Shel Kimen
December 2004

Many argue the world is fragmenting, dwindling into bite size ever more specific chunks. This view has its attractors and detractors. Some believe fragmentation will break apart power structures and strengthen community while others fear chaos and anticipate lost community. Still others reject this fragmentation view in favor of past science fiction predictions of bleak hegemony, envisioning culture destroyed by mega corporations and surveillance style global governments. Others embrace a 'one world' concept placing great faith in institutions like the United Nations and the Internet.

There are certainly many cases to be made in favor of all these views. And since the 1990's 'globalization' is the tool used to explain the concerns and hopes of many.

Queer Rights and Globalization. How To Be Good In A Globalized World. Urban Protest and Community Building In The Age Of Globalization. Brazilian Popular Music and Globalization. The Globalization Of Poverty and The New World Order. How To Succeed At Globalization. The Globalization Of Terror. Globalization and Education. Disease and Globalization.

These are just some of 2,344 titles at Amazon.com featuring 'globalization' somewhere in the title.

So what then is globalization? Who if anyone benefits? Is it death of the nation-state or western imperialism? Is it the destruction of local culture in favor of mass-market culture? Does it break apart our community and pluralize or fragment individual identity? Is it Hyper-capitalism, neoliberal policy, the end of modernity, or the reign of the Internet? Is it a concept referencing a period of time or is it an absolute definition? Webster's Dictionary defines globalization: "To make worldwide in scope an application." What does that mean? Coca Cola is everywhere, but so is the greenhouse effect. Is globalization about products or is it world consciousness? It's obviously both and much more.

The term 'globalization' is so pervasive and consequently so ambiguous that to even begin to understand it one needs to step back and look for the larger, meta-issues, points of parallels and distinction. One needs to consider 'globalization' not as an event, rather a series of events, and not as a concept so much as a symptom of broader concepts, or a force creating concepts. It brings into question the project of modernity and its associated bedfellows liberal democracy, the nation-state, rationality, and technology. It complicates individual identity and group affiliation, and stimulates world consciousness. It indicates that how we live, think, and even breathe is changing and changing rapidly. It's no wonder that so many people are fixated on 'globalization'; it touches almost everything.

The stakes are high. Anything we latch onto as a definition has the potential to shape our future in dramatic ways. It is not a topic that can be covered well in a book, least likely, an essay, particularly one with an agenda -- improving business, marketing global trade, establishing policy positions, enfranchising minorities, increasing environmental consciousness, etc. These and other agendas obfuscate the significance of globalization by tying it too early to specific, divergent meanings. While it's unlikely that consensus will ever be reached, as is the case of any encompassing and pervasive social, political and philosophical frameworks (modernity, capitalism, democracy, etc.) it is possible to examine the phenomena with more care in order to discover deeper, more profound insights.

Globalization touches nearly everyone be it via the environment, economy, media, products, or politics (and war). We have the potential to use it as a tool for whatever we like -- maintain the status quo, change directions, or invent possibilities -- and that is a powerful set of options.

A theme of contention in the globalization prophecies and debates seems to focus on concepts of fragmentation and unification. As already mentioned, some people fear the world is ever-dividing into smaller and smaller disjointed pieces. They fear fragmentation. Others view this fragmentation positively. Some fear a one world global or corporate government, while others embrace the possibility of a one-world (and humane) consciousness. Our options:

A) Fear Fragmenting World
B) Embrace Fragmenting
C) Fear Unified World
D) Embrace Unified World

What's difficult about this framework is that what one individual or group might feel is "fragmenting" another might understand as "unifying." Likewise, two people or two groups could see the event, either fragmented or unified, as also positive or negative depending on context. The categories are subjective -- based on preferences, culture, values, perspective, etc.

People often refer to globalization as either very bad (for the environment, for culture, for social justice and humanitarian issues) or very good (for markets, for technological innovation, for decentralizing power and creating new space for the advancement of grass roots organizations, minorities, women, etc.).This polarizing of the good and bad cannot be constrained to left/right or liberal/conservative, as radical environmentalists, religious fundamentalists, and labor unions have all asserted that we should "step back" from globalization and return to local, protectionist policies for the good of the land, god, money, and work. While other environmentalists, religious organizations, and labor unions have embraced free trade, the advance of telecommunications, and the rapid spread of technology that they believe aid human progress.

