LEARNING ACTIVITY SHEET NO.

Theories of Globalization
from PoliticalScienceNotes.com
All theories of globalization have been put hereunder in eight categories:
liberalism, political realism, Marxism, constructivism, postmodernism, feminism, Trans-
formationalism and eclecticism. Each one of them carries several variations.

1. Theory of Liberalism

Liberalism sees the process of globalization as market-led extension of

modernization. At the most elementary level, it is a result of ‘natural’ human desires for
economic welfare and political liberty. As such, transplanetary connectivity is derived from
human drives to maximize material well-being and to exercise basic freedoms. These forces
eventually interlink humanity across the planet.
They fructify in the form of:

(a) Technological advances, particularly in the areas of transport, communications

and information processing, and,
(b) Suitable legal and institutional arrangement to enable markets and liberal
democracy to spread on a trans-world scale.
Such explanations come mostly from Business Studies, Economics, International
Political Economy, Law and Politics. Liberalists stress the necessity of constructing
institutional infrastructure to support globalization. All this has led to technical
standardization, administrative harmonization, translation arrangement between
languages, laws of contract, and guarantees of property rights.

But its supporters neglect the social forces that lie behind the creation of
technological and institutional underpinnings. It is not satisfying to attribute these
developments to ‘natural’ human drives for economic growth and political liberty. They are
culture blind and tend to overlook historically situated life-worlds and knowledge structures
which have promoted their emergence.

All people cannot be assumed to be equally amenable to and desirous of increased

globality in their lives. Similarly, they overlook the phenomenon of power. There are
structural power inequalities in promoting globalization and shaping its course. Often they
do not care for the entrenched power hierarchies between states, classes, cultures, sexes,
races and resources.

2. Theory of Political Realism

Advocates of this theory are interested in questions of state power, the pursuit of
national interest, and conflict between states. According to them states are inherently
acquisitive and self-serving, and heading for inevitable competition of power. Some of the
scholars stand for a balance of power, where any attempt by one state to achieve world
dominance is countered by collective resistance from other states.

Another group suggests that a dominant state can bring stability to world order. The
‘hegemon’ state (presently the US or G7/8) maintains and defines international rules and
institutions that both advance its own interests and at the same time contain conflicts
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between other states. Globalization has also been explained as a strategy in the contest for
power between several major states in contemporary world politics.

They concentrate on the activities of Great Britain, China, France, Japan, the USA
and some other large states. Thus, the political realists highlight the issues of power and
power struggles and the role of states in generating global relations.

At some levels, globalization is considered as antithetical to territorial states.

States, they say, are not equal in globalization, some being dominant and others subordinate
in the process. But they fail to understand that everything in globalization does not come
down to the acquisition, distribution and exercise of power.

Globalization has also cultural, ecological, economic and psychological dimensions

that are not reducible to power politics. It is also about the production and consumption of
resources, about the discovery and affirmation of identity, about the construction and
communication of meaning, and about humanity shaping and being shaped by nature. Most
of these are apolitical.

Power theorists also neglect the importance and role of other actors in generating
globalization. These are sub-state authorities, macro-regional institutions, global agencies,
and private-sector bodies. Additional types of power-relations on lines of class, culture and
gender also affect the course of globalization. Some other structural inequalities cannot be
adequately explained as an outcome of interstate competition. After all, class inequality,
cultural hierarchy, and patriarchy predate the modern states.

3. Theory of Marxism

Marxism is principally concerned with modes of production, social exploitation

through unjust distribution, and social emancipation through the transcendence of
capitalism. Marx himself anticipated the growth of globality that ‘capital by its nature drives
beyond every spatial barrier to conquer the whole earth for its market’. Accordingly, to
Marxists, globalization happens because trans-world connectivity enhances opportunities of
profit-making and surplus accumulation.

