The Limits to Globalization Theory: A Geographic ...courses.nus.edu.sg/course/geoywc/publication/EG_2002.pdf · The Limits to Globalization Theory: A Geographic Perspective on Global

The Limits to Globalization Theory:A Geographic Perspective on Global Economic Change*

Henry Wai-chung YeungDepartment of Geography, National University of Singapore,

1 Arts Link, Singapore [email protected]

Abstract: The nature of globalization and global economic change has been a subjectof immense academic research during the past two decades. The Janus face ofglobalization, however, continues to obfuscate our understanding of its complexprocesses and alleged geographic outcomes. In this article, I theorize on the indis-pensable role of geography in conceptualizing economic globalization. I argue thateconomic globalization is an inherently geographic phenomenon in relation to thetranscendence and switchability of geographic scales and discursive practices associospatial constructions. Given its complex spatiality, economic globalization ismore a phenomenon in need of explanations than a universal cause of empiricallyobservable outcomes in the so-called globalization theory. To illustrate my theoret-ical claims, I analyze the complex interrelationships between globalization processesand the recent Asian economic crisis. Some implications for future globalizationresearch in geography are offered.

Key words: social theory, globalization, geographic scales, discourses, Asian economiccrisis.

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14) declared in the headline of his columnin the Financial Times. The fact that busi-ness gurus like Kay write about globaliza-tion is nothing new; indeed, some geogra-phers (e.g., Taylor, Watts, and Johnson 2001;Cox forthcoming) have associated thedreaming up of “globalization” as the lexiconin the new century with such business gurus(as well as global financiers and internationalorganizations). What is particularly inter-esting in Kay’s column, however, is his unre-served defense of the importance of placeand location in globalization. Coming fromoutside geography as an academic discipline,his views on globalization provide significantlegitimacy for the claim that geographersmay have some useful things to say aboutglobalization. The missing link in Kay’spolemical acknowledgment of the impor-tance of geography in globalization, however,is what constitutes this importance. Does itrefer to geography as preexisting spatialconfigurations that simply do not witheraway in the midst of globalization processes?Or perhaps more significant, what is theexplanatory relationship between geography

“Geography is still important. Globali-zation has not diminished the economicsignificance of location”—John Kay (2001,

* This is a substantially revised version of anearlier paper, “Questioning the Uneven Terrainsof Economic Globalization,” presented at theConference on Geographies of Global EconomicChange, Graduate School of Geography, ClarkUniversity, Worcester, Mass., 12–14 October2001. I would like to thank David Angel, DickPeet, Yuko Aoyama, and other organizers of theconference for their kind invitation to attend theconference. I also received useful comments fromNeil Brenner, Neil Coe, Philip Kelly, Bae-GyoonPark, James Sidaway, Nigel Thrift, and the partic-ipants at the conference. Four anonymousreferees of Economic Geography offered detailedand relevant comments. In particular, I want tothank one referee who suggested JustinRosenberg’s recent provocative book, The Folliesof Globalisation Theory, from which I borrowedsubstantially in revising the paper. Finally, I grate-fully acknowledge the financial support (R-109-000-007-112) I received from the NationalUniversity of Singapore for my intellectual projecton globalization.

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and globalization? Is geography simply anoutcome or explanandum of globalizationthat poses as the explanans (the cause)? Howdoes geography matter in our explanationsof globalization? This last question points toa significant inversion of cause (geography)and outcome (globalization). My aim in thisarticle is to theorize how this inversionmay be possible and plausible. In their laud-able efforts to relate geography to global-ization, Taylor, Watts, and Johnson (2001,1) noted that “[w]hatever your own opinionmay be, any intellectual engagement withsocial change in the twenty first centuryhas to address this concept [globalization]seriously, and assess its capacity to explainthe world we currently inhabit” [italicsadded]. Assessing the capacity of global-ization (defined in the next section) as aconcept and a set of tendencies to explainthe geographic world is the primary focus ofthis article.

Rather than formulate a definitive frame-work on geography and globalization, thearticle seeks to open up a debate amonggeographers (and other social scientists) whoare interested in studies of global economicchange. It contributes to the current effortsin critical geography to move beyond “first-wave” analyses of globalization as ageographic phenomenon (see Amin andThrift 1994; Cox 1997a; Dicken 1998;Herod, Tuathail, and Roberts 1998; Olds etal. 1999; Coe and Yeung 2001; Peck andYeung forthcoming). Cognizant of the enor-mous amount of globalization studies, I didnot intend this article to be a literaturereview or even a critical assessment of theglobalization literature that is extremelydiverse and, perhaps, chaotic (for anexcellent recent review, see Guillén 2001).Instead, my aim is to develop a geographicperspective on globalization. I argue thatglobalization is an inherently geographicphenomenon, and therefore its allegedcausality and outcomes may be betterunderstood and accurately assessed fromthis perspective. Here, globalizationprocesses are conceived as spatial tenden-cies that are contingent on, and accountedfor by, certain stringent and necessary

requirements, some of which are geogra-phic, while others are political, economic,and/or technological.

Contrary to the efforts of whatFeatherstone and Lash (1995) called “thespatialization of social theory” that seek toinject globalization as the central thematicinto social theory and to elevate the explana-tory status of what may be termed “global-ization theory,” my theorization of theinherent spatiality of globalization attemptsto destabilize the hegemonic mobilizationof globalization as the universal explana-tion of empirical outcomes. My analyticalconcern is not to explain how globalizationis reshaping our lives—a key observation bysuch social/globalization theorists as Giddens(1990, 2000) and Waters (1995) who assumethat globalization is the cause of socialchange (cf. Hay and Marsh 2000). Rather,I am interested in what geographic precon-ditions enable globalization to take place intandem with this reshaping of social life—ageographic theory of globalization. In thisgeographic perspective, globalizationbecomes the phenomenon to be theorized,and spatiality is critical—but only in a nonex-clusive way. To avoid what Cox (1997b, 132)called “the overspatialization of social rela-tions,” I propose that the spatiality of glob-alization is an outcome of social construc-tions of space that are mediated throughhistorically specific political, economic,and technological forces. As a description ofspatial tendencies, globalization does nothave an independent existence outside theseforces and thus cannot be mobilized toexplain empirical outcomes in the absenceof these forces. My geographic perspectivetherefore does not commit the epistemo-logical fallacy of what Rosenberg (2000,14) termed “the systematic fetishising ofspatial categories” by turning globalizationtheory into a spatial theory of supraterrito-riality. This mistake of reifying space iscommonly found in globalization theory inwhich, as Rosenberg (2000, 39–40) furtherpointed out, “the impact of particularkinds of social relationship on the spatialorganisation of societies is instead imputedto the social impact of the geographical laws


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of location, distance and separation—andtheir transcendence via increased speed ofcommunication and transport.” As a theoryof globalization—rather than a globalizationtheory that purports to explain globaleconomic change—the proposed geographicperspective can make a potential contribu-tion to demystifying, or at least qualifying,the alleged explanatory power of globaliza-tion and space.