Globalization has been used by many to mean:

>North or western (American) imperialism
>The death of the nation state
>Free market liberalization/rampant capitalism
>Rise of the corporate super state
>One world government/brave new world style
>Internationalization/cosmopolitism and simultaneous degradation of the rural
>Loss of indigenous culture/homogenization
>A travesty for the environment -- toxic waste, ozone depletion
>Good for the environment -- universal perspective, collaborative science
>Further marginalization of the already marginalized -- especially in terms of wealth distribution and access to social services/employment/education
>An exaggerated opportunity for social change (in an exaggerated decentralized world)
>The end of modernity, the rise of post modernity, or neither

In 1999, Thomas Friedman, foreign-affairs columnist for the New York Times declared in The Lexus and the Olive Tree that globalization was inevitable. The world was destined to become not one of first, second, and third world countries, but of fast and slow countries, and the fast, i.e. the American model, would dominate. His opinions seem a little outdated and US-centric, but consider that he wrote this book at a highpoint in the American economy and at the apex of the "dot com revolution." He wrote this when most everyone in business and the financial world believed or wanted to believe that the Internet and related technologies (wireless, satellite, etc.), most championed by the United States, would move the world to a new prosperity, one of peaceable and humane societies.

In 2003, in the midst of the US-Iraq-terrorism debacle, Dwight Allen and Michael E. Raynor of the Deloitte research department declared something quite opposite, citing Friedman's declaration of inevitability. This paper "Globalization at Risk: Why Your Corporate Strategy Should allow for a Divided and Disorderly World," stated that we needed to consider that globalization was not inevitable, rather, reversible. The Deloitte authors championed "deglobalization" as a viable, and perhaps even preferable, reaction to an increasingly protectionist United States with a falling economy and penchant for war. At the very least we need to plan for it. They urge companies to adopt an approach of "Strategic Flexibility" one which "involves defining scenarios as to how the marketplace might develop, moving forward with steps that would be appropriate under any circumstances, and making contingent arrangements to address conditions that are specific to individual scenarios." In other words, one of the largest consultant firms in the world recommends a strategy of extreme ambivalence in what they see as a very uncertain world. Though skewed to reflect globalization as merely an economic system, their points are valid.

People tend to speculate whether globalization 'is happening' without any consensus on what globalization really is. In the above examples the writers understand globalization as two distinct phenomena. Friedman understands globalization as the spread of technology and media and furthermore he expects it to materialize as American hegemony -- a global cultural revolution in the image of the United States. The consultants at Deloitte are more concerned with the changing face of corporations and in a sense, capitalism -- via mergers and acquisitions, massive restructurings to accommodate new products and technologies, and layoffs that result from failed products or technologies. Friedman tends toward a unified vision of the world 'do it our way, or lose,' whereas Allen and Raynor tend towards a view of fragmentation and specifically fear the fragmentation as 'bad for business.'

Some environmentalists will champion globalization for its one-worldly possibilities, placing hope that extreme environmental issues will transcend national politics and call attention to a larger planet-friendly-world-politic. Others fear that corporations will grow in scale and power and further destroy the environment in the pursuit of capital. In early December 2004, a tanker off the coast of Alaska spilled tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil and fuel. The ship, from Malaysia crashed near a wildlife refuge in Alaska's Aleutian Islands and was shipping soybeans from Washington State to China. The United States coast guard is in charge of trying to contain the mess. In just a few days the oil had traveled as far as ten miles north of the wreck. Questions remain about the seaworthiness of the ship, the long-term ramifications of the spill, and later on down the road, who is responsible and who will levy fines (if any)? How do the states of Washington and Alaska intertwine with China, Malaysia, the US government, and a bevy of related companies? Some environmentalists could use this story to lobby for the creation of more powerful suprastate regulatory bodies while others could use it as a case against global trade. And all arguments and questions would fall under the banner of globalization.

Paradox abounds. Car companies, such as Ford set up foundations to sponsor environmental sustainability programs. Billionaires like George Soros redistribute wealth to Eastern Europe. Global expansion and transnational mergers have simultaneously destroyed cultures and increased the lifespan via higher wages. One could ask whether it's better to live longer in a destroyed culture, but that is a debate that rises from globalization (more-so, international policy) rather than defines it.

