"You could say that we are living in an internally globalized country"
About this Quote
A country can keep its flag, its borders, even its myths, and still be hollowed out by the world it thinks it’s managing. That’s the bite in Ulrich Beck’s line: globalization isn’t only something that happens “out there,” between nations and markets. It moves in, takes up residence, and starts rearranging the furniture.
Beck’s phrase “internally globalized” is deliberately paradoxical. It nudges readers away from the old picture of globalization as trade flows and foreign policy and toward the messier reality of everyday interdependence: supply chains that determine what’s on shelves, migration that rewires neighborhoods, transnational media that syncs anxieties, and financial shocks that leap from one banking system to another. The country becomes a miniature world system, crisscrossed by forces that don’t respect domestic categories like “local” and “foreign.”
The subtext is political. If globalization is internal, then national politics can’t keep pretending it’s sovereign in the classic sense. Debates about jobs, security, culture, even public health are no longer purely national problems with purely national levers. Beck is also warning against the comforting fiction that a nation can “take back control” simply by tightening borders or changing leaders. Control, in this picture, is dispersed across networks, corporations, treaties, technologies, and risks.
Context matters: Beck wrote in an era shaped by European integration, post-Cold War optimism curdling into volatility, and his signature theme of “risk society” (think climate, terrorism, financial crisis). The line works because it flips a familiar narrative. Globalization isn’t an external threat; it’s the condition of modern domestic life.
Beck’s phrase “internally globalized” is deliberately paradoxical. It nudges readers away from the old picture of globalization as trade flows and foreign policy and toward the messier reality of everyday interdependence: supply chains that determine what’s on shelves, migration that rewires neighborhoods, transnational media that syncs anxieties, and financial shocks that leap from one banking system to another. The country becomes a miniature world system, crisscrossed by forces that don’t respect domestic categories like “local” and “foreign.”
The subtext is political. If globalization is internal, then national politics can’t keep pretending it’s sovereign in the classic sense. Debates about jobs, security, culture, even public health are no longer purely national problems with purely national levers. Beck is also warning against the comforting fiction that a nation can “take back control” simply by tightening borders or changing leaders. Control, in this picture, is dispersed across networks, corporations, treaties, technologies, and risks.
Context matters: Beck wrote in an era shaped by European integration, post-Cold War optimism curdling into volatility, and his signature theme of “risk society” (think climate, terrorism, financial crisis). The line works because it flips a familiar narrative. Globalization isn’t an external threat; it’s the condition of modern domestic life.
Quote Details
| Topic | Deep |
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