Marxists reject both liberalist and political realist explanations of globalization. It is

the outcome of historically specific impulses of capitalist development. Its legal and insti-
tutional infrastructures serve the logic of surplus accumulation of a global scale. Liberal talk
of freedom and democracy make up a legitimating ideology for exploitative global capitalist
class relations.

The neo-Marxists in dependency and world-system theories examine capitalist

accumulation on a global scale on lines of core and peripheral countries. Neo-Gramscians
highlight the significance of underclass struggles to resist globalizing capitalism not only by
traditional labor unions, but also by new social movements of consumer advocates,
environmentalists, peace activists, peasants, and women. However, Marxists give an overly
restricted account of power.

There are other relations of dominance and subordination which relate to state,
culture, gender, race, sex, and more. Presence of US hegemony, the West-centric cultural
domination, masculinism, racism etc. are not reducible to class dynamics within capitalism.
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Class is a key axis of power in globalization, but it is not the only one. It is too simplistic to
see globalization solely as a result of drives for surplus accumulation.

It also seeks to explore identities and investigate meanings. People develop global
weapons and pursue global military campaigns not only for capitalist ends, but also due to
interstate competition and militarist culture that predate emergence of capitalism. Ideational
aspects of social relations also are not outcome of the modes of production. They have, like
nationalism, their autonomy.

4. Theory of Constructivism

Globalization has also arisen because of the way that people have mentally
constructed the social world with particular symbols, language, images and interpretation. It
is the result of particular forms and dynamics of consciousness. Patterns of production and
governance are second-order structures that derive from deeper cultural and socio-
psychological forces. Such accounts of globalization have come from the fields of
Anthropology, Humanities, Media of Studies and Sociology.

Constructivists concentrate on the ways that social actors ‘construct’ their world:
both within their own minds and through inter-subjective communication with others.
Conversation and symbolic exchanges lead people to construct ideas of the world, the rules
for social interaction, and ways of being and belonging in that world. Social geography is a
mental experience as well as a physical fact. They form ‘in’ or ‘out’ as well as ‘us’ and they’
groups.

They conceive of themselves as inhabitants of a particular global world. National,

class, religious and other identities respond in part to material conditions but they also
depend on inter-subjective construction and communication of shared self-understanding.
However, when they go too far, they present a case of social-psychological reductionism
ignoring the significance of economic and ecological forces in shaping mental experience.
This theory neglects issues of structural inequalities and power hierarchies in social
relations. It has a built-in apolitical tendency.

5. Theory of Postmodernism

Some other ideational perspectives of globalization highlight the significance of

structural power in the construction of identities, norms and knowledge. They all are
grouped under the label of ‘postmodernism’. They too, as Michel Foucault does strive to
understand society in terms of knowledge power: power structures shape knowledge.
Certain knowledge structures support certain power hierarchies.

The reigning structures of understanding determine what can and cannot be known
in a given socio-historical context. This dominant structure of knowledge in modern society
is ‘rationalism’. It puts emphasis on the empirical world, the subordination of nature to
human control, objectivist science, and instrumentalist efficiency. Modern rationalism
produces a society overwhelmed with economic growth, technological control, bureaucratic
organization, and disciplining desires.

This mode of knowledge has authoritarian and expansionary logic that leads to a
kind of cultural imperialism subordinating all other epistemologies. It does not focus on the
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problem of globalization per se. In this way, western rationalism overawes indigenous
cultures and other non-modem life-worlds.

Postmodernism, like Marxism, helps to go beyond the relatively superficial

accounts of liberalist and political realist theories and expose social conditions that have
favored globalization. Obviously, postmodernism suffers from its own methodological
idealism. All material forces, though come under impact of ideas, cannot be reduced to
modes of consciousness. For a valid explanation, interconnection between ideational and
material forces is not enough.

6. Theory of Feminism

It puts emphasis on social construction of masculinity and femininity. All other

theories have identified the dynamics behind the rise of trans-planetary and supra-territorial
connectivity in technology, state, capital, identity and the like.