Advances in technology have aided student demonstrators in Tianamin Square and helped Africans learn previously lost native languages. However, technology (and its counterpart capitalism) also contributes to pollution and labor disputes -- particularly related to outsourcing software development, customer service, and manufacturing. Some believe the Internet has potential to 'level the playing field' and 'promote democracy' hoping to disrupt political and social institutions that disenfranchise, and others look at the Internet as a mirror, suggesting its ability to reflect a global consciousness. Still others fear its potential use as a tool for surveillance by totalitarian governments or its ability to subvert democracy via voting scams as highlighted by the current Black Box Ohio voting machine controversy.

On the positive, human rights activists have altered the course of Nike employment practices in South East Asia and rock singers have helped end apartheid in South Africa, both signaling that the rise of NGOs can impact national policy for the betterment of national citizens. But is this positive? Many argue that interfering in local cultures threatens a cultures ability to evolve on its own. They argue these interventions operate on the assumption that others know best when perhaps they don't and impose standards of living, which may actually harm developing communities. Corporations (that reside in a particular state) also have tremendous power to drive domestic and international policy against human rights or environmental issues, threatening to take their business elsewhere, bypassing national and at times international sanctions and quotas. Both these possibilities wrestle with the pros and cons of fragmentation, each hoping to benefit from a less powerful nation-state.

Jan Aart Scholte announces in his Globalization: A Critical Introduction (Palgrave, 2000) "The End Of Sovereignty.' However, he does not equate this with the death of the nation state. Rather, nation states are accountable to more than just the citizens that carry its passport. National governments have to deal with international regulatory organizations like the UN (except America of course), political-economic groups like the WTO and the IMF, as well as human rights NGOs, tariff boards, environmental activists, and ecological conditions like ozone depletion that contradict the notion of territorial boundaries. However, nation-states are still crucial to the global expansion of corporations, they still govern at least locally, and have authority to challenge monopolies, regulate or deregulate industry, and levy taxes. Many have argued that the United States government boosted the pocketbooks of many a corporation when it invaded Iraq (a case of nation-state aiding the process of globalization ironically via quasi-protectionist, unilateral foreign policy measures). Nation-states still have customs police at borders and as evidenced in post 9/11 fears of terrorism programs for 'national security' have increased not decreased. Some fear that the rise of local organizations fragments national unity, especially as these local organizations grow to international organizations. Others fear that suprastate organizations like the WTO undermine the nation-state. Some are ready to lose the nation-state, preferring a global, cosmopolitan framework, while others are happy to lose the nation-state to grass roots local organizations. Scholte argues that the nation state isn't going away, but is shifting in how it manifests itself and whom it represents.

This idea of 'shifting' rather than expanding or contracting is an important concept that transcends debates about fragmentation and unification. When borders change the land remains. Things don't necessarily break apart and go away. Perhaps it's just that we see or understand them differently. This idea of shifting may serve as a key to take the debate out of its subjective categories and study it anew.

Tied up into all of this are issues about individual identity, group identity, and the very complicated issue of 'modernity.' Each of these subjects could easily provoke many outcomes in an elaborate decision tree. If the nation-state disappears, who am I as an individual? If it shifts accountability how do I ensure my rights? How are group rights enhanced, challenged, or transmuted in a world of potentially shifting identities? How would group rights be affected by a unified, homogenous, world order? In the case of the large privatized military staff in Iraq, in the face of Abu-Gharib human torture scandal, who goes on trial? Individuals? The corporations? The US government? And who is the jury? An international body? A manager with the ability to fire someone? How does all this affect the project of modernity and its close ties to individual and group rights, democracy, and justice?

In order to begin untangling these issues I've chosen a few topics -- our understanding of time, the nation state, technology, corporations, and the environment - selected first because they exemplify transition. Transitions are multidimensional spanning space, time, and perspective. It would be impossible to define the exact moment that capitalism replaced mercantilism, or the exact moment the renaissance became the enlightenment, (or the exact moment the world began to 'go global'). Transitions are uneven in development. They happen in many different parts of the world at different times, or in the same parts in different ways; they happen at different speeds; and they rest on varying perspectives all influenced by the local and the global (culture, politics, environment, economy, etc). Transitions are important to understanding globalization as a potential tool. The topics also show various sides of the fragmentation/unification dichotomy, which I believe is false and over simplistic. The goal is both to prove this falseness and begin work on a new path to a new program -- small steps towards a new approach to such an overwhelming topic.

