Globalisation: What Does It Mean for Geography? (2002)

Abstract

Let me begin, briefly, with two observations which provoke geographical reflection: the first concerns governments in the UK and USA (and lots more besides) who tell us that ‘globalisation’ is inevitable. (They really mean globalisation in its current form – which is to say ‘neoliberal’.) They tell us it is the only possible future. And if you point to Nicaragua, Mali and Mozambique, which do not yet seem to be part of this future, they will tell you that such countries are just ‘behind’ and that eventually they will follow along the path which we have led. Perhaps my favourite example of this came in 1998 when Bill Clinton delivered himself of the reflection that we can no more resist the current forces of globalisation than we can resist the force of gravity. We might note in passing that this comes from a man who spends his life flying about in aeroplanes and thus quite effectively resisting the force of gravity! But, more seriously, of course globalisation is not a force of nature. It is a product of society – a political and economic project which requires the mighty efforts of the World Trade Organisation, International Monetary Fund, United States of America, multi-national corporations, World Bank, etc., to push it forward. The aim of Clinton’s statement is to persuade us that there is no alternative. This is not a description of the world as it is, so much as an image in which the world is being made. Now, many criticisms can be made of this formulation, but I want to focus on one thing – that within Clinton’s statement is a kind of sleight of hand in terms of how we think about space and time. When we ask about Mozambique and the answer is that that country is just ‘backward’, what is really at issue is a denial of Mozambique’s difference from us – or at least a reduction of that difference merely to the fact that Mozambique is ‘behind’ us in development. Co-existing difference is reduced to place in the historical queue. Effectively this is turning geography into history – space into time.

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