Contemp Prelims Reviewer
Contemp Prelims Reviewer
Contemp Prelims Reviewer
UNDERSTANDING GLOBALIZATION
FRAMING GLOBALIZATION
- Beyond a problem-solving approach
- Perspective of “promoting international competitiveness”
- Process and discourse
- Understood and constituted in different ways (critical view)
- Frames of meaning used to describe the world are a part of a political process
- Words and meanings matter
- Implications for social change: geography, identity, production, governance, knowledge
- Impacts on human condition: security, equality, democracy
- Responses: Neoliberalism (markets), Rejectionism (localism/populism), Reformism (public
policies), Transformism (social revolution)
- Contending perspectives:
LIBERAL/HYPERGLOBAL
1. “end of geography”; “end of the nation-state”; borderless world of flows
2. Privileges an economic and technological logic
3. Globalization as mutually beneficial, progressive, benign
4. New, inevitable, levels off
5. A new modernization theory?
6. The end of the cold war and the ‘end of history”; “there is no alternative”
7. There is however a “pessimist globalist” perspective that emphasize both
homogenization and its negative consequences
CONSERVATIVE/SKEPTICAL
1. internalization/regionalization
2. Marxism/structuralism – adopt a strong state-centric perspective
3. Rise of anti-global authoritarian populism/nativism
CRITICAL/TRANSFORMATIONAL
1. dissolution of old boundaries (states, economies, communities)
2. “the state as a space of flows”: power and politics are reconfigured; flow
through, across and around boundaries
3. Speed and magnitude of changes
4. Mobility, hybridity, complexity
5. Global-local nexus
6. Unevenness and new hierarchies: inclusion and exclusion; globalization of
superficiality; globalization of indifference
GLOBALIZATION
- Interconnectivity, interdependence, interrelationships, intercommunications,
internetworking
- Outsourcing, supply-chaining, political liberalization
- Process of interaction and integration of people, companies, businesses, and even
governments in different nations in the world
- Main aim: to connect various countries together by exporting and importing services and
goods
- Intensification of worldwide social relations – link distant localities in such a way that local
happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa
- Internalization & Multinationalization = Globalization
- As a concept: refers to compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of
the world as a whole
- Process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments of
different nations
- Process driven by international trade and investment and aided by information technologies
- Expansion and intensification of social relations and consciousness across the world time
and across world space
o Expansion – creation of new social networks and the multiplication of existing
connections that cut across traditional political, economic, cultural and geographic
boundaries
o Intensification – expansion, stretching and acceleration of these networks
o Relates to the way people perceive time and space
o Must be differentiated by an ideology – GLOBALISM (belief)
M. Steger:
1. Globality – social condition characterized by tight economic, political, cultural, and
environmental interconnections and flows, making currently existing borders and
boundaries irrelevant
2. Globalization – set of social processes that appear to transform our present social condition
of weakening nationality into one of globality; human lives played out in the world as a
single place; redefining landscape of sociopolitical processes and social sciences that study
these mechanisms
3. Global imaginary – concept referring to people’s growing consciousness of belonging to a
global community; destabilizes and unsettles the conventional parameters of understanding
within which people imagine their communal existence
AS A PROCESS:
- Multidimensional set of social processes that generate and increase “worldwide social
interdependencies and exchanges while at the same time fostering in people a growing
awareness of deepening connections between the local and the distant”
- Start of globalization – depends
- removal of barriers between national economies
- lowering or removal of tariffs and quotas and open trade among nations has helped
globalize the world economy.
- The integration of national economies through trade, investment, capital flow, labor
migration, and technology. To boost development in poor countries and raise standards of
living for their people.
- The key to growing businesses in the 21st century. Businesses must recognize that their
success depends on efficiency and scalability – being able to quickly mobilize global
resources and reach world markets. As a result, it has led economic decision-making away
from local control.
TYPES:
1. Sociological
- structure, functions in society
- involves interconnected changes in the spheres of society
2. Cultural
- traditions, practices, norms
- spread of ideas, values, and meanings across different countries. It
transcends in the realm of business, family, relations, food, language, or
metaphysical beliefs.
- Religion, language, cuisine, fashion, music and dance, and other
ramifications of pop culture are the elements in cultural globalization.
- Results to ‘Americanization’ of the young generation
3. Economic
- movement or interdependence of people, capital, technology, goods and
services on a global scale.
