Metaphors of Globalization

Metaphors of
Globalization
Mirrors, Magicians and Mutinies

Edited by

Markus Kornprobst
School of Public Policy, University College London, UK

Vincent Pouliot
Department of Political Science, McGill University, Canada

Nisha Shah
Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, Canada

Ruben Zaiotti
Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, Canada

algrave
macmi lan
*
Editorial matter and selection © Markus Komprobst,
Vincent Pouliot, Nisha Shah and Ruben Zaiotti 2008
Foreword © Jan Aart Scholte 2008
Individual chapters © their respective authors 2008
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Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Foreword ix
Jan Aart Scholte
Notes on Contributors xi

Introduction: Mirrors, Magicians and

Mutinies of Globalization 1
Markus Kornprobst, Vincent Pouliot,
Nisha Shah and Ruben Zaiotti

Part I Mirrors
1 Closed Fist, Empty Hand or Open Hand?
Globalization and Historical Analogies 19
Markus Kornprobst
2 Reflexive Mirror: Everything Takes Place As If
Threats Were Going Global 34
Vincent Pouliot
3 Mutiny or Mirror? Politicizing the Limit/Ethics
of the Tobin Tax 50
James Brassett
4 Bridging Commonsense: Pragmatic Metaphors and
the 'Schengen Laboratory' 66
Ruben Zaiotti

Part II Magicians
5 Do Metaphors of Globalization Destroy
the Public Service? 83
Andre Spicer
6 In Paradise: Metaphors of Money-Laundering
Brighten up the Dark Side of Globalization 98
Rainer Hii/sse

v
vi Contents

7 Waging Wars in Iraq: The Metaphoric Constitution

of Wars and Enemies 114
David Mutimer

8 Technology as Metaphor: Tropes of Construction,

Destruction and Instruction in Globalization 130
Timothy W. Luke

Part III Mutinies

9 Conceptualizing Glocal Organization: From
Rhizome to E=mc 2 in Becoming Post-Human 149
Sian Sullivan

10 Imagining the Future: Globalization,

Post-Modernism and Criticism 167
Imre Szeman

11 Beyond Sovereignty and the State of Nature:

Metaphorical Readings of Global Order 184
Nisha Shah

12 Where is 'The Fork in the Road'? Over the Horizon!

An Inquiry into the Failure of UN Reform 203
Richard Falk

Part IV Conclusions
13 Commentary 223
K. M. Fierke

14 Conclusion: Metaphors We Globalize By 237

Markus Kornprobst, Vincent Pouliot,
Nisha Shah and Ruben Zaiotti

Bibliography 253
Index 281
Acknowledgements

This project originated with a series of discussions on globalization

amongst graduate students in the Department of Political Science at the
University of Toronto. During our lively debates, we became increas-
ingly interested in the metaphorical dimensions of globalization. Keen
to further explore these, we gathered a group of scholars from different
disciplines to interrogate globalization's metaphorical representations
and interpretations. Our more informal discussions evolved into a for-
mal conference that convened in Toronto and at the International
Studies Association Conference in March 2006. This volume is the
product of these investigations. Far from the end of our inquiry, we
offer it as a way to open a critical dialogue that explores globalization in
an innovative way.
This book would not have been possible without the support of vari-
ous sponsors at the University of Toronto (the Centre for International
Studies in the Munk Centre for International Studies, the Department
of Political Science, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Munk
Centre for International Studies), the Centre for the Study of Globalisation
and Regionalisation at the University of Warwick, and the Institute on
Globalization and the Human Condition at McMaster University. We
thank them for providing the resources that have facilitated the success
of this project.
This project has benefited immeasurably from many thought-
provoking conversations, especially with Emanuel Adler, Francis Beer,
Nina Berman, Steven Bernstein, William D. Coleman, Ronald]. Deibert,
Nancy Kokaz, Daniel Nexon, Dorothy Noyes, Manfred Steger, Janice
Stein, Robert Vipond, David Welch and Gillian Youngs. We have also
benefited greatly from the excellent research assistance of Kate Stinson
and Douglas Gilman, who worked with superb expedience to bring
the final manuscript together. We are grateful to Philippa Grand and
Hazel Woodbridge at Palgrave for their expertise, guidance and under-
standing. Corneliu Bjola and Anil Varughese started as co-editors in
this project and contributed a great deal to many of its ideas. They
were unable to continue, but we are grateful for their support dur-
ing the time it has taken to put this volume together. We thank the

vii
viii Acknowledgements

contributors to this volume. Their enthusiasm, perceptive comments

and patience truly made this volume a collective effort. Finally, we are
most indebted to the unconditional support of Jan Aart Scholte and
Louis W. Pauly. Their persistent encouragement moved this project
forward.
Foreword
Jan Aart Scholte

