Globalization and the American South.

Globalization and the American South. Edited by James C. Cobb and William Stueck. (Athens, Ga., and London: University of Georgia Press, c. 2005. Pp. [xviii], 229. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8203-2648-8; cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-8203-2647-X.)

"The South was global, so to speak, when global wasn't cool"--at least that is the conclusion Peter A. Coclanis reaches in his contribution to Globalization and the American South (p. 30). This edited collection offers other breezy observations about globalization's intimate relationship with the South, such as James C. Cobb's remark that "southernness is a big hit in the international identity market," including in Italy where the "town of Bellagio turned out in force for a 'Texas Party," where a Gucci-scooting good time was had by all": and a rather surprising argument from Marko Maunula that "'No community in the American South--maybe the entire United States--may have benefited more from economic globalization than Spartanburg" (pp. 14, 180). Such observations stand out in what is ultimately a book rooted in hard facts and well-documented historical arguments about the relationship between the American South and globalization, which the editors define as "'the transnational flow of people, capital, technology, and expertise ..." (p. xii).

The chapters cover a broad array of topics as they relate to the U.S. South, including the influx of immigrant groups such as Asians and Latinos, the relocation of manufacturing facilities from Europe and Japan, and the global connections of key southern figures such as Andrew Young and Roger Milliken. Those looking for a reference and statistics on key issues like the impact of foreign corporations and foreign-born populations on the twentieth- and twenty-first-century South will find the collection quite useful.

The shortcoming of this collection, however, is hinted at by the quotations that started this review: there is a real dearth of wide-ranging analysis here. So while the collection offers a readable mix of instructive data and historical narrative couched in folksy anecdotes, the lack of analysis shows itself particularly at the fundamental levels at which the book was conceived: that is, in never really investigating whether globalization leads us to reconsider the concept of the South itself.

What the book does, then, without necessarily aiming to, is raise questions about the coherency of the idea of the South when we consider the region on a global scale. When viewed against the backdrop of the world, does the U.S. South always hold together as a unique region? To explore this question consider Alfred E. Eckes's chapter, "The South and Economic Globalization, 1950 to the Future," which offers sobering statistics on global blue- and white-collar job outsourcing. Eckes discusses Wal-Mart, a corporation headquartered in Arkansas "that once took pride in selling American-made merchandise, [but] now concentrates on selling low-cost imported merchandise, much of it from China"; these Wal-Mart imports, estimates suggest, "created--directly and indirectly--twelve million Chinese job opportunities" (p. 58). In the face of such statistics it is unclear how seeing Wal-Mart as a southern corporation actually provides any particular insight. How is the experience of Wal-Mart's outsourcing particularly southern and significantly different from the global outsourcing of, for example, its Minnesota-based competitor Target?

Of course, there is a way in which Wal-Mart is definitely identified with the U.S. South and all its connotations: the discounter's commercials and shareholder meetings invoke homespun, rural family values nostalgically associated with Dixie as a key element in its marketing strategies, even as its actual economic decisions are ruthlessly cutthroat. But that kind of analysis of the southernness of Wal-Mart is not part of the book. Thus, the only quality that makes Wal-Mart or other companies Eckes mentions, such as Dell Computer and Delta Airlines, fall within the scope of the study is that they happen to be based in southern locations. But the job losses and wage cuts caused by their corporate policies are not particularly southern struggles. They are just as surely local community problems as they are regional, national, and international problems that all industrialized labor forces, to a greater or lesser extent, now have to contend with.

Where the book is particularly helpful is when its authors step back to take the long view. Thus, to stay with the example of Eckes's chapter on the South and economic globalization, we see that the pattern of corporations following exploitable labor is what brought many of these newly lost (or now jeopardized) jobs to the South from northern states in the first place. As Eckes puts it, "low-skilled jobs first moved from the old manufacturing belt in the northeast and Midwest of the United States to Dixie to avoid labor unions and cut costs.... But as recent events suggest, Dixie was not the final destination" (p. 60).

From this perspective we see both the uniqueness of the southern situation and the tragic ordinariness of it. Following the path of manufacturing jobs from the North, where they were born during the industrial revolution, to the U.S. South in the wake of unionization and then to the global South in the wake of advances in transportation, communications, and manufacturing technology, we begin to see a history that suggests certain commonalities between the two Souths. What new ways of understanding both regions would emerge from a systematic study of the two as intimately connected?

To take another example, consider the case of Hispanic immigration that Raymond A. Mohl tackles in his chapter, "Globalization, Latinization, and the Nuevo New South." That chapter takes on many of the social, economic, and political questions that arise when one examines immigration from Central and South America and provides a fascinating study of the impact that immigrants born south of the border have on the day-to-day life of those born south of the Mason-Dixon Line. But again, with economic issues the specificity seems arbitrary and raises more questions than it answers. Are there instances when the South--that is, traditionally the Southeast--might usefully be studied as part of a larger grouping with the Southwest, where immigration from Latin America has also profoundly shaped local life and has been the subject of debate for some time? What new perspectives would arise from this broader framework?

Such questions would not be ways of dismissing the cultural, political, and historical specificity of Dixie, but they would certainly provide a more complex way of understanding the impact of globalization on the region and how that impact then forces us to consider this subject of analysis at multiple levels both within the traditional boundaries and within and outside new boundaries. Instead, we have here a book that enthusiastically studies changes in the South but is not willing to question the idea of the South in the wake of these changes. Perhaps it is not fair to expect that out of a book that aims--and reasonably so--to answer the question, "How has life in this region been influenced by [the] crisscrossing currents of global interaction?" (p. xii). Toward that end, this book provides many useful investigations. But for those readers hoping to understand the current impact of globalization at something more than the empirical level, the book's most useful contributions may be in the larger questions it inspires about the idea of the South and in the valuable data and historical narratives it offers to help us quantify and contextualize those larger answers.

PATRICIA VENTURA

Spelman College