GLOBALIZATION

Globalization is a distinctive and significant feature of recent world history. The dynamics of
globalization involve several of the core forces of modern social life:
rationalist knowledge, capitalist production, automated technology, and
bureaucratic governance. Some people have associated globalization
with progress, prosperity and peace. For other, however, the word has
conjured up deprivation, disaster and doom.

At one end of the spectrum, certain observers claim that we already live
in a fully globalized world. At the opposite pole, skeptics deny that any
globalization has occurred. On the question of chronology, some
accounts trace globalization back to ancient history, while others date
its origin back only several decades.

“Globalization is in fast-forward, and the world’s ability to understand

and react to it is in slow motion”: we use the term globalization to refer
to a phenomenon which we feel is around us and in progress but which
we can’t exactly define. In fact, globalization is advancing at an alarming
accelerated pace while our knowledge and capacity to understand what it implies fails to catch up with it.

There is not only one definition of globalization. There are 5 meanings that can be associated with
GLOBALIZATION, each of which emphasizes a particular aspect:

DEFINITIONS proposed by Jan Aart Scholte

[Link]: “Global” is a synonym for cross-border relations between countries, and

“globalization” designates a growth of international exchange and interdependence. It implies movement of
people, interconnection, interrelation between countries. It has to do with exchange through the means of
communication. This definition emphasized the economic and political aspects of the term.
Some examples:

- Associations of countries: MERCOSUR, ONU, EU, NAFTA.

- Scientific exchange between countries
- Removal of visas (for entering a country)
- Trans-world currency: €

[Link]: “Globalization” refers to a process of removing government-imposed restrictions on

movements between countries in order to create an “open”, “borderless” world economy. It implies free
trade between countries, no tariffs, removal of restrictions implemented by governments. There’s
international economic integration. This term puts emphasis on the economic aspect of the term.
Some examples:

- Widespread reduction or abolition of regulatory trade barriers.

- Foreign-exchange restrictions
- Capital controls and visas
[Link]: “Global” means “worldwide” and “globalization” if the process of spreading various
objects and experiences to people at all corners of the earth. This puts emphasis on the social and cultural
aspects of the term.
Some examples:

- Fashions, objects and trademarks are distributed all around the world.
- Premiere of films (films are released the same day around the world)
- Means of communication and transport.
- Automobiles
- Chinese restaurants

[Link]/MODERNIZATION: dynamic process in which the social structure of modernity

(capitalism, rationalism, industrialism, etc.) spread all over the world, normally destroying pre-existent
cultures and local self-determination in the process. This puts emphasis on the cultural and political aspects
of the term.
Some examples:

- The imperialism of McDonald’s, Hollywood, and CNN.

[Link]/SUPRATERRITORIALITY: entails a reconfiguration of geography, there is a

disappearance of borders, limits, frontiers. Geographic barriers are still important but social boundaries
disappear. The world seen as one single social space (global village).

DEFINITION proposed by Costa Picazo

For Costa Picazo, globalization is “Americanization”: the spread and imposition of the American culture
which leads to homogenization going against local cultures (they are destroyed). It’s the same as
“Westernization”. Globalization has a multidimensional character; there are different areas of social
activities in which this phenomenon is evident:

- Communication
- Markets
- Production
- Finance: ATM/CC
- Money: USD, euro
- Organizations: UNO/IMF
- Social ecology: concern for climate change
- Consciousness: tendency for people to think globally.
 CHRONOLOGY: old or new?

As regards the question of when Globalization began, Scholte sustains that this phenomenon didn’t start at a
definite point in history. Instead, he mentions 3 historic phases of Globalization.

 Emergence of global imagination (1600s)

Due to changes in the way humans see the world (notably through Humanism, Enlightenment, and the
voyages of discovery), civilizations which had never been in contact before were now getting to know about
each other’s existence. For example, the inhabitants of pre-Columbian America now knew that they were
not alone in the world, that there was a global population.

