ABSTRACT: Globalization has already caused a wide range of far-reaching changes to occur throughout the world, in every country and at every level. Although we think of recent dramatic technological and political developments that have tremendously accelerated the process of globalization, it has actually been going on for a very long time and needs to be understood in historical perspective. Although its economic aspects with a focus on world markets, currencies, investments and industrialization have attracted the most attention, its implications for the state and international relations, for problems of war and peace, of endemic conflict, ethnic movements, criminal violence, environmental impacts, educational and cultural aspects, all cry out for attention. This panel will direct attention to the historical, evolutionary, ecological and conceptual aspects of this multi-dimensional phenomenon.

Globalization in Historical, Evolutionary, Ecological and Conceptual Perspectives

Theme Session: Saturday (SB27) 10:30 - 12:15, Ambassador Ballroom

Chair: Sai Felicia Krishna-Hensel

Papers:

Christopher Chase-Dunn, Yukio Kawano, Denis Nikitin, Benjamin Brewer: Trajectories of Globalization: 1800-2000

George Modelski: The Evolution of Globalization

Eduardo Viola : Environmental Aspects of Globalization

Fred Riggs and Henry Teune: The Conceptual Framework of Globalization

Discussants:
Michelle B. Sachs, School of International Relations, University of Southern California, VKC 330, University Park, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0043
fax: 213-742-0281, e-mail: msachs@wesleyan.edu

Selma K. ("Sam") Sonntag, Professor, and Graduate Co-ordinator for Globalization M.A. Program, Department of Government & Politics, Humboldt State University, Arcata CA 95521
Tel. (707) 826-3917, Fax (707) 826-4496, E-mail: sks1@axe.humboldt.edu
Information about this program can be found at Humboldt

ABSTRACTS AND BIODATA

Names are arranged alphabetically. See links to related files. The original plan called for two sessions and the inclusion of papers by Barry Gills and Majid Tehranian. Because the Program Committee limited this panel to one session, they will not be able to present their papers in Washington, but for the record, their abstracts are retained below.

ABSTRACT: Since the 1980s the term globalization has become a popular buzz-word that is used to describe allegedly recent and important changes in the world economy. In the received discourse, globalization refers to changes in technologies of communication and transportation, increasingly internationalized financial flows and commodity trade, and the transition from national to world markets as the main arena for economic competition. These ostensible changes, in turn, have been used to justify economic and political decisions such as deregulation and privatization of industries, downsizing and streamlining of work forces and dismemberment of welfare services provided by governments.

The research here reported was designed to examine the actual historical trajectories of several important types of globalization. Did the globalized world economy arrive all at once in a rapid and recent transition from national to global economic networks? Or are the processes of international economic integration long-term trends that have been going up for centuries only to be noticed recently because they have reached such a high peak? Or, alternatively, is globalization a cyclical phenomenon in which the world-economy alternates between periods of national autarchy followed by periods of international economic integration? The real trajectories of globalization over the last two centuries are knowable if we gather comparable data over time. And these trajectories have important implications for our understanding of the processes of development in the modern world-system. Does international economic integration cause international political and cultural integration? Or vice versa? The two main objectives of this research were:

• to determine the trajectories of economic and political globalization; and
• to test models of the causal relationships between these, and their effects on conflict.

These tasks required conceptualizing and operationalizing measures of globalization, the gathering of comparable and complete data over the past two hundred years, and the splicing of sequences of earlier, cruder series with later, better measures. The data series are graphed to determine the temporal trajectories of the different kinds of globalization. This analysis has important implications for our understandings of how the world economy has been developing in recent decades as compared with earlier periods. The data series are used to test propositions about the causes and consequences of different kinds of globalization. For background analysis, see the Chase-Dunn paper on Globalization

Christopher Chase-Dunn, Yukio Kawano and Denis Nikitin, Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins Univ,Baltimore, MD 21218, USA;
Fax:1-410-5167590, e-mail: chriscd@jhu.edu
Additional information can be found at the World Systems Archive

ABSTRACT: Globalization is a concept about greater economic integration on a world scale, its causes and consequences. However, processes of economic interaction via trade and production, and a process of 'world accumulation' of capital are much older than the contemporary world economic system. This paper presents a structural framework of world accumulation processes over the very long term as a means by which to analyse contemporary globalisation in world historical perspective.

Barry Gills, Dept. of Politics, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK NE1 7RU; Fax: 44 0191 222 5069; tel: 44 0191 222 7742; messages 5064;
E-mail: B.K.Gills@newcastle.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: Globalization is an evolutionary process that proceeds, i.a., along a political dimension. Political globalization describes the evolution of the global political system over the past millennium, from its Eurasian antecedents, through the rise of the nation-state system, toward greater global institutionalization. Political globalization coevolves with changes in global economic arrangements and helps to correct problems that might be created by it. Both processes are anchored in the ongoing process of democratization. Further details can be found at Modelski's home page .

George Modelski: <modelski@u.washington.edu>

Several papers on globalization are also available at this site as linked hypertext documents. An analysis based on this data has led to the preparation of a draft proposal that can also be seen on this site at: Globalization Concepts. The data seems to support four main categories:

1. time/space notions that place globalization historically and geographically;
2. functional and structural concepts that involve cause-effect and other interactive factors that apply universally;
3. dimensions or perspectives on globalization that arise from different disciplinary preoccupations, such as economics, politics, society, psychology, culture, etc.; and
4. viewpoints that reflect the way people look at these processes and the theoretical paradigms that inform their analysis.

Work on this project will generate a report that might serve as a kind of glossary for the field. It will be made available on the Web. Meanwhile, a visualization of the results can be found on a dozen Power Point slides .

Fred W. Riggs, Professor Emeritus, Political Science Department, University of Hawaii, 2424 Maile Way, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, U.S.A. Phone: (808) 956-8123; Fax: (808) 956-6877; e-mail: FREDR@HAWAII.EDU; WebPage: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~fredr/

Henry Teune, Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6215; E-mail: hteune@sas.upenn.edu
Additional material compiled by Teune can be found on the home page of the IPSA/ISA Local-Global group.

Majid Tehranian, Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research,
Tel.: 808-955-8231 Fax: 808-955-6476, and
Department of Communications, Univ. of Hawaii. Honolulu,HI 96822;
Tel: 808 956 3353; E-mail:
For further information see the Toda Institute

ABSTRACT: The paper has two parts. The first discusses the impact of environmental globalization on the theory of international relations focusing on three issues: the interdependence between the Biosphere and the international system, the formation of international environmental regimes, and the transnationalization of national environmental politics. The second part discusses the players (States, Corporations, Inter-government organizations and Non-government organizations) and the dynamics of some global environmental arenas (climate change, depletion of the ozone layer, biodiversity loss, and epidemiological risks) focusing on the limitations of conventional North/South approaches in their attempts to explain cleavages and coalition formation.

Eduardo Viola, Full Professor of the Department of International Relations, University of Brasilia, Brazil. Member of the Committee on Global Environmental Change, National Academy of Sciences (Brazil). Former Visiting Professor at Stanford, Colorado at Boulder, Notre Dame and Amsterdam.

SQSW 504, Bl. "H", #506 Brasilia, DF 70673-508 Brazil
Phone: 55-61-344 2669; FAX: 55-61-344 5684; E-mail: violaedu@nutecnet.com.br

For related documents see:
the Globalization list and project description, the Globalization Roundtable, and the COCTA Program at the ISA Congress, July 28, 1998
the Texts , Mlinar, Teune, Riggs and the Contributors
a proposed Classification and an Index .

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Updated: 9 January 1999
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