Globalization, Marginalization, and the External Arena

Abstract

The crisis of globalization has contributed to the marginalization and exit of people in the postcolonial periphery and growing isolationism in the core. These developments have reduced the “footprint” of the capitalist world-system and contributed to the (re)emergence of what Immanuel Wallerstein called the “external arena.” In the periphery, falling core demand has reduced earnings from commodity production, while debt crisis and government corruption has made it difficult to generate economic growth or provide the infrastructure needed to curb population growth. The result has been the creation in many countries of “low-level equilibrium traps” that prevent any real economic “development.” Moreover, sectarian conflicts over scarce resources have erupted, and many people have sought to escape poverty and violence by migrating to the core. In the core, states have become skeptical about the benefits of aid to corrupt governments in the periphery, indifferent about trade, weary of endemic sectarian violence, and alarmed by immigration. So they have reduced investment, foreign aid, and trade with much of the postcolonial periphery and built “walls” to secure their frontiers. This chapter examines how the crisis of globalization contributed both to the marginalization in the periphery and isolationism in the core.