Starting with certain necessary, but notsufficient, geographic preconditions for glob-alization to take place, the proposed perspec-tive shows how these preconditions aresocially and discursively constructed in waysthat may explain empirical outcomes.Although globalization has been “short-circuited” in this theoretical linking ofgeographic preconditions and empiricaloutcomes, it remains an important phenom-enon to be described and explained. Inparticular, I examine two geographic precon-ditions: scalar switchability and discursivespatial practices. First, geographic scales,defined as the hierarchical ordering of space,mediate how globalization is linked to empir-ical outcomes. The political, economic,and social processes through whichgeographic scales are produced and made“switchable,” not globalization per se,directly shape how these empirical outcomesmay be explained. Second, the discursivedimension of globalization is legitimizedthrough the mobilization of spatialmetaphors and geographic imaginations that,in turn, shape social practices and empiricaloutcomes. In this discursive realm, global-ization becomes a discursive representationthat has little capacity to produce empiricaloutcomes. It is the politics of discursivemobilization that effectively shape empiricalevents. By showing how these geographicpreconditions enable the advancement ofglobalization, I suggest that geographers canavoid the pitfall of taking globalization as thecause of empirical outcomes, and focus fruit-fully on its geographic preconditions, whichmay, in turn, provide a more nuanced expla-nation to account for global economicchange. To illustrate my theoretical claims,I examine critically three causal explanations

of the 1997–98 Asian economic crisis.Although the crisis has been representedas a crisis of economic globalization, it isneither logical nor empirically correct toexplain it by conveniently labeling it asmerely an outcome of globalization.

Uncovering and Delimiting the“Globalization Problematic”

Anyone who is working on globalizationthese days immediately runs into a seem-ingly intractable problem of defining glob-alization. The definitions of globalizationin the literature unfortunately remain largelyelusive, vague, and, in Jessop’s (1999)view, “chaotic.” Geographers now generallyagree that globalization should be viewed asa set of mutually constitutive tendenciescomprising both material processes of trans-formation and countermovements, andcontested ideologies and discourses thatoperate across a variety of geographic scales.Globalization is certainly not akin to a mega-trend “out there” with which social scien-tists can objectively grapple. We cannotdefine globalization as concrete processes ofsocioeconomic and political restructuring ona global scale without underscoring the ideo-logical foundations on which these processesoperate. This definitional problem makesit incumbent upon us to present a specificand precise definition of globalization that,it is hoped, avoids the problem of “chaoticconcepts.”

In this article, I focus more specifically oneconomic globalization, defined as the rapidproliferation of cross-border production,trade, and investment activities spearheadedby global corporations and internationalfinancial institutions that facilitate the emer-gence of an increasingly integrated and inter-dependent global economy (see also Dicken1998). There are three specificities to thisdefinition of economic globalization. First,it includes only material processes ofeconomic transactions and linkages acrossborders and excludes other globalizationimperatives that may have economic conse-quences (e.g., migrations and civil society

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networks). Second, it encapsulates an actor-oriented approach to understandingeconomic globalization by focusing specifi-cally on the transformative role of globalcorporations and international financial insti-tutions. This specificity avoids the flawedstructural view of economic globalization assome sort of megatrend “out there.” It allowsus to bring back the Prince of Denmark(social actor) in the discussion of Hamlet(economic globalization). EchoingMittelman (2000, 2001), we need to iden-tify the “captors” and “captives” of global-ization. Third, it explicitly refers to the globalscale as critical in defining economic glob-alization. Whatever its constituents, contes-tations, and consequences at differentgeographic scales, economic globalization isnecessarily an integrating set of tendenciesthat operate on the global scale and inten-sify connections and flows across territorialborders and regions. This narrower defini-tion of economic globalization avoids thedangerous tendency to use globalization asa catchall term to describe all kinds ofcontemporary processes of change. Despiteits causal links with the contemporary capi-talist imperative, economic globalization iscertainly not just about the latest phase ofuneven geographic development, deterrito-rialization/reterritorialization, or crisis-induced capitalist restructuring. Economicglobalization indeed has much deeper histor-ical roots in the founding of the modernnation-state during the seventeenth century(Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, and Perraton1999; Hirst and Thompson 1999; Schwartz2000).

The transformative capacity of globaliza-tion processes has commonly been associ-ated with both material outcomes in suchspecific spatial units as localities, regions,and nation-states, and peculiar discursivepractices by social actors. This Janus faceof economic globalization, however, hascontinued to frustrate social science researchinto its causes and outcomes. We are oftentold by the popular literature and variouspoliticized groups that economic globaliza-tion is responsible for virtually every goodand bad thing or event that is happening in

the global economy today. Even in the so-called critical theory of globalization, suchan inversion of cause and outcome can bereadily found. For example, Scholte (1996,53) argued that “[t]o date, globalization hasoften perpetuated poverty, widened mate-rial inequalities, increased ecological degra-dation, sustained militarism, fragmentedcommunities, marginalized subordinatedgroups, fed intolerance and deepened crisesof democracy.” Instead of being an outcomedriven and explained by a multitude of inter-related processes and necessary precondi-tions, economic globalization has becomeconceptualized in mainstream economicthinking and radical political debates as theuniversal cause. In his provocative book TheFollies of Globalisation Theory, Rosenberg(2000, 2–3) offered a compelling critique ofthe use of globalization as the universalexplanation by social/globalization theorists:

The term “globalisation,” after all, is at firstsight merely a descriptive category, denotingeither the geographical extension of socialprocesses or possibly, as in Giddens’ defini-tion, “the intensification of worldwide socialrelations” . . . And the globalisation theoristsclearly intend something more than this. Byasserting that the emergence of a single globalspace as the arena of social action increasinglyoutweighs in its consequences other kinds ofcausality which have traditionally been invokedto explain social phenomena; by extrapo-lating the geographical dimension of thisprocess into an alternative, spatio-temporalproblematic for social science; and finally, bypitting this new problematic not simply againstcompeting perspectives in the contemporarysocial sciences, but also against the classicalfoundations of modern social thought as awhole—in all these ways, they have raised theirsights beyond any purely descriptive role forthe concept.

On the one hand, globalization has beennaturalized as the inevitable pathway toeconomic prosperity and success. If anational economy is not performing well, itmust be because the economy is not having“enough” economic globalization. On theother hand, antiglobalization groups—asmanifested in the activism of those demon-



strating in Seattle and Genoa—vieweconomic globalization as the cause of allkinds of socioeconomic malaises. Whateverone’s political position, the presence orabsence of economic globalization has seem-ingly been conceived as a political “fix” toresolve the problems of economic stagna-tion, technological backwardness, and under-development. This “globalization fix” clearlyhas both material and discursive conse-quences for all its participants—people,firms, state authorities and nonstate insti-tutions, international organizations, and soon. It also underscores the central impor-tance of understanding whether globaliza-tion should be the universal explanation inthe first case.

