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Globalization and the American South
In 1955 the Fortune magazine list of America's largest corporations included just 18 with headquarters in the Southeast. By 2002 the number had grown to 123. In fact, the South attracted over half of the foreign businesses drawn to the United States in the 1990s. The eight original essays collected here consider this stunning dynamism in ways that help us see anew the region's place in that ever-accelerating, transnational flow of people, capital, and technology known collectively as "globalization."
Moving between local and global perspectives, the essays discuss how once faraway places like Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Indian Subcontinent are now having an impact on the South. One essay, for example, looks at a range of issues behind the explosive growth of North Carolina's Latino population, which grew by almost 400 percent during the 1990s-miles ahead of the national growth percentage of 61. In another essay we learn why BMW workers in Germany, frustrated with the migration of jobs to South Carolina, refer to the American South as "our Mexico." Showing that global forces are often on both sides of the matchup―reshaping the South but also adapting to and exploiting its peculiarities―many of the essays make the point that, although the new ethnic food section at the local Winn-Dixie is one manifestation of globalization, so is the wide-ranging export of such originally southern phenomena as NASCAR and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
If a single message emerges from the book, it is Beware of tidy accounts of worldwide integration. On one hand, globalization can play to southern shortcomings (think of the region's repute as a source of cheap labor); on the other, the influx of new peoples, customs, and ideas is poised to alter forever the South's historic black-white racial divide.
Moving between local and global perspectives, the essays discuss how once faraway places like Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Indian Subcontinent are now having an impact on the South. One essay, for example, looks at a range of issues behind the explosive growth of North Carolina's Latino population, which grew by almost 400 percent during the 1990s-miles ahead of the national growth percentage of 61. In another essay we learn why BMW workers in Germany, frustrated with the migration of jobs to South Carolina, refer to the American South as "our Mexico." Showing that global forces are often on both sides of the matchup―reshaping the South but also adapting to and exploiting its peculiarities―many of the essays make the point that, although the new ethnic food section at the local Winn-Dixie is one manifestation of globalization, so is the wide-ranging export of such originally southern phenomena as NASCAR and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
If a single message emerges from the book, it is Beware of tidy accounts of worldwide integration. On one hand, globalization can play to southern shortcomings (think of the region's repute as a source of cheap labor); on the other, the influx of new peoples, customs, and ideas is poised to alter forever the South's historic black-white racial divide.
- GenresHistory
228 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
About the author
James C. Cobb
26 books18 followersJames C. Cobb is Spalding distinguished professor of history emeritus at the University of Georgia.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 18, 2023
Kinda frustrating.
The research is well done, it is a solid array of scholars, and the breadth of the material was decent (though I was extremely disappointed that there wasn’t a chapter about KFC abroad, or much discussion at all about the Colonel given he was on *multiple* book covers).
My main beef is with the theoretical framing. Suffers way too much from the overly optimistic globalization prophets of the 90s/2000s, completely uncritical to capital’s growth and neoliberalism’s horrible inequalities. This was particularly flagrant with some of these author’s lack of attention (or in the worst cases, downright dismissal) of race relations.
Good, but not great.
The research is well done, it is a solid array of scholars, and the breadth of the material was decent (though I was extremely disappointed that there wasn’t a chapter about KFC abroad, or much discussion at all about the Colonel given he was on *multiple* book covers).
My main beef is with the theoretical framing. Suffers way too much from the overly optimistic globalization prophets of the 90s/2000s, completely uncritical to capital’s growth and neoliberalism’s horrible inequalities. This was particularly flagrant with some of these author’s lack of attention (or in the worst cases, downright dismissal) of race relations.
Good, but not great.
Displaying 1 of 1 review