedmann’s and Wolfe’s (1982) who identified them as “command centers” that control and articulate the “new International division of labor” that is being brought into focus by multi national corporations. World cities are taken to be the basing points in this network and are identified as “global network of cities” (King, 1990, Page 12), a “transnational urban system” (Sassen, 1994, Page 47), “functional world city system”, (Lo and Yeung, 1998, Page 10), or a “global urban network” (Short and Kim, 1999, Page 38) William I. Robinson: A Theory of Global Capitalism: William I. Robinson, is a research associate and a former investigative journalist at the Center for International Studies at Managua The author has earned the reputation of being one of the leading critical analysts of capital globalization. According to Robinson, the world is now witnessing a historical transition and moving into a new phase of capitalism which includes more power, struggle and resistance. Sociologist, Robinson offers us a new theory on globalization that comprises of a new capitalist class and transnational state. This new class traverses all national boundaries and presents us with a global system where people feel comfortable crossing their boundaries and carrying on businesses with people far beyond their own boundary. For example, North American’s are just as comfortable, investing in South East Asia as Japanese capitalist are in Latin America. Their progress of interconnected, global businesses and industries, make them drivers of World capitalism. Sakia Sassen admired Robinson for his work and had this to say "This book operates at multiple levels. It is a detailed and original contribution to the study of Central America. And by positioning Central America in a broader historical and structural framing, Robinson also makes a major contribution to our understanding of global capitalism. Through it all, the narrative never loses track of human actors involved. Complex and brilliant!" (Sakia Sassen) Robinson explains how global capital mobility has maximized our profit making opportunities by allowing capital to reorganize production worldwide. Previously, production systems were located in a single country, but now –a- days, they are not only fragmented but also integrated externally into new global circuits of accumulation. So taking this point into consideration, we could see how Sakia differed from Robinson in the sense that Sakia worked his theory around boundaries; where as Robinson’s theory goes beyond boundaries. As a result of this worldwide decentralization and fragmentation, the process of production has taken place alongside the centralization of command leading to the control of the global economy in transnational capital. According to Robinson’s observation, the global elites, without regard to their nationality, interact and share similar life styles, thereby expanding the net work of transnational states. In this way, Globalization is uniting the world into a single global system by integrating different regions and countries into a new global economy. But, in the 21st century, there is bound to be conflicts where the new global capitalism is concerned, as the gap widens between the global rich and the global poor. References: Sassen S, 1994: “Cities in a World Economy” London, Pine Forge Press. www.geog.umontreal.ca/ William I. Robinson – Theory of Global Capitalism. www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/robinson Read More