The Contemporary World 2020 PDF - Unit 1 Introduction to Globalization

The Contemporary World 2020 UNIT I INTRODUCTION TO GLOBALIZATION Coverage: Weeks 1 and 2 Duration: 6 hours Learning Objectives: After studying the unit, the students should be able to:  synthesize the definitions of globalization by the different authorities;...

The Contemporary World 2020 UNIT I INTRODUCTION TO GLOBALIZATION Coverage: Weeks 1 and 2 Duration: 6 hours Learning Objectives: After studying the unit, the students should be able to:  synthesize the definitions of globalization by the different authorities;  explain the different attributes or characteristics of globalization;  trace the historical periods of globalization;  identify the different dimensions of globalization; and  expound the major ideological claims of advocates of globalism. Globalization Concepts, Meanings, Features, and Dimensions Globalization is the process in which people, ideas and goods spread throughout the world, spurring more interaction and integration between the world's cultures, governments and economies(1). Globalization is a process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments of different nations, a process driven by international trade and investment and aided by information technology. This process has effects on the environment, on culture, on political systems, on economic development and prosperity, and on human physical well-being in societies around the world (2). Globalization is about growing worldwide connectivity. Example: People are engaged in buying and selling from other places in far-away lands like the famed Silk Road across Central Asia that connected China and Europe during the Middle Age for thousands of years and they also invested in enterprises in other countries for centuries. There were similarities in features of those prevailing wave of globalization before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 to the current wave. There is an increase cross border- trade, investment, and migration due to policy and technical developments in the past few decades. It is in the area of economic development that observers believe the world has entered a new phase. Today’s globalization is farther, 5  The Contemporary World 2020 faster, cheaper, and deeper in compared to earlier wave of globalization (3). Example: Since 1950, the volume of world trade has increased by 20 times and from 1997 to 1999, flows of foreign investment nearly doubled from $468 billion to $827 domestically. In the years since the Second World War, and especially during the past two decades, many governments have adopted free-market economic systems, vastly increasing their own productive potential and creating myriad new opportunities for international trade and investment. Governments also have negotiated dramatic reductions in barriers to commerce and have established international agreements to promote trade in goods, services, and investment. Taking advantage of new opportunities in foreign markets, corporations have built foreign factories and established production and marketing arrangements with foreign partners. A defining feature of globalization, therefore, is an international industrial and financial business structure (4). One principal driver of globalization is technology. Economic life is dramatically transformed by advancement in information technology. All sorts of individual economic actors like consumers, investors, and businesses which are valuable new tools for identifying and pursuing economic opportunities, including faster and more informed analyses of economic trends around the world, easy transfers of assets, and collaboration with far-flung partners are provided by information technologies. Globalization is the process of integration of economies across the world through cross-border flow of factors product and information (5). According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) globalization is the growing economic interdependence of countries worldwide through increasing volume and variety of cross border transactions in goods and services and of international capital flows and also through the more rapid and wide diffusion of technology (6). Globalization is an expansion, and intensification of social relations and consciousness across world time and world space. It is about growing worldwide connectivity according to Steger. Further, globalization is considered a multi-dimensional process involving economic, political, technological, cultural, religious and ecological dimensions. It suggests a dynamic process of change that results in either positive or negative development. It leads to the creation of something new; it involves the multiplication of 6  The Contemporary World 2020 social connections and various activities that transgress traditional and political, economic, cultural and geographical lines. Attributes, Qualities or Characteristics of Globalization Globalization has four characteristics or qualities. These are: 1. It involves both the creation of new social networks and the multiplication of existing connections that cut across traditional, political, economic, cultural, and geographical boundaries. Example: Brazilian World Cup: Today’s media combine conventional TV coverage with multiple streaming feeds into digital devices and networking sites that transcend nationally based services. 2. Globalization is reflected in the expansion and the stretching of social relations, activities, and connections. Examples:  Reaching of financial markets around the globe  Occurrence of electronic around the clock  Emergence of gigantic and virtually identical shopping malls in all continents to cater to consumers who can afford commodities all over the world-including products whose various components were manufactured in different countries. This process is called social stretching. Covered in the process of social stretching are:  Non-governmental organization  Commercial enterprises  Social clubs  Regional & global institutions and associations (UN, EU, ASEAN, Google and others) 7  The Contemporary World 2020 3. Globalization involves the intensification and acceleration of social exchanges and activities. Examples:  The worldwide web relays distant information in real time  Satellites provide consumers with instant pictures of remote events  Sophisticated social networking by means of facebook or twitter has become routine activity for more than a billion people around the globe. The intensification of worldwide social relations means that local happenings are shaped by events occurring far away, and vice versa. This means that there is intermingling of local and global, with the national and regional in overlapping horizontal scale. 