CIAO DATE: 11/2009
October 2009
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
In the interest of convenience, the study of globalization can be grouped into three camps – hyperglobalist, sceptic, and transformationalist approaches (Held et al. 1999). Over the past decade or so, the first two have gradually fallen into disrepute for their empirical weaknesses and their theoretical lack of sophistication. By default, proponents of the transformationalist thesis, although by no means a unified approach, have emerged triumphant by being able to offer increasingly compelling examinations of the changing relation between space and sovereignty. These advancements notwithstanding, this paper argues that the transformationalist thesis remains unsatisfactory because it takes for granted many of the problematic dualisms upon which modern political and sociological knowledge relies – e.g. state/individual, market/society, knowledge/power – and as a consequence fails to develop a critique of its own political ambitions. Alternatively, this paper presents a Foucaultian analytics of government which problematizes both the concept of sovereignty and the preoccupation with geographic scale presently preoccupying students of globalization. The aim of this paper is to problematize the spatial ontology globalization studies draws upon by presenting an approach to globalization that is preoccupied with temporal ruptures, discursive fissures, and events instead. It concludes with a consideration of the potential problems a Foucaultian approach to government may harbor.
Resource link: The Politics of Globalization Studies: From the problem of sovereignty to a problematics of government [PDF] - 315K