Biological sex is held to mould the overall social order and shape significantly the
course of history, presently globality. Their main concern lies behind the status of women,
particularly their structural subordination to men. Women have tended to be marginalized,
silenced and violated in global communication.

7. Theory of Trans-formationalism

This theory has been expounded by David Held and his colleagues. Accordingly,
the term ‘globalization’ reflects increased interconnectedness in political, economic and
cultural matters across the world creating a “shared social space”. Given this
interconnectedness, globalization may be defined as “a process (or set of processes) which
embodies a transformation in the spatial organization of social relations and transactions,
expressed in transcontinental or interregional flows and networks of activity, interaction and
power.”

While there are many definitions of globalization, such a definition seeks to bring
together the many and seemingly contradictory theories of globalization into a “rigorous
analytical framework” and “proffer a coherent historical narrative”. Held and McGrew’s
analytical framework is constructed by developing a three part typology of theories of
globalization consisting of “hyper-globalist,” “sceptic,” and “transformationalist” categories.

The Hyperglobalists purportedly argue that “contemporary globalization defines a

new era in which people everywhere are increasingly subject to the disciplines of the global
marketplace”. Given the importance of the global marketplace, multi-national enterprises
(MNEs) and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) which regulate their activity are key
political actors. Sceptics, such as Hirst and Thompson (1996) ostensibly argue that
“globalization is a myth which conceals the reality of an international economy increasingly
segmented into three major regional blocs in which national governments remain very
powerful.” Finally, transformationalists such as Rosenau (1997) or Giddens (1990) argue
that globalization occurs as “states and societies across the globe are experiencing a process
of profound change as they try to adapt to a more interconnected but highly uncertain
world”.
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Developing the transformationalist category of globalization theories. Held and

McGrew present a rather complicated typology of globalization based on globalization’s
spread, depth, speed, and impact, as well as its impacts on infrastructure, institutions,
hierarchical structures and the unevenness of development.

They imply that the “politics of globalization” have been “transformed” (using their
word from the definition of globalization) along all of these dimensions because of the
emergence of a new system of “political globalization.” They define “political
globalization” as the “shifting reach of political power, authority and forms of rule” based
on new organizational interests which are “transnational” and “multi-layered.”

These organizational interests combine actors identified under the hyper-globalist

category (namely IGOs and MNEs) with those of the sceptics (trading blocs and powerful
states) into a new system where each of these actors exercises their political power, authority
and forms of rule.

Thus, the “politics of globalization” is equivalent to “political globalization” for

Held and McGrew. However, Biyane Michael criticises them. He deconstructs their
argument, if A is defined as “globalization” (as defined above), B as the organizational
interests such as MNEs, IGOs, trading blocs, and powerful states, and C as “political
globalization” (also as defined above), then their argument reduces to A. B. C. In this way,
their discussion of globalization is trivial.

Held and others present a definition of globalization, and then simply restates
various elements of the definition. Their definition, “globalization can be conceived as a
process (or set of processes) which embodies a transformation in the spatial organization of
social relations” allows every change to be an impact of globalization. Thus, by their own
definition, all the theorists they critique would be considered as “transformationalists.” Held
and McGrew also fail to show how globalization affects organizational interests.

1. Theory of Eclecticism

Each one of the above six ideal-type of social theories of globalization highlights
certain forces that contribute to its growth. They put emphasis on technology and institution
building, national interest and inter-state competition, capital accumulation and class
struggle, identity and knowledge construction, rationalism and cultural imperialism, and
masculinize and subordination of women. Jan Art Scholte synthesizes them as forces of
production, governance, identity, and knowledge.

Accordingly, capitalists attempt to amass ever-greater resources in excess of their

survival needs: accumulation of surplus. The capitalist economy is thoroughly monetized.
Money facilitates accumulation. It offers abundant opportunities to transfer surplus,
especially from the weak to the powerful. This mode of production involves perpetual and
pervasive contests over the distribution of surplus. Such competition occurs both between
individual, firms, etc. and along structural lines of class, gender, race etc.

