Globalization Archives - Public Seminar

Interviews

How a Financial Times journalist became a prominent critic of globalization

February 22, 2023 • by Rana Foroohar and Ben Kodres-O'Brien

In my interview with Rana Foroohar, we discuss her childhood and professional trajectory, and discover how she came to formulate the ideas that comprise her economic vision...

Finance

As history’s pendulum swings back, the problems and promises of globalization’s fragmented frameworks become almost too evident

February 22, 2023 • by Rana Foroohar

The neoliberal thinking that has defined globalization in the West since the eighties decrees that state involvement in the economy is verboten-but that’s actually antithetical to America’s origins....

History

Time Is Out of Joint

Simultaneity in the epoch of the near and far

July 16, 2020 • by Sergio Infante

For those who are either unemployed or overworked, those whose habits and routines have fallen apart, those experiencing psychological or bodily distress, the days may seem to drag on endlessly. For others -- perhaps those who find themselves on the pandemic’s frontlines or those who have discovered a sense of ...

Politics

The U.S. and UK Are a Wrecking Ball Crew Against the Pillars of Internationalism

They have undermined the sovereignty of nations and mutilated international law

July 13, 2020 • by Vijay Prashad

Ambassador Kelly Craft, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, spoke at the same meeting. She praised the charter and called upon the member states of the UN to bring its values into the world. However, Ambassador Craft said, “On far too many occasions, we have seen nations that are parties ...

The U.S. and UK Are a Wrecking Ball Crew Against the Pillars of Internationalism

Capitalism

There’s a Hidden Economic Trendline That Is Shattering the Global Trade System

Why economic nationalism is suddenly a fashionable excuse for countries to decrease their reliance on the existing global supply chains

July 8, 2020 • by Marshall Auerback and Jan Ritch-Frel

Covid-19 has accelerated a process that was well underway before it, spreading beyond U.S.-China-EU trade negotiations and into the world’s 50 largest economies. As much as many defenders of the old order lament this trend, it is as significant a shift as the dawn of the World Trade Organization (WTO) ...

There’s a Hidden Economic Trendline That Is Shattering the Global Trade System

Economy

We Won’t Have a Truly Global Economy Until We Start Taxing It That Way

Reconstructing our tax system is an integral part of future national industrial policy as we restart the economy

July 2, 2020 • by Marshall Auerback

Taxation is one of those areas that exposes the contradictions at the heart of globalization. Globalization of goods has proceeded quickly, as has the harmonization of industrial standards across countries. Harmonization of taxation? Not so easy. The power to tax is the ultimate national prerogative, one that very few sovereign nations would ...

We Won’t Have a Truly Global Economy Until We Start Taxing It That Way

Race

black on Black

The digital future of color bias and racism

June 15, 2020 • by Asha Hassan Nooli

Asha Hassan Nooli is a rising sophomore at Lang College, and a first-generation American coming from a Somali background. She is interested in stimulating social reform on a global scale. The essay that follows was Hassan Nooli’s contribution to the New School Dean’s Honor Symposium, an annual celebration of the ...

Labor

I, Face Mask

A reconsideration of the classic essay, “I, Pencil”

May 27, 2020 • by Fred Block

“I, Pencil” uses a genealogy of an ordinary lead pencil to explain that nobody knows how to make one. It is, rather, the genius of the market system that coordinates the efforts of people around the world to manufacture the final product. They include loggers in Northern California, graphite miners ...

Reviews

Why Intellectual Property Rights Matter

A review of Roberto Unger’s ‘The Knowledge Economy’

July 11, 2019 • by Ella Coon

The structure of The Knowledge Economy roughly mirrors this dual ambition. The 287-page work of pure theory is organized into digestible, cumulative micro-chapters. The first seven theorize the structure of the knowledge economy. Chapters eight and nine turn to the issues of inequality and precarity. The following eight chapters look at ...

Feature

The Globalization of White Supremacy

Countering the Spread of South African Apartheid Rhetoric

April 1, 2019 • by Zeb Larson

In classrooms, apartheid is often depicted as the last gasp of old-school racism, a throwback to an earlier era of European imperialism that took too long to die. Sometimes it’s compared to other racist systems, such as Jim Crow in the United States or the racial hierarchy in Nazi Germany. ...

Education

University Faculty Should Welcome “Foreign Influences,” Not Police Them

Indiana University instructs faculty to comply with all laws and regulations regarding foreign influences

January 14, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

I just received the letter at bottom in a mass e-mailing to Indiana University faculty. It instructs faculty about the importance of complying with all laws and regulations regarding the disclosure of “foreign influences.” The sender, a high official of the University, is also a smart colleague who I respect. And ...

University Faculty Should Welcome “Foreign Influences,” Not Police Them

Feature

The New History of Capitalism

And what it owes to poststructuralism

January 9, 2019 • by Andrew Seal

Where did the new history of capitalism come from? I would like to break from the common sense narrative and argue that the new history of capitalism should not be understood as rooted in or as a response to the financial crisis of 2007-2008. Certainly the crisis drew attention to the field ...