Introduction
You live in a world that feels as if it is spinning out of control. Global forces reshape your daily habits, financial markets, and personal relationships without your consent. You face invisible dangers that science and technology create rather than solve. Institutions such as the family and tradition no longer offer the certainty you once expected.
Anthony Giddens argues in Runaway World that globalisation is not a mere economic myth but a revolutionary force transforming every aspect of your existence. You must navigate a society where political systems lag behind global markets and where personal identity requires constant reinvention.
How does globalisation actually change your local life? What replaces traditional authority when it vanishes? How can democracy survive in a runaway world?
1. Globalisation
Globalisation is a multi-dimensional revolutionary restructuring driven by modern communications technology rather than a mere economic myth.
Sceptics argue that globalisation is a myth and point to regional trading blocs. Radicals correctly point to the unprecedented scale of electronic money and capital flows. You live in a world where globalisation is political, technological, and cultural. It fundamentally alters your daily experiences through instant global connectivity.
Consider the infrastructure that enables this connectivity:
- 200 commercial satellites orbiting the earth carrying information;
- transpacific and transatlantic cables carrying more than a million voice paths compared to fewer than 100 previously;
- 50 million audience reached in 40 years for radio, 15 years for personal computers, and 4 years for the Internet in the US.
A researcher visiting a remote village in central Africa to study traditional pastimes found the locals watching the film Basic Instinct on video before it had even reached cinemas in London.
The Global Electronic Economy
The contemporary world economy operates on digital finance and electronic money. This allows massive capital transfers at the click of a mouse that can destabilise national economies.
Unlike historical trading periods, today's trillion-dollar daily currency markets are tied to electronic digits in computers. Fund managers, banks, and corporations move vast amounts of capital globally instantly. This diminishes the economic sovereignty and policy effectiveness of nation-states.
Scale is difficult to visualise without concrete dimensions:
- 1 million dollars in hundred-dollar notes would be 8 inches high;
- 1 billion dollars would stand higher than St Paul's Cathedral;
- 1 trillion dollars would be over 120 miles high, 20 times higher than Mount Everest.
The 1998 Asian financial crisis demonstrated the disruptive side of globalisation and the immense volatility caused by instantaneous capital movements.
Polycentric World and Inequality
Globalisation exerts contradictory pressures. It pulls power upwards into global arenas while simultaneously pushing downwards and sideways, fostering local autonomies and regional zones.
As Daniel Bell noted, the nation-state becomes too small to solve big problems and too large to solve small ones. This dynamic ignites local nationalisms and cross-border economic zones. You can observe this in the desire for increased independence in Scotland, separatist movements in Quebec, and cross-border economic integration in regions like Catalonia and Silicon Valley.
Globalisation is not identical to Americanisation. Geopolitically, the world is becoming increasingly polycentric. Although the United States is the sole global superpower and economic motor, its influence is diffuse and requires international collaboration. Rising regional powers include the EU, Russia, China, Japan, and India.
The power of large corporations is often exaggerated. Sovereign nations and global non-governmental organisations possess superior leverage. Unlike corporations, nations control territory, law, and military power. Large corporations rely heavily on brand names, making them deeply vulnerable to campaigns and exposure by global NGOs.
Environmental and consumer groups forced Monsanto to abandon its plans to promote genetically modified foods into Europe, substantially undermining its economic position.
Global economic integration tends to reduce absolute poverty and global inequality rather than intensify it, provided countries open up to external markets. Poor economies opening up to external markets achieved significant growth rates, whereas closed poor economies stagnated. Localized increases in inequality often reflect prior states of equality in extreme poverty.
The share of the poorest fifth of the world population in global income dropped from 2.3 percent to 1.4 percent between 1989 and 1998. At the same time, poor countries that opened their economies achieved 5 per cent average growth rates, compared to 0 per cent average growth rates for poor economies that remained closed.
In China, the number of rural poor went down from 250 million in 1978 to 34 million in 1999. Vietnam reduced absolute poverty by 50 percent between 1990 and 2000.
2. Risk
Traditional cultures relied on fate, luck, or gods rather than calculating risk. Modern industrial society embraced risk as a mobilising dynamic through double-entry bookkeeping and insurance. Today, our interventions in the material environment have ended pristine nature, generating novel hazards whose long-term outcomes cannot be actuarially calculated.
