UC Irvine

Recent discussions of globalization are founded on an assumption about the movement of capital, goods, people, and images—that movement generates change, and that movement is a self-evident phenomenon. Cultural approaches to globalization, such as Appadurai’s (1996) and Hannerz’s (1996), tend to posit thatincreasingmobility characterizes the contemporary era. Critics of these approaches note that capital, goods, labor, and ideas have been moving from place to place ever since the rise of capitalism, if not before, through trading routes and ancient empires (e.g., Abu-Lughod 1989; Friedman 1995). Within political science, “international political economy” (IPE) scholars, while not dipping quite...