Winners and losers observed during the period of significant transformations in capitalism and during the progress of globalization are associated with changes in the economic processes. According to Professor Saskia Sassen, the identification of winners and losers should be directly connected with discussing the concepts of expansion and expulsion (Sassen presentation, March 12, 2015). Thus, Prof. Sassen notes that “an expansion of the operational space for advanced capitalism through the expulsion of people from a range of institutional settings in both the Global South and North” is a normal process (Sassen 2013: 27).
From this point, in order to define winners and losers, it is necessary to refer to the initiators of expansion and to the objects of expansion as well as to victims of expulsion. In this context, following Sassen’s argument, it is possible to state that the winners in the current globalized world are the cities and nations that choose to continue expansion in spite of barriers in order to gain more profits; and losers in this process are nations and people who cannot adapt to the continuous acquisition of lands and resources that leads to the people’s expulsion.
From this perspective, winners are those actors in this situation who can benefit from some global economic processes and who can achieve prosperity while making losers be expelled. Prof. Sassen mentions cities, nations, firms, and investors as winners because they expand by means of losers and a range of other resources. In this context, not only the United States and the United Kingdom can be discussed as winners at the global arena, as it is according to the traditional view, but also China and India can be analyzed within this category because these nations are also focused on foreign acquisitions (Sassen 2013: 29). The other example of a winner is any global corporation that actively uses outsourcing and refers to employees as to the labor that can be changed any time.
In this case, it is also possible to state that losers are both nations and people because such nations as Greece need to survive within the environment of capitalist laws and such vulnerable categories of population as homeless persons need to survive due to the focus on expulsion from social classes and cities (Sassen presentation, March 12, 2015). In addition, the idea of expulsion related to ‘losers’ is realized in terms of dead natural lands that cannot be protected from damages and dead urban lands that cannot be protected from the economic crisis (Sassen 2014: par. 13; Sassen presentation, March 12, 2015).
Moreover, globalization leads to changing the traditional rules and to significant transformations. In this context, such nations that were traditionally discussed as losers can become winners during their life cycle, as it is in case of Latvia, for example. The reason is that the authorities and businessmen in this country choose the way of expansion.
Prof. Sassen’s claim regarding winners and losers in the globalized world is interesting because it is important to focus on changes in the capitalist world, where the processes of expansion and expulsion are closely connected. In spite of the fact that the traditional vision of winners and losers has changed during the recent years, there is still correlation between these two categories that influences the economic and social balance in the world.
Works Cited
Sassen, Saskia. Countdown to Oblivion: The Real Reason We Can’t Stop Global Warming. 2014. Web.
—. “Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy”. UC Irvine School of Social Sciences. Irvine, California. 2015. Lecture.
—. “Land Grabs Today: Feeding the Disassembling of National Territory”. Globalizations 10.1 (2013): 25–46. Print.