-interplay of different countries and regions with one another to gain
beneficial partnerships and establish economic growth.
- increase of interdependence of world economies due to the growing scale
of trading commodities between countries, the flow of international capital,
and the spread of technologies.
4. Political
- policies, government
- Shared, conviction that all people should be governed by their own consent
and a rule of law.
5. Financial – interconnection of world’s finance
6. Technological – connection through technology
SOCIO-CULTURAL PROCESS
- it covers the diffusion of beliefs, practices, and issues concerning population
growth, media, urbanization, tourism, education, and sports that also drive
nations, institutions, and governments to expand social relations.
- Negative side is that global health is at risk, due to international travel, it
contributed to the spread of communicable and fatal diseases such as HIV,
AIDS, SaRS, bird flu, etc.
- United Nations cooperates among countries to control and eradicate these
global health issues
ECONOMIC PROCESS
- determined as the continuous restructuring and readjustment of the global
industry, because of the development of science and technology and the
increase of income level
POLITICAL PROCESS
AS A CONDITION:
- Globality
- Transplanetary connectivity (establishment of social links between people located at
different places of the planet – not geographic unit but as a space) and supra-territoriality
(social connections that transcend territorial geography – renders borders and barriers
irrelevant) (Scholte)
EFFECTS:
- Global market
- Competition
- Culture
- Job insecurity
- Stable security
- Environmental change
- Fluctuation in prices
- Developed and developing countries are impacted by globalization (Bhasin)
CURRENT SITUATION
- Its rise has led to many effects (positive/negative)
- Caused the world to become more connected with many countries (Pennisi)
- Still more room to improve
- Allows the creation of “clusters” – connection between businesses
- A global market allows more efficient production and easier access to
cheaper and higher-quality goods and services
- Some countries are still imposing protectionism (limiting the number of and
enforcing taxes on imports)
- “Regional Inequality” = a country that mass produces its goods will sell their
products at a low price
BENEFITS:
- Increased free trade
- Diversity of goods
- More capital
- Potential growth of local companies
- More business negotiations across the globe
- Efficient communication and transport
- Cooperation among nations
- Less possibilities of warfare
- People from all parts of the world are easily connected through mass media
- Political ideas become widespread
- More environmental issues are being addressed
- Different cultures are greatly influenced by one another
PROBLEMS
- Making the rich, richer, makes the non-rich poorer
- Big companies are able to expand their businesses and get a hold of more
power
- High demand must adhere to a higher supply – lack of concern for the
environment and the mismanagement of natural resources
- Greenhouse effect
- Water pollution
- Soil pollution
- Encroachment of land
- Uses up finite resources more quickly
- Increases world oil prices
- Too much dependence on imports
- More workers and laborers experience social injustice and unfair conditions
- Exploitation of workers
- Cost of labor
- Human trafficking
- Tverberg: big companies have the power to transfer their taxes to the
individuals
- Barriers like imposing restrictive export and measures
- Virus and communicable diseases
- Losing borders = losing identity
- Large multinational companies promote their products globally
- Local companies are edged out of the market
- Western countries impose cultural values on others through media and
popular culture
- Language – key expression of cultural diversity
- Marginalizes some languages and may even cause some languages to die
out
- Territories are linked together, one of them should avoid collapsing.
AS AN IDEOLOGY:
- Exist in the people’s consciousness – ideas and beliefs about the global order
- 6 Core Claims
1. Globalization is about the liberalization and global integration of markets.
2. Globalization is inevitable and irreversible.
3. Nobody is in charge of globalization.
4. Globalization benefits everyone in the long run
5. Globalization furthers the spread of democracy in the world.
6. Globalization requires a global war on terror.
ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS
- All have this common sense of wanting to draw closer to one
another and be open to different identities, cultures, views apart
from their own.
o Hierocles’ Concept of Oikeiosis
- Oikeiôsis – affiliation, affinity, appropriation, endearment,
familiarization, and orientation; to grow closer to the concentric
circles
- Concentric circles:
innermost: oneself
last/outermost: one’s family, society, humanity
- Stoic ethics we all belong to a “single and universal community.”
