), co-sponsored by the Center for Advanced Study. On Monday, October 7th, Professor Steger gave a talk titled “Globalization at a Crossroads: Deglobalization or Reglobalization?” making a case that the world is in an era of reglobalization fueled by exponentially increasing “disembodied globalization.” This talk responded to the question, “Are we witnessing a nationalist turn toward deglobalization or a new moment of reglobalization?” by taking a transdisciplinary and timely appraisal of globalization over 30 years after the end of the Cold War and advent of the neoliberal system of globalization.
Dr. Steger began his presentation by asking what is happening to globalization in the post-Covid-19 era. He presented on the prevailing thesis—that the world is in an era of deglobalization. Simply put, deglobalization is a reversal of the trends researchers saw in the 1990s. It is driven by crises that began in the early twenty-first century and continue now, particularly with populist movements across the globe from Donald Trump’s recent victory in the U.S. to far-right wins in Germany’s regional elections. Professor Steger’s argument pushes back against calling this “deglobalization.” Instead, he argued, we are in an era of reglobalization. Reglobalization is globalization along new lines with new dynamics, new connections, and, ultimately, a reconfiguration of globalization. Dr. Steger’s presentation centered on backing up this argument with empirical evidence to highlight that a decline in connections is not happening, and instead, that certain spheres of global connection are drastically increasing leading to a disjointed globalization.
Before he dove into the empirical evidence, Professor Steger explained four key arenas of globalization for him and how they overlap and work together under the umbrella of globalization. These four formations are embodied, disembodied, objective, and institutional. Economic, political, and social dynamics unfold within and across all four at any given time. The embodied arena is focused on sentient beings and the mobility of living bodies via global interconnectivity. The objective formation looks at the mobility of physical objects while the institutional arena centers on organizations’ and institutions’ mobility. Lastly, the disembodied formation is concerned with the mobility of intangibles—ideas, data, and information. Dr. Steger argues that these four formations are increasingly becoming disjointed and out of sync which has clear consequences for globalization. Namely, the disembodied formation is exponentially increasing while the other three—embodied, institutional, and objective—are slowly increasing or stagnating.
Elaborating on the disjunctivity of reglobalization, Professor Steger jumped into the empirical part of his presentation. Beginning with the three mostly stagnant formations, he presented several graphs, maps, and other data analyses of international business and trade, military institutions, tourism, and migration, to name a few. Steger demonstrated that institutional, objective, and embodied arenas of globalization are stagnant or slowly increasing over the past 5-10 years (with some caveats for Covid-19 impacts). He then tackled the disembodied frame. He presented several more data points, some comparing the four frames. All reinforced his argument that the disembodied formation is charging ahead, immensely increasing while the other three remain mostly stagnant. Dr. Steger focused on data about the increase of intangible assets in the S&P 500, the growth of the digital transformation market, and large increases in investment in technologies like applied AI, Web3, and quantum technologies. He connected this frame beyond business and trade as well, highlighting the large amount of time people around the world spend online, on their phones, and generally in front of screens with a recent study placing the global average online time at almost seven hours per day. Ultimately, this wealth of data demonstrated that data flows have increased the largest of any globalization frame in the past two decades. However, he did acknowledge that several countries have recently enacted or tried to enact restrictions to and regulation of data flows—a development that could impact his argument.
In closing, Professor Steger moved back to explaining why researchers should be focused on reglobalization, not deglobalization. He argued that deglobalization discourse looks solely at economic indicators, a major error of 1990s neoliberal globalization conceptions. Instead, Dr. Steger said, we are looking at reglobalization—in a disjunctive form and with two important caveats. First, the absolute level of globalization remains at 25%, meaning that this is nowhere close to a borderless world. Second, globalization is not being reconceptualized as regionalization. As is particularly clear with the disembodied frame, transnational flows are continuing to take place over longer distances and across major geographic regions. Reglobalization as Professor Steger sees it, reconceptualizes globalization as growing disembodied digital interconnectivities, mobilities, and imaginations, accelerated by Covid-19, and quickly outpacing the other three frames of analysis.
The Center for Global Studies recorded this lecture, which is now available to view on their website.
If you are interested in learning more about this topic, check out Manfred Steger’s most recent book, Globalization in the 21st Century (Rowan & Littlefield, 2024), in the library’s catalog here.
The University Library also maintains some relevant subject LibGuides that may help you learn more about this topic, such as the Global Studies Research Guide from the International & Area Studies Library. This page includes many different kinds of resources to get started as well as information about global studies research methods more specifically.
You can find more information on upcoming events sponsored by the Center for Global Studies by checking out our Online Calendar. Be sure to subscribe to our Listerv to be the first to learn about upcoming talks and events from CGS.