Time-Space Compression

Before we can untangle globalization we need to look at how we understand 'the world' in terms of time and space. Globalization, as many people define it, is not a new idea. "Globalization has no origin, in a sense of exact starting point. Rather the trend had a long gestation period without a precise moment of conception." The world has been going global since the development of world maps, clocks, a universal calendar, the railroads, airplanes, mass transit, television, and most recently, cell phones and the Internet. All of these innovations relate to our understanding of time and space.

Anthony Giddens in his 1990 book The Consequences of Modernity describes the influence of clocks, maps, and calendars in dividing "time from space" and then "space from place" as a function of modernity and a precursor to globalization. Dividing time from space and space from place created a global network, one that transcends, at least in part, physical and mental barriers.

Before the invention and proliferation of clocks time was local, based first on the sun then on water glasses (water dripped through the hole of a bowl with hour markings on the sides), and then to hourglasses with sand. How each hourglass related to the hourglass of the next town over was not so much a concern. Time built a circle around place, an invisible but very real fence. Clocks and calendars couldn't free time from space on their own. Ultimately it was trade, sea travel, the railroads, and business dealings that created the necessity for unified time across distances and removed that fence, particularly via shipping schedules and railroad timetables. Sailors needed to know time in order to navigate longitude and trains needed time so they wouldn't crash. As time became less local space expanded.

"The invention of the mechanical clock and its diffusion to virtually all members of the population (a phenomenon which dates at its earliest from the late eighteenth century) were of key significance in the separation of time from space. The clocks expressed a uniform dimension of 'empty' time, quantified in such a way as to permit the precise designation of 'zones' of the day (e.g. the 'working day')" (Giddens, p17)

Exploration, trade, and railroads also led to the development of universal maps. Though time had been separated from space, space was still synonymous with place. And place created similar fences around local areas. As places became more aware of other 'places' a concept of space developed -- a unified space. Showing the relationships of the local created an awareness of a global. Historians have been able to date maps to 6,000BC wall paintings of neighborhoods, streets, and local features like a volcano. Belief that the earth was round came as early as Pythagoras and Aristotle. The Arab empires added sophisticated latitude markings in the 9^th century. The development of the printing press proliferated maps and the development of more sophisticated mathematics improved the maps, but ultimately it was need to coordinate disparate peoples for travel, business or leisure, that maps became global, separating space from place.

"The progressive charting of the globe that led to the creation of universal maps, in which perspective played little part in the representation of geographical position and form, established 'space' as independent from any particular region or place" (Giddens, p19)

In the 20^th century, time and space have further, and more rapidly compressed into instant transmissions. This first happened with the telegraph, which sent a message from one location to another, advanced by the telephone, allowing people to communicate across large distances. This however represented only one to one communication. It wasn't until TV and radio that live communication could broadcast one to many, and the Internet allowed many users to be in a virtual "space" at the same time, though they physically resided in different locations. By 1999 there were two billion radio sets, one billion television receivers, 900 million phone lines, and 180 million Internet users.

In February 2003 Nielsen NetRatings reported up to 580 million Internet users worldwide. With mass, instant communication and the Internet time and space rejoined in the midst of an entirely new paradigm.

Likewise air travel allowed at first hundreds, then millions, and now close to two billion people to traverse the sky and land thousands of miles away in just a few hours, adding a very tangible aspect to a one-world concept. Air travel and media have had startling effects on culture. Exposure to new foods and customs inspired people to take these ideas home, and luxuries of exotic foods and things are now found in all corners of the world, often far from where they originated. These foods and products consequently change, resulting in the rise of pan-Asian restaurants for example -- Japanese, Thai, Korean, and Chinese food mixed into single dishes. Technologies to aid travel, communication, and publishing continue to dissolve our understanding of time and space, heralding a future of Star Trek Holodecks.

Thirteen years have past since the Chernobyl nuclear power plant sent radiation and toxic chemicals floating around the world. Farms in England are still monitored for radioactive content from the disaster. Related connections to thyroid cancer exist in France and Corsica. Though sources argue that it is difficult to tell which cases result from the accident and which result from other sources the point is clear: Radioactive material carried by the wind does not stop at national borders.