- Immanuel Kant (Concept of Cosmopolitanism)
- Cosmopolitanism
– Wide variety of views or perspectives (moral, economic,
cultural, and socio-political philosophy) that exists within a
community or in the contemporary world
– Aimed to connect people – “supreme objective”; wanting
to achieve perpetual peace or world order
– Helped the emergence of globalization (widening of
knowledge of more principles and the like)
- Explains the rights of both states and individuals (“citizens of the
earth”)
o Pericles (Democracy leads to Globalization)
- “openness” – exactly the same process
- Political democracy > globalization
- Not just free-trade but also the free movement of people
- “Globalization would not be stable without democracy”
- Enables countries and people from different places to connect
(cultural, social, economical, political)
-
Karl Marx – Internationalism (1848)
- Practice of nations acting and working together and transcending
nationalism
- Believed in the power of communism.
- In coming together, it should be global rather than local in scope
- In fighting for phenomenon such as communism, the impact would
be greater if we will put down our borders and combat things as a
global nation
o Marshall McLuhan (Global Village)
- Media theorist – “global village”
- Predicted and observed – the world would be integrated because of
an electronic nervous system
- Changed the world’s views on technology (made the world shrink
into one small village by being able to disseminate information in
every part of the globe simultaneously)
- Globalization – developed socially, politically, culturally – rise of
technology and communication (connected the people rapidly)
MODERN THINKERS
- One common definition of Globalization – process that helps a
nation to advance with the help of technology.
- Globalization – method used by businesses, politicians and other
powerful individuals to improve their country’s economy or income
and to raise their economic standing as it brings about influence and
opportunities to affiliate with other countries who can aid the
nation’s insufficiency in certain areas of resources or capital.
- Technology – huge part in speeding up the process of Globalization,
o Thomas Friedman
- Cold War system
– countries excluding one another in all aspects concerning
them, such as politics, culture, technology, economics, etc
– much more about integration than exclusion
- Globalization brought about a newer international system
- Globalization – challenge of achieving balance between prosperity
(the Lexus) and the traditional (the olive tree)
- Gobalization – outcome of a free-market economy
- Globalization: “farther, faster, cheaper, deeper” (Friedman)
- Ten factors (driving force) for such a phenomenon to happen:
Greatly contributed to the fast growth of globalization (21st
century)
1. The Soviet empire disintegrating, fall of the Berlin Wall.
2. Netscape browser
3. Machine to machine communication
4. Open-source software
5. Outsourcing
6. Offshoring
7. Supply-chaining
8. Insourcing
9. Informing
10. Proliferation and personalization of of digital, mobile, and
virtual technology
MISCONCEPTIONS (Scholte)
AS INTERNALIZATION
- Internationalization – increasing importance of international trade, international
relations, treaties, alliances, etc. Inter-national, of course, means between or among
nations.
- Includes activities by entities such as corporations, states, international
organizations, and even individuals with reference to national borders and national
governments
- Globalization – global economic integration of many formerly national economies
into one global economy, mainly by free trade and free capital mobility, but also by
easy or uncontrolled migration.
- Includes a gamut of human activities that do not require reference to a state’s
national border.
AS LIBERALIZATION
- Liberalization – removal of barriers and restrictions imposed by national
governments (to create an open and borderless world economy)
- Globalization – realized when national governments “reduce or abolish regulatory
measures like trade barriers, foreign – exchange restrictions, capital controls and
visa requirements” (Scholte)
- Problem with this misconception:
o Confines the study within the debate concerning the neoliberal
macroeconomic policies: pro and anti
o Political implication – neo-liberalism is the only available policy framework
for a truly global world.
o Debate about the pros and cons of laissez faire has been happening for
centuries
AS UNIVERSALIZATION/WESTERNIZATION
- Universalization – process of spreading various objects, practices and experiences to
the different parts of the planet
- Globalization is when things, values and practices spread to the different parts of
the planet.
- Implication: Homogenization of culture, politics, economy and laws. Destroys
indigenous practices and cultures.
- When Western modernity spreads and destroys – Westernization
- Issues arising from this misconception:
o Universalization – not a new feature of world history.
o Westernization – not the only path that can be taken by globalization
MULTIPLE GLOBALIZATION
- Scholars found it simpler to avoid talking about globalization as a whole
- Instead “multiple globalizations” instead of one process
- Arjun Appadurai: Different kinds of globalization occur on multiple and intersecting
dimensions of integration – “SCAPES”
o “ethnoscapes” – global movement of people
o “mediascapes” – flow of culture
o “technoscapes” – circulation of mechanical goods and software
o “financescapes” – global circulation of money
o “ideoscapes” – realm where political ideas move around
- Claudio: distinct windows into the broader phenomenon of globalization