Their contests can be overt or latent. Surplus accumulation has had transpired in
one way or another for many centuries, but capitalism is a comparatively recent
phenomenon. It has turned into a structural power, and is accepted as a ‘natural’
circumstance, with no alternative mode of production. It has spurred globalization in four
LEARNING ACTIVITY SHEET NO. 3

ways: market expansion, accounting practices, asset mobility and enlarged arenas of
commodification. Its technological innovation appears in communication, transport and data
processing as well as in global organization and management. It concentrates profits at
points of low taxation. Information, communication, finance and consumer sectors offer vast
potentials to capital making it ‘hyper-capitalism’.

Any mode of production cannot operate in the absence of an enabling regulatory

apparatus. There are some kind of governance mechanisms. Governance relates processes
whereby people formulate, implement, enforce and review rules to guide their common
affairs.” It entails more than government. It can extend beyond state and sub-state
institutions including supra-state regimes as well. It covers the full scope of societal
regulation.

In the growth of contemporary globalization, besides political and economic forces,

there are material and ideational elements. In expanding social relations, people explore
their class, their gender, their nationality, their race, their religious faith and other aspects of
their being. Constructions of identity provide collective solidarity against oppression.
Identity provides frameworks for community, democracy, citizenship and resistance. It also
leads from nationalism to greater pluralism and hybridity.

Earlier nationalism promoted territorialism, capitalism, and statism, now these

plural identities are feeding more and more globality, hyper-capitalism and polycentrism.
These identities have many international qualities visualized in global diasporas and other
group affiliations based on age, class, gender, race, religious faith and sexual orientations.
Many forms of supra-territorial solidarities are appearing through globalization.

In the area of knowledge, the way that the people know their world has significant
implications for the concrete circumstances of that world. Powerful patterns of social
consciousness cause globalization. Knowledge frameworks cannot be reduced to forces of
production, governance or identity.

Mindsets encourage or discourage the rise of globality. Modern rationalism is a

general configuration of knowledge. It is secular as it defines reality in terms of the tangible
world of experience. It understands reality primarily in terms of human interests, activities
and conditions. It holds that phenomena can be understood in terms of single
incontrovertible truths that are discoverable by rigorous application of objective research
methods.

Rationalism is instrumentalist. It assigns greatest value to insights that enable

people efficiently to solve immediate problems. It subordinates all other ways of
understanding and acting upon the world. Its knowledge could then be applied to harness
natural and social forces for human purposes. It enables people to conquer disease, hunger,
poverty, war, etc., and maximize the potentials of human life. It looks like a secular faith, a
knowledge framework for capitalist production and a cult of economic efficiency. Scientism
and instrumentalism of rationalism is conducive to globalization. Scientific knowledge is
non-territorial.

The truths revealed by ‘objective’ method are valid for anyone, anywhere, and
anytime on earth. Certain production processes, regulations, technologies and art forms are
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applicable across the planet. Martin Albrow rightly says that reason knows no territorial
limits. The growth of globalization is unlikely to reverse in the foreseeable future.

However, Scholte is aware of insecurity, inequality and marginalization caused by

the present process of globalization. Others reject secularist character of the theory, its
manifestation of the imperialism of westernist-modernist-rationalist knowledge. Anarchists
challenge the oppressive nature of states and other bureaucratic governance frameworks.
Globalization neglects environmental degradation and equitable gender relations.
(politicalsciencenotes.com 2017)

Name: TRIXIA U. ALMENDRAL

Course: Contemporary World Year and Block: BSN-4A

Essay: “Why Early Globalization Matters” Video Evaluation Chart

Watch Crash Course Big History #206: Why Early Globalization Matters hosted
by Emily Graslie during your free time. Use this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=1esRyRV8H2M and then read the instructions below carefully and answer the following
questions cogently.