The Geographic Foundations ofEconomic Globalization

My geographic perspective begins byquestioning the common assumption ofeconomic globalization as a causal factor thathas certain structural coherence and prop-erties to cause empirically observableoutcomes (see also Jessop 1999). Thisassumption is evident in such statementsas “economic globalization leads to deep-ening income inequality and unemploy-ment.” Similarly, debates on the “winners”and “losers” of economic globalizationhave also demonized globalization as a myth-ical juggernaut that is powerful enough tocause all sorts of socioeconomic miseries andpolitical problems (Kapstein 2000). Suchtypical and uncritical acceptance of global-ization as causally efficacious is found inKaplinsky’s (2001, 46; italics added) argu-ment that “the increasing globalization offactor and financial markets leads to growinginequality and poverty, both in developingand industrialized countries.” For economicglobalization to be causally efficacious,however, it must contain some inherentconstituents that exist in necessary relationwith empirically observable outcomes. Morespecifically, the intrinsic spatiality ofeconomic globalization sets some necessary,but not sufficient, preconditions for it to

effect empirical changes and outcomes. Todefine the spatiality of economic globaliza-tion, we have to look into specific geographicfoundations that presuppose and legitimizeeconomic globalization: the transcendenceand switchability of geographic scales anddiscursive practices as sociospatial construc-tions. I argue that these geographic precon-ditions enable economic globalization tooccur in the first place. When coupledwith other substantive political-economicforces, these geographic preconditions—noteconomic globalization per se—help toexplain empirical consequences andoutcomes. This geographic perspective oneconomic globalization thus does not neces-sarily force us to make a false choice betweengeography and other political-economicfactors as the preconditions of economicglobalization. Extending the politicaleconomy tradition in economic geography,it makes a more explicit link betweengeography and globalization by synthesizingrecent thinking in human geography aboutgeographic scales and discursive represen-tations in understanding global economicchange.

Economic Globalization as theTranscendence of Geographic Scales

If economic globalization is a set ofprocesses and practices that transcend ourcommonly accepted nesting of geographicscales, one necessary precondition to enableeconomic globalization to take place is whatmay be termed the “switchability” ofgeographic scales. The issue of geogra-phies of scales has received a great deal ofattention in the recent geographic literature(Brenner 1999, 2001; Kelly 1999; Marston2000; Herod and Wright 2002a). Whilemany of these geographic interpretationshave clarified the status of overlapping scalargeographies and the reconfiguring of terri-torial units in understanding globalization,few have interrogated and ventured into theontological status of geographic scales and,therefore, fundamentally questioned thespatiality of globalization. As Brenner (2001,609) argued, we have to pay attention to the



specific properties of geographic scales as“the hierarchization of spaces in relation toone another which is the very essence oftheir scalar ordering/differentiation or‘rescaling.’” In this sense, economic global-ization represents a significant “scalarproblem” because its very processes areconstituted by the rescaling of multipleand overlapping geographic scales thatfundamentally challenges the preexistinghierarchy of geographic spaces and territo-riality. Facilitated by the enhanced spatialconnectivity across the globe, events atdifferent geographic scales (e.g., the nationaland the local scales) are often connected viaglobalization tendencies. Economic global-ization is therefore associated with suchrescaling effects as global localization, or“glocalization” (Swyngedouw 1992, 1997)and changing urban/regional governance(MacLeod and Goodwin 1999). Thisphenomenon of scalar connectivity trans-forms our interrogation of economic glob-alization from simply an analytical problemof understanding globalization as a horizontalspatial reach—a common notion in global-ization theory—to a “scalar problem” inwhich it is impossible to understandeconomic globalization without addressingwhat enables it to transcend differentgeographic scales and, in the process, toreconstitute and reconfigure relationsbetween these scales.

In particular, the global scale has para-doxically been undertheorized in recenttheoretical work on the (local and national)politics of scale and the rescaling of (urbanand supranational) politics. This is what Shaw(2000, 14) alluded to as “the poverty of theunderstanding of the global in most global-ization debates.” We still do not knowenough about the transformation of scalesto an ontological elevation of the global scale.As Kelly (1999, 386) argued, ignoring theglobal scale effectively places one in anawkward position that defers to “theorthodox way in which it is representedand the neoliberal policy conclusions thatare drawn.” While it can be discursivelyconstructed through political-economic

projects oriented toward other scales(discussed later), I argue that the global scalehas an independent material existencebeyond mere social construction. Suchnatural phenomena as climatic change andsea-level fluctuations, for example, are globalin their scale of occurrence, impact, andimagination (cf. Cosgrove 1994; Albrow1996; Demeritt 2001). The global space iswhat Lefebvre (1991, 422) referred to as “thefurthest edge of the possible,” “the spaceof the human species,” and “the social foun-dation of a transformed everyday life opento myriad possibilities.” It is the ultimatespace in which all possibilities for humanemancipation lie, and, according to Shaw(2000, 11–12), a common worldwideconsciousness of human society as the largestconstitutive framework of all social relationsemerges.

The ontological existence of the globalscale implies that contemporary economicglobalization is an outcome of, and can beexplained by, the historical and socialprocesses in the preglobalization period thatsubsequently emerged and operate on aglobal scale under certain necessary condi-tions. As I explain later, the switchability ofgeographic scales provides one such neces-sary precondition for economic globalizationto take place. For example, industrializationin the preglobalization period occurred inspecific territorial formations, such asEngland. But its subsequent impact on tech-nological change and political empowermentgreatly facilitated the transcendence ofgeographic scales by capital in such a way asto produce globalization tendencies in thecontemporary period. The ontological exis-tence of the global scale also means thatcontra the pro- and antiglobalizationrhetoric, the outcomes and consequencesassociated with economic globalizationcannot be determined a priori, but onlyempirically and contingently. Pointing to theanalytical indeterminacy of globalizationtheory, Albrow (1996, 91–2) noted that“[t]here is no inherent logic to globaliza-tion which suggests that a particular outcomenecessarily will prevail.” We can assess their



social consequences only in relation to thespecific places and contexts in which thesetendencies manifest and unfold (Amin andThrift 1997; Dicken, Peck, and Tickell 1997).

How, then, does the ontological existenceof the global scale matter, and how does itrelate to the switchability of geographicscales? In this article, geographic scales aretheorized as having a significant influenceon the processes of economic globalizationif these scales possess properties of switch-ability—defined as the ease in which partic-ular material processes and social practicescan be constituted or reconstituted in rela-tion to different configurations of geographicscales. These scales are not spatial solu-tions pregiven at the ontological level suchthat they can be “crossed over by socialactors” and “produced” by globalizationtendencies; they are rather contestedthrough social struggles and political means.The relational switching process of global-ization may indeed reconstitute or recon-struct these scales in such ways that newconfigurations of scales occur. In this sense,social actors who drive economic globaliza-tion do not merely switch from one scale toanother. Rather, as Herod and Wright(2002b, 13; italics omitted) argued, they actu-ally “constitute scale through their socialpraxis.” Thus, their action—not economicglobalization—accounts for empiricaloutcomes.

Scalar switchability is different fromspatial switching in that the latter refers onlyto the substitutability of processes within thesame geographic scales (e.g., from one loca-tion to another) rather than betweendifferent geographic scales (e.g., from thenational scale to the supranational and thelocal and regional scales). Scalar switcha-bility implies that such economic processesas global production networks can beswitched from the global scale in its strategicconceptualization to the regional or localscale in its operationalization. There is acontinuous tension in these global produc-tion networks between capital’s mobilityon a global scale and its necessary spatialfixity at the local or another scale (Harvey

1982, 1996; Henderson et al. forthcoming).Different degrees of scalar switchability canbe attributed to human imperatives (e.g.,technological changes and political move-ments) and social constructions (e.g.,geographic imagination and discursive prac-tices). Scalar switchability, however, variescontingently, depending on specific global-ization processes such that geographic scalesmay be much more switchable in someprocesses (e.g., global capital flows) andmuch less switchable in others (e.g., inter-national diplomacy and antiterrorism activ-ities). The operationalization of scalar switch-ability in globalization and its allegedoutcomes thus becomes an empirical ques-tion.

