Читать книгу Globalization - George Ritzer - Страница 22

While there is no question that the world is increasingly characterized by greater liquidity, increased flows, as well as various structures that expedite those flows, we also need to recognize that there are limits and barriers to those flows. The world is not just in process, there are also many material structures (trade agreements, regulatory agencies, borders, customs barriers, standards, and so on) in existence. As Inda and Rosaldo (2008: 31) argue: “Material infrastructures do not only promote mobility… . They also hinder and block it.” Any thoroughgoing account of globalization needs to look at both flows and structures and, in terms of the latter, the ways in which they both produce and enhance flows as well as alter and even block them. In other words, there is interplay between flows and structures, especially between flows and the structures that are created in an attempt to inhibit or to stop them. As Shamir (2005: 197) puts it, globalization is an epoch of increased openness and “simultaneously an era of growing restrictions on movement.” Borders, of course, are major points at which movement is blocked. There are many examples of this including the toughening of border controls in the UK (and elsewhere in Europe), Australia, and the US because of growing hostility to refugees and undocumented immigratns (Hogan and Haltinner 2015).

There are challenges to the idea that all there is to globalization is flows and fluidity (Tsing 2000). In examining global flows (some of which have been anticipated above), we also need to consider those agents who “carve” the channels through which things flow, those who alter those channels over time, national and regional units that create and battle over flows, and coalitions of claimants for control over channels.

A focus on the above kinds of agents and structures, rather than flows, promises a more critical orientation to globalization in terms of the structures themselves, as well as in terms of who creates the structures through which things flow as well as who does and does not control and profit from them (more on this in the next section).

Another important idea is the “frictions,” or the “awkward, unequal, unstable … interconnection across difference” (Lowenhaupt Tsing 2005: 4). The main idea is that the global flows that create interconnections do not move about smoothly; they do not move about without creating friction. Friction gets in the way of the smooth operation of global flows.³ However, friction not only slows flows down, it can also serve to keep them moving and even speed them up. Highways can have this double-edged quality by both limiting where people and vehicles can go while at the same time making movement “easier and more efficient” (Lowenhaupt Tsing 2005: 6). More generally, “global connections [are] made, and muddied, in friction” (Lowenhaupt Tsing 2005: 272). The key point in this context is that flows themselves produce friction that can slow or even stop global flows: “without even trying friction gets in the way of the smooth operation of global power. Difference can disrupt, causing everyday malfunctions as well as unexpected cataclysms. Friction refuses the lie that global power operates as a well-oiled machine. Furthermore, difference sometimes inspires insurrection. Friction can be the fly in the elephant’s nose” (Lowenhaupt Tsing 2005: 6). A prime example of this today is the many frictions being produced in many parts of the world by large numbers of documented and undocumented immigrants, and the backlash against them. For example, refugees from Syria have fled to Europe and other places, and have sometimes been killed by border guards when entering a country without authorization (Yeginsu and Shoumali 2016). Such frictions led Greece to complete a 6.5 mile fence along its border with Turkey, which was considered the most porous entry point for undocumented immigrants entering Europe (Besant 2012). As has already been mentioned, the most important and most obvious barriers to global flows are those constructed by nation-states. There are borders, gates, guards, passport controls, customs agents, health inspectors, and so on, in most countries in the world. (The great exception is the countries that are part of the European Union [EU] where barriers to movement among and between member countries have been greatly reduced, if not eliminated. The EU is a kind of structure that allows people and products to move much more freely and much more quickly. At the same time, it serves to reduce the need to use hidden channels since there is far less need to conceal what is moving among and between EU countries.) Although many people (undocumented immigrants) and things (contraband goods) do get through those barriers, some of them are successfully blocked or impeded by the barriers. However, it is far more difficult to erect barriers against many newer phenomena, especially the non-material phenomena associated with cell phones and the Internet.

