INTRODUCTION

No sooner has the issue of globalism been elevated into a general proposition of paradigmatic dimensions, than its death has been declared. In Harper's, the journalist John Ralston Saul states simply enough that not only is there a “collapse of globalism,” but also a “rebirth of nationalism.” He is only the most recent to post an obituary. My own sense of the situation is that the language of “tendencies,” “strains,” and “forces” better represents reality than the heated rhetoric of “birth” and “death.” The international economy is not reduced to rubble by ideological missives, nor has the national state been dissolved by the recognition that the world is whole, round, and virtually boundless.

Globalization has been perceived either as the latest and most pernicious form of imperialism or as the latest form of modernization. Whatever position one takes on globalization—whether one is in mute support or unabated opposition—it is clear that globalization has become not just a thing unto itself, but a metaphor of fundamental values of peoples and systems alike. My purpose here is to examine how this term has become part of the polarization of the American culture. The controversy over globalization has become a struggle over the shaping of the world's economy, but it is also a political and cultural struggle. In this process, old battles between political systems and economic structures have acquired new dimensions.