Humanity has shifted from external risks imposed by nature to manufactured risks created by our own scientific and technical knowledge.
Anthony Giddens calls external risk the hazard that comes from the natural world or tradition. You encounter manufactured risk when human science and technical interventions alter the material environment.
The outbreak of BSE or mad cow disease in the UK and the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1996 illustrate situations of manufactured risk with unknown long-term consequences.
Global warming and genetic modification represent new hazards without historical precedent. By 2001, there were 35 million hectares of land globally planted with genetically modified crops. This cultivated area represents 1.5 times the size of Britain.
The Politics of Risk
Managing manufactured risk creates a permanent political paradox where authorities are routinely trapped between accusations of scaremongering and cover-ups. Because manufactured risks are heavily disputed before they materialize, experts and officials must actively publicize potential dangers to provoke preventive action. If successful, they are accused of needless scaremongering. If they downplay the risk and disaster strikes, they face charges of a cover-up.
British government officials initially claimed beef consumption posed no significant risk during the early stages of the BSE crisis, later facing severe accusations of a cover-up.
Failed States
The primary sources of global danger today stem from failed or collapsing states rather than traditional belligerent nation-states. Countries struggling against poverty and the long-term impacts of colonialism and the Cold War lack government legitimacy, creating breeding grounds for resentment, despair, and havens for transnational networks.
Afghanistan became a haven for transnational networks due to a lack of legitimate government following the Cold War.
3. Tradition
Enlightenment thinkers dismissed tradition as mere ignorance. Traditions are persistent frameworks defined by ritual, repetition, and guardians. Far from being unchanging remnants of the distant past, many national and cultural traditions were manufactured during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The decline of tradition forces individuals to live autonomously, giving rise to invented traditions, addictions, and fundamentalism.
The short kilt and clan tartans associated with Scottish national identity were largely invented in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by industrialists and tailors rather than originating in antiquity. Other practices emerged later for public consumption.
Consider these historical examples of manufactured practices:
- the British set up an archaeological survey in India and codified local dress uniforms in the 1860 decade;
- the British monarch's annual Christmas address on broadcast started in the 1932 year.
Detraditionalisation involves the waning of customary authority across society. You must now navigate life through active choices rather than inherited roles.
Addiction and Fundamentalism
Detraditionalisation offers human emancipation and freedom of lifestyle choice, but the anxiety of open personal futures can subvert autonomy. Addiction emerges as a pathological reliance on repetitive behaviors when individuals cannot break away from lifestyle habits, functioning as frozen autonomy.
Self-help groups like Alcoholics Anonymous help individuals recover from addictions by rewriting the story-lines of their lives and revisiting their pasts.
Fundamentalism is not ancient fanaticism or a rejection of modernisation, but a distinct modern reaction defined as beleaguered tradition defended through ritual truth in a globalising world. Fundamentalism arises specifically in response to globalising influences and the demand for reasoned justification. Rather than engaging in dialogue or accepting multiple interpretations, fundamentalists demand a literal reading of foundational texts overseen by privileged guardians of tradition, frequently utilizing modern communication technologies.
Militant groups and religious movements use electronic mail, the Internet, videos, and cassette tapes to enforce literal dogmas and build identity. Al-Qaeda emerged as a fundamentalist movement originally supported by the US during the Cold War to eject Soviets from Afghanistan before being neglected.
Fundamentalist groups, whether religious, nationalist, or ethnic, are inherently intolerant and typically focus their hostility on the emancipation of women and the core principles of democracy.
4. Family
The traditional family as an economic unit has transformed into a shell institution anchored in emotional communication and the pure relationship.
Historically, the traditional family functioned primarily as an economic unit rather than an emotional sanctuary. Agricultural production involved the entire family, and among elites, marriage was used to transmit property. Inequality between men and women was intrinsic, with women treated as legal chattels, and children were valued mainly for their economic contribution.
Georges Duby noted that medieval European marriage was not meant to involve frivolity, passion, or fantasy.
One in four infants died in their first year in seventeenth-century Europe and America. Nearly 50 per cent of children didn't live to age ten in seventeenth-century Europe and America.
Pure Relationships
In modern Western societies, sexuality has become completely separated from reproduction. This severance means sexuality is no longer dominated by heterosexuality or reproduction. It transforms sexual life into something to be discovered, moulded, and altered, which logically leads to the increasing acceptance of homosexuality.
