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Globalization, Technology and Consumption

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Political Economy, Power and the Body

Part of the book series: International Political Economy Series ((IPES))

Abstract

Technology has been too much a missing link in the analysis of GPE. This chapter explores it as one of the conceptual paths to developing our understanding of power, including through the association of production and consumption. It is identified as part of the path toward embodied understanding, particularly in helping to close the production-consumption circle. The chapter explains how technology is usefully integrated into both an historical analysis of developments leading to globalization, and examination of the changing qualities of US hegemony in this context. I argue that technological factors are key to exploring transnational linkages, especially as they are articulated through crossborder corporate networks and the activities of the most powerful transnational corporations (TNCs). I also illustrate how technology is an embedded dimension of discourses of globalization, such as Fukuyama’s (1992) ‘end of history’ thesis, and thus crucial to critical thinking about such discourses (see also Youngs 1996). Drawing in particular on the work of Susan Strange (1994 and 1996), the chapter goes on to discuss technology as an element of structural power in the global economy.

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Authors
  1. Gillian Youngs
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Mass Communication Research, University of Leicester, UK

    Gillian Youngs (Lecturer) (Lecturer)

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© 2000 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Youngs, G. (2000). Globalization, Technology and Consumption. In: Youngs, G. (eds) Political Economy, Power and the Body. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333983904_5

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