Comments on: Globalisation and nationalism

By: Cory Blad

Cory Blad — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 11:08:18 +0000

Ingrid,

Thanks for the comments on our paper – and for continuing what I feel is an incredibly important discussion. While globalization is certainly a multifaceted series of processes, there is most certainly a material foundation that cannot neither legitimate itself nor offers an institutional framework to provide such legitimacy. Transnational capitalism and capitalists (generally speaking, of course) certainly champion the growth potential of a liberal economic context; however, it is equally essential to note that neoliberalism requires some form of local institutional authority to create (1) the differentiation between investment/production locations that motivates capital mobility and (2) a means of mitigating/assuaging the adverse material conditions that result from deregulated capitalism. To that end, both global capital and state proponents of global capitalism face a quandary: How to both promote a deregulated, corrosive capital accumulation regime while at the same time maintaining local legitimate authority? To that end, I hope, our argument that the legitimation of state authority through increasingly primordial (nationalist) cultural means offers some way of explaining the mechanical utility of nationalist cultural definitions in an era of neoliberal austerity.

By: Ingrid Piller

Ingrid Piller — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 23:33:16 +0000

In reply to Khan.

Thanks, Khan! I like your comment that “globalization might give an impression of the demise of nationalism on surface level” – lack of attention to the material base is clearly bedevelling much globalisation scholarship in the humanities …

By: Khan

Khan — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:21:38 +0000

Thanks for opening up an interesting debate. I think one possible way of looking at the phenomena of free-market economy is to examine the ways in which neoliberalism has transformed the mode of production and the division of labour in different settings. In case of Post-colonial countries, Alavi, a Marxist theorist argues that Classical Marxist explanation is inadequate to explain the development of capital in colonial world. He holds that colonial countries are a case of ‘peripheral capitalism’ and colonizers are a case of ‘metropolitan capitalism’. The major difference between them has been that in the former the generalized commodity production was not made an integrated process of development as in the latter. I see neoliberal economy as the new form of metropolitan economy where the generalized commodity production feeds into the national economy of some countries. In other words, globalization though might give an impression of the demise of nationalism on surface level, the discourse of nationalism is very much the part of globalization in making a clear differentiation between peripheral and metropolitan economies.

By: Christof Demont-Heinrich

Christof Demont-Heinrich — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 04:10:14 +0000

Another dimension to this debate is class position, education, and individual and social group material conditions. I’m thinking in particular of a small, but clearly growing group of highly educated elites, including, of course, academics, who regularly travel across national borders, interact regularly with, work with, and collaborate with people across national borders, etc. For this group — which some call transnationals — nationalism is very often something from which they want to distance themselves. I’m not an expert on scholarship that’s looked at nationalism and class/education position, but I will speculate that the higher the education level and the more international interaction and travel, the lower the level of nationalism you are likely to find, and vice versa. I personally think this has a lot to do with power and empowerment: Transnational identity empowers the privileged educational elite but offers little in the way of personal empowerment for the less educationally privileged. For this group, nationalism provides power and empowerment and therefore continues to hold tremendous appeal. Sure, there are plenty of educational elites who are nationalistic, but I still say that’s where you’ll find the greatest push/pull away from nationalism, especially in countries like the U.S., Australia, Germany, etc. and it’s a significant and powerful pull indeed.