Calhoun, Harvey & Appadurai

1. Calhoun provided a good background for our reading of Harvey's lens of historical-geographical materialism. Calhoun described globalization as inextricably bound up in the context of history. He noted that globalization is not a natural process, but rather, is a reflection of power, which is inherently unequal. He noted that it is multidimensional, affecting markets, media and migration. Appadurai concurs that the four key factors in understanding globalization are financial capital, electronic information technology, the growing gaps between rich and poor, and the new kinds of migration in the world labor market.

After their initial discussion of what drives globalization, Harvey and Appadurai continue with disturbing analyses of its dire consequences. Harvey concurs with the NY Times' view that "America's entire war on terrorism is an exercise in imperialism." Appadurai sees the 9/11 attacks as "a massive act of social punishment" for America's "moral travesties around the world." Appadurai describes our post-9/11 world as one in which "order...is organized around the fact or the prospect of violence," a world that destabilizes two of our cherished assumptions: "that peace is the natural marker of social order and that the nation-state is natural guarantor and container of such order." In this world, "civilians do not exist."

Harvey quotes Arendt: "Since power is essentially only a means to an end a community based solely on power must decay...only by acquiring more power can it guarantee the status quo; only by constantly extending its authority...through process of power accumulation can it remain stable." Harvey notes that accumulation is done by dispossession, by taking away the rights, lands, and livelihoods of anyone who stands in the way of the U.S.'s "perpetually expansionary" capitalist imperialism.

2. I was taken by Calhoun's point that globalization exists only because it is imagined. This concept follows up on our Anderson reading last semester on Imagined Communities. Calhoun's concept of globalization's existence relying on our imagining it is both radical and self-evident. .

I was disturbed by the apocalyptic vision of Appadurai, who sees growing "macroviolence" as a fact of life that we must learn to live with. I would like to have seen some suggestions as to how to address the dire circumstances that he describes.