NEW BOOK BY UB LAW PROFESSOR FOCUSES ON MAKING SENSE OF GLOBALIZATION

Argues that 'markets' are now the dominant form of governance;
globalization limits the rise of aggressive, militarized nationalism

Prof. David A. Westbrook

Globalization is trumpeted by some and demonized by
others as a pathway to either unprecedented global prosperity or
increased poverty, among other benefits and ills.

A new book by a University at Buffalo law professor attempts to make
sense of the debate and forge a new era of understanding by examining
the powerful cultural and political implications of a force that is
transforming the way we live and view the world. 

In City of Gold:  An Apology for Global Capitalism in a Time of
Discontent, David A. Westbrook, associate professor of law in the UB
Law School, argues that "markets not nations" have become the dominant
form of global governance.  And while the emergence of globalization
has created its own set of problems -- including the fact that people
and governments have yet to fully grasp what it means to live in a
"globalized" world -- Westbrook says globalization has achieved its
primary goal:  It has successfully stunted the emergence of aggressive,
militarized nationalism, as was practiced by Germany, France, Great
Britain and the United States prior to World War II.

In Westbrook's view, globalization is not a recent phenomenon, as is
commonly described, but rather is more than 50 years old, set in motion
by political decisions made in the aftermath of World War II.
"Globalization was adopted for essentially political reasons because
the nation-state -- as exemplified most perfectly by Hitler's Germany
-- had become simply too dangerous," he explains. 

"Globalization limits the creation of this type of power by fragmenting
institutions' and peoples' ways of looking at the world," he adds. "If
we have a fragmented and overlapping set of affiliations, we can't --
as we did prior to World War II -- create a world in which large
militaries, large economies and large politically mobilized populations
all meet at the Rhine."

According to Westbrook, when economies are radically dependent on events in other parts of the world, and when people have contacts across political and geographic lines -- through travel, marriage, work, etc. -- it becomes difficult to build the militarized nation-states that gave rise to World War II.

"Prevention of future wars required suppression of nationalism,"
Westbrook writes in "City of Gold." "The vehicle for such suppression
was economic integration.

"So we integrated Europe and globalized much of the world," he
explains.  "As a result, marketplace activity should be seen not as
social relations that are opposed or ancillary to politics, but as
political activities in their own right.  Much of our politics today is
done through markets."

The concepts of "nation building" proposed for Kosovo and Iraq are
modern examples of how the process of globalization restricts the
growth of militarized nation states, Westbrook points out.

"By 'nation building' we don't mean creation of independent nations
that are free to go to war," he says.  "We mean creating nations where
people have profound economic and cultural attachments that transcend
geographic borders, which limits the ability to create a focused
military machine that can inundate its neighbors."

The emergence of globalization, however, has outpaced our understanding
of what it means to live in such a world, Westbrook says.

"We're aware that we are going through a transformation, but we're not
very good at articulating what we mean by globalization," Westbrook
says. "We've had a difficult time thinking about what it means to live
in a world in which we understand our political relationships to be
market relationships.

"This book addresses that problem," he continues. "It asks very
traditional political questions, but does so in the context of market
relations -- in terms of the institutions of money and property --
rather than the democratic relations among citizens that inform most
modern political thought and social criticism. In contrast, most
contemporary thinking about globalization tends to view the market as a
machine operating outside of our experience, and certainly outside of
our politics."

In Westbrook's opinion, anti-globalization protests in Seattle,
Washington, Prague and Miami are partly an attempt to orient ourselves
in this new political reality.

"By and large, I think the protests are about something else than what
the protestors claim.  Call it discontent with modern life.  'City of
Gold' is simultaneously an effort to articulate the discontent many of
us feel with our situation, and an effort to make some peace with that
situation -- which is why the book is called an apology."

Though globalization has prevented the growth of aggressive,
militarized nationalism, it has come at considerable cost, Westbrook
argues. Considered as a way of doing politics, globalization can
provide only unsatisfying answers to the classic questions of political
thought, he says.  "It offers little in the way of truth, provides
little sense of community and little hope for justice," he explains.

Westbrook argues that the usual ways we think about political economy,
the languages used by both detractors and defenders of globalization,
no longer are adequate.  Economics, progressive social thought and
rights-based liberalism are all "exhausted philosophies," he says.
"Such thinking remains instructive, but it has entered the tradition,
along with the Greeks and the medieval scholars and many others, and
cannot be used un-self consciously for contemporary purposes," he adds.

What is needed now is an awareness that global markets can be shaped to
achieve social and political goals, Westbrook contends.  "When you
define markets you're making choices about the way people live
together," he argues. "We must begin to imagine how we want to
structure our markets, and thus how we want to live in this new world."

But while such thinking is commendable, much of social life will remain
organized by markets, and therefore will remain dissatisfying and
limited in the way that markets are, Westbrook concludes.