Globalizations

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What was globalization?

Valentine M. Moghadam

To cite this article: Valentine M. Moghadam (2021) What was globalization?, Globalizations, 18:5,
695-706, DOI: 10.1080/14747731.2020.1842095

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GLOBALIZATIONS
2021, VOL. 18, NO. 5, 695–706
https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2020.1842095

What was globalization?

Valentine M. Moghadam
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and International Affairs Program, Northeastern University, Boston,
MA, USA

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This contribution draws on world-system, Marxist, and feminist theories to Globalization; world-system;
argue that globalization is a stage in the evolution of the capitalist world- capitalism; female labour;
system, with distinct geographic, class, and gender features. Although there globalization-from-below
is some merit in redefining ‘globalization’ to enable its extension back to
ancient history, this contribution situates ‘globalization-from-above’ and
‘globalization-from-below’ in a particular stage of world capitalist
development, highlights female labour in social reproduction, and ends by
speculating as to whether aspects of this stage may be on the decline.

Introduction
What is globalization? When Manfred Steger and I were both at Illinois State University in the late
1990s, we organized a series of weekly seminars on globalization in which we identified and dis-
sected three dimensions: economic, political, and cultural. At the time, there was much discussion
and debate concerning globalization’s origins, main actors, transnational reach, and social effects.
Was globalization a more-or-less inevitable product of structural and technological change, or was
it a deliberate strategy by corporate and political elites to undermine labour, accumulate more
profit, and compete more effectively internationally through the liberalization of trade, labour,
and finance, and through outsourcing? Whether structural or strategic, was (economic) globaliza-
tion a novel phenomenon of the late twentieth century, or had there been earlier incidents or waves
of globalization? Did the current wave have a tendency toward standardization and homogeniz-
ation? And how was globalization – with its attendant institutions of global governance – affecting
state sovereignty? At around the same time, financial crises broke out in Argentina, Russia, and
South Korea, among other countries, and a new literature began to identify and analyse new
forms of political activity – transnational advocacy networks and cross-border social movements,
or what some called global civil society, along with ‘horizontal’ forms of anti-globalization organiz-
ing and mobilizing. The new actors and their norm diffusion of ‘another possible world’, it was
argued, were changing the nature of world politics and global governance while also challenging
the centrality of the state. One of the most promising expressions of such novel forms of mobiliz-
ation was the World Social Forum.1
Parallel to the studies of ‘globalization-from-above’ and ‘globalization-from-below’ emerged a
body of literature on the growing resource wars and ethnic-based conflicts, with some scholars
seeking to make a connection between aspects of globalization and the new conflicts (Chua,

CONTACT Valentine M. Moghadam v.moghadam@neu.edu

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
696 V. M. MOGHADAM

2003; Gobbicchi, 2004). The 2003 US/UK invasion and occupation of Iraq highlighted the continu-
ing core–periphery hierarchy and especially the role of the hegemon, the United States. Other
studies drew attention to the growing culture of capitalist consumerism, fed by the proliferation
of cheap goods meant largely for the working classes and low-income families in the Global
North. Huge retailers such as Walmart and Primark relied on cheap labour in the Global South,
in a ‘global assembly line’ process that produced all manner of goods. Through the process of global
commodity chains used by ‘fast fashion’, items such as cheap clothing, footwear, and accessories
became the favoured purchases of the middle classes, which were easy to discard and added to
the growing problem of waste and ecological degradation.2
Throughout this period of capitalist globalization, income and wealth inequalities widened, cer-
tainly when compared with the levels that had characterized the social contract of the so-called
golden age of capitalism, which was informed by Keynesian economics. Unlike the focus on poverty
alleviation, however, income inequalities were not central to such global initiatives as the UN-spon-
sored Millennium Development Goals (2000–2015). Income and wealth inequalities resulted from
the financialization of the economy, fuelled by the hyper-masculinist and herd culture of the finan-
cial sector (Moghadam, 2011; Walby, 2015; Wichterich, 2012). Eventually, the reckless behaviour of
that financial sector produced the 2007 mortgage crisis in the U.S., the ensuing financial crisis in
Europe, the Great Recession, and the adoption and implementation of austerity measures even
in those countries with social democratic governments. Shortly thereafter, the world was engulfed
in protests – the Green Protests in Iran, labour protests in Egypt and Tunisia, the Arab Spring, the
European anti-austerity protests, demands in Chile for an end to privatization, and Occupy Wall
Street. What were the results of the crisis and protests? In Europe and North America, governments
bailed out banks and corporations. Greece was given a punishing austerity regime. The Arab Spring
produced only a modest harvest: democratization in Tunisia. Western powers and their regional
allies destabilized Libya, Syria, and Yemen. The brutal Islamic State went on the rampage. By
2015 right-wing populist political parties and regimes were in place, and by 2019 the World Social
Forum was said to be in demise.3
The above sketch of recent history underscores both the capitalist world order’s contradictions
and its tenacity. In light of the new book by Manfred Steger and Paul James, however, one might
ask: What is the relationship between globalization and capitalism? Are the features and contradic-
tions just described part of millennia-old unfolding of globalizing processes? Or are they distinctive
to the centuries-old unfolding of the modern capitalist world-system, which includes stability but
also transition, crisis, and chaos?

