Understanding Globalization

Study Notes

Globalization is a process involving increasing liquidity and growing multidirectional flows, as well as the structures they encounter and create (Ritzer).
The essence of globalization is about moving from fixed to liquid/movement (Ritzer).
A completely non-globalized world does not exist, and neither does a completely globalized one.

Ritzer: increasing cross-border flows of goods, services, people, money, etc.
Nederveen Pieterse: a long-term historical process of growing worldwide interconnectedness.
Wallerstein: World Systems Theory, the process by which the capitalist world system spreads across the globe.
Robertson: the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole.
Lechner & Boli: Neo-institutional Theory, formation of a world society composed of nations, international organizations, and populated by citizens with a distinct world culture.

Flows: movement of people, things, information, and places due to the increasing porosity of global barriers.
Structures: encompassing sets of processes that may either impede or facilitate flows.
Examples of structures: nation states, regulations, capitalism, networks.

Interconnected: global flows that interconnect at various points and times.
Multidirectional: all sorts of things flowing in every conceivable direction among many points in the world.
Conflicting: transplanetary processes that conflict with one another (and with much else).
Reverse: processes which, while flowing in one direction, act back on their source.

Solidity: people, things, information, and places "harden" over time and therefore have limited mobility.
Barrier example: Great Wall of China.
Liquidity: increasing ease of movement of people, things, information, and places in the global age.

Mintz' analysis of sugar reveals the relational aspect of globalization, linking European proletariat to slaves working on sugar plantations in colonial empires.
Industrialization, colonial empire, and slavery are strongly interrelated phenomena.