Hytrek, Gary, and Kristine M. Zentgraf. America Transformed: Globalization, Inequality, and Power.

• Author: Blaser, Kent
• Position: Book review

Hytrek, Gary, and Kristine M. Zentgraf. America Transformed: Globalization, Inequality, and Power. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. xvi + 238 pages. Paper, $29.95.

Globalization is one of the big ideas, maybe even the big idea, of current social-science theory. With the waning of interest in postmodernism, globalization is arguably the most innovative and fruitful conceptual tool for thinking about and understanding the world today. At the same time, growing economic inequality has been one of the most pernicious and intractable developments in recent American society. Both of these matters are complex and controversial, and coming to grips with them is simultaneously an important but difficult task for students of social science. America Transformed, an overview of globalization and its impact on the United States, explores the intersection of these critical issues.

The opening and longest section of the book provides context, background, basic theory, and definitions, focusing on a fundamental transformation of American society that began in the 1970s when the post-New Deal/World War II Keynesian social and economic compact, often referred to as the "welfare state," began to unravel and be replaced by a more individualistic, market driven, risk, and growth-oriented "neoliberal" (i.e., "conservative") economic system. A complex set of economic, political, social, and cultural changes made American life more competitive but also less stable, secure, and predictable, and, above all, less equal, with a reduced social and governmental support system to mitigate the effects of these changes on the most vulnerable individuals. Globalization, intensified and magnified by massive innovation in information and communication technology, was a major catalyst for these changes.

From the beginning, there have been skeptics, from both the left and right, who argue that current developments are neither new nor unique and instead have been going on for millennia. They also point out that, while most globalization theory posits a major shift of power from nations to transnational entities, mostly corporations, a long line of social theorists, dating back at least to Karl Marx, who bet against the staying power of nationalism and the nation-state, have been spectacularly discredited. While the debate over the significance of globalization as a social reality and its usefulness as an explanatory theory, like a similar discussion of the reality of...