Why Global? Diagnosing the Globalization Literature Within a Political Economy of Higher Education

Bibliographic Data

ID2264294
AuthorsIsaac Kamola (0000-0002-2535-1822, Johns Hopkins University, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume7
Issue1
Pages41-58
Publication date2013-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Political Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1749-5679 • E-ISSN: 1749-5687
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/ips.12008
OpenAlexW1969884763
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited46

This article examines the assumed factuality of globalization in light of its persistent conceptual incoherence. Through a diagnosis of five reoccurring ambiguities within the globalization literature, I argue that the concept of globalization lacks an empirical referent. Scholars writing on globalization overcome this absence by asserting that some things (the Internet, McDonald's, etc.) and not others (genocide in Rwanda, refugee camps, etc.) are essentially “global.” It turns out, however, that who is positioned to posit some things (and not others) as “global,” and therefore posit the foundation for a theory of globalization, is shaped by a highly asymmetrical political economy of knowledge production. In particular, some scholars—usually in North American and European universities—are materially better positioned to produce knowledge about globalization than many of their colleagues in postcolonial countries. The seemingly arbitrary positing of some things as “global,” therefore, should be understood as a symptom of the highly unequal social relations in which knowledge about globalization is produced

Global politics · Globalization · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Referent · Social science · Sociology · Global Education and Multiculturalism · Global Educational Policies and Reforms · Higher Education Governance and Development · Law · Philosophy

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