"Kitching has performed a valuable service in calling for an 'antinationalist
left politics.' . . . Kitching's call to consider the interests
of everyone, not just those who share nationality, is a challenge
that will assume enhanced importance with the passage of time. That
alone should make Kitching's book required reading for all who would
take seriously their commitment to a moral social order in an age
of increased international economic integration." -Jay Mandle, Commonweal
"This book speaks more sensibly about globalization than any existing
book-length treatment of this issue. Seeking Social Justice Through
Globalization will inspire many and irritate some-but all will
agree that it is a great read." -Jonathan Pincus, Journal of
Agrarian Change
As demonstrations at meetings of world economic leaders have dramatically
shown, the "globalization" of the world economy is now a subject
of heated political debate. Generally supported for its positive
benefits by neoliberals and attacked for its negative repercussions
by the left, it is a multifaceted phenomenon, and even the term
is much in dispute as both academic experts and political activists
tend to define it in ways that best support their own biases.
In this book, Gavin Kitching is not interested so much in providing
new information about globalization as an economic and social process
as he is in clarifying how globalization is to be understood and
evaluated as a "good" or "bad" thing. Central to his argument is
that a proper evaluation requires historical self-awareness, both
of the historical background of globalization itself and of the
historical origins of the very norms by which such evaluations are
made.
Unusual for a book written from a leftist perspective, Seeking
Social Justice Through Globalization argues that those who care
for social justice should seek more globalization, not try to prevent
its development or roll it back. In his "modified Ricardian" analysis,
Kitching warns especially about the constraints that the inherited
discourse of economic and cultural nationalism places on the full
potential of globalization to improve the welfare of poor people,
which is his principal concern.
