From Global to Local: The Making of Things and the End of Globalization

Livesey, a Cambridge lecturer on politics and international studies, puts forth the thought-provoking and disruptive premise that globalization is not the way of the future. He posits accepted wisdom on globalization’s victory as misleading and argues that, instead of being in the midst of an ever-expanding world economy, societies are operating on an economic model that became obsolete over the past few decades. As evidence that globalization is already on the decline, he cites the United States’s increased tariffs on foreign goods and current pledges to end trade deals, and the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union. In addition, he cogently points out one downside of globalization’s ascendancy: what he calls the “hollowing out of the industrial common,” in which skills and infrastructure leave a country along with outsourced manufacturing jobs. To bring to light a positive alternative to this trend, Livesey discusses how localization in manufacturing is already taking place, with a print-on-demand machine at the Harvard Bookstore and a process currently under development at Wake Forest University for creating artificial human organs rather than relying on donations. Livesey’s insightful and reflective work makes a convincing argument that the economic landscape of the future is already being significantly reshaped. (Sept.)