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570 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 8 (2000)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0570 and id is 1 raw text is: PREFACE The contributors to this collection explore their individual subjects within a common understanding of the term globalization. There is agreement that globalization refers to the consequences of two phenomena that, in combi- nation, have resulted in the global compression of time and space (Harvey 1989, quoted in Holton 1998, 8). The first is technological changes in the pro- cessing and dissemination of information related to finance and production. The second is the international spread of the technical competence necessary to use these advances efficiently. What sets the current period of globalization off from other eras of interna- tional economic integration are the availability of new communicative tools and the fact that, worldwide, increasing numbers of potential users are suffi- ciently well educated to put these new tools to effective use. In this perspec- tive, then, globalization represents the outcome both of the appearance and spread of the artifacts of the contemporary world-fax machines, personal computers, satellite broadcasting systems, and the Internet-and the world- wide growth in human capital. The combination of invention and user compe- tence is the critical synergy. Because of it, there has been a dramatic increase in the ability of people rapidly to communicate, coordinate activities, and engage in long-distance, extremely rapid transactions. As a result, the tyr- anny of distance has been obliterated (Holton 1998, 8), and the geographic web of human interaction has been drawn together more tightly. By conceptualizing globalization in this way, we affirm that this process represents something that is historically unique and of profound importance. We are not satisfied with Louis Uchitelle's quip in the New York Times that, when it comes to globalization, the 20th century is ending on a note of deja vu: the world's economies are roughly as intertwined today as they were in 1913 (1998, 1). What is going on today is something that is only inadequately captured by the measures of globalization that Uchitelle employs: the growth rate of trade and foreign direct investment as a percentage of world output. Aside from the fact that the technology of communications is vastly more effi- cient than that used a century ago, the contemporary process of integration embraces a far higher proportion of the world's population than in that ear- lier period. Uchitelle's formulation misses what is distinctive in today's expe- rience. It is only in recent decades that, as Robert Pollin has remarked, we are moving in the direction of every country being able to produce everything (quoted in Uchitelle 1998, 1). We are eager to be sufficiently precise in our formulation to avoid being included among those who engage in globe-talk, described by Holton (1998) as the rhetoric, hype, and babble of voices . . . that may well testify to a cer- tain modishness or fashion for global things (1). We want our discussion of globalization not only to capture adequately the increased international inte- gration of life, but as well to provide insight into the dynamic by which this 8

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