Globalization and Chicana Politics of Representation

Abstract

The origins, components, and capacity of globalization to reorganize social order continue to be debated. Some critics locate its roots in the sixteenth century at the dawn of capitalist expansion and Western modernity (Chesnaux 1989, Wallerstein 1989). Others place it in the mid-twentieth century, when technology enabled the articulation of markets at a planetary scale (Albrow 1997, Giddens 1999, Ortiz 1997). Still, other critics examine the economic, communicative, and migratory dimensions of globalizations and assert that globalization promotes a new conception of space and time (Giddens 1999, Sassen 1998). In La globalizatión imaginada(2008), Néstor García Canclini draws two important conclusions from these divergent views with respect to the meaning and reach of globalization: first, that globalization is not a scientific paradigm with a clear and coherent object of study; and second, that it cannot be considered a political or cultural paradigm since it does not follow a single or unique mode of development. More than a social order or a single process, globalization—states García Canclini—is the result of multiple movements, in part contradictory, with open results.