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This paper applies Deleuze and Guattari's concept to analyze the growth of the global trade in English-language books, as this development is indicative of how a rhizomic model of globalization captures the nonlinear path growth sometimes seems to follow. Moreover, the paper examines how the development of a global book trade, and by extension globalization, can best be understood in terms of a rhizome. Finally, the paper considers the implications that a rhizomic model of globalization and the late nineteenth-century book trade has for our understanding of globalization both past and present.

"According to the so-called imprinted brain theory, the paradoxes can be explained in terms of the expression of genes, and not simply their inheritance. Imprinted genes are those which are only expressed when they are inherited from one parent rather than the other. The classic example is IGF2, a growth factor gene only normally expressed when inherited from the father, but silent when inherited from the mother. According to the most widely-accepted theory, genes like IGF2 are silenced by mammalian mothers because only the mother has to pay the costs associated with gestating and giving birth to a large offspring. The father, on the other hand, gets all the benefit of larger offspring, but pays none of the costs. Therefore his copy is activated. The symbolism of a tug-of-war represents the mother's genetic self-interest in countering the growth-enhancing demands of the father's genes expressed in the foetus-the mother, after all, has to gestate and give birth to the baby at enormous cost to herself."

The first principle of rhizome is that individual nodes-whether that is family units or communities of varying sizes-must be minimally self-sufficient. "Minimally self-sufficient" means the ability to consistently and reliably provide for anything so important that you would be willing to subject yourself to the terms of the hierarchal system in order to get it: food, shelter, heat, medical care, entertainment, etc. It doesn't mean zero trade, asceticism, or "isolationism," but rather the ability to engage in trade and interaction with the broader system when, and only when, it is advantageous to do so. The corollary here is that a minimally self-sufficient system should also produce some surplus that can be exchanged-but only to the extent that is found to be advantageous. A minimally self sufficient family may produce enough of its own food to get by if need be, its own heat and shelter, and enough of some surplus-let's say olive oil-to exchange for additional, quality-of-life-enhancing consumables as it finds advantageous. This principle of minimal self-sufficiency empowers the individual family or community, while allowing the continuation of trade, value-added exchange, and full interaction with the outside world.