The capacity for geographic scales to beswitchable in relation to globalizationprocesses explains the propensity foreconomic globalization—as a set of spatialtendencies—to occur in two ways. First, thelack of fixed ontological status among suchgeographic scales as homes, localities, andregions indicates that these scales can be(re)constituted, (re)structured, and(re)combined through—not by—variousglobalization processes. Such processes asinvestment flows and cultural diffusion can“switch” up, down, or simultaneously up anddown these different geographic scales insearch of profits and other benefits for actorsin economic globalization (e.g., business andpolitical elites). In this sense, an explanationof the switchability of such sociallyconstructed geographic scales helps toexplain globalization processes becausethis switchability enables globalizationprocesses to transcend nested territories andoverlapping scales and to reorganize theminto perhaps different scalar geographies.Scalar switchability is, however, a neces-sary but not a sufficient geographic precon-dition for economic globalization to takeplace. Other contingent factors matter aswell. It is intuitively possible to think of coun-terexamples that globalization tendenciesare reinforced because it is impossible forthese tendencies to switch “out of” the globalscale (e.g., economies of scale attainable only



on a global scale). Alternatively, downwardscalar switchability may enhance the impor-tance of the local scale relative to globalprocesses, a case in which scalar switcha-bility weakens, rather than strengthens, glob-alization tendencies.1

Second, economic globalization, at leastin the version defined here, is bothconstrained and enabled by the fixed andnonswitchable ontological existence of theglobal scale. Economic globalization has itsscalar limits because the Earth places anupper limit on the spatial reach of economicglobalization that should be understood asa spatial-temporal tendency of becoming,not an end-state being or a finality (Dicken,Peck, and Tickell 1997; Yeung 1998). Byeffectively delimiting the spatiality ofeconomic globalization, the global scale setsa precondition on how far economic glob-alization can go—as far as the Earth can bestretched. Quite literally, economic global-ization cannot proceed beyond the globalscale; if it did, it would no longer be deemedglobalization. There are also other possiblecontingent scenarios that may limit scalarswitchability. For example, a nationalgovernment may decide to control the flowof capital and thereby effectively disenablethe scalar switchability of that country atdifferent subnational scales (local, regional,and national). For example, financial glob-alization owes much to the efforts by nationalgovernments to grant freedom to marketactors through liberalization initiatives andnot to implement more effective controls onfinancial movements (Martin 1994;Helleiner 1995; Watson 2001). How, then,do these actors and institutions create condi-tions that are conducive for economicglobalization to take place? What kind ofdiscursive practices do they engage to ensuresuccessfully sociospatial constructions ofeconomic globalization?

Economic Globalization as DiscursiveSpatial Practices

The spatiality of economic globalizationis more than just about exploiting preex-isting spatial differences and switchingamong different, but overlapping,geographic scales. Economic globalizationhas a significant discursive dimension aswell, which is manifested in specificsocial-spatial constructions, or whatLefebvre (1991, 33) called “representationsof space, which are tied to the relations ofproduction and to the ‘order’ which thoserelations impose, and hence to knowledge,to signs, to codes, and to ‘frontal’ relations.”Globalization discourses, as we have nowcome to know, are highly motivated byeconomic gains and political legitimacywithout which economic globalization, asa set of material tendencies, would have lostits appeal to different groups of social actors.Capable of producing significant materialeffects, these discourses and their coun-terdiscourses are fundamental in improvingthe political and social acceptance ofeconomic globalization to both the politicalRight and the political Left. As JacquesDerrida (quoted in Shaw 2000, 4) noted inresponse to questions about globalization asa political phenomenon, “today it ’s aconfused concept and it’s the screen for anumber of non-concepts and sometimesof political tricks and political strategies. . . .[And] as you know, using this word, this keyword, allows a number of political appro-priations—in the name of the free marketfor instance.” Watson (2001, 86) also arguedthat “[g]overnments need only act on theperception of the structural constraintsimposed by globalising tendencies inorder to turn the globalisation hypothesisinto a self-fulfilling prophecy. At no stagedoes globalisation have to come completewith an actual logic of political necessity forthe effects of such a logic to becomeapparent.”

From a geographic perspective, thisdiscursive dimension of globalization isspatially construed in the sense that manyglobalization discourses mobilize spatial


1 I thank one anonymous referee for this impor-tant qualification of my argument.


metaphors to legitimize and justify the intru-sive nature of globalization. In this sense, wecan analyze what may be termed “geogra-phies of discursive practices.” Spatialmetaphors are developed from ourgeographic imaginations of the materialworld to “make sense” of this changingworld. Smith (1991, 168) pointed out that“metaphorical uses of space inevitablyrefer to material space; the one isconstructed from within the other.” Spatialmetaphors are grounded in specific onto-logical conceptions of scalar geographies (thehierarchical separation of the global scale asopposed to the local scale) and universalhomogeneity (applicability in all temporaland geographic contexts). Grounded incertain imaginative geographies, economicglobalization is presented in these spatialmetaphors as if it corresponds to the realmaterial world in which we live. Spatialmetaphors serve as important hermeneu-tical devices for the social-spatial construc-tions of globalization tendencies withoutwhich globalization would face a crisis oflegitimation. Spatial metaphors advocatedin globalization discourses thus provideanother necessary, but not sufficient,geographic precondition for globalization totake place. Material geographies facilitatethe construction and mobilization of spatialmetaphors that, in turn, legitimize global-ization tendencies. Critically analyzing theevolution of the local/global as a spatial imag-inary in globalization theory, Cox (forth-coming, 17) contended that “it is an abstrac-tion from more complex socio-spatialrelations; a construction, therefore, whichsimplifies, silences and can be turned touseful ideological effect. Spatial imaginaries,like the local/global, are always constructedfrom the standpoint of particular social posi-tions, if not always in a very self-consciousmanner.”

This section seeks to unravel the mean-ings of these spatial metaphors and toshow how they shape the practices ofsocial actors. As Barnes (1996, 157) argued,“[t]o then demonstrate that the metaphor’smeaning is in its use, we must in additionshow that it allows people to do things that

they could never have done before.” Onegood example is Ohmae’s (1990) represen-tation of the “borderless world” that has beenappropriated by the international businesscommunities as if it were a reality (see alsothe “rape” script of globalization analyzed inGibson-Graham 1996, Chap. 6). Protagonistsof the metaphor would like to see thenegation of all territorial boundaries in orderto enhance capital’s global reach. Manyglobal corporations subscribe to this ideaof the “borderless world” and take a “oneworld” view in their strategic intent andmanagement. What these economic actorshave obviously forgotten is the representa-tional nature and underlying sociospatialrelations that underscore the (re)productionof this spatial metaphor (Miyoshi 1993;Yeung 1998).