Marriage and the family have become shell institutions where the outer name remains, but the internal character has fundamentally shifted. While the 1950s standard family represented a brief transitional phase, contemporary family life is built around the couple and coupledom, anchored in emotional communication and intimacy rather than economic necessity.
Up to a quarter of women aged between 18 and 35 in the United States and Europe say they do not intend to have children.
Modern intimate relationships are increasingly approximating the model of the pure relationship, which mirrors the values of public democracy. Based on active trust, disclosure, and emotional communication, a pure relationship is implicitly democratic. It requires equality, mutual respect, open dialogue, and an absence of arbitrary power or coercion.
5. Democracy
Political democracy is spreading across various continents while long-established democracies experience a growing paradox of citizen disillusionment. Over 90 per cent of the population in the US and major West European countries approved of democratic government in recent surveys. Yet citizens in these mature democracies show decreased trust in politicians and lower voter turnout.
Orthodox parliamentary politics feels remote from your everyday experiences of change.
Mature democracies face a paradox of citizen disillusionment that requires democratising democracy and global institutional reform.
The number of democratic governments has increased by well over double since the mid-1970s. Hard power is no longer enough to maintain order in a globalised world.
David Held points out the large democratic deficits opening up between nation-states and global forces.
Institutional Reform
Combating global terrorist networks requires worldwide collaboration rather than unilateral military actions tied to traditional national security. The US administration under President Bush pursued unilateral policies, rejecting major international accords and courts. Security in the global age requires shared intelligence, international law, and political resolution of root conflicts.
The United States refused to sign the Kyoto accord on climate change and disavowed the treaty designed to counter chemical warfare. Despite US refusal, 53 nations endorsed the Kyoto agreements. Also, as of April 2002, 66 countries had ratified the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court.
Market competition alone is insufficient and can lead to economic deterioration without complementary social reforms. Successful economic development requires active state guidance and institutional reforms alongside trade liberalisation.
Nations such as Botswana and Mozambique have achieved major institutional advances demonstrating that structured reforms are attainable even for very poor countries.
To foster successful development, you can apply several specific strategies:
- Introduce institutional reforms promoting education and the emancipation of women.
- Implement banking reforms and foster a stable investment climate.
- Provide rich-society help including money for investment, technological assistance, and expertise to guide institutional reform.
Conclusion
Globalisation, manufactured risk, detraditionalisation, changing families, and political democracy are deeply interconnected forces driving our runaway world. You cannot isolate economic integration from the spread of artificial hazards or the collapse of inherited ways of life. These transformations strip away traditional certainties and force you to construct your identity, relationships, and civic life through continuous dialogue.
To navigate this era of rapid change, you can follow these practical rules:
- Embrace manufactured risk by anticipating the long-term consequences of technological and environmental decisions rather than denying them.
- Abandon rigid traditions in favor of active dialogue, negotiation, and emotional communication in your personal relationships.
- Cultivate pure relationships based on mutual trust and intrinsic satisfaction rather than external economic necessity.
- Participate in democratising democracy by holding institutions accountable and engaging with civic associations beyond the ballot box.
- Support cosmopolitan governance and transnational coalitions to manage global risks that no single nation can solve alone.
10 Key Ideas
- Globalisation is a multi-dimensional revolutionary restructuring driven by modern communications technology rather than a mere economic myth.
- Global economic integration tends to reduce absolute poverty and global inequality rather than intensify it, provided countries open up to external markets.
- Humanity has shifted from external risks imposed by nature to manufactured risks created by our own scientific and technical knowledge.
- The primary sources of global danger today stem from failed or collapsing states rather than traditional belligerent nation-states.
- The decline of tradition forces individuals to live autonomously, giving rise to invented traditions, addictions, and fundamentalism.
- Fundamentalism is not ancient fanaticism or a rejection of modernisation, but a distinct modern reaction defined as beleaguered tradition defended through ritual truth in a globalising world.
- The traditional family as an economic unit has transformed into a shell institution anchored in emotional communication and the pure relationship.
- Modern intimate relationships are increasingly approximating the model of the pure relationship, which mirrors the values of public democracy.
- Mature democracies face a paradox of citizen disillusionment that requires democratising democracy and global institutional reform.
- Successful economic development requires active state guidance and institutional reforms alongside trade liberalisation.