Establishing Conformity : Globalization Perspectives of Four Nordic Countries

Sammanfattning: By first arguing for the fact that globalization is a concept under contest within the social sciences this thesis develops a tool to classify perspectives of globalization. This tool is then applied to textual documents that represents the so called globalization councils (or initiatives) of Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway. Each document is then classified as falling within one of four perspectives of globalization; Liberalisms, Marxisms, Constructivisms and Post-colonialisms. By analyzing a number of documents tied to all four councils and initiatives the thesis is able to interpret what perspective of globalization that is dominant within each of them. Since all four nations examined aspire to use scientific methods to deal with the challenges of globalization they should reflect the diverse state of explanations present within the social scientific community. The thesis finds that this is not the case. While the Norwegian initiative establishes a platform where the concept of globalization could be said to be broadly debated and understood, the other three nations show an astonishing conformity around the perspective named Liberalisms. In a concluding discussion the thesis argues that the results of the study cannot be fully explained by differences within the institutional arrangement among the councils and initiatives. Instead the thesis holds that the results can be explained by investigating how science is used in modern society to establish truths that are not necessarily the views of the scientific community. Using theories by Georg Henrik von Wright and Chantal Mouffe the essay concludes that the conformity could be understood as a part of a process that some social scientists call post-politics.