01 / Reading Guide
Reading Guide
Citation
Held, D., McGrew, A., Goldblatt, D., & Perraton, J. (1999). Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture. Polity.
Chapter Summary
The book runs to about 540 pages and is organized as an introduction, eight topical chapters, a conclusion and a methodological appendix. The publisher presents it as a widely acclaimed study that sheds light on the processes reshaping the contemporary world, at a time when debates about globalization, and about whether it implies the end of the nation-state, had often "descended into polemics and confusion". The publisher also describes it as systematic, historical and comparative, covering changes in politics, economics, culture, the environment and military and legal affairs in accessible language. The topical chapters share a pattern visible in their section headings: most review the history of a domain, compare historical forms of globalization in it, and look at how national societies are "enmeshed" in contemporary patterns.
Introduction
The introduction has five sections: The Globalization Debate; Sources of Contention in the Globalization Debate; Rethinking Globalization: An Analytical Framework; Determining the Shape of Contemporary Globalization; and The Book Ahead. It lays out the debate, proposes the analytical framework the later chapters use, and previews the plan.
The Territorial State and Global Politics
This chapter moves from empires to modern nation-states, discusses the emergence of global politics and multilayered governance with the diffusion of political authority, compares historical forms of political globalization (the transformation of political community), considers differential national enmeshment, and concludes on political globalization and structural impacts.
The Expanding Reach of Organized Violence
The chapter on military affairs asks what military globalization is, traces the globalization of the war system and a world military order, looks at a global arms dynamic, compares historical forms, examines contemporary patterns of national enmeshment in the world military order, and ends with its political consequences.
Global Trade, Global Markets
This chapter follows trade from antiquity to the nation-state, through the industrial revolution and the rise and fall of world trade up to the Second World War, to a global trading order. It compares historical forms, looks at national enmeshment in the global trading system and the impact of global trade relations, and concludes on state autonomy and sovereignty.
Shifting Patterns of Global Finance
The finance chapter proposes indicators of financial globalization and enmeshment and goes through early patterns, the classical gold standard period (1870–1914), the interwar years, and the Bretton Woods era before describing contemporary financial globalization. It then compares historical forms, examines national enmeshment and discusses economic autonomy and sovereignty.
Corporate Power and Global Production Networks
Here the authors discuss multinational corporations and global production, from international business before the industrial revolution and multinational expansion from 1850 to 1939 to the transnationalization of production and global production networks. The chapter compares historical forms of business globalization, contemporary patterns of enmeshment and domestic impacts.
People on the Move
The migration chapter covers historical forms of global migration, contemporary patterns of migration, a comparison across periods, migration and national enmeshment, and the relationship between globalization, migration and the nation-state.
Globalization, Culture and the Fate of Nations
This chapter analyses cultural globalization, places it in historical perspective, describes the shape of contemporary cultural globalization and its political impact, and sums up the historical forms.
Catastrophe in the Making: Globalization and the Environment
The environmental chapter considers environmental globalization in historical perspective, changing historical forms, the stratification of environmental degradation and national enmeshment, and the contemporary pattern of global environmental change and its political impacts.
Conclusion: the Shape of Contemporary Globalization; Methodological Appendix
The conclusion draws the chapters together, and the appendix covers the methods behind the comparisons.
Key Concepts
Introduction
- Analytical framework for globalization: the introduction's "rethinking" of globalization, used to compare historical forms across domains.
- Shape of contemporary globalization: the object of the book's comparison of past and present.
Chapters on politics, violence, trade, finance, production
- Historical forms of globalization: each chapter compares past and present patterns within its domain.
- National enmeshment: how national societies are tied into global patterns, which varies between countries.
- State autonomy and sovereignty: a theme in the trade and finance chapters.
Chapters on migration, culture, environment
- Cultural globalization and its political impact: the focus of the culture chapter.
- Stratification of environmental degradation: the environmental chapter's way of treating unequal exposure.
Critical Analysis
Strengths
- A common structure across domains. Politics, military affairs, trade, finance, production, migration, culture and the environment are treated with a recurring sequence of history, comparison and enmeshment, so readers can compare domains with each other.
- Historical depth. The chapter headings go back to empires, antiquity and the early modern period, which lets the book test claims that globalization is new.
- Breadth. The publisher stresses the range of domains covered and calls the book the most comprehensive introduction to the analysis of globalization; the contents list eight domains in one volume.
- Debate-oriented opening. The introduction maps the globalization debate and its sources of contention before offering its own framework, so the argument is set against positions a reader may already know.
Limitations
- Length. At about 540 pages, with eight domain chapters of similar structure, the book is a long read and not an introduction.
- Dated evidence. Published in 1999, it cannot cover developments since then, so the contemporary patterns it describes are those of the end of the twentieth century.
- Uneven fit for specific interests. A reader interested in one domain, such as migration, must work through a long chapter and may prefer a specialist text.
Where It Fits in the Course
Global Transformations is the comprehensive scholarly treatment in the globalization-and-development course, to be read after a short introduction. Steger's Globalization: A Very Short Introduction and the edited Introduction to International Development are accessible overviews, and McMichael and Weber's Development and Social Change and Peet and Hartwick's Theories of Development cover development as a historical process and the main schools of development theory.
Evans's Embedded Autonomy is a focused comparative study of how particular states handled the computer industry; Held and colleagues offer the wider picture of globalization against which such a case study can be read, and their treatment of state autonomy in the trade and finance chapters connects directly to Evans's concerns.
How to Use This Book
The book suits undergraduates and graduate students in sociology, politics and international relations who have already met the debates about globalization.
A practical plan:
- Core: the Introduction and the Conclusion, which carry the framework and the overall argument.
- By interest: choose the domain chapters that match the course. The politics, military, trade and finance chapters belong together; the migration, culture and environment chapters can be read separately.
- Comparison: after reading two domain chapters, list how their historical forms and the enmeshment of states differ.
- Optional: the methodological appendix for readers who want to see how the comparisons were constructed.