New wine in old bottles?

In Globalization Matters, Steger and James have written an elegant book that seeks to lay out a new,
general theory of globalization based on an exhaustive literature review, a set of principles and
propositions, and an historical perspective that reaches back to the empires of the ancient world.
Their second chapter provides a fascinating discussion of the genealogy of the term ‘globalization’
and its uses prior to the 1980s (Steger & James, 2019, esp. pp. 32–43). Ultimately, they extend the
concept all the way back to tribal and nomadic eras (e.g. ‘humanity spreading across the globe’),
thus disconnecting globalization from capitalism. Indeed, Steger (2019) defines globalization as
‘the expansion and intensification of social relations and consciousness across world-space and
world-time’. He provides three provisos: globalization is geographically uneven; it does not always
translate into higher interdependence but can also disrupt and disconnect existing relations; and it
 GLOBALIZATIONS 697

generates different forms of consciousness and competing ideologies. In that essay, Steger does not
regard populism as a backlash to globalization but rather as an expression of it.
In their book, Steger and James argue that ‘globalization was never merely an objective process
of increasing capital and commodity flows across national borders. It also contains crucial subjec-
tive dimensions … ’ (p. 103), namely, ideas, ideologies, and imaginaries. They identify ‘three cur-
rently dominant ideologies of globalization – market globalism, justice globalism, and religious
globalism’. This aligns with my own identification, in the first and second editions of my book, Glo-
balization and Social Movements, of three global movements responding to capitalist globalization:
Islamism, feminism, and the Global Justice Movement. In the third edition, I address the growth of
populism, both right-wing and left-wing (Moghadam, 2020; see also Moghadam & Kaftan, 2019).
Steger and James define contemporary globalization as an unprecedented phase of interconnec-
tivity, which is an apt observation. In particular, the new information and communication technol-
ogies (ICTs) have been an indispensable tool for activist mobilization and information-exchange
across borders, and many scholars, including me, have highlighted ICT and social media advan-
tages for cross-network synergies. For example, in an expression of cyberactivism, WikiLeaks –
part of a longer tradition and principle of free publication, ‘open source’ information, and news
distribution – challenged authorities and governments the world over by releasing classified U.S.
documents revealing malfeasance in wars, foreign policy, and global business. Founder Julian
Assange unveiled WikiLeaks.org in January 2007, and in publications that were picked up by the
New York Times, the Guardian, El País, Der Spiegel, and Le Monde, it exposed evidence of corrup-
tion in the family of former Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi, published the standard operating
principles for the Guantánamo Bay detention centre, and, most significantly, released in April 2010
a video of a U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad in July 2007, which killed a number of Iraqi civilians
and two Iraqi-born Reuters personnel. An eighteen-minute film called ‘Collateral Murder’ gave a
chilling insight into what could be perceived as U.S. war crimes. Assange maintained that an expli-
cit part of WikiLeaks’ purpose in exposing U.S. State Department cables and other government
documents was to highlight human rights abuses. Subsequently, both the website and its founder
became the subject of investigation, personal attacks, and a financial blockade that impeded sup-
porter donations. In response, the chimerical Anonymous collective retaliated by hacking into gov-
ernment, police, and corporate files (Moss, 2010).4
As one of the ‘gifts’ of globalization, the Internet has been an indispensable tool for activists.
Peace and anti-war activists can access the U.S.-based Peace Action website and that of ANSWER
(Act Now to Stop War & End Racism Coalition), or the websites of the women-led groups Code
Pink: Women for Peace, Marche Mondiale des Femmes, and the longstanding Women’s Inter-
national League for Peace and Freedom.5 Cyberactivism crosses generational lines but is the vehicle
par excellence of the younger generation, with their affinity for, and expertise in, social-networking
media; young climate justice activists deploy social media tools extensively. As such, the ‘biographi-
cal availability’ of youth for protest activity is enhanced by their immersion in the world of ICTs,
creating a demographic pool with a potential for rapid mobilization and protest activity.
Such cyberactivism is clearly a feature of contemporary globalization, but Steger and James have
a more far-reaching theoretical perspective. In Chapter 6, Steger and James propose four globaliza-
tion periods across world history: the ‘customary’ period they call the Great Divergence, the ‘tra-
ditional’ period called the Great Universalizing, the modern period of the Great Convergence, and
the postmodern period of the Great Unsettling. Many readers will be persuaded by the authors’
theorization and historical reach. I am not convinced, however, that the proposed periods supplant
the distinctions between tributary, slave-holding, feudal, and capitalist modes of production or the
698 V. M. MOGHADAM