Likewise the effects of deforestation of the South American rainforests are tremendous. Deforestation releases an average of 1.6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, compared to 6 billion released by fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas).Carbon dioxide contributes to the greenhouse effect and consequently global warming. It doesn't matter whose territory releases the carbon dioxide, temperatures rise globally, ice melts, and all continents will eventually flood. Deforestation of the rainforests also contributes to significant losses in biodiversity. "Worldwide, there are between 5 to 80 million species of plants and animals, which make up the biodiversity of planet Earth.... Most scientists believe the number of species to be between 10 and 30 million. Tropical rain forests-covering only 7% of the total dry surface of the Earth-hold over half of all of these species....

Many of the rain forest plants and animals can only be found in small areas, because they require a special habitat to live. This makes them very vulnerable to deforestation. If their habitat is cut down, they may go extinct. Every day species are disappearing from the tropical rain forests as they are cut. We do not know the exact rate of extinction, but estimates range from one to 137 species disappearing worldwide per day...The loss of species will have a great impact on the planet. For humans, we are losing organisms that might have us how to prevent cancer or cure AIDS. Other organisms are losing species they depend upon, and thus face extinction themselves."

The cliché story about the butterfly flapping its wings in China (the "butterfly effect") is quite applicable to the precarious relationship between lost life in the Amazon and the fish population in Norway.

As a result of these and other serious environmental issues that effect everyone, regardless of where the problem originates, hundreds of local, national, and global organizations have developed in attempt to preserve the environment via education, regulation, and activism. These organizations are sometimes entities of themselves with a specifically environmental focus (The Rainforest Action Network, The World Wildlife Foundation, Greenpeace), others live under the umbrella of larger bodies like the United Nations Environment Programme and the WTO's Committee on Trade and Environment.

In some cases local and international NGOs are able to effect national policy. In 1992 the World Wildlife Foundation made an agreement with the government of China to expand wildlife preserves for the Panda and in 1998 they negotiated a new forest protection program also with China. Greenpeace succeeded in forcing the Brazilian government to protect two million hectares of rainforest land and in partnership with Global Witness pressured the UN to apply Sanctions on Liberia for illegal logging.

In other cases NGO's have helped define 'corporate responsibility.' The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) pressured Citigroup to take the environment seriously and set public standards for environmental protection and sustainability. Bank of America followed the lead before RAN pressure and set a more ambitious policy that includes promises of a 7% reduction of greenhouse gases from its operations and to maximize investment return through energy and resource efficiency. The Rainforest Action Network headquarters is in San Francisco, California and is subject to United States non-profit laws. It is a local, national, and international organization. That said, it certainly didn't hinder the group from targeting Citigroup (in New York) or Bank of America (in its home state California). RAN is paradoxically protected by US law while it also strives to impact or in some cases override domestic policy. The World Wildlife Foundation is based out of Switzerland, a historically neutral state that guarantees its protection in other, more global ways.

Not all environmental issues are global. Often these issues remain local such as the case with toxic dumping or overgrazing. National governments also lobby for the environment, often 'their' environment, as is the case of the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States and the Environment Agency of the United Kingdom. These groups also intersect with regional and global governing and non-governing organizations in the coordination of global efforts.

Nonetheless, the sovereignty, "freedom from external control," of nations is clearly at odds with outside organizations exerting policy control. It may seem that lost sovereignty chips away at the source of a nation-state, giving way to local and global pressures, and often people interpret this as signaling the 'death of the nation-state.' This is just not the case, as already mentioned. While sovereignty may have set the groundwork for nation-state development, the fact remains that some official nation states, particularly poorer ones, have never steadily maintained sovereignty, existing under the guidance of governing bodies like the UN or severely controlled via funding from the IMF. For example in 2002 the IMF said it would block loans to Nicaragua if the country didn't privatize its water distribution and to Zambia if it didn't sell off its state-owned commercial bank. Regardless of whether one supports or opposes privatization and its effects on lost sovereignty, Nicaragua is still an official country with specific and profound jurisdiction over its territory, its own dialect of Spanish, and its own, unique culture. To reiterate Scholte, nation states aren't going away, they are shifting in terms of accountability and responsibility.