4. Globalization processes do not occur merely or an objective, material level but they also involve the subjective plane of human consciousness. Without erasing local and national attachments, the compression of the world into a single place has increasingly made global the frame of reference for human thought and action. Globalization involves both the macro-structures of a global community and the micro-structures of global personhood. It extends deep into the core of the self and its dispositions, facilitating the creation of multiple individual and collective identities nurtured by the intensifying relations between the personal and the global. They differ from each other by acceleration in the speed of social exchanges and widening of geographical scopes (7). Historical Periods of Globalization 1. The Prehistoric Period (10000 BCE-3500 BCE) In this earliest phase of globalization, contacts among hunters and gatherers – who were spread around the world – were geographically limited. In this period due to absence of advanced forms of technology, globalization was severely limited. 2. The Pre-modern Period (3500 BCE- 1500 CE) In this period the invention of writing and the wheel were great social and technological boosts that moved globalization to a new level. The invention of wheel in addition to roads made the transportation of people and goods more efficient. On the other hand writing facilitated the spread of ideas and inventions. 8  The Contemporary World 2020 3. The Early Modern Period (1500-1750) It is the period between the Enlightenment and the Renaissance. In this period, European Enlightenment project tried to achieve a universal form of morality and law. This with the emergence of European metropolitan centers and unlimited material accumulation which led to the capitalist world system helped to strengthen globalization. 4. The Modern Period (1750-1970) Innovations in transportation and communication technology, population explosion, and increase in migration led to more cultural exchanges and transformation in traditional social patterns. Process of industrialization also accelerated. 5. The Contemporary Period (from 1970 to present) The creation, expansion, and acceleration of worldwide interdependencies occurred in a dramatic way and it was a kind of leap in the history of globalization. Dimensions of Globalization There are six dimensions in globalization. These include: economic, political, technological, cultural, religious and ecological dimensions. 1. Economic Dimension This refers to the extensive development of economic relations across the globe as a result of technology and the enormous flow of capital that has stimulated trade in both sources and goods (8).  Major players in the current century’s global economic order 1. Huge international corporations (General Motors, Walmart, Mitsubishi)  International Economic Institutions (IMF, World Bank, The World Trade Organization)  Trading Systems The result of these powerful forces resulted in the wide gap between the rich and the poor countries. Major Sources of Economic Growth across Countries (9) 1. Property rights 2. Regulatory institutions 3. Institutions for macro-economics 9  The Contemporary World 2020 4. Stabilization 5. Institutions for social influence 7. Institutions for conflict management Economic institutions have decisive influence on investment in physical and human capital, technology, and industrial productions. It is also important for resource distribution. 2. Political Dimension This refers to an enlargement and strengthening of political interrelations across the globe (10). Political Issues that Surface in this Dimension 1. The principle of state sovereignty 2. Increasing impact of various intergovernmental organization 3. Future shapes of regional and global governance The globalization rendered almost powerless any political efforts to introduce restrictive policies affecting individual states, with the results that the world in many ways turned into a borderless world. Governments often seek to restrict the migration of peoples, especially those coming from the poor countries in the global South (11 a). In the development of supra-national structures and associations held together by common concerns and mutually agreed upon norm, the most obvious is political globalization. On the part of the involved parties, informal structures which are considered binding, bring together world power centers due to common interests. Example:  Global cities like New York, London, Tokyo, and Singapore are closely connected with one another than they are to various cities in their own countries.  European Union, United nations, NATO, The World Trade Organization 3. Cultural Dimension This refers to the increase in the amount of cultural flows across the globe. Cultural interconnections are at the foundations of contemporary globalization (11b). 