Finally, and perhaps most importantly, that which is liquid tends to melt whatever (especially solids) stands in its path. This is clearest in the case of the much discussed death, or at least decline, of the nation-state and its borders in the era of increasing global flows (see Chapter 5). According to Cartier (2001: 269), the “forces of globalization have rendered many political boundaries more porous to flows of people, money, and things.”
It is clear that if one wanted to use a single term to think about globalization today, liquidity would be at or near the top of the list. That is not to say that there are no solid structures in the world – after all, we still live in a modern world, even if it is late modernity, and modernity has long been associated with solidity. And it does not mean that there is not a constant interplay between liquidity and solidity with increases in that which is liquid (e.g. terrorist attacks launched against Israel from the West Bank during the Intifada) leading to counter-reactions involving the erection of new solid forms (e.g. that fence between Israel and the West Bank), but at the moment and for the foreseeable future, the momentum lies with increasing and proliferating global liquidity.
FLOWS
Closely related to the idea of liquidity, and integral to it, is another key concept in thinking about globalization, the idea of flows (Appadurai 1996); after all liquids flow easily, far more easily than solids. In fact, it is the concept of flows that is widely used in the literature on globalization5 and it is the concept that will inform a good deal of the body of this book.
Because so much of the world has “melted” or is in the process of “melting” and has become liquefied, globalization is increasingly characterized by great flows of increasingly liquid phenomena of all types, including people, objects, information, decisions, places, and so on. For example, foods of all sorts increasingly flow around the world, including sushi globalized from its roots in Japan (Edwards 2012), Chilean produce now ubiquitous in the US market (and elsewhere), Senegalese food in Paris (and other parts of the world), and so on. In many cases, the flows have become raging floods that are increasingly less likely to be impeded by, among others, place-based barriers of any kind, including the oceans, mountains, and especially the borders of nation-states.
Looking at a very different kind of flow, many people in many parts of the world believe that they are being swamped by migrants, especially poor undocumented migrants (Hogan and Haltinner 2015). Whether or not these are actually floods, they have come to be seen in that way by many people, often aided by media personalities and politicians in many countries who have established their reputations by portraying them as “illegal” immigrants flooding their country. It is also flows of people that accounted for the spread of COVID-19 from Wuhan, China, to the rest of China and out into the rest of the world (Jia et al. 2020). Given the increasing flows of people within a rapidly developing China and a more interconnected world via air travel, the coronavirus spread around the world before health authorities could adequately contain it.
Undoubtedly because of their immateriality, ideas, images, and information, both legal (blogs) and illegal (e.g. child pornography), flow (virtually) everywhere through interpersonal contact and the media, especially now via the Internet and social media. To take a specific example within the global circulation of ideas, “confidentiality” in the treatment of AIDS patients flowed to India (and elsewhere) because of the efforts of experts and their professional networks. The arrival of this idea in India made it possible to better manage and treat AIDS patients who were more likely to seek out treatment because of assurances of confidentiality. Confidentiality was very important in this context because of the reticence of many Indians to discuss publicly such matters as sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS (Misra 2008).
Decisions of all sorts flow around the world, as well as over time: “The effect of the [economic] decisions flowed, and would continue to flow, through every possible conduit. Some decisions would be reflected in products rolling off assembly lines, others in prices of securities, and still others in personal interactions. Each decision would cascade around the world and then forward through time” (Altman 2007: 255). At the moment, much of the world is experiencing slower growth (World Bank 2019) which continues to be affected by COVID-19. The effect of the pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing trade tensions and tighter financial conditions, further slowing trade and investment in both developed and developing economies.
Even places can be said to be flowing around the world as, for example, immigrants re-create the places from which they came in new locales (e.g. Indian and Pakistani enclaves in London). Furthermore, places (e.g. airports, shopping malls) themselves have become increasingly like flows (for more on this and the transition from “spaces of places” to “spaces of flows,” see Castells 1996).
Even with all of this increasing fluidity, much of what would have been considered the height of global liquidity only a few decades, or even years, ago now seems increasingly sludge-like. This is especially the case when we focus on the impact of the computer, Internet, and social media on the global flow of all sorts of things. Thus, not long ago we might have been amazed by our ability to order a book and have it delivered in 30 minutes or less by drones (Mims 2019). But an even more liquid form of delivery is the ability to download that book in seconds to a tablet or smart phone, and share on social media.
TYPES OF FLOWS
It is worth differentiating among several different types of flows. One is interconnected flows. The fact is that global flows do not occur in isolation from one another; many different flows interconnect at various points and times. Take the example of the global sex industry (Farr 2005, 2017). The sex industry requires the intersection of the flow of people who work or are trafficked in the industry (usually women and girls) with the flow of customers (e.g. sex tourists). Other flows that interconnect with the global sex industry involve money and drugs. Then there are the sexually transmitted diseases that are carried by the participants in that industry and from them branch off into many other disease flows throughout the world.
A very different example of interconnected flows is in the global fish industry. That industry is now dominated by the flows of huge industrial ships and the massive amount of frozen fish that they produce and which is distributed throughout the world. In addition, these huge industrial ships are putting many small fishers out of business and some are using their boats for other kinds of flows (e.g. transporting undocumented immigrants from Africa to Europe) (LaFraniere 2008). Over-fishing by industrial ships has emptied the waters of fish and this has served to drive up their price. This has made the industry attractive to criminals and the result is an increase in the global flow of illegal fish (Rosenthal 2008).
Then there are multidirectional flows. Globalization is not a one-way process as concepts like Westernization and Americanization (see Chapter 3) seem to imply (Marling 2006; Singer 2013). While all sorts of things do flow out of the West and the United States to every part of the world, many more flow into the West and the US from everywhere (e.g. Japanese automobiles, Chinese T-shirts, iPhones assembled in China, Russian sex workers, and so on). Furthermore, all sorts of things flow in every conceivable direction among all other points in the world.
Still another layer of complexity is added when we recognize that planetary processes not only can complement one another (e.g. the meeting of flows of sex tourists and sex workers), but often also conflict with one another (and with much else). In fact, it is usually these conflicting flows that attract the greatest attention. This is most obvious in the case of the ongoing “war” on terror between the United States and Islamist militants and jihadists (e.g. al-Qaeda and ISIS). On the one hand, al-Qaeda and