Conclusion – new geographies
According to a number of geographers there exists considerable
confusion with respect to the conceptualization of the causal power
of ‘globalization’. In particular in many studies the lines between
globalization as discourse, process and outcome are blurred. In this
context Dicken notes (2004, p. 7): ‘[T]he problem is that . . . material
processes are themselves enmeshed within a web of discourses from
which material processes need to be disentangled (Kelly, 1999, p. 386)
– although, of course, the discourses themselves influence material
processes and outcomes.’ In this context, according to Yeung (2002),
globalization does not have determining power in and of itself, and this
idea is similarly refuted by a number of commentators, including Urry
(2003) and Hay and Marsh (2000). Rather its importance is arranged
around two crucial themes. First, it reconstitutes scale. As we have seen
in the above discussion globalization leads to a collapsing of scales, and
increased interpenetration between them. This does not mean, as Thrift
(2002) mischievously argues, that scale does not exist; but it has become
more fluid. The dominant process in this respect then is that in the lived
experience of humans the local grows (becomes more extensive) and the
global shrinks (is compressed) leading to new ‘glocal’ outcomes. This
requires that governments, businesses, people – agents in general – have
to transform their activities and responses to cope with this. Second, there
is a geography of globalization as discourse (i.e. how it is used – and
abused – by different social groups to justify certain interventions and
readings). In short, globalization is historically, spatially and politically
contingent. To respond to it effectively in any given situation, it has to be
understood within the context of that situation.
These arguments remind us that geography does indeed matter. In the
preface to an excellent sociological survey of globalization, Waters
(2001) argues: ‘The constraints of geography are shrinking and world
is becoming one place.’ While it cannot be disputed that compression is
occurring and that this has undermined the constraints of absolute space
to both socio-cultural and economic flows, this statement misinterprets
what is meant by ‘geography’, and ‘place’. The constraints of geography
are changing as space and scale are transformed; this creates new
geographies of old and new places, which are undoubtedly harder to
understand than ever before.