10  The Contemporary World 2020 Individualism and consumerism which are the dominant cultural characteristics of our age and the drive for economic success stimulated by the internet and other technological devices circulate much more easily than they did in earlier periods. In the dissemination of popular culture, transactional media corporations play a major role which brought a sharp rise in homogenized popular culture that is manifested in the dominance of fast food restaurant on more aspects of life throughout the world. Cultural diversity often results hybridization- a constructive interaction process between global and local characteristics which is often visible in food, music, dance, film, fashion, and language. As a result there is a scarcely any society in the world that expresses itself in its own self-contained and authentic culture (11c). Media empires generated and directed the extensive flow of culture. Examples of these are Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and Disney. Advertisement plays an important role in this cultural flow by featuring various celebrities in the television aside from transforming newscast into entertainment shows. 4. Religious Dimension Religion is a personal or institutionalized set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity (12). It is the most important defining element of any civilization as contrasted with race, language, or way of life. As such, it is also portrayed as a defining element in future conflicts. Whether the root cause of a particular conflict or merely a vehicle for the mobilization of nationalist or ethnic passions, religion is certainly central to much of the strife currently taking place around the globe (13). Jihadist globalism is a religious response to the materialist assault by the ungodly West in the rest of the world. Coming out of what they consider a pure form of Islam, its disciples seek to destroy all those alien influences that have been imposed on Muslim people. It applies to those extremely violent strains of religion that convert the global imaginary into very concrete political agendas and terrorist tactics. It is also applied to those violent fundamentalists in the West who seek to transform the world into a Christian Empire (14). Example:  Bin Ladin understands umma as a single community of believers professing faith in the one and only God, but at the same time committed to destroying not only alien invaders but also corrupt Islamic elites in order to return power to the Muslim masses.  Since one third of the world’s Muslim population lives in non-Islamic countries, the restoration of God’s proper reign must be a global event. Hence, Al-Qaeda established jihadist cells in various parts of the world. 11  The Contemporary World 2020 Roman Catholic Teaching of Globalization There are eight (8) principles that summarize the Roman Catholic Teachings (15). 1. Commitment to universal human rights 2. Commitment to the social nature of the human person 3. Commitment to the common good 4. Solidarity (The principle of Solidarity affirms that membership in the human family means that all bear responsibility for one another.) 5. Preferential option of the poor (In the Theology of the Incarnation- Christ God became poor for us so as to enrich us by his poverty. The poor are susceptible to the effects of environmental irresponsibility because they live in countries where cheap building materials and cheap labor are readily available. They regularly work in farming, fishing, and forestry, areas which suffer environmental damage). 6. Subsidiary (The Catholic Church teaches that decisions should be made at the lowest level in order to achieve the common good. 7. Justice 8. Integral Humanism- is concerned with whole person Justice is divided in three (3) categories: 1. Commutative justice This aims at fulfilling the terms of contracts and other promises on both personal and social level. 2. Distributive justice This ensures a basic equity in how both the burden and the goods of society are distributed and that ensures that every person enjoys a basically equal moral and legal standing apart from differences in wealth, privilege, talent and achievements 3. Social justice This refers to the creation of the conditions in which the first two categories of justice can be realized and the common good identified and defended. According to catholic teaching, a just society is one which these forms of justice are assured because they are required by human dignity. 12  The Contemporary World 2020 5. Ideological Dimensions Ideology is a system of widely shared ideas, beliefs, norms and values among a group of people. It is often used to legitimize certain political interests or to defend dominant power structures. Ideology connects human actions with some generalized claims (14a).Globalization is a social process of intensifying global interdependence while globalism is an ideology that gives the concept of neo-liberal values and meanings to globalization. Major Ideological Claims of Advocates of Globalism (14b) 1. Globalization is about the liberalization and global integration of markets. The problem with this claim is that liberalization and integration of markets happen through political project of engineering free markets by interference of centralized state power, and it is in contrast to the neoliberal ideal of limited role of governments. 2. Globalization is inevitable and irreversible. Globalists believe that spread of market forces driven by technological innovations is inevitable in globalization. Neoliberals use this claim to convince people to adopt the natural discipline of the market if they want to prosper, which implies the elimination of government controls over the market. 3. Nobody is in charge of globalization. This claim seeks to depoliticize the public debate on globalization and neutralizing anti -globalist movements. 4. Globalization benefits everyone. Globalists talk about the benefits of market liberalization such as rising global living standards, economic efficiency, individual freedom, and technological progress. But the reality is that the opportunities of globalization are spread unequally and power and wealth are concentrated among a specific group of people, regions and corporations. 5. Globalization furthers the spread of democracy in the world. For the globalists democracy and free markets are synonymous. The neoliberal explanation of globalization is ideological because it is politically motivated and contributes to the construction of particular meanings of globalization which stabilize existing power relations. Globalism tries to create collective meaning and shape people’s identities. 13