 Incipient globalization (1850s-1950s)

Scholte describes globalization during this period as incipient (just beginning to exist). With the invention and
improvement of means of communication and of transport, conditions were created for globalization to
begin expanding.

 Full scale globalization (1960s-Present)

From the ‘60s until today, the world has witnessed full scale globalization with the creation of global
markets, global banking systems, global corporations, global tourism, and of the World Wide Web.

CAUSES of GLOBALIZATION

Scholte argues that when it comes to the causes of globalization, this global situation is driven chiefly by
rationalist knowledge, capitalist production, various technological innovations and certain regulatory
measures:

- Rationalist knowledge: he refers to secular global consciousness and to the anthropocentric view of the
world as home of the human species, both of which made it possible for human kind to discover that there is
a world and that it is populated.
- Capitalism: he makes reference to the emergence of international banking.
- Technological innovations: have improved conditions for globalization to exist, putting people all over
the world in contact.
- Changes in regulation: have provided for global relations. For example, the development of
standardization and international law have made it possible for different countries around the globe to share
similar conditions as regards production, quality of goods and services, etc; thus making it easier for those
countries to break all borders and trade barriers at a global scale.
 MULTIDIMENSIONAL VIEW of GLOBALIZATION
Globalization becomes evident in different areas of social activity

 Communications: development of the mass media & of means of transport, which make it possible for
people to contact others with immediacy.
 Markets: spreading of goods and services all over the world. People can get the same goods and
services almost all over the world.
 Production: there is “global production”; the world has become a “global market”, where the different
stages in production may be scattered all over the world.
 Money: trans-world use of the Euro. Certain strong currencies have gone beyond their own borders.
There’s also a widespread use of the credit card.
 Finance: foreign transactions take place through a round-the-world stock market. People can place their
savings in different places, all over the world.
 Organization: today there are many supraterritorial institutions; not only economic, but also civic and
religious, which make laws that operate all over the world. For ex: UNO, IMF, The World Bank, etc.
 Consciousness: today, the people see the world as being a single space, a global village. There’s a
tendency to think globally: there’s a coexistence of our own conceptions of society, life and the conception
of different people from all over the world. People think and act globally. For ex: sports competitions and
concerts that take place all over the world.
 CONTINUITY or CHANGE?
SOCIAL CHANGE: does globalization transform our lives or do social structures persist intact?

Many people share the intuition, articulated by the sociologist Anthony Giddens, that “the emergence of
globalized orders means that the world we live in is different from tat of previous ages”. According to
Scholte, there are 4 general areas of debate about globalization and social change:

- PRODUCTION: a first set of claims posits that globalization has transformed the nature of economic
activity. For example, global markets, global competition, and global management have fundamentally
reshaped the visions, organization and behavior of firms. Globalization is also widely associated with
technological evolution in transport, communications, and data processing. These developments have
changed what we produce and how we produce.
These strong affirmations have provoked equally strongly asserted counterclaims of continuity. These
arguments often note that the spread of global relations involve shifts in the ways that surplus accumulation
occurs. For example, globalization may bring a new division of labor, rise of regionalism, greater
concentration of production in giant corporations, etc. However, such changes are underlain by continuity:
globalization leaves capitalism as entrenched as ever, if not more so.

- GOVERNANCE: a second set of claims about the changes wrought by globalization relates to governance,
especially the fate of states. Many believe that contemporary globalization has deprived the state of
sovereignty. More broadly, many analysts have linked the growth of global relations to the “diminished
nation-state”, “the decline of the nation-state” and “the retreat of the state”.
Such assertions have triggered a host of rebuttals. For example, certain authors insist that globalization has
done nothing to undermine sovereign statehood. According to this view, a state could, if it wished, extricate
itself from global relations. Related arguments have affirmed that global flows (in communication, ecology,
etc.) do not necessarily undermine the state and indeed may in some cases strengthen it. These perspectives
maintain that the state retains substantial capacities to govern global economic activities. Indeed, states
remain the prime regulators.

