Understanding Globalization

Globalization Overview

• Globalization enables students to analyze its drivers and the emergence of global economic and political systems.
• Aims to provide a working definition of globalization.
• Aims to differentiate competing conceptions of globalization.
• Aims to allow for a narration of a personal experience of globalization.

Daily Experiences of Globalization:

• Products like smartphones contain parts from different countries that are assembled in various locations.
• Foods from other countries such as sushi (Japan), pasta (Italy), and tacos (Mexico), are available worldwide.
• The prominence of international movies, music, and TV shows are easily accessible through streaming services like Netflix and Youtube.
• Social media platforms connect people globally for instant cultural and ideas exchange.
• Traveling abroad has become more affordable and accessible, with interconnected international airports and airlines.

Globalization as an Uneven Process:

• Affects people differently, benefiting some while disadvantaging others and can create inequalities and exploitation.
• Mail-order bride arrangements involve women from poorer countries marrying men from wealthier nations, often facilitated by online platforms.
• Women from impoverished backgrounds may seek mail-order marriages.
• Global communication advancements enable the connections to create opportunities for some people.
• Men from wealthier nations in mail-order bride arrangements may hold greater economic and social power.
• Women are vulnerable to abuse and domestic violence because of power imbalances in international marriages.
• Some women are deceived into mail-order bride arrangements, trafficked, or sold to sex gangs.
• Criminal organizations exploit the globalized system by using mail-order bride arrangements to lure vulnerable women.
• Women may face cultural and linguistic barriers in foriegn countries that leave them isolated and vulnerable
• Globalization creates opportunities but can exacerbate inequalities and facilitate exploitation

Defining Globalizaton

• Economic globalization acts as a window to understanding globalization.
• Journalists and political activists often view globalization as primarily an economic process.

Manfred Steger's Globalization Definition

• Steger defines globalization as the expansion and intensification of social relations and consciousness across world-time and world-space.
• Globalization involves the creation of new social networks and the multiplication of existing connections across boundaries.
• "Social Network" refers to a network of individuals connected together
• Facebook, founded in 2004, has 2.9 billion active users by 2023.
• The global reach of Facebook is driven by the exchange of information, ideas, and cultural practices.

Technology and Cultural Impact of Global Networks

• The use of technology enables personalized experiences, regardless of location.
• Plays a role in spreading cultural norms, viral content, and political movements
• Globalization involves the flow of ideas, cultures, and technologies.
• Intensification is expansion, stretching, and acceleration of global networks.
• The second quality of globalization is reflected in the expansion and stretching of social relations, activities, and connections.
• Shopping malls sell products manufactured in different countries.
• The intensification and acceleration of social exchanges and activities happens through organizations like FIFA, the UN, and Google
• Technological advancements have fueled the creation of global networks.
• Innovations are reshaping the social landscape
• The World Wide Web and satellites relay distant information in real-time.
• Social networking has become routine for billions of people.
• Intensification of worldwide social relations means local happenings are shaped by events occurring far away, and vice versa.

Global Imaginary and Arjun Appadurai's Definition

• Globalization involves the subjective plane of human consciousness.
• People feel the world has become smaller and distances have collapsed.
• Email, TV, Internet, and music apps have exposed individuals to cultures and news from across the globe.
• Airplanes and ships have made travel to different places easier.
• Arjun Appadurai defines globalization as the increasing pace and scope of interconnectedness crisscrossing the globe.
• Five specific "scapes" or flows are ethnoscapes, technoscapes, ideoscapes, financescapes, and mediascapes.
• “Scapes” criss cross with each other

Contrasting Globalization and Globalism

• Globalization views varying processes in the contemporary world.
• Globalism focuses on economic globalization.
• Globalization represents the processes that allow global connections to grow and strengthen.
• Globalism is the belief among powerful people that global integration of economic and democracy are important.
• Globalization integrates social networks and consciousness across world time and space.
• Globalism promotes international cooperation, shared values, and problem-solving to address global challenges.
• Globalization is the process of global integration, and globalism is the ideology that integration is necessary to solve problems.