The other side of this debate circles around the one-world concept. Many of the events described above contribute to the alleged fragmentation of the world via overriding, or at least impacting, national authority. However, these same events also could be used to signal unity of a one-world space. For example, one can imagine that the rise of environmental NGOs, based locally but positioned globally, will eventually net together to not only create a one-world perspective and consciousness, but they may also create a singular large world governing agency (or division of such a group). This possibility perhaps poses more of a threat to the nation-state than lost sovereignty, but its conceivable (and probable) that a one-world consciousness could rise without a one-world politic.

On December 9, The Economist.com published "Champ or Chump? What the IBM-Lenovo deal says about Chinese firms' overseas ambitions." Lenovo, China's leading maker of personal computers bought the PC division of IBM. Lenovo's annual sales hovered around $3 billion, the IBM PC Division accounts for $9 billion, and the deal cost Lenovo only $1.75 billion. Lenovo instantly became the third largest manufacturer of personal computers, behind Dell and Hewlett Packard. After running through the precarious financials and problematic business case for the purchase the article ends with a thoughtful insight: "Lenovo may make things worse [than its already fledgling business], given cultural differences between Americans and Chinese, big differences in pay and the need for interpreters at every meeting. Vincent Yan, finance director of TCL, which is going through the same experience with the French, has admitted that the cultural gap proved wider than expected." This is just one of many cases that highlight the potential impact of culture on business and the general economy. Increasingly consultants crunch numbers to prove that cultural difference impacts revenue, often negatively, and an entire field, Cultural Economics, now examines these complex relationships. While some economists have long declared a direct relationship between culture and the economy (Marx, Veblen, and Galbraith) it's only been a fashionable, if not legitimate course of study since the 1980's advanced by its strong connections with globalization.

People often think of M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) activity when they think of globalization. M&A became popular in the 60's, but it didn't spike until the late 90's (around the same time hundreds of books about globalization, particularly books with an economic agenda, hit the market). In 2002 the United States alone witnessed 5,317 transactions (companies acquiring other companies) and in 2003 that number rose to 5,440.KPMG reported global estimates of 20,160 bids (attempts to acquire) in 2004, an 8% increase (up 1,612 bids) from 2003. There are many reasons for a rise in M&A activity, but liberalization and deregulation of new markets, competition, and intense technological change are the driving factors. Liberalization, the opening of borders to smooth the flow of capital and goods, is often synonymous with globalization. Scholte argues that when people think about globalization, particularly as it relates to corporations and the economy, they are really thinking about neoliberal policy. It is neoliberal policy that allows corporations to expand and (opponents say) gobble competitors via relaxed anti-trust, human rights and environmental laws. It is neoliberal policy that forces poorer countries funded by the IMF to deregulate utilities and outsource water to private companies like Bechtel. It is the drive of capital to grow, grow, grow, that pressures national governments to cut taxes, thus reduce social services, and then shift that responsibility over to corporations. In New York City, Medicaid recipients are required to choose private providers via an absurdly complex and mismanaged process, indicating that this shift from government to private is not necessarily beneficial to national citizens. It is not always negative either. People need to be careful not to confuse what they may not like about neoliberal policy as a synonym for 'globalization.'

While liberalization encourages globalization, they are not one in the same. Neo-liberal policy complicates sovereignty and at the same time increases individual and national wealth. Likewise it simultaneously encourages new national and global identities. The government of China will have difficulty controlling the exploits of the world's third largest PC manufacturer, which now resides in its borders. Lenovo's employees will undoubtedly have to change how they do things because of cultural differences. At the same time the impact of a once relatively small company becoming one of global significance gives China an opportunity to deepen national pride. Lenovo's chairman, Liu Chaunzhi said "This acquisition will allow Chinese industry to make significant inroads on its path to globalisation." Another official told the BBC the deal "was a dream come true and a matter of national pride."

M&A is related to globalization in another way. In the flurry of domestic and transnational mergers new areas of management study developed to specifically address the needs of restructuring and merging companies. These techniques combine psychological coaching with more technical business analysis and consultants now offer a range of services: organizational climate studies (how to evaluate the corporate environment), process re-engineering (how to change work flow to accommodate new technologies, products, and procedures), people performance (how to increase productivity), and all of this is supervised via change management (how to get buy-in and navigate the psychological forces of change).

