The Contemporary World - VUCA World

The World I am Living In

• GE 3 - The Contemporary World
• By Carl Patrick S. Tadeo, Instructor at Gordon College

VUCA World

• VUCA means "world of disruptive change.
• VUCA stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity.

Volatility

• The challenge is unexpected or unstable.
• It may be of unknown duration.
• It is not necessarily hard to understand.
• Knowledge about it is often available.
• Features fast, unpredictable changes without clear patterns or trends.

Uncertainty

• Despite a lack of other information, the event's basic cause and effect are known.
• Change is possible but not a given.
• Includes frequent disruptive changes where the past is not a predictor of the future.

Complexity

• The situation has many interconnected parts and variables.
• Some information is available or can be predicted.
• The volume or nature of it can be overwhelming to process.
• Characterized by multiple, complex, intertwined tech, social, political evolutions.

Ambiguity

• Causal relationships are completely unclear.
• No precedents exist.
• People face "unknown unknowns."
• Contains little clarity on what's real or true.
• Difficult to predict the impact of actions.
• Volatility requires Vision
• Uncertainty requires Understanding
• Complexity requires Clarity
• Ambiguity requires Agility

Defining Globalization

• Globalization is one of the concepts in social sciences that is hard to define.
• There is no consensus among experts on what globalization really is.
• Most definitions focus on one aspect, indicating the complexity and multi-faceted nature of the concept.
• Definitions offered by scholars vary across disciplines

Globalization Defined

• Defined as a transplanetary process of increasing liquidity and growing multidirectional flows of people, objects, places, and information as well as the structures they encounter which create barriers to, or expedite, those flows.
• Integration of the national market to a wider global market significant by the increased free trade.
• Expansion and intensification of social relations and consciousness across world-time and across world-space.
• Can be defined broadly and inclusively, or narrowly and exclusively

Broad and Inclusive Definitions of Globalization

• According to Ohmae (1992), globalization means the onset of the borderless world.
• Kiely and Marfleet (1998) define globalization as a world in which societies, cultures, politics, and economics come closer together.
• Harvey (1998) describes globalization as the compression of time and space.
• Generally allude to diminishing traditional boundaries.
• A vague definition with no clear implications

Narrow and Exclusive Definitions of Globalization

• Cox (2000) states that globalization trends include internationalizing production, international division of labor, migratory movements, competitive environment, and internationalizing the state.
• According to Bridgemary Community Sports College (2006), globalization is where an industry or corporation acts on a global scale with manufacturing bases in several countries.
• Langhorne (2001) defines globalization as the latest stage in technological advance giving human beings the ability to conduct their affairs across the world without reference to traditional boundaries.
• More specific, but can be limiting in terms of application.

Economic Globalization Rationalized

• Globalization on economic terms involves situating globalization as an economic phenomenon with free trade and migration.
• Globalization refers to global economic integration of many formerly national economies into one global economy through free trade, free capital mobility, and uncontrolled migration, effectively erasing national boundaries for economic purposes.

Cultural Globalization Rationalized

• The third definition speaks of globalization as a cultural process that spreads cultural traits across the globe.
• Globalization names the explosion of a plurality of intersecting, syncretic, local differences.
• It involves the emergence of new identities.
• It involves the expansion of world-wide media and technology culture with popular democratization.

Political Globalization Rationalized

• Globalization's influence going beyond nation-states.
• Focuses on power in global social formations and expressed through global networks rather than through territorially-based states.

Appreciation for Globalization

• Shaped by the perspective of the person defining it.
• "...(processes), they also involve the subjective plane of human consciousness" (Claudio & Abinales, 2018).
• Debate is globalization and reality.

Metaphors of Globalization

• Solidity - barriers to prevent or make difficult for things to move (Great Wall of China, Berlin Wall, Nine-Dash Line).
• Liquidity - "ease the movement of people, things, information and places in the contemporary world” (videos uploaded in Youtube or Facebook).

Metaphors of Globalization: Solid

• Solidity refers to a world where barriers exist that prevent free movement and can be natural or manmade.
• People, things, information, and places "harden" over time with limited mobility

Metaphors of Globalization: Liquid

• Liquidity refers to the increasing movement of people, things, information, and places in the contemporary world.
• Contains three characteristics: changes quickly and continuously fluctuates, movement is difficult to stop, permeable.
• Forces of liquid made political boundaries more permeable to the flow of people and things.
• Liquidity tends to melt anything in its path (especially solids).

