THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD MIDTERMS

I- THE GLOBAL SOUTH

• The term “undeveloped world” has its reference on the Dependency theory which
believes that poor nations are poor because they were under-developed by the rich
countries who colonized them.
• The “less-developed” and “poor world” are largely descriptive statements and not
ideologically-laden which some critics find lacking because of the assumption that there is
no history or politics behind the patterns of development. The global south is often
associated with the New Development Bank.
• The former German chancellor Willy Brandt in his famous 1983 Brandt report popularized
the term “The South” signifying that most of the poor nations lie south of the latitude and
the richer ones lie north.
• It was the French scholar Alfred Sauvy who coined the term “Third World” to distinguish the
formerly colonized countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America from the modernized “first”
world of capitalism and the modernizing “second” world of socialism. (Dirlik,2015)
• For Jonathan Rigg, the Global South is termed as less-developed, third world, and even
undeveloped.
• Some emerging economies include, Africa, China, and India. China, as part of the
globalized world, typically builds silk roads in order to expand their economic wealth.
• Emma Mawdsley states that the north has an obligation to assist the south in this globalized
world. Southernization of development for her is evident in the relations of China with
Africa. In addition, Southern worlds are often used, for Mawdsley, as somewhat like role
models from whom the north could learn and adopt new political and economic
processes in this globalized world.

II- ASIAN REGIONALISM

• Asia Pacific is comprised of the following regions: (1) East Asia, (2) Southeast Asia, and (3)
Oceania.
• ASIA PACIFIC AND SOUTH ASIA AS A NEW POLITICAL FORCE. Driven by the robust economic
growth in China and India and its strategic implications. US implemented ‘Pacific Pivot’ –
committing more resources and attention to the region. From ‘Atlantic century’ to ‘Pacific
Century’
• Asian alternatives to globalization include:
o “Bia” currency
o Jemaah Islamiyah
o Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
• Mark Beeson posits that after World War II, concerns about political instability and
economic reformation pushed the United States to incorporate Japan in the world
economy. Japan had the economic capacity to play a prominent role in the East Asian
region but failed to do so because of subordination to US. Vietnam, on the other hand,
sapped America’s economic strength during the height of the Cold War while
simultaneously allowing its competitors in Europe and Asia catch-up.
• China has been establishing multilateral relations with neighboring states but has gained
the prejudice of other nations with regard to territorial disputes. China’s largest trading
partner is Walmart.
• The similarities between the “Southeast Asian tigers” and the “East Asian tigers” include:
o Rise of manufacturing and industrial sectors
o Close ties between the state and business elite
o Some autonomous decision-making structure
• Externalist View - refers to globalization as a process that transforms the Asia and Pacific.
An example of this is the tendency for Asian countries to mimic western TV shows, ideas,
themes, and even practices. Globalization is leading to cultural homogenization and the
 destruction of cultural diversity. Cultural Westernization (McWorld): Increase of McDonalds
stores in Asia.
• Generative View - Globalization has not been one-way street. The region is generative of
many aspects of the globalization process. This can be seen both historically and more
recently and across a broad variety of domains from the economy to political structures to
culture. There is an increasing number of Overseas Filipino Workers abroad and it has a
positive effect to our economy is an example of such a view. The growing popularity of the
Korean pop culture all around the world is an example that can be viewed under this
perspective as well
• Realist view of the international system suggests that hegemonic power is determined by
the country’s military strength.

III- GLOBALIZATION AND RELIGION

• Globalization of Religion - pertains to the spread of religions and specific genres or forms or
blueprints of religious expressions across the globe. This interpretation on religion is
problematic within the context of globalization since it concerns the relations and the
impact of globalization upon religion. Some religious groups believe but do not belong.
• Deterritoriality – refers to the weakening of ties between a location and the cultural entities
such as people, objects, languages, or traditions associated with that location
o Deterritorialization – it opens up new markets for film companies to explore the life
stories of diasporic communities and the need of these deterritorialized populations
for contact with their homeland. As an example, from the 80’s onwards, satellite
television has created the means for the catering to these geo-cultural groups in the
host countries of Europe and the US, with new communication technologies assisting
diasporic communities in their urge to stay in touch with news and relatives from
their native land.
• Reterritoriality - Reterritorialization is when people within a place start to produce an aspect
of popular culture themselves, doing so in the context of their local culture and making it
their own.
• Particularization vs Universalization
• The Formation of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation - presents that globalization
supplies a unified image of contemporary global conditions.
• Secularization, on the other hand, is understood as a shift in the overall frameworks of
human condition, whereby it makes possible for people to have a choice between belief
and non-belief.
• Transnationalization – is a particular form of glocalization.
• New Religious Movements - pertains to a religious or spiritual group that has modern origins
and is peripheral to its society's dominant religious culture
• Post-Secularity - refers to the contemporary phase in modern societies, whereby religion
makes a return to the public sphere from where it was cast out during the era of modernity.
• Religious Terrorism - the various attempts made by defenders of religion to reclaim the
center of public attention and authority.