Specific examples of barriers created by the nation-state involve blocking economic transactions that it regards as not in the national interest. For example, in 2006 the US government blocked a deal in which a Dubai company was to purchase an American company involved in the business of running America’s ports (Economist 2006: March 10). The government felt that such ownership would be a threat to national security since foreign nationals, perhaps enemies, could acquire information that would allow terrorists easy entrée to the ports. In other examples, the US government blocked a Singapore-based firm from acquiring Qualcomm, a manufacturer of computer chips (Kang and Rappeport 2018), and pressured the Chinese company owning TikTok to sell its US assets (Associated Press 2020). Former President Trump, through separate presidential orders, argued that the deals “threaten to impair the national security of the United States.” In the case of Qualcomm, the move prevented what would have been the largest technology deal in history, and continued an “America first” policy.

However, many of the barriers created by nation-states that we assume are, or can be, successful do not in fact deal with the flows they are supposed to stem. It remains to be seen whether the new wall between Mexico and the US can reduce the flow of undocumented immigrants to the US. Similarly, it is not clear that the wall between Israel and the West Bank will stop the flow of terrorists into Israel during more intense periods of conflict in the Middle East.

More generally, in a study of the confluence of legal and illegal global imports, Nordstrom found that the global flow of illegal goods is almost impossible to stop. For one thing, the illegal is often shipped with, or is even part of, the legal so that stopping one means stopping the other. For another, the global economy would grind to a halt if there really were serious efforts to, for example, search all cargo entering every country in the world. Even holding “up one line of trucks, one train, one ship” ripples through the global supply chain (Nordstrom 2007: 196). Nordstrom estimates the “most sophisticated ports in the world can inspect a maximum of only 5% of the cargo passing through customs,” but even inspecting that much cargo would tax any port and its authorities beyond the limit of its capacities. Global economic gridlock would occur if 5% of cargo was really inspected; a total global economic meltdown would occur if all cargo was inspected.

Nordstrom found that not only do illegal products flow freely across borders, but so do people. She traveled by freighter to and from the US and found that “security does not exist, in fact it cannot exist, in the world today” (Nordstrom 2007: 181). She boarded the freighter and left the US without anyone checking her or stamping her passport and her arrival in Europe was no different: “When I went ashore, I couldn’t even find a person to tell me how to get out of port and into town. No customs, no immigration, no one to even ignore me” (Nordstrom 2007: 187). On both sides of the Atlantic she moved freely among the containers, some of them open, stored onshore.

Corporate organizations, say a multinational corporation like Volkswagen, are devoted to optimizing the flow of their automobiles to all possible markets throughout the world. They also seek to compete with and out-perform other multinational corporations in the automobile business. If they are successful, and Volkswagen has been extremely successful (it has supplanted Toyota as the world’s largest automobile manufacturer), the flow of automobiles from those corporations is greatly reduced, further advantaging the company.

While organizations of many types, including nation-states and corporations serve as structures that can operate against global flows, the fact is that there are signs that many organizations are changing and are themselves becoming more fluid and increasingly open.

One of the roots of this change is open-sourcing and the Internet. The best-known example of open-sourcing is Linux, a free computer-operating system. Anyone in the world with the needed skills can make changes in, and contributions to, it. (The best-known operating systems are produced by Microsoft [now Windows 10]. They cost a great deal and are closed in that only those who work for the company can, at least legally, work on and modify them.) In recent years a traditionally closed organization – IBM – has embraced not only the Linux system, but opened up more and more of its own operations to outside inputs. The Internet has a number of open systems, such as the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia (or wikis more generally). With Wikipedia, (virtually) anyone, anywhere in the world, can contribute to the definition of terms on it. The contrast here is the traditional (and costly) dictionaries (e.g. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary) and encyclopedias written by selected experts (Encyclopedia Britannica) are closed to contributions from anyone else.

However, in spite of this new openness, most organizations and systems remain closed to various flows. This usually benefits (often economically) those in the system and disadvantages those outside the organization. Even with the new open systems, there are structural realities that help some and hinder others. For example, to contribute to Linux or Wikipedia one must have a computer, computer expertise, and access to the Internet (especially high speed access). These inequalities are explored in the next section.