ABSTRACT
As numerous observers have pointed out, global capitalism in the late twentieth century underwent yet another sea-change with widespread economic, political, and cultural repercussions for the structure of space and time. In the words of Harvey (1989a:293), “We have, in short, witnessed another fierce round in that process of annihilation of space through time that has always lain at the center of capitalism’s dynamic.” The profound global crisis in Fordism that ended the post-war boom in the 1970s was accompanied by numerous birth pangs of the new order, including: the petroshocks that witnessed a hefty rise in the price of oil; pronounced and prolonged deindustrialization in the West manifested in worldwide recessions; the rise of the Newly Industrializing Countries, particularly in East Asia; the end of the Bretton-Woods era in 1973 and subsequent shift to floating exchange rates; the explosive growth of Third World debt, largely driven by recycled petrodollars; the emergence of “flexible” specialization, the microelectronics revolution, and computerized production technologies; the rapid, sustained growth of financial and producer services (Coffey and Bailly 1991; Peck and Tickell 1994). Simultaneously, international finance and producer services grew rapidly (Dicken 2007). By the 1990s, these changes included the collapse of the Soviet Union and the cessation of the cold war. This round of restructuring, therefore, was not simply economic or technological in origin: Agnew (2001) is certainly correct in arguing that contemporary globalization has geopolitical roots reflecting the strenuous assertion of American liberalism (and neoliberalism) worldwide. In Smith’s (2003:22) words, globalization “after 1989 can be seen as a contemporary remapping strategy and as a fervent attempt to redress the geographical divisions established after 1945.” The end of Fordism, therefore, entailed a new geopolitical order, including the global wave of neoliberal deregulation, privatization, and the lifting of state controls in many industries; new trade regimes such as NAFTA, the European Union, and the World Trade Organization, which freed capital to move across national boundaries with ever greater ease; and the integration of world financial markets through telecommunications systems (Thrift 1986; Lash and Urry 1987). Concomitantly, globalization has steadily eroded the sovereignty of states in some matters through supranational organizations
such as United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, which have effectively assumed some governance functions.
