Embedded statism and the social sciences 2: geographies (and metageographies) in globalization

This paper was stimulated by the ability of David Held and his colleagues t o produce a rigorous and coherent treatment of globalization from a convent ional social science position. Their geographical-scale approach to globali zation is contrasted with Bauman's emphasis on the space of flows. Four arg uments are sustained. First, to produce a viable social science treatment o f globalization the academic pecking order has to be reversed: political sc ience dominates the analysis. Second, an emphasis on geographical scale pro motes a comparative 'historical globalizations' approach which, combined wi th the politics, leads to the omission of the 1970s global watershed when a century of reducing economic polarization was reversed. Third, the problem s of studying flows are rehearsed and it is emphasized that networks need t o be studied in the whole; you are not studying flows unless you have both origins and destinations. Fourth, the embedded statism is recast as a probl em of metageography, a states metageography exists which has no rivals; a p ossible alternative metageography, the world-city network, is briefly intro duced.