A third general stand in debates about globalization and governance focuses more on shifts in the contours
of regulatory authority. It is believed that globalization has taken world politics away from the state-centric,
sovereignty-based model of governance that held sway prior to the late 20 th century. Although national
governments remain crucially important, governance has become more multilayered. Authority is
increasingly diffused across substate (municipal and provincial) and suprastate (regional and transworld)
agencies as well as state organs.

In short, on these lines of argument, states have survived under globalization, but governance has become
substantially different.
- CULTURE (homogenization, heterogenization, hybridization): On the one hand, many believe that
globalization brings a worldwide “cultural synchronization” (homogenization); “everywhere everything gets
more and more like everything else as the world’s preference structure is relentlessly homogenized.”
Globalization introduces a single world culture centered on consumerism, mass media, Americana, and the
English language. Depending on one’s perspective, this homogenization entails either progressive
cosmopolitanism or oppressive imperialism.
In contrast, others have linked globalization with enduring cultural diversity (heterogenization). They
emphasize that global communications are often adapted to fit diverse local contexts. Global products take
different forms and have different impacts depending on local particularities. Many groups have championed
national, religious, and other particularities as a reaction to and a defense against a universalizing
“McWorld”.

Others believed that globalization has highlighted the creation of new patterns of meaning, identity, and
community (hybridization). From this perspective, globalization has intensified intercultural relations,
encouraging countless new combinations and blurring distinctions between nations and civilizations.

- MODERNITY and POSTMODERNITY: researchers believe that globalization has developed out of modern
society: Giddens argues that “modernity is inherently globalizing”. Some have linked globalization with the
development of “high, advanced or radical” modernity. The spread of global relations has extended and
deepened the hold of modern structures (rationalism, bureaucratism, capitalism and industrialism). There’s
an association of globalization with a new and reflexive modernity, a modernization of modernization that
replaces industrial society with a risk society driven by insecurities. Others believe that globalization has
effected the dawn of postmodernity. Postmodernity is taken as equivalent to a post-industrial society and
associated with cultural changes.

POSITIVE and NEGATIVE ASPECTS of GLOBALIZATION

POSITIVE NEGATIVE

- Increase in wealth - Social injustice, inequality, unfairness

ECONOMIC - Gains in efficiency - Inequity
GLOBALIZATION - Enhanced consumer satisfaction - Gender discrimination
- Distribution of more products to - Racial injustices
more people at lower prices - Inability of states to solve problems
because what prevails is competitiveness,
pure capitalism
- The flow of cultural goods - Disenchantment of the world resulting
CULTURAL
- Renaissance of local cultures and from “Americanization” which leads to
GLOBALIZATION languages homogenization.
- Global communications promote - Cultural imperialism
greater intercultural understanding

- The existence of transworld - Lack of democratic accountability

POLITICAL institutions with the purpose of policing - Decisions are only taken by powerful
- Democratizing potential: citizens countries
GLOBALIZATION have access to unprecedented amounts - Low-intensity democracy
of information at an unprecedented
speed
Is the spread of global relations new to contemporary history? Or did the trend start several generations,
centuries or even millennia ago?

OLD NEW
Analysts who define globalization as Globalization is entirely novel to present times:
internationalization or liberation, regard the global relations started with the jet plane and the
process as a recurrent trend that has appeared at computer.
several previous junctures in the history of the
modern states-system.
There’s nothing new about globalization: the levels Global connections have certain antecedents in
of cross-border trade, migration and investment earlier centuries, but they have figured as a
were as high in the late 19th century as they were in pervasive, major aspect of social life mainly since
the run-up to 2000. the 1960s.
Globalization started on a small scale anywhere
from 100 to 500 years ago and reached
unprecedented rates in recent years.
Global connections have certain antecedents in earlier centuries, but they have figured as a pervasive,
major aspect of social life mainly since the 1960s.