I. Reaction (Check the blank below)

 Very Favorable
____ Favorable
____Unfavorable
____Uncertain

II. Your response to the video in six words:

Clearly explained the importance Of Globalization

III. In just six words, explain the purpose/theme/aim of the video as you see it.
Globalization is unending process that makes a big impact in the history.

IV. Make a summary of the video in ten words.

Discussion of the Advantages of Early Globalization to every countries.

V. In ten words, what are the values you learned from this video?
Horrific events in the past shows what not to bring in the future.

RUBRIC
3 - Full Participation - Students wrote their reflection essays about the video in a clear and
consistent manner.
2 - Substantial Participation - Students wrote their reflection essays about the video and do
so in a somewhat consistent manner.
1 - Little or Partial Participation - Students have difficulty writing their reflection essays
about the video consistently

Name: TRIXIA U. ALMENDRAL

Course: Contemporary World Year and Block: BSN-4A

Essay: “Globalization Theories” Video Evaluation Chart

LEARNING ACTIVITY SHEET NO. 3

Watch Globalization Theories hosted by Sydney Brown from Khan Academy during
your free time. Use this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQIVIYCZ4ec and then read the
instructions below carefully and answer the following questions cogently.

I. Reaction (Check the blank below)

 Very Favorable
____ Favorable
____Unfavorable
____Uncertain

II. Your response to the video in six words:

Good explanation of Globalization Theories

III. In just six words, explain the purpose/theme/aim of the video as you see it.
The interpretation of the current events on the international sphere

IV. Make a summary of the video in ten words.

Definition and explanations of globalization and some of its theories

V. In ten words, what are the values you learned from this video?

Country must support their own citizens. You cant be dependent on someone.
RUBRIC
3 - Full Participation - Students wrote their reflection essays about the video in a clear and
consistent manner.
2 - Substantial Participation - Students wrote their reflection essays about the video and do
so in a somewhat consistent manner.
1 - Little or Partial Participation - Students have difficulty writing their reflection essays
about the video consistently.

Name: TRIXIA U. ALMENDRAL

Course: Contemporary World Year and Block: BSN-4A
Quiz: The Theories of Globalization Differentiated

Directions: To compare is to tell how two or more things are alike. To contrast is
to tell how two or more things are different. Clue words such as like or as show
comparisons. Clue words such as but or unlike show contrasts. Often authors don’t use clue
words. Readers must make comparisons for themselves. Use this chart to compare and
contrast any two theories of globalization.