Case studies commonly speak to employees at all levels of a given company about their fear of change. People logically worry that they will lose their jobs or be demoted, that they won't be able to learn the new technologies, that they will have to relocate, or that their friends or allies might leave. In a way, change management is the corporate worlds answer to the uncertainty of globalization. It prepares people to understand why change is important (competition, complacency), rallies support, and then guides them on how to make it happen. More than just a management fad to sell books, change management actually prepares employees to live in a shifting world where products, jobs, and even identities change rapidly. Companies that can take in all the process, technology, and cultural changes of transnational mergers will fare much better than those who don't, and the skills people learn in the process translate into many other areas of life. If we can change how companies work and believe they have to change, why can't we change how nations work and what we believe they should do? If millions and millions of people have survived massive corporate change wouldn't they be more prepared for the changes in nation states? Corporations may lead the way of testing limits and blurring boundaries that comes with globalization. And while on the one hand they threaten sovereignty by over-riding laws and blending cultures, they also help create new, sometimes more powerful identities for national citizens.

Every year around Labor Day the Burningman festival takes place in a Nevada desert and participants gather for a few days to a few weeks. Most construct large art projects, design theme camps, or decorate themselves. Burningman began in the late 80's and has grown from a few dozen people to nearly 40,000 people. It celebrates self-reliance, radical creativity, and the development of community through collaborative art projects. Over the years the scale and infrastructure has yielded what some call a tyranny of the BORG (Burningman [leadership] Organization) and they feel the art has suffered, receiving less attention, less funding, and is subject to themes and evaluation from a small, increasingly removed committee. <

This year the artists, or at least many of the 'old-time' and established ones, have decided the art selection process should be more open and the placement of art at the event should not be so regulated. Via the Internet the group disseminated a petition, which called for the democratization of the art selection process. They proposed Internet voting as a main ingredient for this new democracy. The proposal received overwhelming support from artists around the world but the Burningman Organization (BORG) rejected the proposal, mostly commenting that the process was too complicated to allow a true democracy of Internet voting. They sighted faulty technology, accessibility, and an inability to get all the thousands of proposals online in any sort of orderly way as the chief problems.

It's an interesting situation. One would think that the organizers of an event preaching self-reliance and collaboration would be excited about such a large desire on the part of long-time participants to open up the process. Also, it should be noted that Burningman, a product of San Francisco, has benefited tremendously from the Internet. It's made up of technically savvy people mostly from the SF Bay Area (Silicon Valley) who contribute vast economic and material resources from their personal wealth to the overall festival and projects. The founder and leader, Larry Harvey, has always believed the Internet was his most important communication vehicle and developed an elaborate website, community forums, regional networks, and a regular Internet newsletter that reaches more than 40,000 'burners'.

The Internet created a valuable framework for the organization to work. In many ways it laid a democratic foundation, particularly for people to organize their elaborate projects over time and distance. But as the Internet gains even more support it's testing the organizations original commitment to an open society. Unfortunately for them the Internet is proving more powerful. Already the rogue resistance movement has set up its own websites and is using the Internet to allow thousands of people to collaborate on new organizational principles. They are trying to raise $250,000 entirely for art projects and people are building technology to support a 'truly democratic' voting process for the selection of art. They've convinced the BORG to give them an area of the festival land to conduct their experiment in democracy on a wager that if it proves successful BORG will reconsider the original petition.

This is far from the first time the Internet, a potential tool for democracy, has exposed the contradictions of traditional democratic structures and tested its limits. Another group, the alternative web-based publisher Indymedia.org, believes that everyone should write the news. They are justifiably skeptical of corporate broadcast and traditional publishing, such as Fox, CBS, and The New York Times. The constitution of the United States protects and encourages free speech, but there are countless examples of media censorship in favor of political agendas and corporate benefit. In 1997 two journalists for Fox WTVT in Tampa, Florida were fired for refusing to change a story exposing local dairymen of secretly injecting bovine growth hormones into their cows. And in February 2005, mainstream media (NBC, FOX, The New York Times, etc.) reported that Jean-Baptiste Aristide had resigned when Aristide himself claimed to have been kidnapped and ousted by the United States. While this last example is more a case about misinformation provided by the US state department rather than censorship, it demonstrates that media cannot always be trusted to check its facts and report fairly.

