Globalization: Drivers, Systems, and Examples

Globalization Overview

• Globalization is a process experienced daily, analyze its drivers, and describes the emergence of economic and political systems.
• Examples include shopping for products with international components, eating foreign foods, accessing entertainment from other countries, using social media to connect with people worldwide, and traveling abroad.
• Globalization is an uneven process that affects people differently, creating opportunities and exacerbating inequalities.

Mail-Order Brides Example

• Mail-order bride arrangements involve women from poorer countries marrying men from wealthier nations.
• These relationships are often facilitated by matchmaking services or online platforms.
• It can provide a chance for women from impoverished backgrounds to escape hardship and gain financial stability
• Globalization enables these connections through advancements in communication and technology.
• It creates a power imbalance, where men from wealthier nations hold more economic and social power, making women vulnerable to abuse and domestic violence.
• Women may also face isolation and vulnerability due to cultural and linguistic barriers.
• Trafficking and exploitation can occur, with women being deceived and forced into prostitution or sold to sex gangs.

Defining Globalization

• Economic globalization is just one aspect of understanding globalization.
• This view is common among journalists and political activists.
• Manfred Steger defines globalization as the expansion and intensification of social relations and consciousness across world-time and world-space.

Steger's Three Qualities of Globalization

• Expansion refers to the creation of new social networks and the multiplication of existing connections across traditional boundaries, such as the rise of Facebook.
• Intensification refers to the expansion, stretching, and acceleration of these networks, as seen in the emergence of identical shopping malls across continents.
• Global imaginary involves the subjective plane of human consciousness, where people feel the world has become smaller.
• Globalization processes do not happen at objective, and material level but also needs human consciousness.
• Cable TV an internet allows for easier news sources and media apps that expose different music tastes.

Arjun Appadurai's Definition

• Globalization refers to the increasing pace and scope of interconnections crisscrossing the globe, categorized into five "scapes" or flows, namely ethnoscapes, technoscapes, ideoscapes, financescapes, and mediascapes.

The Five "Scapes"

• Ethnoscape is the global flow of people (e.g., migrants, tourists).
• Technoscape is the global flow of technology (e.g., hardware components, technical know-how).
• Financescape is the global flow of money (e.g., national stock exchanges, bitcoins).
• Mediascape is the global flow of information (e.g., newspapers, websites).
• Ideoscape is the global flow of ideas (e.g., human rights, environmentalism).

Globalization vs. Globalism

• Globalization looks at the varying processes in the contemporary world.
• Globalism focuses on economic globalization.
• Globalization represents processes that allow for the expansion and intensification of global connections.
• Globalism represents the belief among powerful people, about global integration of economy and democracy.
• Globalization is a process of expansion and intensification of social networks and consciousness, resulting in increased global interdependence.
• Globalism is an ideological perspective that promotes a unified, interconnected world, with international cooperation and shared values.
• Globalization is the process of global integration, while globalism is the ideology that sees such integration as desirable and necessary.