Beyond “Alternative Globalization” in Socialist Eastern Europe: A Critique of the Concept
By Béla Tomka. Research on the globalization of socialist Eastern Europe has become a thriving field within international historiography over the past decade. At the same time, scholars have made ambitious efforts to develop new conceptual tools for identifying the distinctive features of globalization in socialist Eastern Europe. Some of these new concepts go beyond just examining the transnational ties of socialist states — they also make broader claims about globalization itself by suggesting that globalization is not a single, uniform process but rather one that unfolds in distinct, segmented ways. The approach of “alternative globalization” introduces a profoundly new way of thinking about the topic by reshaping how we understand the dynamics and chronology of globalization in the region.