The literature on globalization commonlymobilizes three spatial metaphors to repre-sent economic globalization in sociospatialterms. First, all sorts of champions and oppo-nents have constructed economic globaliza-tion discursively as an external force thatimpinges on specific scalar geographies (e.g.,localities). This ontological separation ofeconomic globalization as “out there” andplaces as “in here” is problematical. As Amin(2001, 6273) argued, this kind of metaphor-ical representation of economic globaliza-tion implies that “relations within localitiesare cast as good and meaningful, andcontrasted to bad and totalizing external rela-tions [at the global scale]” (see also Dirlik1999; Cox forthcoming). The missing link inthis problematical ontological separationbetween local (internal) and global (external)geographies is the necessary and integralrelations between the local scale and theglobal scale (and other scales in between).Economic globalization is not an externalforce that is crushing self-contained locali-ties and territories. Instead, these localitieshave always been socially constructed in rela-tion to the global scale. Economic global-ization is as internal to these localities as thelocalities are integral in the development andevolution of globalization processes. Thisontological inquiry into the discursive repre-sentation of economic globalization as an



external force has important implications foran understanding of its spatiality. It allowsus to understand better the discursive strate-gies deployed by proponents of economicglobalization, who would argue that weshould accept economic globalization whole-heartedly simply because everyone “outthere” has been involved in and is benefitingfrom it. We can also appreciate the prob-lematic representation of economic global-ization by its dissents, who would argue thatwithout economic globalization, the goodlife in localities will return or remainintact. In either case, economic globaliza-tion is discursively constructed as a spatiallyexternal force that causes all kinds of pros-perity and/or misery.

Second, economic globalization has beenput forward in political campaigns and offi-cial speeches as natural and inevitable. Thisis typically a TINA argument (“There IsNo Alternative”), as evident in earlierdebates about market liberalization in the1980s. For example, Leyshon (1997, 143)stated that “[m]ost of the globalizationdiscourses which emerge from withinpolitical communities tend to be far moresimplistic in their general tenor, if not evan-gelical in tone, and display a burning faithin the ‘natural’ benevolence and ‘obvious’utility of markets.” In this metaphoricalconstruction, economic globalization is“naturalized” as a historical inevitability,which is clearly far from being true. As Iargued earlier, economic globalization is notinevitable even if geographic scales areperfectly switchable; there are othernecessary stringent conditions for global-ization to take place. The inevitability ofeconomic globalization remains a contingentissue. For example, economic globalizationmay not take place if we can minimizeuneven development and disenable scalarswitchability. It is thus reversible and can bestopped. Mittelman (2001, 7) contended that“if globalization is a contested and politicalphenomenon, then it cannot have a prede-termined outcome. A political agenda ofinevitability overlooks the fact that global-ization was made by humans, and, if so,can be unmade or remade by humankind”

(see also Gibson-Graham 1996; Petras 1999;Prakash 2001). In The End of Globalization,James (2001) showed how an earlier waveof globalization tendencies was disrupted bypopular resentment against the hypermo-bility of capital flows, trade, and internationalmigration during the Great Depression.

Third, economic globalization has beenchampioned in the popular media and busi-ness literature as universal (e.g., in “the endof history” debate stimulated by Fukuyama1992) and, by implication, beneficial tohumankind globally. Again, this sociospatialconstruction of the universality of economicglobalization overlooks its equally possiblespatial logic of exploitation and uncertainty(Harvey 1982; Smith 1991; Yeung 1998).Although economic globalization, as a set oftendencies, has potential for planetary reach,its universality cannot be guaranteed on twocounts. First, economic globalizationrequires the exploitation of spatial differ-ences in different parameters, ranging fromwages and labor productivity to the avail-ability of venture capital and state regula-tion. While beneficial to the drivers ofeconomic globalization (e.g., transnationalcorporations), this spatial exploitation mayoutstrip the short-term advantages thateconomic globalization brings to specificplaces (as in the “footloose capital” argu-ment; see Watson 2001). Second, althoughthe geographic precondition of scalar switch-ability allows different localities/regions tobe “plugged” into the global economy inCastells’ (1996) sense, it can significantlyincrease the vulnerability of these locali-ties/regions to scalar switching processes thatmay be more harmful than beneficial (e.g.,the sudden valorization of domestic produc-tive capital into other forms of financialcapital at different geographic scales, as inthe case of the Asian economic crisisdiscussed next). Put in this perspective,economic globalization is neither alwaysuniversal nor necessarily beneficial. It clearlydepends on preexisting geographic founda-tions of particular globalization tendenciesand their historically contingent realizationthrough various political, economic, andsocial arrangements.



A Crisis of Globalization?Interpreting the AsianEconomic Crisis

If we are able to determine what thespatiality of economic globalization isreally about, we will be in a good position tobegin analyzing and assessing the explana-tory capacity of globalization theory in termsof its alleged causes and outcomes. The1997–98 Asian economic crisis (henceforth“the crisis”) is a highly relevant concreteexample that can shed light on the allegedcausality of economic globalization for tworeasons. First, the overwhelming amount ofcompeting literature published on the crisisdemonstrates a plethora of different ways ofinterpreting the crisis as an outcome ofeconomic globalization. The crisis may bepossibly one of the rare large-scalephenomena of global economic change inrecent decades that has been associated soclosely with economic globalization per se(see also Kelly and Olds 1999). In particular,the popular media and many people inAsia have become “globalization critics” bymisrepresenting the crisis as an outcome ofthe globalization of Asian economies. Thecrisis also signifies the breakdown of “thelast bastion of successful development in theworld economy, following the ‘lost decadefor development’ which has befallen a majorpart of the underdeveloped world sincethe 1980s” (Lo 1999, 18). Second, thecrisis has been highly politicized to the extentthat it is at least partially responsible forthe downfall of several presidents in Asiancountries (e.g., Suharto in Indonesia andKim Young-Sam in South Korea). Thediscursive constructions of the crisis bydifferent actors/elites with different moti-vations and their related strategies of nego-tiation may offer important insights into thesociospatial constructions of economic glob-alization.

In the following two sections, I firstsummarize the literature by presenting theAsian economic crisis as a crisis of economicglobalization through linking concreteoutcomes to what some observers allude toas globalization tendencies. In this way, I

show how economic globalization has beenconceived as the cause and the crisis as theoutcome, particularly in some highly ideo-logical and simplistic interpretations of thecrisis. I then question the logic and evidenceof explaining the crisis as the outcome ofeconomic globalization. I elaborate on ageographic perspective that examines therelationship between the crisis and thespatiality of economic globalization, theimpact of which is contingent on differen-tiated sociospatial structures of Asia and theglobal economy. This argument can beunderstood in two parts. First, the scalarswitchability of capital allows national andlocal economies of Asia to be differentiallyincorporated into the global economy. Inthis process, generally known as global finan-cial integration, global capital switches notonly within scales (spatial substitution), butalso between scales (scalar switchability).Whereas spatial substitution greatly increasesthe crisis tendency of the host Asianeconomies through greater ease of globalcapital inflows and outflows, scalar switcha-bility works quite differently. By connectinglocal and/or national capital to global flowsof capital, scalar switchability allowsunprecedented global exports of capital fromlocal and national economies in Asia that, inturn, increase these economies’ vulnerabilityto global economic downturns. Second,the impact of this increasing crisis tendencyclearly varies among Asian economies,depending on their differential institutionalfabric and economic structures that explainthe varying degrees of scalar switchability oftheir capital outflows in the first place (Yeung2000a; 2000b). Economic globalization perse, understood here in terms of free flowsof global capital across borders, does notprovide a convincing explanation for thecrisis as its outcome.