Theories of Globalization
Theory of Liberalism Theory of Political Realism
 Liberals view globalization as a  Cultural, ecological, economic, and
market-driven extension of psychological components of
modernization. It stems from 'natural' globalization are not ascribable to power
human desires for economic politics.
prosperity and political freedom.  It's also about resource production and
Thus, transplanetary connectivity is consumption, identity discovery and
the result of human motivations to affirmation, meaning production and
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maximize material well-being and
exercise fundamental liberties.
Eventually, these forces will connect
humans across the earth.
Theories of Globalization
Theory of Marxism
 Marxism focuses primarily on forms
of production, social exploitation
through unequal distribution, and
social liberation through the
transcendence of capitalism. Marx
himself predicted the growth of
globalization, stating that "capital by
its nature transcends all spatial
barriers to conquer the entire planet
for the market." Accordingly,
according to Marxists, globalization
occurs because trans-world
connectivity promotes profit-making
and surplus accumulation
opportunities.
 Both liberalist and political realist
interpretations of globalization are
rejected by Marxists. It is the result
of historically unique capitalist
development tendencies. Its legal and
institutional infrastructures support
the concept of global surplus
accumulation. The liberal concept of
freedom and democracy legitimizes
communication, mankind shaping and
being molded by nature. The majority of
these are unaffiliated with any political
party.
 State power, national interest pursuit,
and state conflict are all issues that
proponents of this theory are interested
in. States, they claim, are fundamentally
acquisitive and self-serving, and are
bound for power rivalry. Some scholars
advocate for a power balance, in which
any attempt by one state to gain global
domination is met with collective
pushback from other states.
 Specifically, concentrate on the activities
of the Great Britain, China, France,
Japan, the United States, and some few
other large countries. As a result,
political realists emphasize power and
power conflicts, as well as the
involvement of nations in generating
global relations.
Theory of Constructivism
 To cognitively build the social reality
with distinct symbols, language, images
and interpretations has also led to
globalisation. It is the product of specific
mental states. Production and
governance patterns come from deeper
cultural and socio-psychological
influences. Anthropology, Humanities,
Media Studies, and Sociology have all
written about globalisation.
 Constructivists study how social actors
‘construct' their worlds, both internally
and with others. Conversations and
symbolic interactions help people form
worldviews, social rules, and ways of
being and belonging. Social geography
is both a mental and physical truth. They
can establish ‘in' or ‘out' groups.
 They see themselves as citizens of a
specific global world. National, class,
religious, and other identities are shaped
by material and inter-subjective
contexts, as well as shared self-
LEARNING ACTIVITY SHEET NO. 3
exploitative global capitalist class
relations.
Theories of Globalization
Theory of Postmodernism
 Other conceptual interpretations of
globalization emphasize the
significance of structural power in
the formation of identities,
conventions, and information. They
are grouped together under the term
"postmodernism." They, like Michel
Foucault, seek to comprehend society
in terms of knowledge power:
knowledge is shaped by power
systems. Certain knowledge
frameworks promote particular
hierarchies of power.
 Postmodernism, like Marxism, helps
to move beyond the relatively
superficial explanations of liberalist
and political realist theories in order
to identify the social conditions that
have facilitated globalization.
Postmodernism is obviously afflicted
by its own methodological idealism.
Although all material forces are
influenced by ideas, they cannot be
reduced to forms of consciousness.
Theories of Globalization
Theory of Feminism
 It emphasizes the societal creation of
male and female identities. All
previous theories have highlighted
the dynamics behind the emergence
of trans-planetary and supra-
territorial connectedness in
technology, state, capital, and
identity, amongștiinds.
understanding. Too much social-
psychological reductionism ignores the
role of economic and ecological
variables in shaping mental experience.
This paradigm ignores systemic
inequities and power hierarchies. It is
naturally apolitical.
Theory of Trans-formationalism
 Globalization can be defined as "a
process (or series of processes) that
embodies a change in the geographical
arrangement of social relations." Such
statement makes every change a
globalization impact.
 The analytical framework proposed by
Held and McGrew involves a three
typology of globalization theories:
"hyper-globalist," "sceptic," and
"transformationalist." "Contemporary
globalization defines a new era in which
people everywhere are increasingly
subject to the disciplines of the global
marketplace," the Hyperglobalists claim.
Sceptics such as Hirst and Thompson
(1996) assert that "globalization is a
myth that conceals the reality of an
international economy increasingly
segmented into three major regional
blocs in which national governments
remain very powerful." Finally,
transformationalists such as Rosenau
(1997) or Giddens (1990) contend that
"states and societies across the globe are
experiencing a process of profound
change as they try to adapt to a changing
world."
Theory of Eclecticism
 Eclecticism is a conceptual approach
that merges together aspects of current
theories that emphasize technology and
institution building, national interest and
inter-state competition, capital
accumulation and class struggle, identity
and knowledge construction, rationalism
and cultural imperialism, and
LEARNING ACTIVITY SHEET NO. 3

masculinization and female

 Sex is believed to shape the entire subordination.
social order and substantially  Production, governance, identity, and
influence the current globalization of knowledge are all sources of other
history. The condition of women, things; they are both causes and effects
particularly their systemic of one another.
subordination to men, is their
primary concern. In global
communication, women tend to be
marginalized, silenced, and violated.