| This dissertation offers a genealogical exploration of "globalization." Where do the ideas and categories that circulate around this narrative (the national economy, economic progress and competitiveness, interdependence, the global economy itself) come from? Are the categories under which this discourse takes place objective and scientific, in an Archimedean sense?;Our entry point into this genealogical study is via slices of statistical history - particularly national income analysis - from the 17 th to the 20th centuries. The governmentality of the present is one that is frequently mathematical, statistical, numeric. In such a context, it is appropriate to explore those numbers that have been taken not only as guides for action, but also as arbitrators of true and false statements with respect to both the present and the past. To what extent are the numbers associated with the globalization narrative intrinsically political rather than self-evidently true? What do the numbers have to say when read in their own terms? What is the socio-technical history of the economic?;In sum, the objective is to both undermine the teleological and presentist history associated with "globalization," and to demonstrate that the evidence on which the globalization debate is informed and arbitrated is as politically saturated as the positions in the debate. In fact, there is a certain sense in which the statistical evidence helped to constitute the debate in the first place and therefore cannot be used to judge it. |