phases of world-capitalist development as elaborated by Marxist and world-system scholars. (I

should note that Christopher Chase-Dunn and co-authors study smaller world-systems in early his-
tory, going back to the regionally-based city–state settlements and empires of the Bronze Age and
the Iron Age, and even earlier. See, e.g. Chase-Dunn & Lerro, 2014.)
In the 1990s, some scholars mocked the new concept of globalization as ‘globaloney’, but many
took it seriously.6 Steger and James point to Immanuel Wallerstein’s early skepticism but later
adoption of the term (see discussion in Chapter 2). As in the first edition of my book, Globalization
and Social Movements, I would continue to argue that globalization is the latest stage of capitalism.
The early twentieth century writings on imperialism by Rudolf Hilferding (2006/1910), Vladimir
Lenin (1969/1917), and others highlighted the growth of credit money, finance, and banking,
along with the development of large corporations, cartels and trust, often followed by various crises.
In the latter part of the century, this stage of capitalist development, now called neoliberal, became
vastly enhanced, leading to the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression and to a return
to ‘Belle Epoque’ levels of inequalities. Steger and James certainly are not oblivious to the damaging
effects of contemporary globalization, and their theory does account for agency as well as structure
(see the discussion of the four ‘social forms of globalization’). But what their historical sweep omits
is the centrality of labour – male and female, child and adult, free and unfree, paid and unpaid –
across various modes of production and stages of capitalist development. I will return to this point
presently, with a focus on female labour. For now it suffices to underscore globalization’s glaring
contradictions: wide income and wealth inequalities that have turned democracies into oligarchies;
new forms of surveillance; inter-state competition and rivalries that have encouraged conflicts and
wars; and waves of migration by the poor that have generated right-wing backlashes. In the wake of
such contradictions, globalization has come under attack by the pro-capitalist Right (‘America
First’, Brexit, ‘the people vs the elites’, the new trade wars, anti-immigration) as well as by the
anti-capitalist Left, who were the first critics. Globalization’s expansion was facilitated by the weak-
ening and eventual collapse of world communism, and its possible contraction represents crisis,
chaos, and transition in the capitalist world-system.
One expression of the possible contraction is that the interconnectivity of globalization has been
rejected by many across the capitalist world-system, notably in the form of right-wing populist-
nationalism.7 In a recent report, The Economist magazine (2020b) describes ‘virtual nationalism’
and ‘data sovereignty’ as a trend that runs counter to the earlier ‘cosmopolitan ideals’ of the
free, cross-border flow of information. Others have noted the dark side of the internet as well as
the fragility of leaderless (‘horizontal’) movements. Evgeny Morozov (2011) points out that state
security services use the internet and cyber-tools such as Twitter as effectively as do young dissen-
ters, hacktivists, and would-be democratic revolutionaries, and Shoshana Zuboff (2019) describes
the surveillance functions of the corporations and the state. The internet also has been used by
right-wing and violent networks, most notoriously by the terrorist group Islamic State (also
known as ISIS or ISIL), which formed in the chaos following the U.S./U.K. invasion of Iraq and
especially after the weakening of the Syrian state in the wake of its post-2011 internationalized
civil conflict. For Zeynep Tufekci (2016), networked movements can grow dramatically and
rapidly, obtaining and exchanging information despite state-owned media, self-censored corporate
media, and police surveillance. However, many such movements lack prior building of formal or
informal organizational and other collective capacities that could prepare them for the inevitable
challenges and give them the ability to respond to what comes next. Leaderless networked move-
ments also lack the capacity for decision-making or negotiating with officials – such as occurred
after the Gezi Park protests in Turkey. At the same time, the giant profit-making tech corporations
 GLOBALIZATIONS 699

