Globalization, culture and society: The state as place amidst shifting spaces

Globalization is the set of processes that connect societies, while fragmenting and transcending the social structures it confronts. This article advances four central arguments. First, the uncertainties in the pace and trajectory of contemporary processes of globalization are very large. Second, globalization is a layered process: some of the threads of globalization may thicken more quickly than others and others may thin out. Third, the state remains an indispensable institution, under virtually all foreseeable contingencies, but it does face new and powerful challenges to its core mandates. Finally, we sketch four stylized models of the state, each pair embedded in two very different narratives of globalization, and conclude that the state has the capacity and the opportunity to make important strategic choices about its economic, social, and cultural investments. How the state responds when globalization is intensifying will have a significant impact on its capacity to respond should globalization stumble.