Globalization, In/Security, and the Paradoxes of the Social

Abstract

The concept of the social draws together many of the core themes of this collection, especially human insecurity, the diminished provision of public goods, and the sustainability of social reproduction in an era of intensifying globalization.¹ Globalization is a contested term perhaps best understood as a set of interactions whose uncertain parameters are, in many respects, historically unique and still unfolding. At a minimum, the many dimensions of contemporary globalization can be subsumed under two related processes — globality, the irreversible forces, many technological, that are breaking down barriers of time, space, and nation and fashioning the planet into a global community, and globalism, a contestable political posture that promotes a transnational worldview, philosophy of governance and institutional structures (Beck 2000: 1–3, 11–15). The prevailing version, neo-liberal globalism, prioritizes economic growth and market logics over all other goals and institutions of governance. With varying degrees of coercion, neo-liberal globalism seeks to enforce privatization, trade liberalization, the deregulation of capital, and the erosion of the public sector and of democratic control on all national polities.