display what Jodie Dean (2012) calls the ‘communicative exploitation’ of different forms of labour.
As noted by The Economist magazine (2020b, pp. 11–12), the ‘data economy’ is very unequal, domi-
nated by a few gigantic platforms such as Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook, and
Google, which have the power to hold down wages for data labour. Clearly, we have come a
long way from the early years of optimism and hope regarding the free flow of information as a
democratic right and form of liberation.

The state and globalization

If cyberactivism, cybersurveillance, and cyberwarfare are unique to contemporary globalization,
none of these processes has obviated the role and power of the state. Indeed, the state has always
been important for capitalist development in all its phases – mercantilist, industrial, financial – as it
has been responsible for the necessary institutional and infrastructural environment conducive to
capitalist growth and expansion. Along the way, progressive social movements and their elite allies
compelled the capitalist state to forge social policies and labour legislation to improve the condition
of the working classes. Such social contracts, along with the development of civil society, functioned
to legitimate state power and maintain the stability of the social order while also defending society
against free-market fundamentalism.
Since the onset of neoliberal capitalist globalization, however, those social contracts have frayed,
even in the most advanced welfare states. In the U.S., the globalization project overturned the FDR
‘New Deal’ and even the Johnson-era ‘Great Society’ policies. Neoliberal capitalist globalization
changed the nature of economic policy as a bounded, national project for development and growth,
especially for developing/Third World countries that now had to privatize state-owned sectors and
liberalize trade, finance, and labour markets. One national economy after another took part in the
global assembly line, a far cry from the earlier trade in finished products or raw materials described
by the classical political economists. Still, the state continued to matter to the emerging transna-
tional capitalist class that relied on deregulation and incentives for financialization, accumulation,
and profit.
Institutions of global governance had a hand in these developments, notably in the many
instances of austerity measures that states have had to implement in return for new loans since
the 1970s. A detailed study of the role of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund
(IMF) in a number of Middle East and North African (MENA) countries finds two patterns: ‘(1)
a lack of rigor in developing recommendations geared toward addressing social imbalances and
(2) a convenient scapegoating of national governments when policy changes do not produce
their intended results’ (Radwan, 2020, p. 8). While absolving the ‘world class economists and devel-
opment professionals’ of the World Bank and IMF for these outcomes, the study shows how the
tight relationship between the institutions and the rich Western countries ‘prioritize their own
economic and foreign policy objectives’ (Radwan, 2020). The study includes reports on Egypt,
Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia, as well as the Palestinian Territories, Yemen, and Iraq. The results
have been underwhelming, to say the least, as even The Economist magazine notes. Consider the
IMF loans to Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia most recently. Egypt signed a $12 billion deal in 2016,
while Tunisia and Jordan each received two loans. Tunisia raised taxes and allowed the dinar to
depreciate, which tamed the country’s deficits but also resulted in massive social protests; poverty
did not decline, prices increases, and unemployment stayed high. Higher taxes and lower subsidies
leave consumers with less purchasing power. In Egypt in particular, the poverty rate climbed five
percentage points since 2015, to 33 per cent. The Economist notes that Jordan stopped publishing its
700 V. M. MOGHADAM