Metaphors of Globalization: Flows Examples

• Patronization of foreign cuisines.
• Global financial crises.
• Poor illegal migrants and information.
• Virtual flow of information
• Filipino communities abroad and Chinese communities in the Philippines.

Origins and History of Globalization Theories

• Hardwired: basic needs driven i.e. dwellers of Africa walked out from said the continent.
• Cycles: long-term cyclical process.
• Epoch: waves of globalization.
• Events: Roman Conquest, Christopher Columbus' exploration, Magellan's circumnavigation of the world & advancement of technology.
• Recent Changes: US as a global power, emergence of MNCs & demise of Soviet Union and end of Cold War.

Five Perspectives on the Origins of Globalization

• Hardwired: globalization is due to the basic human need to make lives better.
• Cycles: globalization is a long-term cyclical process.
• Epochs: there are six great epochs of globalization.
• Events: specific events are considered as the beginning of globalization.
• Recent Changes:
  • The emergence of the United States as the global power (post-World War II).
  • The emergence of multinational corporations (MNCs).
  • The demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

Six Great Epochs of Globalization

• Globalization of religion (4th to 7th centuries).
• European colonial conquests (late 15th century).
• Intra-European wars (late 18th to early 19th centuries).
• Heyday of European imperialism (mid-19th century to 1918).
• Post-World War II.
• Post-Cold War Period.

Approaches to Studying Globalization Theories

• Manfred Steger classified three approaches of studying globalization based on the works of various scholars.

Approaches to Studying Globalization Critics: Rejectionists

• They are not the critics who pointed on the negative impact of globalization, but are those questioning the very essence of the concept.
• Those who believe that the globalization as a concept has very weak theoretical foundations.
• Since there is no consensus on what constitutes globalization, they reject its usefulness as a conceptual tool in studying our global society.

Approaches to Studying Globalization Critics: Sceptics

• Reject the idea that globalization is just a recent phenomenon that occurred in the last decade of 20th century.
• Believe that it has a real phenomenon, but its effect to the global affairs is somewhat exaggerated by scholars.
• The global economy is not as integrated as proponents want people to believe.
• Without this global integration of markets, the effect of globalization will remain a “myth”.

Approaches to Studying Globalization Critics: Modifiers

• They do not believe globalization is a recent phenomenon.
• Robert Gilpin claimed that globalization has been around for a while before.

Globalization Theories

• World Systems Theory.
• Polity Theory.
• World Culture Theory.

Globalization Theories: World-Systems Theory

• In the World-system Theory, the core countries are the industrialized capitalist countries on which periphery countries and semi-periphery countries depend.
• Core countries control and benefit from the global market as wealthy nations with a wide variety of resources, a favorable location, strong state institutions, a powerful military, and powerful global political alliances.

Globalization Theories: World Polity Theory

• The Polity theory views the world system as a social system with a cultural framework called world polity, which encompasses and influences actors.
• The world polity is constituted by a distinct culture of fundamental principles and models.

Globalization Theories: World Culture Theory

• Societies must make sense of themselves in relation to a larger system of societies.
• Agrees that world culture is new and important.

Impact of Globalization Theories

• There are two opposing views: homogeneity and heterogeneity.

Homogeneity in Globalization

• Increasing sameness in the world of ethnicity, economy & politics.
• Cultural imperialism (dominant religion-Christianity, Americanization).
• Economy of neoliberalism, capitalism & market economy.
• "McWorld" One political orientation (i.e. Democracy, Ferderalism).
• Globalization increases the sameness of cultures, arts, economic factors, political orientation, and knowledge.
• Cultural Imperialism, Media Imperialism, McDonaldization Grobalization all pertain to this.

Heterogeneity in Globalization

• Variety of ethnicity, economy & politics.
• Differences due to hybrids or combinations of cultures through transplanetary processes occur.
• Glocalization (When global forces interact with local factors or specific geographic areas).
• Jihad: alternative of McWord; an intensification of nationalism leads to greater political heterogeneity.

Task #1 (Ang Mundo sa Mata ng Isang OFW)

• Find a former or a current OFW to be interviewed (minimum of 3 OFWs per group). Your respondent's name should not be revealed.
• Use the following guide questions:
  • How long have you stayed abroad?
  • What are the purposes for your stay there?
  • What were your most unforgettable experiences there?
  • How will you describe those experiences?
  • How will you compare the Philippines with other countries?
  • Do you want to go back abroad or to other countries in the future? Why or why not?
• Consolidate the result of your interviews and you will share it to the class.
• Prepare personal insights about your respondents' experience as well as a conclusion based on your activity.