Indymedia.org challenges the institution of media and pushes the limits of democracy by providing a forum for activists of all flavors to report live on the Indymedia website, anonymously, about current issues. They've used the Internet to report on the Invasion of Iraq, human rights violations, environmental catastrophes, and protests during the Republican National Convention. Their coverage of the RNC included updates every ten to twenty minutes about protests, arrests and conditions of detainees as well as information about legal help (including, names numbers, and what to do if arrested) and live video of police brutality. Other websites such as TXTmob.com used the Internet to build phone trees for activists during the RNC, allowing protesters (peaceful and otherwise) to find each other and learn of police activity via cell phone text messaging. Thousands of other websites exist solely to expose mainstream media hegemony and unite activists. Technology such as distributed networks (information lives in the network not on any one server that can be turned off) and mirrors (a server in one location can directly mirror its content onto other servers all over the world) has made it impossible to stop renegade reporting. The Internet has proven to be much more democratic than the democratic nations that deployed it.

The relationship between the Internet and the nation is tricky. A study from Harvard University looked at website censorship in China. From May 2002 through November 2002, 19,032 websites were inaccessible. These were mostly religious, news, and pornography sites. They also seemed to be blocking sites about Chinese culture and as of March 28th, 2004 all Blogspot sites. (Blogspot freely hosts diary-type online journals, ranging from the personal, to the perverted, to the political -- anyone can have a blog to publish anything. Blog provides server space, easy to use publishing tools and directories). While China now embraces its own brand of capitalism to stay on even footing with the rest of the world, articulating its desire to play the globalization game in at least part, it is far from supporting open democracy and the cultural freedom also related to globalization. At the same time it would be impossible for China to block all 'questionable' websites -- the technology makes this so.

The Internet complicates intrastate taxing (payment policies are underdeveloped). It complicates communications regulation (many can talk via Internet telephony using existing phone, cable, and DSL lines without minute charges). It complicates local and national authority (independent publishing and services like TXTmob) and certainly adds to the lost sovereignty debate. At the same time it also promotes national identity. For example even the open, transparent, Indymedia has 'regional' sub-sites based on city centers (Indymedia NYC and Calgary), nation states (Indymedia Mexico, Belgium, and France) and even regions (Indymedia Rocky Mountain). Additionally, its main stories are translated in eight languages, instead of one global English. So while on the one hand Indymedia serves to unify activists from all over the world, it also re-enforces local, regional, national, and linguistic differences. Nearly every country in the world has at least one national website, usually more. Local and national government services ranging from vehicle registration to food stamps also have informational and sometimes transactional websites. (In New York residents can pay parking tickets and file for unemployment online). The nation state is simultaneously losing control in some areas and gaining prominence in others.

Related to the Internet is an underlying philosophy of networks and nodes coined for use in the globalization dialog by Anthony Giddens. In his book "The Consequences of Modernity" (1990) Giddens writes of a shifting world with overlapping spheres of influence. He refers to this world as a "network" and on that network there are various "nodes" or power points that impact each other. He maps out a series of relationships that form this network: Institutional dimensions (capitalism, industrialization, militarism and surveillance), movement dimensions (labor, democratic, ecological, and peace), and global dimensions (nation states, world capitalist economy, world military order, and an international division of labor). Within these dimensions exist sources of concentrated power that decentralize previous understandings of politics, location, and self. The future seems likely to be more a process of negotiation above, below, and including the state via activists, corporations, the military, and existing governments than one of a lost state.

While at first his endless diagramming of said spheres seems to complicate matters, what he's really showing us is the complex nature of the concept. Thinking in terms of networks and nodes vs. nations and governments, give us an important tool to shift our thinking about globalization away from the fragmentation/unification debates. It highlights the complex structure of our 'world order' and helps us draw new lines (which constantly move), challenging traditional understandings of borders.

The world is neither fragmenting nor unifying, rather aspects of our world are changing. Corporations, nation states, the environment and technology are all intertwined creating feedback loops spiraling inwards and out. While we may be losing sovereignty we are far from losing national culture (at least for the time being) and new local, national, and global identities continue to form, alongside individuals who tie themselves to various political, environmental, or affinity groups. If we think in terms of networks and overlapping spheres of influence we can better understand globalization as a multidimensional concept rather than a single event. It is a framework housing shapes that change sizes rather than add on or take away. And in this framework we have the capability to redraw the lines as necessary without losing ourselves and the world to chaos and fear.

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