poverty rate in 2010, though that rate may have climbed six points since then, to 20 per cent. The
World Bank estimates that 15 per cent of Tunisians live below the national poverty line. When
Egypt signed its deal with the IMF, the Fund projected that foreign direct investment would exceed
USD 9 billion a year by June 2017, but inflows have fallen since then, to USD 6 billion in 2018.
Investment there and in Jordan is less than it was a decade ago (The Economist, 2020a, p. 50). Is
it any wonder that the MENA region was engulfed in a renewed wave of protests before the
COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020?
For a while it appeared that feminism would thrive in an era of globalization. After all, there was
the new interconnectivity, leading to the formation and spread of transnational feminist networks,
which I studied in the 1990s and into the new century (Moghadam, 2005). The UN-sponsored glo-
bal women’s rights agenda was diffusing across the globe – the product of the UN Decade for
Women (1975–1985), the UN conferences of the 1990s, the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform
for Action, and the October 2000 Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security.
But the emerging emancipatory gender contract has since been decimated by cutbacks in social
spending and gender budgets, and declining support for the activities of transnational feminist net-
works and women-led non-governmental organizations. Many transnational feminist leaders have
criticized corporate patterns of funding.8 In particular, the goal of women’s empowerment could
hardly be expected to encompass all women (and not just highly-educated and professional
women) in an era of neoliberalism, militarism, conflicts, and income and wealth inequalities.
It is no accident that contemporary globalization expanded in the context of the weakening and
eventual collapse of world communism. ‘Globalization’ may have been the neutral term favoured
by the business elites who first promoted it, but in effect it was a capitalist and class project that was
no longer challenged by an alternative socialist or communist system. As such, it supplanted
imperialism as the ‘highest phase of capitalism’, as Lenin would put it. Bourgeois democracies tol-
erated the growth of transnational advocacy networks and civil society, at least insofar as these did
not threaten the capitalist order. When threatened with disruptions to the global power hierarchy,
however, those same bourgeois democracies did not hesitate to send in troops or spooks, especially
to oil-rich or otherwise geopolitically strategic countries, or to continue to manufacture and export
weapons to their allies, many of them corrupt or dictatorial. Bourgeois democracies no longer fight
each other (the so-called democratic peace thesis), but they do not hesitate to invade or destabilize
countries (Afghanistan 2001; Iraq 2003; Libya 2011; Syria 2011–2020) or to provide arms to allies
(e.g. Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE, and others) to do the same.

Female labor: production and social reproduction

I mentioned above that the Steger and James framework neglects the role of labour (free and unfree,
child and adult, male and female) across historical time. In particular, the sexual division of labour
– which first emerged in ancient patriarchal city-states and has proved to be remarkably resilient,
extending to contemporary times – has been a key feature of all known modes of production.
Under conditions of kinship-based agrarian production or forms of uneven development, women’s
exclusion from land ownership or their marginal position in the paid labor force reflects but also
reinforces the “domestic gender regime” (Kocabicak, 2020) or the “patriarchal gender contract”
(Moghadam, 2013, p. 96). Under contemporary globalization, it has undergirded the ‘global care
chain’, wherein women from poor countries migrate to richer countries to care for children and
the elderly. That elder-care institutions and private households should be staffed by women
from poor countries at low wages is but part of the logic (or ideology) of contemporary capitalism.
 GLOBALIZATIONS 701

Here the hierarchies of class and gender, and of core, periphery, and semi-periphery, reveal them-
selves in the spheres of production and social reproduction.
In Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels famously associated the rise of
property through settled agriculture – which led to patrilocal residence and patrilineal descent –
with ‘the world-historical defeat of the female sex’. Systematic patriarchy was the result, and
over time, especially with the onset of industrial capitalism, female labour came to be devalued.
In Capital, Marx writes [Vol. I, Part VII, ch. 23, ‘Simple Reproduction’]:
A society can no more cease to produce than it can cease to consume. When viewed, therefore, as a
connected whole, and as flowing on with incessant renewal, every social process of production, is at
the same time, a process of reproduction.