This geographic interpretation of the crisisoffers a more nuanced analysis of thecomplex interrelationships betweeneconomic globalization and the crisis thathave escaped the attention of most analystsof the crisis. I do not aim to refute alterna-tive interpretations of the crisis because thetask involves a detailed empirical analysis of



the complex causes and effects of the crisisthat clearly go beyond the limits of thisarticle. Whatever the specific causes andeffects of the crisis, this brief excursioninto its spatiality should be considered acomplementary effort to demystify the hege-monic discourse of globalization theory inwhich economic globalization is convenientlyposed as the key explanation of the crisis.The following analysis should also not beconsidered as a stand-alone empiricalanalysis of what has caused the crisis. Indeed,it is intended to shed light on the generalarguments of this article that economic glob-alization does not have enough analyticalcapacity to explain many empirically observ-able outcomes.

Existing Explanations of the AsianEconomic Crisis

There is now no shortage of explana-tions of why the 1997–98 Asian economiccrisis occurred. In fact, an entire cottageindustry has been established to produce allsorts of heavily contested interpretations ofthe crisis (Ariff and Khalid 2000; Chang,Palma, and Whittaker 2001). Nevertheless,three explanations stand out for scrutiny: (1)neoliberal arguments of moral hazard; (2)the political economy of globalization; and,more specifically, (3) the Marxist perspec-tive. It is interesting that some of these expla-nations indirectly hinge on particulargeographic scales, which tend to shape theirdifferent analytical foci that contribute totheir “incommensurability” in both ideo-logical and empirical terms. As an expect-edly dominant discourse, the leitmotiv of theneoliberal literature is that the crisis can belargely explained by such internal factorsas crony capitalism and excessive state inter-vention (infamously known as the problemof “moral hazard”) in Asian countriesseverely hit by the crisis. The effective analyt-ical focus on the national scale allows theneoliberals to point their fingers at the failureof national governance, not economicglobalization, as the key explanation of thecrisis. Aligning themselves with prominenteconomists from the United States (e.g.,

Krugman 1998), neoliberal thinkers main-tain that there is nothing fundamentallywrong with economic globalization per se;in fact, they view it as a positive influenceon economic development. Instead, theyblame individual Asian economies that didnot put their houses in order. The fallingexports from Asia and the large trade deficits,the pegging of domestic currencies to theU.S. dollar, and the moral hazard of thestate’s bailing out crony businesses duringthe precrisis period are all relevant variablesfor explaining the crisis. Once the crisisbegan—particularly when massive outflowsof portfolio capital occurred in late 1996 andearly 1997, these neoliberals note that it hada strong contagious effect that spread thefinancial crisis from a few countries to thereal economy in all the countries of Asia(Radelet and Sachs 1998). Productive activ-ities were disrupted because of liquidityproblems, and social contracts of securedemployment were broken. Both effectsoccurred in combination in some Asiancountries and led to dramatic political insta-bility and other related outcomes. The inter-vention by the International Monetary Fund(IMF) from a distance in late 1997 and early1998 did not help much either. In fact,Radelet and Sachs (1998) strongly arguedthat IMF intervention worsened the crisisby increasing financial panics and scaringaway potential investors and depositors ofdomestic banks.

Critics of this neoliberal explanation,however, adopt a political economy approachand question why the crisis did not occurearlier when the problem of “moral hazard”and state intervention in the economic devel-opment of Asian economies was even morepronounced (given the relatively recentliberalization efforts of most Asianeconomies). This timing issue shows that thecrisis has more to do with the advent ofeconomic globalization associated with theso-called Washington consensus and finan-cial liberalization (Wade and Veneroso 1998;Hamilton 1999; Henderson 1999; Chang2000). Put another way, the Asian economiccrisis represents a crisis of economic glob-alization that serves as a convenient platform



for Anglo-American capitalism to takeover—some may even say “colonize”—theburgeoning Asian economies. Domesticelites in many Asian economies have beenquick to jump on this “globalization-bashing”bandwagon to denounce the crisis as a mirrorimage of internal governance problemsand to ignore the argument that is anoutcome of ruthless economic globalization(see Higgott 1998; Mathews 1998; Kelly2001). By pitching their explanation of thecrisis at the global scale, these antiglobal-ization critics blame economic globalizationfor all the social-economic problems in Asiaand conveniently overlook the governanceproblems that surfaced at the nationalscale in most crisis-stricken Asian economies.

Amid these conflicting perspectives onthe origin of the Asian economic crisis—justlike the earlier round of explanations for the“East Asian miracle” (see World Bank 1993;Wade 1992; 1996), there is a third explana-tion that is based on a much more radicalMarxist perspective. Drawing upon theMarxist theory of uneven development andcapitalist crises to a varying degree, scholarsin this admittedly less-developed literatureargue that the crisis is not simply a finan-cial crisis (Webber 2001) but, rather, reflectsconditions in the real economy. Glassman(2001), for example, identified the crisismore generally as an economic crisis thatinvolves all circuits of the economy, linkingdomestic and international capitalist accu-mulation processes, and stemming, in part,from contradictions and struggles over theappropriation of the surplus and valorizationof (financial) capital. The crisis is explainedin terms of neither internal governance prob-lems nor economic globalization as anexternal shock. It is seen as an outcome ofa much deeper capitalist logic and contra-dictions in accumulation strategies. In short,it reflects a serious breakdown in the capi-talist regime of accumulation (Lo 1999;Hart-Landsberg and Burkett 2001; Sum2001). The lack of a clear analytical focus ona particular geographic scale in this radicalinterpretation of the crisis, however,contributes to its relative ambivalencetoward the nature of economic globalization

as the cause of the crisis. By focusing on thedeeper capitalist structures and their crisistendencies, the radical perspective cannotbe used effectively to debunk the myth ofeconomic globalization as the cause of thecrisis.

Toward a Geographic Perspective onthe Asian Economic Crisis

Questioning these contradictory andseemingly more-or-less convincing explana-tions of the Asian economic crisis points tothe importance of a particular mix ofgeographic scales in determining the validityof their arguments and in ascertaining therole of economic globalization as the keyexplanation of the crisis. How, then, does ageographic perspective inform us aboutthe causes of the Asian economic crisis andits relation to globalization processes? As Ihave argued elsewhere (Kelly, Olds, andYeung 2001, viii–ix), this geographic perspec-tive is essential “not because geographersbring any specific technical or analytical skillsto the debate, but rather because ageographical sensitivity to space and scale isneeded to capture the complexity of eventsthat are too easily explained through dogma.”In particular, a geographic perspective onthe crisis views it not as an outcome of glob-alization, but as a contingent developmentwithin the spatial logic of economic global-ization itself. This perspective emphasizesthe social construction of geographic scalesand scalar switchability that offer useful theo-retical lenses to examine the spatiality of thecrisis and its discursive representations. Myaim is not to deny the empirical relevanceof the various factors reviewed earlier (e.g.,rapid inflows/outflows of capital, crony capi-talism, and the role of the IMF). Instead, itis to show how the politics of producinggeographic scales and the discursive repre-sentations of the crisis in various Asianeconomies, not economic globalization perse, may have contributed to the unfoldingof the crisis. In fact, economic globaliza-tion has been constructed in these discur-sive representations as a smokescreen to



cover up the more direct causes of the crisisput forward in the literature.

