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National borders are a distinctive type of geographical boundary-drawing associated with the rise of modern nation-states. As such they have at least two roles to play in shaping national identity: 1) marking national territory and national sovereignty in a physical way on the ground, and 2) also serving in maps and other visual depictions of nation-states to delimit the geographies of nations as "imagined communities" (Anderson, 1983). These material and representational roles of borders are clearly linked, and today they are also changing in ways that are profoundly revealing about the future of the nation-state and national citizenship in the context of globalization (Sparke, 2005).Some simplistic accounts of globalization argue that it has made national borders obsolete, ushering in a 'borderless world' or 'flat world' (e.g. Friedman, 2005; Ohmae, 1990) that represents 'the end of geography' and 'the end of the nation-state' (O'Brien, 1992; Ohmae, 1995). Even scholarly authors sometimes make similar claims, describing contemporary cross-border connections in sweeping terms of 'deterritorialization' and 'denationalization' (Appadurai, 1996; Sassen, 2009). However, if we examine borders and border regions empirically, a much more complex picture of the relationships between national identities and globalization starts to emerge in which national identities endure at the same time as we can also see patterns of what geographers call 'reterritorialization' happening at and around borders. It is just such an empirical approach and geographically-sensitive picture that the case studies offered here aim to provide. By studying particular cases of border region redevelopment and reterritorialization we can thereby better come to terms with the fact that borders still have an extraordinary hold on people's lives, giving meaning and consequence to enduring forms of national identity even as they are made into less disruptive speed bumps for global business. Moreover, by studying how the geographies of border regions reveal patterns of reterritorialization in which national identities persist, we can also better come to terms with how specific local conditions help shape new cross-border ties in context-contingent ways.
Globalization both homogenizes and fragments. On one hand, it allows nations and
citizens of the world to share common events, values and knowledge, often
instantaneously thanks to advances in telecommunications and information
technology. Its proponents tout globalization as a vehicle for promoting certain
universal goals of governance, economic cooperation and civil society. Ideally,
globalization should be an arena for all kinds of flows and exchanges1 in which the
local is synergized with the global and vice versa. In reality, of course, globalization
has also fragmented identities and rekindled ethnic divisions once dormant under the control of nation-states. Ernest Gellner, an influential theorist on the cultural dimension of nationhood, once argued that for a given society to persist, it must be one in which its people “can breathe and speak and produce…the same culture.”2 But now “in the age of fragmentation of the world system,”3 notions of culture that were once constructed on the basis of the “national” must be reviewed. This new “crisis of identity”4 affecting both the center and periphery of the world system, reflects the tenuous conception of a bounded notion of culture and the idea of a homogenizing national identity—the “imagined” oneness of the nation-state “community”5 and its rather static, elitist and conflated conception of identity.
23. Why the spread of capitalism matters for globalisation?
These days the word ‘globalization’ is on everyone’s lips. Yet few
people truly understand what it means, or appreciate what a revolutionary
impact it has had on the world. Anyone can see that it has transformed life as
we know it in various ways. But in order to understand it, it is not enough to
simply enumerate the changes we can see immediately before our eyes. Instead
we must dig deeper, to understand the essence of the phenomenon and develop
a scientific theory of its workings.It is of vital importance for the labor movement to cultivate such an understanding of globalization. Its workings have totally changed the structure of the world economy and of world labor markets, and in this way have completely undermined our old ways of fighting for our rights. If we wish to build our movement anew, we must understand clearly the opportunities and barriers that globalization thrusts before us, and rebuild our institutions
accordingly.It is not enough to let bourgeois theories of globalization guide us. As
workers, when we hear the rhapsodic ode to globalization that is sung in the
media and in academia, it does not ring true. And yet in our criticism of
globalization we rarely get beyond countering their ‘pros’ with our ‘cons’. We
fail to question the scientific validity of the dominant body of theory, and this is
to our detriment. For the theory reflects the capitalist point of view that, in the
new global economy, the labor movement is basically irrelevant. We need to be
probing deeper and developing a theory of our own that can aid us in turning
our movement around, so we can prove in practice that we are not irrelevant.
Instead, we accept their theory, and content ourselves with impotent whining
about how unjust this new era is.
A number of commentators on globalization have recently speculated that the logic of modern economic development is making the state redundant.* The argument is hardly new. Early in the twentieth century both Leninists and certain liberal internationalists forecast the demise of the state. Functionalist theories of international integration reiterated the prediction in mid-century while some versions of what was called 'transnationalism' recycled the argument in the 1970s. In the latest revival, several best-selling management consultants of the 1990s have suggested that, with the contemporary advance of globalization, the state has seen its day.1 In a similar vein, various public policy analysts have proposed that global companies are creating a world beyond states and nationalities.2
As in previous rounds of this debate, 1990s predictions of the end of the state have provoked insistent refutations. For example, in a series of publications Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson have maintained that arguments of globalization are greatly exaggerated and that states retain many crucial capacities for governance.3 In the realist tradition of international relations theory, Stephen Krasner has affirmed that in the late twentieth century 'de facto [state] sovereignty has been strengthened rather than weakened'.4 Sociologists like Michael Mann who 'brought the state back in' to their discipline during the 1980s have also been skeptical of any proposition that the state is making its exit from history.
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