Inspired by Engels and the observation in the Communist Manifesto that the relationship
between man and woman mirrors that of bourgeois and proletarian, Marxist-feminists extended
the conceptual insights to theorize the role of female labour in production and social reproduction,
which in most analyses include biological reproduction, the reproduction of the labour force, and
provisioning and care needs (both paid and unpaid). The theme of women’s role in social repro-
duction has animated much feminist scholarship, from ‘the debate on domestic labor’ that took
place in the 1970s in the British Marxist journal New Left Review and Lise Vogel’s outstanding
1983 book, to more recent studies. In her book, Vogel highlights Marx’s reference to the work
of reproduction to explore how women’s domestic labour helps reproduce the labour power that
is available to the capitalist. (See also Vogel, 1993.) In a fascinating section of their survey of the
literature on women and social reproduction, Barbara Laslett and Johanna Brenner (1989,
pp. 394–395) show how consumerism became geared to the housewife, from the department stores
first targeting middle-class and elite women to the ‘bargain basement’ stores which ‘expanded the
culture of consumerism to the working class as well’.
In capitalist economies, and especially under neoliberal conditions, women’s reproductive
labour is considered a private service rather than a social good. In its extreme form in the U.S.,
women’s domestic work – childbearing, child rearing, caring for the elderly – is utterly devalued,
most women workers are not provided statutory paid maternity or family leave, and primary school
teachers and childcare workers are non-professionalized and vastly underpaid. Hedge-fund man-
agers are considered far more important because they produce ‘money’. As Silvia Federici (2004,
p. 75) notes, ‘In the new monetary regime, only production-for-market was defined as value-creat-
ing activity, whereas the reproduction of the worker began to be considered as valueless from an
economic viewpoint and even ceased to be considered as work’. Echoing earlier feminist studies
of the gendered effects of structural adjustment policies in developing countries, Isabella Bakker
(2003, pp. 68–69) describes the impact of the neoliberal economic regime in OECD countries.
She describes the ‘reprivatization of social reproduction’, the decline of the family wage mode,
and the increasing polarization among women. Martha Gimenez (2018) shows that social repro-
duction has distinct class, gender, and racial components, informing such processes as the repro-
duction of labour power, domestic labour, the feminization of poverty, and reproductive
technologies. Wilma Dunaway (2013) theorizes the fundamental role of social reproduction in glo-
bal commodity chains, identifying the household as an important site of production, and highlight-
ing the rapidly expanding arenas of global care work and sex trafficking. Sylvia Walby (somehow
left out of Steger and James’ panoply of complexity theorists), has theorized the transition from
private patriarchy to public patriarchy and the construction of gender regimes under conditions
of modern capitalist globalization (Walby, 2009).
702 V. M. MOGHADAM

Across historical time, therefore, what has remained constant is the subordination of women,
their responsibility for childbearing and childrearing, their domestic labour, and – under capit-
alism – their role as part of the ‘reserve army of labor’ as well as paid and unpaid labour in
production and reproduction. In some parts of the world, most specifically the MENA region,
the highest rates of unemployment are found among women (Karshenas et al., 2016; Karshenas
& Moghadam, 2021). Because of women’s vulnerable, unpaid, partially paid, non-unionized, and
intermittent location in labour markets, women are more likely to be in poverty. At the same
time, contemporary globalization turned what had previously been good jobs for men into
‘women’s work’ – irregular, precarious, non-unionized (Standing, 1989).

Conclusions
As I was completing this essay, the novel corona virus, or COVID-19, was spreading around the
world, with concerns about the availability of medicines, given that many ingredients, in global
assembly line logic, are made in China, where the virus originated. Travel bans on citizens to
and from affected countries subsequently were enacted. Globalization was already under attack
before the spread of the virus, with the right-wing populist reaction to free trade and large-scale
migration, but the pandemic has possibly made it even more likely that economic globalization
will be derailed. It is entirely possible that there will be resounding calls for more secure borders
as well as economic self-reliance.
Capitalism was never intended to benefit the working masses, much less create prosperous
autonomous national economies. Karl Polanyi’s analysis of the origins of ‘market society’ drew
attention to its dislocations and societal responses, which he called the ‘double-movement’ (Pola-
nyi, 2001/1944).9 Marxists have argued about the extent to which the shift from feudalism to capit-
alism was driven by structural crisis and change, or class struggle, or a combination. There is
consensus among Marxist and world-systems scholars that capitalist development was to a large
degree an elite project, initially promoted by the rising bourgeoisie of England and other European
countries and later promoted by core countries and especially the hegemon, resulting in the per-
petuation of a periphery and a process of uneven or unequal development (Amin, 1978; Waller-
stein, 1979). These processes of capitalist development and growth also entailed episodes
wherein social movements and state policies extended citizen rights and welfare, such as in the
post-WWII period of Western welfare states and Third world state-led social and economic devel-
opment. Neoliberal capitalist globalization, however, fundamentally changed the rules of the global
game. Capital’s continued dominion over labour refutes ‘the world is flat’ claim of Thomas Fried-
man and other globalization enthusiasts.
World-system scholars distinguish between structural globalization – an upward trend that
cycles in waves, with intermittent periods of deglobalization – with neoliberalism as a political
and ideological project (Chase-Dunn, 1998, 1999; Chase-Dunn et al., 2020). Periods of capitalist
expansions (or Kondratieff waves) ebb and flow in waves of globalization and de-globalization,
and egalitarian and humanistic counter-movements emerge in a cyclical dialectical struggle.
Terry Boswell and Christopher Chase-Dunn (2000) termed this ‘the spiral of capitalism and
socialism’. (See also Almeida & Chase-Dunn, 2018; Arrighi et al., 1989.) When elaborated with a
class analysis of power and a feminist perspective on masculinities and power, world-system
analysis provides a solid basis for systemic theorization and cross-disciplinary, generalizable
knowledge about ‘the global’, given the theory’s roots in history, political economy, and sociology.
Moreover, concepts of resistance and change are inscribed in world-system, Marxist, and
 GLOBALIZATIONS 703