IV- GLOBALIZATION AND MASS MEDIA

• Media - a means of conveying something, such as a channel of communication. Through
language, aided in globalization because through such a medium, humans were capable
of understanding the messages they communicate with each other, hence, they
managed to collaborate due to this mutual understanding of each others’ messages.
Media is essential to the growth of economic globalization in the world. Global media
market is not yet dominated by China’s interest and by the Chinese domestic market. The
oligopoly’s single-minded interest in profits results in mass content rather than local content.
The impact is that around the world, news has gotten weaker and a bit disappointing due
to the spread of fake news and biases.
 • Global Village – created out of the connections that media created in the world.
• Television - This powerful and pervasive medium brought together the visual and aural
power of film with the accessibility of a radio.
• An oligopoly is basically an ownership of media companies in which an influential majority
group is in control of the world’s media companies.
• The study of globalization and media includes the following:
o Oral - The most overlooked medium in histories of globalization, the enduring of all
media.
o Script - The very first writing, which allowed humans to communicate and share
knowledge and ideas over much larger spaces across much longer times
o Print - It started the “information revolution” and transformed markets, businesses,
nations, schools, churches, governments, armies and more.
o Electronic - The telegraph, telephone, radio, film and television are examples of
what media
o Digital - These are often electronic media that rely on digital codes – the long
hidden combinations of 0s and 1s that represent information.
• Hybridization – Neverdeen Pieterse (2004) sees hybridity as being part of a certain
“postmodern sensibility”, a contemporary reaction to racial purity and tight nation border
controls and a liberation from the West’s historical legacy of Eurocentric thinking and
colonialism. The hybridization argument thus contends that the impact of global culture
does not lead to the extinction of local cultures. Cultural Hybridity, on the other hand,
refers to how the culture of one area is adopted by another but the original culture of the
one that adopted still possesses the same name even though the services rendered are
different.

V- GLOBAL CITIES
• It was Saskia Sassen, one of the leading urban theorists of the global world, who
popularized the term “global city”. She ignited a debate on what defines a global city
with her works on the effect of globalization and international human migration in urban
areas. She also stressed the differences between the terms – world cities and global cities.
Globalization, though has its good points, it also led to the problematic spread of
commercialism. In a global city, the land of production has become a land of
consumption. Workers have already been labeled as Professional class; the Knowledge
workers; the skilled workers; etc. It is the knowledge workers, take note who, though not
part of the core wealth power of the state’s elite, but are still highly effective and mobile
in the global career market.

• World city – refers to a type of city which we have seen over the centuries, such as in
earlier periods in Asia and in European colonial centers. Thus, some of today’s global
cities- namely economic powerhouses like Hong Kong, Sydney, New York- cannot be
described as world cities. But a city may correspond to both her world city and global city
models (e.g. London- a retired imperial capital). However, other urban theorists and
experts do not really draw a line between the two terms.

• From an economic standpoint, Brexxit found that individuals were the ones who greatly
influenced and changed their state’s respective economies.

• Cosmopolitanism – a person is already a part of the bigger globalized world; and not just
one who is living within the confines of their national and/or local boundaries.
• By concentrating powerful institutions, global cities have reached new heights of
economic prosperity accompanied by bifurcated labor markets and rising local
inequality. As Sassen (1991) points out, global cities are home to the ‘global mobile’, a
class of global elites who steer and profit from global political economic changes, and
the ‘global immobile’, who toil in obscurity, perhaps cleaning hotel rooms, offices, and
airplanes for the jet-setting class, but are no less important to the day-to-day operations of
the global economy. This has also led to the symbolic production of knowledge wherein,
the process of switching to a “service economy” as a “cultural turn” in advanced
societies.

• Global cities are often both surrounded by and separated from economically distressed
communities in their regions. This serves as a platform for organizing global commerce,
most especially, in an open economy.

• Global cities are typically: economically, competitive; focal points for capitalism; and the
dominance of a national region. Likewise, from a Global City index standpoint,
Transportation development is not a measure. The six criteria of Japanese Mori foundation,
on the other hand, does not include Politics as determinant in the Global city index. A
highly “liquid” environment makes the global city a receptacle of demographic and
social change. This necessitates the idea that a competitive economy requires a flexible
workforce. From a cultural standpoint, this the presence of cultural diversity in global cities
have become an evident consequent of this recent trend in globalization.