Discourse:

Study Guide for Chapter 2 of Introducing Globalization

Prepared by Matthew Sparke for students using
Introducing Globalization: Ties, Tensions, and Uneven Integration, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.

Learning objectives:
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
1) understand how Globalization functions as a powerful political
discourse that exaggerates real elements of global integration
into mythic proportions;
2) describe the three main myths of big G Globalization in
dominant discourse and the way they work to naturalize
neoliberalism as needed and necessary;
3) understand how the label anti-Globalization is applied to critics
of neoliberalism who contest the Globalization myths;
4) explain how critics of neoliberalism are often in favor of alterglobalization alternatives, but they are NOT anti-globalization
with a small g;
5) analyze popular and political commentary on globalization for its
use of dominant and dissident discourse.

Main arguments:
This chapter is all about the power of Globalization as a discourse,
including the influence of all the associated images, advertisements,
and educational initiatives that present global interdependency as an
unstoppable, flattening juggernaut of sudden world transformation.
The impact of this dominant Globalization story is examined in relation
to how it is repeatedly retold with real-world consequences in political
speeches, books, and articles. At the same time, the chapter is also
concerned with other globalization stories that contest the pro-market
neoliberal conclusions of the dominant discourse. The underlying
argument throughout is that all these representations matter, that they
are consequential. In this sense, discourse is used analytically in the
chapter to describe far more than just a way of talking about the world
or debatable descriptions. Discourse instead serves to name a much
closer coupling of power and knowledge that is at once ordered and
influential. In the language of so-called ideology critique, discourses
certainly do ideological work. But, at the same time, discourse is not a

simple ideology that is deliberately designed to obscure and mislead

on purpose. Hence the definition offered on page 29: A discourse is a
set of terms and arguments about the nature of reality that are tied
together in a narrative that systematically shapes the reality it
purports to describe. Thus, even though the dominant discourse of
Globalization suggests it is inevitable, it has been this very same
discourse that has helped expand pro-market policies globally and
thereby increase and intensify the influences of market forces over
global life. In other words, neoliberal globalization is actually not so
inevitable precisely because it has required this drumbeat of discursive
delineation and defense.
In the chapter, the power of discourse is explained by making a
comparison between the discourse of Patriotism and the discourse of
Globalization. Like Patriotism, Globalization discourse is based at
least partially on facts. Just as there are people who feel strongly
attached to what they see as their homeland, and just as they feel and
show such patriotic attachment in multiple ways, there clearly are
multiple global interdependencies that today link peoples fates
together around the world. However, in the same way as the labels
patriotic and unpatriotic are used in partisan ways to make citizens
accept particular national policies like war, so, too, is the discourse of
Globalization used to turn aspects about global interdependency into
simplistic, one-sided lessons about what we should do in response.
Similarly, as was also suggested in the study guide for Chapter 1.
There are yet other discourses with which we can compare
Globalization in addition to Patriotism. Both Pollution and Evolution
can be simplified in political rhetoric into discourses that incline us to
particular policies and actions. The power of discourse about
globalization to simplify and persuade is likewise considerable. This
accounts for much of the interest and buzz about the term as well as
the main myths of newness, inevitability, and leveling.
Each of the myths has an element of truth about it. Todays
patterns of global integration are unprecedented historically in their
impact and scope. They are also extraordinarily influential, creating
forces and governmental norms that are hard for individual countries
and people to resist. And the transnational expansion and
entrenchment of these norms have in turn created leveling effects,
including the softening of borders for the movement of goods, capital,
and business professionals. But acknowledging all this should not lead
us to ignore all the many ways in which the discursive emphasis on
newness, inevitability, and leveling has systematically contributed to
these effects itself, and that it has done so by radically simplifying and
mythologizing much more complex, context-contingent and uneven
integration effects globally. It it vital then to explore the limits of the

myths as well as their constitutive relationship with what is really

happening in the world at large.
Charting the limits of the myths in the dominant discourse of
Globalization also makes it easier to understand and unpack dissident
discourse, too. Some of this anti-neoliberal discourse repeats the
myths about newness, inevitability, and leveling in ways that just offer
another ending to the dominant story-line. In the case of the book
Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, for instance, we still
therefore read epochal announcements of novel and unstoppable
global transformations that inevitably end up smoothing over the
complexity of global space. Hardt and Negri offer a different, neocommunist perspective on where this neoliberal juggernaut of global
change is ultimately heading, but the parallels with dominant discourse
are more multitudinous that they acknowledge. By contrast, many
other critics of global neoliberalization tend instead to contest the
myths in the dominant discourse to highlight all the inequalities,
unevenness, and opportunities for policy redirection that then become
visible and conceivable. And it is this kind of complexity and
heterogeneity that has in turn animated debate at global justice
protest spaces ranging from Zapatista Encuentros, to Occupy
encampments, to ongoing to World Social Forums right around the
globe.

Key conclusions:
1) The dominant discourse on globalization draws on and reproduces
three main myths:
a)
b)
c)

the myth of newness;

the myth of inevitability;
the myth of leveling.

2) The three myths make neoliberal policies of free trade, privatization,

tax reduction, and so on seem like the only viable governmental
response.
3) Dissident discourse generally challenges the idea that there is no
alternative to neoliberalism and interprets the implications and
opportunities of globalized interdependecy in other ways.

Further reading:

If you are interested in the theories of power, knowledge, myth, and

discourse that support the arguments of this chapter, it is well worth
reading some of the writings of the philosophers and theorists listed
below. If you are concerned with the influence specifically of
globalization myths and the debates that surround them, there are
many further readings on these topics, too.
i)

On the theory and philosophy of discourse as

power/knowledge

Michel Foucault (1980) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and

Other Writings, 19721977. New York: Pantheon Books.
Paul Smith (1988) Discerning the subject. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Roland Barthes (2012) Mythologies. New York: Hill & Wang.
Sara Mills (1997) Discourse. New York: Routledge.
Stuart Hall (2002) Representation & the Media [DVD/videorecording],
introduced by Sut Jhally. Northampton, MA: Media Education
Foundation.
Terry Eagleton (1991) Ideology: An Introduction. New York: Verso.

ii)

On the mythologization of Globalization and Empire

David Held and Anthony McGrew (2002) Globalization/AntiGlobalization. Oxford: Blackwell.

Jai Sen, Anita Anand, Arturo Escobar, Peter Waterman, editors (2004)
The World Social Forum: challenging empires, . New Delhi: Viveka
Foundation: New Delhi, 2004.
Jan Nederveen Pieterse (2009) Globalization and Culture: Global
Mlange. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Justin Rosenberg (2000) The Follies of Globalisation Theory. London:
Verso.
Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin (2012) The Making of Global Capitalism:
The Political Economy of American Empire. Brooklyn, NY: Verso.
Matthew Sparke (2005) In the Space of Theory: Postfoundational
Geographies of the Nation-State. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, chapter 5: 239312. PDF

Michael Veseth (2005) Globaloney: Unraveling the Myths of

Globalization. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.