Prior to the crisis, political elites in severalAsian economies sought to legitimize theirglobalization efforts through the scalarproduction of an imaginary global economyas “out there.” In this imagination, whatprevails on the global scale is seen as bene-ficial to the domestic national economy. Thisdiscursive construction of the global-nationalscalar geographies, in which nationaleconomies in Asia were increasingly seen assignificant players in the global economy,was used to justify the political legitimacy ofpowerful elites and their developmental poli-cies. Geographic scales matter here becausewithout relegating economic processes atthe local and national scales to events atthe global scale, these domestic politicalelites would have found it difficult to over-come economic nationalism that prevailedduring most of the post–World War II andpostcolonial period. Scalar geographies wereconstructed to convince social and economicactors that participation in the globaleconomy would necessarily enhance theeconomic fortunes of the nationaleconomies. Massive liberalization and dereg-ulation at the national scale further allowed“scalar switchability” through whichlocal/national capital began to globalize itselfand, in the process, massive foreign debtswere accumulated that were highly vulner-able to major currency fluctuations. Insofaras the crisis was set in motion, economicglobalization—once constructed discursivelyas beneficial to national economies—wasblamed for the socioeconomic malaise inthese national economies. The only differ-ence was that economic globalization wasnow discursively constructed as the cause ofthe crisis, which presumably started with toomuch of a national drive toward economicglobalization in the first place. Viewed in thisperspective, economic globalization certainlycannot be accepted as the cause of the crisis;it is, indeed, an integral part of the crisis thatremains to be explained by a combinationof its geographic preconditions and othercontingent political-economic and socialfactors.

South Korea may be used as an exampleto illustrate my arguments. Some scholarshave argued that one specific cause of thecrisis in South Korea was its untimely andwholesale adoption of financial liberalizationand capital account convertibility in the early1990s (though market liberalization beganas early as the 1980s). This decision epito-mized the political transformation in SouthKorea from state-driven developmentalismup to the late 1980s (Amsden 1989, 2001)to neoliberal developmentalism in the 1990s(Y.T. Kim 1999; Hart-Landsberg andBurkett 2001). Under the Kim Young-Samregime, South Korea was admitted into theOrganization for Economic Cooperation andDevelopment in 1996 and, to qualify for thisentrance, it had to embrace the principleof free capital flows. To justify this liberal-ization, the Kim administration discur-sively constructed the pressing need forSouth Korea to globalize itself to be quali-fied as having reached the status of adeveloped country. In his second year inoffice in 1994, Kim announced thatsegyehwa, or globalization, was his admin-istration’s main priority (Ungson, Steers, andPark 1997; S. S. Kim 2000). Haggard andMo (2000, 204) argued that “[i]n the nameof globalization, the Korean governmenteliminated many restrictions on the move-ment of capital, allowing Korean banks andfirms to borrow from abroad and interna-tional investors to invest in Korean assets.”South Korea’s major business conglomer-ates, known as the chaebols, were encour-aged to globalize their operations into Asia,Europe, and North America. The 1990s alsowitnessed the growing autonomous andstructural power of these chaebols that wereable to pressure the state to provide neolib-eral business environments in which bigbusinesses could prosper. As Y. T. Kim(1999) and Hart-Landsberg and Burkett(2001) contended, this growing institutionalcapacity and economic power of the Koreanchaebols by the early 1990s began to under-mine the “embedded autonomy” betweenthe state and big businesses. Through theirdirect access to the global financial markets,these conglomerates took out excessive



short-term loans denominated in foreigncurrencies to finance their long-term invest-ment projects. In 1997, for example, morethan 90 percent of Korea’s external debt ofU.S.$120 billion was in the private sector,and nearly two-thirds was short term (Y. T.Kim 1999, 453). The rest of the story is well-known now and will not be repeated here(Chang 1998, 2000; D.-C. Kim and Suh1998; Haggard and Mo 2000).

During the crisis, the scalar constructionof “Asia” in the media and other publicdomains might also have had a significantimpact on material flows that, in turn, aggra-vated the damage and contagion of the crisis.Clark and Wojcik (2001), for example, foundthat senior analysts for the Financial Timesand, by inference, the City of London, wereparticularly pessimistic about the crisis overa longer period than were those on WallStreet—an indication of the differentinterpretations of the crisis even within the“twin centers” of global capitalism. The studypointed to the domination of the City ofLondon’s interpretation of the crisis as herdbehavior based on homogenous expectations(see also Amin and Thrift 1992; Sidaway andBryson 2002). Although it focused on therole of information and uncertainty in globalfinancial markets, Clark and Wojcik’s (2001,124) analysis showed that “the City ofLondon was dominated by pessimistic expec-tations for much of the Asian crisis 1997–98.”The tendency for the global media tospeak of an “Asian” economic crisis delim-ited the scalar—read regional—extent of theevents and their causes in a fundamentally“space-blind” manner. The representationof the crisis as pan-Asian implies that theproblem really lies within Asia, not in thewider global financial system. This biasedconstruction of the crisis as a regional crisis,when it actually had seriously affected onlythree Asian national economies (Indonesia,South Korea, and Thailand; see Henderson1999; Sum 2001), led to significant capitaloutflows from virtually all the Asianeconomies. This phenomenon was para-doxically termed “contagion effects,” on theassumption that national economies in Asiawere homogenous and undifferentiated in

their “resistance” to the effects. With fewexceptions (e.g., Hong Kong and China), allAsian currencies were dragged down in late1997 and early 1998 by the massive sellingbehavior of foreign fund managers andglobal financial institutions. It is inter-esting that an empirical study by Kaminskyand Reinhart (2000) found that the suscep-tibility of national economies to the “conta-gion effects” is highly nonlinear, indicatingthat it is impossible to extrapolate from theexperience of a single national economy.

Another dimension of this discursiveconstruction of geographic scales during thecrisis is related to the ways in which domesticelites represented the crisis in specific spatialmetaphors that were linked to discoursesof political power and the construction ofeconomic policy. On the basis of discourseanalysis, Kelly (2001) examined andcompared the cases of Singapore andMalaysia. He found that in Malaysia,metaphors of colonial domination andmilitaristic aggression dominated in such away that economic globalization, particularlyfinancial globalization, was seen as the mainculprit of Malaysia’s fate in the crisis. Thisrepresentational strategy was adopted byPrime Minister Mahathir to justify thecapital control measures he imposed inSeptember 1998 to counteract the destruc-tive effects of financial globalization (Prakash2001). In Singapore, political elites activelyrepresented the crisis as being akin to such“natural” phenomena as typhoons andtectonic shifts. This strategy allowed thepolitical blame to be shifted from thenational government to the unpredictableexternal global economy and the policycredits to be accrued to the national govern-ment should its economic policies work(Yeung 2000c). The crisis was discursivelyrepresented in Singapore as similar to “actsof God” and therefore a disembodied force.If this “natural” and “external” crisis couldbe contained by the national government’sefforts, the political elites would gain all thecredits. Otherwise, the government couldnot be expected to be accountable for suchan externally imposed disaster. In the casesof both Malaysia and Singapore, economic



globalization was discursively constructed asthe cause of the Asian economic crisis,irrespective of whether the crisis was reallyexplained by something else. Economic glob-alization became the convenient shorthandfor political elites to shift their domesticaccountability to national citizens in favor ofnaturalized events operating on a globalscale. Economic globalization was “victim-ized” by these discursive constructions as thereal cause of the crisis and thereforenecessarily negative and uncontrollable.

