Hi there and welcome back. We're going to configure the world in terms of globalization. So in this first video, we're going to discuss what the term actually means. We're going to look at the debate surrounding it. But before we do that, I want to read you an extract. An extract from a book by John Maynard Keynes called, the Economics of the Peace. Now, Keynes was a member of the British delegation to the peace conference after the end of the First World War. He wrote a biting book on his experience there. But that's not why I'm want to read it, I want to read this particular element from it. You got to remember though that Keynes is a very privileged man from a very privileged sector of society, from an incredibly privileged nation. And he writes, "What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man that age was that came to an end in August 1914!" Then he goes on, he describes what actually it was like. "Inhabitants of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed," I told you he was from a privileged class, "The various products of the whole earth, in such quantities he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep. He could by the same moment, by the same means, by phone, adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world and share in its prospective fruits and advantages. He could secure forthwith if he wished it, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality. He could dispatch his servant off to get the necessary money and then proceed abroad to foreign quarters without knowledge of their religion, language, or customs, bridges never seemed to change, bearing on him coined wealth upon his person, and he would be very upset if anybody interfered. But," he writes, "Most of all, he regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain and permanent except in the direction of further improvement.". And he says, "The internationalization of this world was nearly complete in practice." Now that is Keynes's view of globalization on the eve of the First World War. If you search Google scholar for the year 2013, only for that year for books and articles with globalization in the title, spell it with a Z and an S, you get over 2000 hits. Try it in Chinese, you get 1600 options, 110 in French, 50 in German. But if we move back in time before Google was even invented, people like me had to search through published databases. My favorite then was the Journal of Economic Literature. It's now available electronically. If you go there, you'll find that there's not been one single article with the word globalization in the title published before 1984. Now globalization is a sort of term that everybody understands but where no two people will agree on a definition. Is it a question of more international contacts or connections? Or does it imply a greater dependence or interdependence on those international contacts? Is the word international as we've used it here sufficient or should we distinguish between local and regional and the more truly global? Should we distinguish among the different dimensions of globalization, the economic damage and the cultural sphere and areas of governance? And if it is economic,what should we attach most importance? To trade, to business, to labor, to communications? And if it's governance, where should we be concentrating on cooperation among governments? On the role of international bodies or on the influence of civic society and the NGOs? And finally, within all of this, where does it leave the nation state, unit upon which we've lavished so much attention last week, and which remains the focus of our course. Now, in 1999, a team led by David Held of the Open University published a book called Global Transformations, which described the parameters of the discussion, and which still largely holds true for today. They divided the different authors in three separate camps: hyperglobalists, skeptics and transformationalists. The first disagreement among them is on the very nature of the globalization experience. Hyperglobalists see the present globalization as something new and truly unique. They would argue that market forces have undermined state control over national economies, and are weakening the authority of nation states. Skeptics used to argue that current globalization resembled that of the earlier period, 1870 to 1913. And they argue that in some respects, this was even more truly global than what we experience today. And this is the passage I was referring to in the piece I read to you from Keynes. They also consider that market forces can still be brought under control if, and this is a big if, the main international actors can agree on collective action. Now, the transformationalists sit in the middle. They say globalization is more complex than mere economics or the freeing of markets, it also involves sociological and cultural factors. And they refused to commit on the direction of where it's heading or whether the process is reversible or not. Now, not only is there disagreement on the nature of the process, they also disagree whether it's beneficial or not. And on one extreme again you get the hyperglobalists. They argue that markets decide the optimal use of the world's resources, and that globalization is bringing the world's citizens a wider range of products at ever lower prices. Poverty exists they can see, but because governments persist in maintaining protection and deprive their citizens of benefiting fully from the developments of globalization. And with the market, come the other benefits of Western civilization such as democracy and human rights. The skeptics on the other hand argue the process has already gone too far. It's been driving down employment in wages in developed economies and it penalizes the vulnerable in less developed countries. Far from enriching countries, the penetration of Western culture is homogenizing local cultures and aggravating the conditions for cultural conflict. Now another source of disagreement is on the ability or even the desirability of nation states to do anything to change the course of events. Calls by skeptics for states to protect the vulnerable have to confront a reality, the prospective legislation or higher welfare expenditure will lead to capital re-allocating itself to states with lower standards and lower taxation, taking even more jobs and income with them. Hyper globalists and others argue that the nation state is already being bypassed. The world economy is coalescing around production and service hubs or agglomerations. And these are already functioning independently of the states that are supposed to be controlling them. Transitionalists and some skeptics would respond that globalization is not making the state irrelevant, but it does place a new premium on what the state supplies in terms of public goods and good governance. Now, let's try and pull all of this together. We've seen how difficult it is to define exactly what should be understood by globalization. We've sketched the outlines of the debate over the nature of the process, the benefits it's supposed to confer, and the role if any for national governments. There are no unambiguous answers. What do I think? Well, you should never ask a historian to predict the future. But when the future becomes the past, a historian will explain why it was always inevitable. And with that thought, I'll leave you till the next video, where we'll explore globalization in the field of trade.
