Globalization: The Key Concepts

Citation

Eriksen, T. H. (2014). Globalization: The Key Concepts (2nd ed.). Bloomsbury Academic (now published by Routledge).

Chapter Summary

The second edition is a short textbook of about 210–224 pages in the Key Concepts series: a preface, an introduction, nine chapters each named after one concept, and an afterword. Thomas Hylland Eriksen, a social anthropologist at the University of Oslo, argues that globalization is an inherently double process, happening from above and from below, and that it both shrinks the world and makes people more aware of their differences. According to the publisher and to Cecilie Endresen's review in Anthropological Notebooks (2015), each chapter has boxed case studies, a short introduction, a bullet-point summary, essay and discussion questions, and annotated suggestions for further reading.

Introduction: A Shrinking Planet

The introduction sets out the starting point: most of the world's population is now connected through trade, travel, production, media and politics, while people everywhere try to keep their identities rooted. Endresen quotes its claim that globalization creates a shared grammar for talking about difference and inequality, so that friction and conflict are part of the process.

Chapter 1: Disembedding

How social life is lifted out of local contexts into abstract systems. Sections move from distance and abstraction through abstract time, money as a means of communication, abstract music, printing and factories, and nationalism as a template for globalization, to disembedded friendship, neoliberal economics and the critics of disembedding.

Chapter 2: Speed

Acceleration as a feature of globalization: time–space compression, accelerated change, Thomas Friedman's "flatteners", acceleration in the media, Pierre Bourdieu's pessimism, simultaneity, and the unevenness of speed across the world.

Chapter 3: Standardization

The standards of global modernity and their contemporary forms, including obsolescence, bilingualism, "the globalization of nothing", "McWorld and its discontents", the word processor MS Word and the shipping container, ending with resistance to standardization. Endresen notes that McDonald's, globally standard yet locally distinctive, recurs as an example.

Chapter 4: Connections

A critique of methodological nationalism, followed by the network society, communication networks, the question of a networked global economy, globalization from below, global governance, translation, remittances and cheap calls, soccer, chosen and enforced delinking, the growth of slums, and the disjunctures that accompany connectedness.

Chapter 5: Mobility

Transnational migration and connections, the question of outsourcing the nation-state, the growth of tourism, the contrast between the tourist and the refugee, long-distance nationalism, gendered migration and nostalgia.

Chapter 6: Mixing

Forms of cultural mixing, the concepts of hybridity and creolization, world music, and a case study of a mixed family in Mauritius, the country where Eriksen did his own fieldwork, ending with a model of mixing.

Chapter 7: Risk

Natural and manufactured risks, perceived risk and its real consequences, invasive species, climate change and global democracy, wavering trust in expert systems, local responses to global risks, the wars on terror, and human rights and security.

Chapter 8: Identity Politics

The politicised concept of culture and identity politics as a response to globalization, with a "grammar" of identity politics, indigenous strategies, re-embedding in diasporas, trust and social capital, a comparison of neonationalism and Islamism, and human rights. Endresen credits the chapter's argument that the quest for purity and authenticity and the polarisation of collective identities are offspring of globalization.

Chapter 9: Alterglobalization

Movements that seek another globalization rather than none: protest movements, the transnational Occupy movement, alterglobalizing strategies in the global South, the Slowness movement, and events from the Arab Spring to the Snowden affair.

Afterword: An Overheated World

The afterword introduces the metaphor of "overheating" for a world in which too many transactions happen at once, leading, as Endresen summarises it, to exponential growth, accelerated change and a loss of overview and predictability.

Key Concepts

Introduction and Chapters 1–3

• Globalization from above and below: the book's thesis that global processes are driven both by powerful institutions and by ordinary people.
• Disembedding: the removal of social relations from local contexts into abstract systems such as money, clock time and the nation.
• Time–space compression and acceleration: the shrinking of distance and the speeding up of change.
• Standardization: shared global formats, from containers to software, and resistance to them.

Chapters 4–6

• Methodological nationalism: the habit, criticised in Chapter 4, of treating the nation-state as the natural unit of analysis.
• Network society: a world organised through communication networks.
• Transnational migration and long-distance nationalism: lives and loyalties spanning several countries.
• Hybridity and creolization: the mixing of cultural forms.

Chapters 7–9 and Afterword

• Manufactured risk: dangers produced by human activity, such as climate change.
• Identity politics and re-embedding: attempts to restore rootedness in response to globalization.
• Alterglobalization: movements seeking a different globalization.
• Overheating: the afterword's image of a world of runaway, simultaneous change.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Organised by concept. Nine short chapters, each built around one idea, give students a vocabulary that can be applied to any case. Endresen notes the instructive headings and the questions for class discussion in each chapter.
• Simple but not simplistic. Endresen judges Eriksen well placed to cut across disciplinary boundaries and explain complex issues plainly, and praises the variety of empirical examples. The book does not treat globalization as simply good or bad but as complex, with different effects on different lives.
• Teaching apparatus. Case boxes, summaries, discussion questions and annotated further reading in every chapter make the book suitable for both classroom and independent study.
• Up to date for its time. The second edition was substantially revised, and the contents show material on Occupy, the Arab Spring, the Snowden affair and climate change.

Limitations

• Weak on religion. Endresen finds the treatment of religion and globalization thin, presented in passing and mainly concerning Islam, with little relevant literature cited. She questions specific claims and terms, including the imprecise use of "Islamism" and its characterisation as resistance to standardisation, and a passage equating a fatwa with a death sentence.
• Anglophone sources. Endresen observes that, with one exception, the bibliography is in English and drawn largely from scholars at British and American universities.
• Short entries. Each concept gets a chapter of a few sections; the book is an introduction to the debates rather than a full treatment of any of them. Events after 2014 are not covered.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the anthropology of globalization list, Eriksen is the conceptual starting point: it gives the vocabulary (disembedding, standardization, mobility, hybridity, identity politics) that the other books apply to development and colonialism. Emma Crewe and Richard Axelby's Anthropology and Development is an introductory textbook that treats development as relationships between donors, governments, organisations and the people they aim to help; it pairs naturally with Eriksen's chapters on connections, mobility and alterglobalization. Katy Gardner and David Lewis's Anthropology and Development is a more critical account of how development thinking and practice changed after the 1990s and argues that the industry has become narrowly technocratic.

Two classics take the critique further. Talal Asad's edited volume Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter examines anthropology's colonial origins and the power relations in its knowledge, and gives historical depth to Eriksen's discussion of the politics of culture. Arturo Escobar's Encountering Development argues that post-war development discourse created the "Third World" as an object of intervention; it is a sustained theoretical argument, best read after Eriksen and one of the development textbooks.

How to Use This Book

The book is written for students meeting globalization studies for the first time and requires no background. It suits first- and second-year students in anthropology, sociology, geography and international studies.

• Start with the introduction and Chapter 1: disembedding is the foundation for the later chapters.
• Core sequence: Chapters 2–5 (speed, standardization, connections, mobility) cover the main processes.
• Choose by theme: Chapter 6 for culture and hybridity, Chapter 7 for environment and risk, Chapter 8 for identity and nationalism, Chapter 9 for social movements. The afterword is a short, readable synthesis.
• Use the apparatus: answer the discussion questions with a case from your own surroundings, and use the annotated reading lists to choose sources for essays.

For religion and globalization, supplement Chapter 8 with specialised literature, as the reviewer's criticisms suggest. Because the examples end around 2013, update each concept with a recent case of your own; doing so is also the best test of whether the concepts have been understood.