It is increasingly appreciated that globalization is as much ideational as

material. Global connectivity entails not only concrete flows (of infor-
mation, money, people), but also states of mind. As well as their many
tangible links, global relations are constituted through consciousness,
imagination, language, meaning, narrative, interpretation, perception,
knowledge, poetry, belief. Indeed, globality arguably could not exist
materially in the absence of mental orientations that enabled and
encouraged it.
The notion that globalization is (at least partly) an ideational con-
struction is not new, of course. Various scholars in anthropology, soci-
ology and the humanities have always appreciated the global largely in
these terms. However, the mainstream of international studies has usu-
ally approached globalization with the methodological materialism
that underpins most business studies, economics, geography and polit-
ical science. Although constructivism and poststructuralism have over
the past decade acquired notable places in the theoretical repertoire of
world politics, ideational analyses have thus far played relatively little
part in international studies research on globalization.
That absence makes the present volume especially welcome. On the
one hand it draws on ideational accounts of globalization as developed
outside international studies. On the other hand it draws on ideational
approaches within international studies. These two rich seams are com-
bined around a theme - itself novel in investigations of globalization -
of metaphors.
It is an inspired focus. As the chapters of this book demonstrate,
investigations of metaphor prove to be an innovative and provocative
way of bringing different ideational perspectives into conversation with
each other. The diversity of understandings is conveyed - suitably by
means of metaphor itself - in the subtitle 'mirrors, magicians and mutin-
ies'. The notion of 'mirrors' here represents the positivist appreciation of
the effective metaphor as one that reflects and reveals a pre-existent
objective reality. In contrast, from a constructivist position, metaphors
are 'magicians' that help to constitute and create the lived-in world.
Meanwhile radical theorists go further and regard effective metaphors

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x Foreword

as 'mutinies' that unmask otherwise hidden and often oppressive con-

ditions, thereby expanding possibilities for emancipatory change.
As with any aspect of world politics, globalization is bound up in
metaphors. The countless and widely varying examples include 'creol-
ization', 'flexibilization', 'glocalization', 'McWorld', and 'virtual reality'.
Such utterances generate mental associations that can deeply shape
overall knowledge of globalization. If, further, we accept the premise of
constructivists and radical critical theorists that knowledge informs
practice, then the step from metaphors to politics is immediate and
unhesitatingly direct.
Indeed, which metaphors of globalization are to prevail in contemp-
orary history, and with what consequence? Whereas some metaphors
soothe their audiences with talk of global community, global neigh-
bourhood and global village, other metaphors disturb with talk of glo-
bal apartheid, global terror and global pillage. Consider the repercussions
when reigning metaphors of globalization turned in 2001 from 'the
Internet' to '9/11'. Looking to the future, is the ascendant metaphor to
be 'free market' or 'open source': one a triumph of capitalism, the other
its transcendence? In regard to identity politics, is it to be 'clash of civil-
izations' or 'fusion cuisine'? With respect to governance of a more glo-
bal world, what are the implications of different descriptors such as
'empire', 'new medievalism' or 'plurilateralism'?
If poetry constitutes an action as well as a comment on the world,
then different metaphors may facilitate or discourage one or the other
course of globalization. Metaphors relate to structures of power, either
endorsing and reinforcing the established order or challenging and sub-
verting it. Appreciated in this way, struggles over metaphors are a sig-
nificant and largely underappreciated aspect of the politics of
globalization.
This thoughtful and imaginative book does much to bring such
insights to light. As the introduction that follows this foreword elab-
orates, the chapters take a tour through different conceptions of the
relationship between globalization and metaphor. Mirrors, magicians
and mutinies are in dialogue throughout, with no perspective imposing
itself on the others. Instead, readers are invited to blaze their own trail,
to arrive at their own metaphors and understandings of metaphor in
relation to the contemporary more global world. It is a journey well
worth taking.
Notes on Contributors

James Brassett is RCUK Research Fellow, Centre for the Study of Global-
isation and Regionalisation and Assistant Professor in the Department
of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick.
Richard Falk is Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus at
Princeton University, and since 2002, Visiting Distinguished Professor
of Global Studies at University of California-Santa Barbara.
K. M. Fierke is Professor in the School of International Relations at the
University of St Andrews.
Rainer Hiilsse is Assistant Professor at the Geschwister Scholl Institute
of the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich.
Markus Kornprobst is Lecturer in the School of Public Policy at
University College London.
Timothy W. Luke is University Distinguished Professor in the
Department of Political Science at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and
State University.
David Mutimer is Associate Professor of Political Science and Deputy
Director of the Centre for International and Security Studies at York
University.
Vincent Pouliot is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political
Science at McGill University.
Jan Aart Scholte is Professor of Politics and International Studies, and
currently Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and
Regionalisation, at the University of Warwick.
Nisha Shah is a doctoral candidate in International Relations in the
Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto.
Andre Spicer is Associate Professor of Organisation Studies at Warwick
Business School.
Sian Sullivan is Lecturer in Environment and Development at the
University of East Anglia.
Imre Szeman is Senator William McMaster Chair of Globalization and
Cultural Studies at McMaster University.
Ruben Zaiotti is a doctoral candidate in International Relations in the
Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto.

xi