The Blackwell Companion to Globalization

Chapter 18

Globalization and Ideology

MANFRED B. STEGER

INTRODUCTION: THE IDEOLOGICAL DIMENSION OF GLOBALIZATION

From its beginnings in the late 1980s, the fledgling field of global[ization] studies has been dominated by accounts focusing primarily on the economic and technological aspects of the phenomenon. To be sure, a proper recognition of the crucial role of integrating markets and new information technologies should be part of any comprehensive understanding of globalization, but it is equally important to avoid the trap of technological and economic reductionism. As Malcolm Waters (2001) observes, the increasingly symbolically mediated and reflexive character of today’s economic exchanges suggests that both the cultural and political arenas are becoming more activated and energetic. And yet, despite the burgeoning recent literature on crucial cultural and political aspects of globalization, researchers have paid insufficient attention to the global circulation of ideas and their impact on the rapid extension of social interactions and interdependencies across time and space. Save for a few notable exceptions (Mittelman 2004; Rupert 2000; Sklair 2002; Steger 2003, 2005), globalization scholars have been surprisingly reluctant to enter the misty realm of ideology. Bucking the trend, this chapter explores the ideological dimension of globalization with particular attention to its important discursive features.

Following Michael Freeden’s (1996, 2003) and Lyman Tower Sargent’s ...