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The liquefaction of the social world, as well as its increasing weightlessness, is only part of the story of globalization. As pointed out already, another major part is the fact that many heavy, material, objective structures continue to exist and to be created in the globalized world. Some are holdovers from the pre-global world, but others are actually produced, intentionally or unintentionally, by global forces. In studying globalization we must look at both all of that which flows (or “wafts”) with increasing ease, as well as all of the structures⁷ that impede or block those flows (see below for more on these), as well as that serve to expedite and channel those flows. To put it another way, we must look at both that which is light and weightless as well as that which is solid and heavy and that greatly affects their flow in both a positive and a negative sense. This is in line with the view of Inda and Rosaldo (2008: 29):

we will examine the materiality of the global. This refers to the material practices – infrastructure, institutions, regulatory mechanisms, governmental strategies, and so forth – that both produce and preclude movement. The objective here is to suggest that global flows are patently structured and regulated, such that while certain objects and subjects are permitted to travel, others are not. Immobility and exclusion are thus as much a part of globalization as movement.

For example, there are various “routes” or “paths” that can be seen as structures that serve to both expedite flows along their length, as well as to limit flows that occur outside their confines.

 Intercontinental airlines generally fly a limited number of well-defined routes (say between New Delhi and London) rather than flying whatever route the pilots wish and thereby greatly increasing the possibility of mid-air collisions (see Figure 1.1 for some of the major global airline routes).

 Undocumented immigrants from Mexico have, at least until recently, generally followed a relatively small number of well-worn paths into the US. Indeed, they often need to pay smugglers large sums of money and the smugglers generally follow the routes that have worked for them (and others) in the past.

 Goods of all sorts are generally involved in rather well-defined “global value chains” (see Chapter 7 for a discussion of this concept) as they are exported from some countries and imported into others.

 Illegal products – e.g. counterfeit drugs – follow oft-trod paths en route from their point of manufacture (often China), through loosely controlled free-trade zones (e.g. in Dubai), through several intermediate countries, to their ultimate destination, often the US, where they are frequently obtained over the Internet (Maddox et al. 2016).

Figure 1.1 Airline passenger volume. Air travel, the dominant mode of international passenger transportation, was once limited to the wealthy and those traveling for business. With increased competition, lower fares, and a growing global economy, air travel has boomed over the last 40 years. Air traffic is concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere between Europe and North America, with increasing volume to East Asia. Martingrandjean.ch. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Then there are an increasing number of formal and informal “bridges” (Anner and Evans 2004) which have been created throughout the globe that expedite the flow of all sorts of things. This idea applies perhaps best to the passage of documented people across borders through the process of migration (Sassen 2007). It is clear that in the not-too-distant past there were many structural barriers to the flow of people. There are even a few places in the world today where this remains true – e.g. between the US and Cuba, or into and out of North Korea. However, with the end of the Cold War, there are now many bridges for people (and products) to cross openly not only between the countries of the old East and West, but also among and between virtually every country and region of the world (see Figure 1.2 for a representation of the international flows of migrants within and between various regions). However, undocumented migrants are likely to need to be more covert in their movements. All sorts of illegal products are also less likely to move openly across such “bridges” where they would be highly visible to the authorities. Thus, there are also more hidden structures that permit movement of undocumented people and illegal products.

Figure 1.2 Global migration flows by region, 2010–2015. Arrows estimate international migration between countries within and between all regions of the world. Source: Azose, Jonathan, and Adrian Raftery 2019. Estimation of Emigration, Return Migration and Transit Migration Between All Pairs of Countries. PNAS 116 (10: 116–122.), doi : https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1722334116. National Academy of Sciences.

It is also the case that an increasing number of people, perhaps nearly everyone, is involved in, and affected by, global relations and flows and personally participate in global networks (Axford 2012; Singh Grewal 2008) of one kind or another (networks of communication and information technology, interpersonal networks involving individuals and groups, having to alter their lives as result of flows of COVID-19). While global networks span the globe (e.g. cables under the oceans that permit transoceanic communication [Yuan 2006: A1]), or at least much of it, there are other types of networks including transnational (those that pass through the boundaries of nation-states [Portes 2001]), international (those that involve two or more nation-states), national (those that are bounded by the nation-state), and local (those that exist at the sub-national level) (Mann 2007). Networks can expedite the flow of innumerable things, but they are perhaps best-suited to the flow of information (Connell and Crawford 2005). People involved in networks can communicate all sorts of information to one another in various ways – phone calls, snail-mail, email, blogs, social networking sites, and so on. These networks have revolutionized and greatly expanded the global flow of information. As with all other structures, such networks can be blocked or monitored in various ways (e.g. the “Great Firewall” or NSF surveillance).

All sorts of networks have been made possible by the Internet. The Internet can be seen as being of enormous importance in allowing information of various sorts to flow in innumerable directions. One important example involves the formation of the networks that became and constitute the movements for global justice and democratization (Vanden et al. 2017; see Chapter 15). It (as well as its various political actions, most notably the anti-WTO [World Trade Organization] protests in Seattle in 1999), like much else in the world today (e.g. the popular uprisings in Turkey and Egypt in 2013), was made possible by the Internet:

By significantly enhancing the speed, flexibility, and global reach of information flows, allowing for communication at a distance in real time, digital networks provide the technological infrastructure for the emergence of contemporary network-based social forms … allowing communities to sustain interactions across vast distances… . Using the Internet as technological architecture, such movements operate at local, regional, and global levels… .(Juris 2008: 353–4)

Finally, it is not only individuals who are increasingly involved in networks. An increasing number of social structures (e.g. states, cities, law) and social institutions (the family, religion, sport) are interconnected on a global basis and these, too, enable and enhance global flows. For example, the international banking system has an infrastructure that facilitates the global movement of funds among a network of banks. Included in that infrastructure are IBANs (International Bank Account Numbers), rules, norms, and procedures on how such money transfers are to occur, and a highly sophisticated technical language that allows those in the business to communicate with one another wherever they are in the world. Another example involves global (Sassen 1991, 2013) and world cities (Derudder et al. 2012) (see Chapter 13) that are increasingly interconnected with one another directly rather than through the nation-states in which they happen to exist. The financial markets of the world cities of New York, London, and Tokyo are tightly linked with the result that all sorts of financial products flow among them and at lightning speed. More generally, in this context, we can talk in terms of the “global economy’s connectedness” (Altman 2007). To take another example, the World Health Organization (WHO) includes nearly 200 member states and has coordinated the global response to COVID-19 (see Chapter 15). When the virus was discovered at the end of 2019, the WHO immediately went into action by tracking cases and the spread of the disease, disseminating the most recent medical knowledge, helping to distribute personal protective equipment (PPE) throughout networked countries, recommending health-related policies, and developing the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for fundraising for the pandemic. Once again, however, barriers are erected to limit such interconnections (e.g. the unwillingness of at least some countries to acknowledge the urgent threat of the disease, and the US’s attempt to withdraw funding to the WHO).