Global Studies, Current Academic Approaches to

Publication Streams

First, in the aftermath of the post-Soviet nationalist revolutions in 1989 and the collapse of communism in eastern Europe, a broad body of literature emerged in sociology and related fields that used the word globalization and the vision of a future global civil society to postulate and propagate the creation of a new single global system that would be inclusive of the hitherto separated Eastern bloc of communist countries. This stream of literature has placed a great deal of attention on economics and institutional developments. It also includes numerous works of political scientists and sociologists. Its most prominent representatives are sociologist Anthony Giddens and political scientist David Held. Increasingly, many authors working along these lines have come to adopt the suggestion that the world is currently moving toward a cosmopolitan society. German sociologist Ulrich Beck has provided the most elaborate sociological writings in this direction. Beck, Giddens, Held, and numerous others have explored the idea that greater interconnectivity leads to the potential for and the reality of greater cosmopolitanism. For those theorists, cosmopolitanism offers the basis for facing up to many of the social problems of contemporary globalization, and in particular, it offers the possibility of building a more inclusive society.

Second, there is a neo-or post-Marxist or critical globalization perspective that views the very notion of the “global” and its related projects of globalization, cosmopolitanism, and global civil society as catchwords that are used to conceal the reality of expanding forms of international capitalism. There are many different variations of this general orientation. However, nearly all of them consider economic relations or power arrangements (including institutional arrangements) between capitalists and workers to be the main explanatory factors for global development. Of particular importance in this stream of publications is the development of arguments suggesting the internationalization or transnationalization of classical Marxist concepts—such as the capitalist class or the state. That is, the articulation of a transnational capitalist class or of the transnational state is viewed as a mechanism thanks to which new power arrangements are developed worldwide. These offer legitimacy and effectiveness to contemporary global capitalism. In addition to this line of interpretation, one has to mention also the older and more established group of scholars who are adherents to what is known as world-system theory or analysis or perspective. These follow broadly the work of Immanuel Wallerstein, who proposed the [Page 738]development of a capitalist world-system that emerged in 16th-century Europe and then expanded gradually to cover the rest of the globe. In accordance with this interpretation, then, globalization is nothing else but the continuous expansion of the capitalist world-system and the various institutions and cultural frameworks that accompany it.

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