The discursive construction of geographicscales, however, cannot explain all dimen-sions of the crisis that clearly has a materialbasis. The scalar switchability of globalcapital (and hence, financial globalization),for example, provides a material basis forexplaining the occurrence of the crisis.This argument can be illustrated by thedevelopment of complex financial instru-ments in the global capital markets such thatfinancial capital has a global reach. Theglobal nature of capital, however, can be“switched” into productive activities at thelocal and the national scales (e.g., theconstruction of production facilities and thebuilt environment). For example, the exces-sive borrowing of the South Korean chaebolfrom global capital markets effectively linkedtheir localized production activities in SouthKorea and elsewhere to the rise and fall ofglobal financial markets. This “scalarswitching” would have been much lesspossible if the South Korean governmenthad retained its tight control over mone-tary regimes and state-monitored bankingand financing policies. Financial liberaliza-tion and the discursive embrace of economicglobalization in South Korea allowedglobal capital to “infiltrate” into the coun-try ’s economy, thereby significantlyincreasing its vulnerability and crisis tenden-cies. When the crisis broke out and thechaebol were burdened by massive short-term loans denominated in the U.S. dollar,the real economies of South Korea and otherAsian localities in which the South Koreanchaebol had large investments in productionfacilities also suffered from a massive disrup-tion of their production activities.

Consequently, their exports were halted andthe crisis was deepened further (see alsoHart-Landsberg and Burkett 2001). Insummary, the crisis was not simply anoutcome of economic globalization versuslocalities, but a consequence of the spatialityof economic globalization mediated throughlocally contingent conditions that varied fromone country to another.

ConclusionEconomic geographers can indeed make

a significant contribution to the study ofeconomic globalization through our theo-rization of its inherent spatiality and scalareffects. As Amin (2001, 6276) argued, “thedistinctive contribution of this discipline[geography] within the congested study ofglobalization [lies] in the study of thespatiality—social, economic, cultural, andpolitical—of what is increasingly being seenas a single and interdependent world.”Instead of brushing aside the term global-ization as too vague and useless for under-standing contemporary global economicchange, I believe there are some signifi-cant reasons why globalization—as mutuallyconstitutive material processes and ideo-logical discourses—will be used for a longtime, not the least because the term has nowgained so much currency in the political andbusiness world. In the context of his critiqueof international relations and globalizationstudies, Rosenberg (2000, 14) further arguedthat we need to take globalization theoryseriously, since its claims “combine toexercise a kind of theoretical veto over other,more valuable resources for understandingboth the contemporary world in general andits international politics in particular.”

This article has investigated thegeographic foundations of economic glob-alization and argued that economic global-ization is very much shaped by its own spatialpeculiarities. Economic globalization doesnot have a life of its own because there aresome stringent geographic preconditions forit to take place. As Cox (2002, 109) noted,“globalization is more product than condi-tion.” Guillén (2001, 254) also concluded



that “[t]he most persuasive empirical workto date indicates that globalization per seneither undermines the nation-state norerodes the viability of the welfare state.”Rejecting the causal claims in globalizationtheory, I conclude that economic global-ization is not capable of producing andcausing empirically observable outcomes.This conclusion does not refute the mate-rial unfolding on globalization processes asa set of spatial tendencies in today’s globaleconomy. It merely places serious limits onthe explanatory power of these processesin the absence of other necessary precon-ditions and contingent factors. In the finalanalysis, globalization is a spatial phenom-enon worthy of further explanation, but itis certainly not a spatial explanation forempirical outcomes as alleged in globaliza-tion theory.

Using the recent Asian economic crisis asan empirical context, I have shown howthe crisis has been discursively constructedby some actors (academic researchers, polit-ical elites, and media professionals) in allkinds of ways as an outcome of economicglobalization. To them, the crisis happenedin 1997–98 because of economic globaliza-tion. This historically and geographicallyinsensitive explanation of the crisis is clearlybiased and plainly problematical.Introducing a geographic perspective on thecrisis, I have examined how the fulfillmentof certain geographic preconditions ofeconomic globalization (e.g., scalar switch-ability) can explain why the crisis occurredin a particular historical moment (e.g., SouthKorea’s untimely embracing of segyehwa, orglobalization). The fact that such fulfillmentvaries geographically explains why the crisisunfolded more dramatically in some Asianeconomies. The perspective also helps usunderstand how economic globalization hasbeen discursively appropriated by politicaland economic elites in some Asian countriesto reproduce their political legitimacy andpower. In conclusion, economic globaliza-tion cannot be the singular determinant ofthe crisis. Its analytical relationships withspecific empirical outcomes must begrounded in an understanding of its

geographic constitution and other contin-gent peculiarities arising from specific polit-ical, economic, and social configurations.

What, then, are the implications of thisgeographic analysis of the uneven terrainsof economic globalization for futuregeographic studies of global economicchange? Although this article has exam-ined two specific geographic preconditionsof economic globalization, there must beother such geographic preconditions of glob-alization worthy of further theorization. Forexample, Amin (1997, 1998, 2001) devel-oped a relational concept of place in histheory of the relationship between geog-raphy and globalization. He argued that “arelational or global sense of place willinterpret the spatiality of globalization—however defined—rather differently from aterritorial perspective” (Amin 2001, 6274).This relational perspective on the spatialityof globalization views such locales as citiesas “a meeting place for diverse geographiesof linkage” (Amin 2001, 6275) that clearlygo beyond a territorial and scalar readingof the position and function of urbaneconomies in globalization. Other economicgeographers have recently developed thegeographic concepts of “global city-regions”as “points at which globalization processescrystallize out on the geographic landscapeand as active agents in shaping globalizationitself” (Scott 2001, 7) and “global cities” asrelational networks (Beaverstock, Smith, andTaylor 2000). Whether these concepts heraldthe sociospatial construction of newgeographic scales is a moot point. But whatis clear in these conceptual initiatives is theexplanation of globalization tendencies inrelation to their various sociospatial forma-tions, not the other way around—as in glob-alization theory—where globalization ispretended to explain those very forma-tions. Space does play an analytical role inexplaining globalization tendencies, althoughthis role is not exclusive to geography orother social sciences for that matter.

Another important implication of thisarticle is related to an agency-focusedapproach to globalization research that placesmore significance on the transformation and



resistance of actors. Much of the globaliza-tion literature takes on an abstract macroand structural view of the global economy.What is missing in this globalization agendais the attention to social actors who are notonly constructing globalization in theirvarious capacities, but experiencing signifi-cant transformations in their own everydaysocial lives. By focusing on these actors inglobalization processes, we can make a muchbetter connection between the apparentlynonhuman processes of economic global-ization and their manifestations in all sortsof human activities, practices, and struggles.This approach also allows us to study thecontested sociospatial production of scalarswitchability and globalization discourses. Inshort, we have to pay attention to economicglobalization as a living experience, whichentails both transformations of social prac-tices and resistance from social actors (seeMittelman 2000; Shaw 2000; Dicken, Kelly,Olds, and Yeung 2001). The empirical orien-tation of geography as an intellectual disci-pline allows us to bridge the still largelyunfilled gap between overwhelmingly styl-ized abstractions in most globalizationstudies and the contradictory experiences ofmost people who are living with economicglobalization as an everyday fact.

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