feminist theories, thus generating critiques and recognition of forms of social engagement such as
alter-mondialisation, transnational feminist networks, climate change activism, peace action,
labour activism, and other forms of mobilization, within which scholar-activists have been
involved.
In my own work, I have drawn on world-system, Marxist, and feminist conceptual frameworks
to help explain the factors behind the emergence and global diffusion of Islamism, feminism, the
global justice movement, and populism. I have argued that although aspects of globalization
may be regarded as long-term, secular, or structural developments (e.g. long-distance interconnec-
tions via technological changes), neoliberal capitalist globalization was a class-based project for pri-
vate capitalist accumulation imbued with masculinist bravado (within the corporate world as well
as the military and polity) in the wake of the collapse of world communism and therefore with
nothing to keep it in check. It emerged and grew within a world-system of markets and states,
wherein capitalist accumulation is the central driver. That this form of accumulation came to
wreak havoc on whole economies, as well as specific communities even in the richest core countries,
is but part of the logic of historical capitalism. Integrating feminist insights allows us to discern the
role of gender, the sexual division of labour, and hyper-masculinities across capitalist phases as well
as forms of collective action and contentious politics. The present period of transition, crisis, and
chaos opens possibilities for collective action, although it not clear if the many contemporary dis-
parate and ‘horizontal’ movements are up to the task of replacing the present global order with one
centred on peace and the wellbeing of people and the planet.

Notes
1. In the interest of space, I do not cite the many studies; the debates are examined in chapter 2 of my
book, Globalization and Social Movements (2020). See, for example, Robinson & Harris, 2000; Smith
et al., 1997, 2008.
2. An early study of the global reorganization of production and labour is that of Frobel et al. (1980). On
fast fashion’s downside, see Anguelov (2015).
3. See Great Transition Initiative https://greattransition.org/gti-forum/farewell-to-the-wsf.
4. See also BBC World Service, October 24, 2011; wikileaks.org (accessed October 27, 2011). A November
2011 Facebook posting by Catherine Savage featured a photo of Julian Assange with the comment, ‘I
give private information on corporations to you for free and I’m the villain’, juxtaposed with the
image of Mark Zuckerberg and the comment, ‘I give your private information to corporations for
money, and I’m the Man of the Year’.
5. www.peaceaction.org ; www.answercoalition.org ; www.codepink.org; https://marchemondiale.org/?
lang=fr; www.wilpf.org.
6. Even before globalization became a buzzword, Von Laue’s (1988) took a critical view of the global reach
of Western political, economic, and ideational power, noting its connection to violence and wars as well
as its influence on political leaders and state-building in developing countries. Controversially, he
argued that Western institutions were adopted even by anti-Western leaders and states. This is not
so far removed from the Communist Manifesto’s prediction of the worldwide diffusion of bourgeois
values and institutions through ‘the exploitation of the world market’ – or indeed the acceptance of
neoliberal capitalist globalization by former critics of Western capitalism, such as the leaders of the Isla-
mic Republic of Iran and the People’s Republic of China.
7. The chapter by Steger and James on populism and globalization (Ch. 8) resonates with my own per-
spective on the subject, but I agree with Cas Mudde that populism, as a ‘thin-centered ideology’, can
look different in varied contexts and can assume a left-wing as well as a right-wing complexion.
8. See https://www.awid.org/publications/beyond-investing-women-and-girls-mobilizing-resources;
Ford (2016); personal interview with Mahnaz Afkhami, founder/director of the Women’s Learning
Partnership (19 January 2020).
704 V. M. MOGHADAM

9. Karl Polanyi’s influential text was originally published in 1944. The 2001 edition includes contributions
by economist Joseph Stiglitz and political sociologist Fred Block.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor
Valentine M. Moghadam is Professor of Sociology and International Affairs, Northeastern University,
Boston, and co-author (with Shamiran Mako) of the forthcoming After the Arab Uprisings: Progress and
stagnation in the Middle East and North Africa (Cambridge, 2021).

ORCID
Valentine M. Moghadam http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1939-0606

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