Methodological Nationalism in Global Studies and Beyond

Abstract

Global studies, or the study of globalization, is a diverse field of research, with different disciplinary focuses and with some national versions. Russian Alexander Chumakov constructed it as a philosophical discipline, while in U.S. academia it is considered an empirical inquiry at the intersection of area studies, international studies, and international relations. This paper focuses on American global studies, pointing out the heavy epistemological burden it inherited from the field of knowledge dominated by international relations, which enshrines both methodological and political nationalism. International relations makes claims to be the sole theory originator in this field, but it may be criticized for several methodological and ethical issues (such as unwarranted simplifications that purge empirical contents to the point of unfalsifiability, antiquated epistemic ideals, Western and hegemonic biases, besides methodological nationalism), thus alternate theorizations are highly desirable.

Overselling Globalization: The Misleading Conflation of Economic Globalization and Immigration, and the Subsequent Backlash

“…However, globalization's definition has been increasingly expansive-by, for example, including people and culture in the list of cross-border exchanges. No discipline owns the term or has sole jurisdiction over the study of "the global" (Koos and Keulman 2019). The term has become obfuscated, obscuring rather than clarifying social analyses.…”

The Politics of Explanatory Nationalism and the Evolution of the United Nations Agenda on Multinational Enterprises

“…Dependency theorists argue that structural economic imbalances sustain poverty and other social ills in low-income countries: development in the Global North is enabled by underdevelopment in the Global South. This results from capital's geographical accumulation and the division of labour in global trade, which results in the economic periphery's deteriorating terms of trade relative to the economic core [Baran, 1962;dos Santos, 1970;Frank, 1966;Hopkins, Wallerstein, 1977;Koos, Keulman, 2019;Prebisch 1950]. Contemporary cosmopolitan theory focuses on the global community, and on interdependence more generally.…”

“…This angle also expands analysis to the field of economics. The developments in mainstream IR have been greatly influenced by various economics-related approaches, from statistical analysis to game theoryas well as institutional theory [de Mesquita, Smith, 2012;Koos, Keulman, 2019].…”