Connection and Constitution: Locating War and Culture in Globalization Studies

ABSTRACT War and the military are neglected in globalization studies, despite the fact that the worldwide circulation of people, goods and ideas often takes warlike form. This article seeks to remedy this neglect by conceiving war itself as a form of interconnection between peoples and locales, and as an occasion for circulation and interchange. The article develops a multi-dimensional and historical conception of globalization as relations of connection and mutual constitution, and locates war and culture within them. Cultural approaches to globalization are used to illuminate the role of war and the military in consciousness of the world as a whole and to address the significance of military ‘traveling cultures’. The end of the Cold War saw the rise of globalization as a frame for conceiving world politics, for scholars, politicians, policy analysts and the public. Alongside the neoliberal ‘globalist’ agenda that framed much discussion in policy and media circles, a diverse and multidisciplinary scholarly literature developed with extraordinary rapidity. Liberated from the peculiar confines of the discipline of International Relations (IR), with its obsession for sovereignty and relative neglect of social relations, a rich and exciting body of thought concerning the ‘international’ broadly conceived has grown around the globalization concept, with economists, sociologists