THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD (WEEK 1 & 2 LECTURE)

The world today is… “world of disruptive change” (Schwab, 2015)

OUR VUCA WORLD:
 VOLATILITY
o Characteristics: The challenge is unexpected or unstable and may be of unknown
duration, but it’s not necessarily hard to understand; knowledge about it is often
available.
 UNCERTAINTY
o Characteristics: Despite a lack of other information, the event’s basic cause and
effect are known. Change is possible but not a given.
 COMPLEXITY
o Characteristics: The situation has many interconnected parts and variables. Some
information is available or can be predicted, but the volume or nature of it can be
overwhelming to process.
 AMBIGUITY
o Characteristics: Causal relationships are completely unclear. No precedents exist;
you face “unknown unknowns.”
DEFINING GLOBALIZATION
In search of definition:
 Globalization is one of the concepts in the lexicon of social sciences that is hard to define.
 There is no consensus among the experts of the different disciplines of social sciences on
what really is globalization.
 Most of the definitions of globalization tend to focus on one aspect of globalization. It does
not mean that these are wrong, rather, it is a proof of the complexity and being multi-
faceted of the globalization as a concept.
 The following are some of the definitions of globalization offered by scholars of different
disciplines:
o Broad and inclusive: “…globalization means the onset of the borderless world…”
(Ohmae, 1992; Aldama, 2018).
o Narrow and exclusive: “…include internationalizing of production, the new
international division of labor, new migratory movements from South to North, the
new competitive environment that accelerates these processes and the
internationalizing of the state” (Cox, n.d.; Aldama, 2018).
 “Globalization is a transplanetary process or set of processes involving increasing liquidity
and growing multidirectional flows of people, objects, places, and information as well as the
structures, they encounter and create that are barriers to, or expedite, those flows…”
(Ritzer, 2015; Aldama, 2018).
 “It refers to the integration of national market to a wider global market
significant by the increased free trade” (Claudio & Abinales, 2018).
 “The expansion and intensification of social relations and consciousness across
world-time and across world-space” (Claudio & Abinales, 2018).
DEFINITION 1:
 “The characteristics of globalization trend include the internationalizing of production, the
new international division of labor, new migratory movements from South to North, the
 new competitive environment that accelerates these processes, and the internationalizing
of the state…making states into agencies of the globalizing world”
DEFINITON 2:
 “Globalization refers to global economic integration of many formerly national economies
into one global economy, mainly by free trade and free capital mobility, but also by easy or
uncontrolled migration. It is the effective erasure of national boundaries for economic
purposes…. What was many becomes one.”
RATIONALIZATION OF DEFINITION 1 & 2:
 The scholars describe globalization mainly on economic terms. This is situating
globalization as an economic phenomenon with free trade and migration, to name a
few, as driving forces.
DEFINITION 3:
 “As cultural process, globalization names the explosion of a plurality of mutually
intersecting, individually syncretic, local differences; the emergence of new, hitherto
suppressed identities; and the expansion of world-wide media and technology culture with
the promise of popular democratization.”
RATIONALIZATION OF DEFINITION 3:
 Third definition speaks of globalization not as an economic process but as a cultural
process that spreads cultural traits across the globe.
DEFINITION 4:
 “Refers broadly to the process whereby power is located in global social formations and
expressed through global networks rather than through territorially-based states.”
RATIONALIZATION OF DEFINITION 4:
 Focus on power is in fact an emphasis on the political aspect of globalization; its
influence is going beyond nation-states.
APPRECIATION OF GLOBALIZATION (ALDAMA, 2018)
 It is shaped by the perspective of the person who defines it.
“…(processes), they also involve the subjective plane of human consciousness” (Claudion &
Abinales, 2018).
 It is the debate, and the debate is globalization.
 It is the reality.
METAPHORS OF GLOBALIZATION (ALDAMA, 2018)
 Solidity refers to barriers that prevent or make difficult the movement of things. This can
either be natural (like landforms and bodies of water) and Man-made barriers (like Great
Wall of China, Berlin Wall, Nine-Dash Line).
 Liquidity, therefore, refers to the ease the movement of people, things, information, and
places in the contemporary world. Another characteristic of liquid phenomena is that their
movement is difficult to stop. For example, videos uploaded in YouTube or Facebook are
unstoppable once they become viral.
 “Tends to melt whatever stands in its path (especially solids)” (Ritzel, 2010; Aldama, 2018)
  Today, globalization is liquidity (flow of ideas) (Appadurai, 1996; Rey & Ritzer, 2010;
Aldama, 2018).
FLOWS OF GLOBALIZATION (ALDAMA, 2018)
 “Flows are the movement of people, things, places and information brought by the growing
“porosity” of global limitations” (Ritzer, 2015; Aldama, 2018).
 Examples: patronization of foreign cuisines, global financial crises, poor illegal migrants,
flooding of many parts of the world (Moses, 2006), virtual flow of information such as blogs
and child pornography (OSEC).
 Filipino communities abroad and Chinese communities in the Philippines.
GLOBALIZATION THEORIES (ALDAMA, 2018)
HOMOGENEITY
 Homogeneity refers to the increasing sameness in the world (ethnicity, economy & politics).
 Homogeneity in culture is often linked to cultural imperialism, a given culture influences
other cultures (dominant religion-Christianity, Americanization defined by Kuisdel (1993)).
 Americanization defined by Kuisdel (1993) as “the import by non-Americans of products,
images, technologies, practices, and behavior that are closely associated with
America/Americans”
 In terms of economy, there is recognition of spread of neoliberalism, capitalism, and the
market economy.
 McWorld is existing, means only one political orientation is growing (Ex: Democracy,
Federalism) (Barber, 1995).
HETEROGENEITY
 Heterogeneity pertains to the creation of variety (ethnicity, economy & politics).
 Heterogeneity refers to the differences due to hybrids or combinations of cultures through
transplanetary processes. Heterogeneity in culture is associated with cultural hybridization.
 Glocalization, as coined by Roland Robertson, is global forces interact with local factors or
specific geographic area, the “glocal” is produced.
 Jihad, as the alternate to McWorld, refers to group involved in intensification of nationalism
leads to greater political.

DYNAMICS OF LOCAL AND GLOBAL CULTURE

 Global flows of culture tend to move more easily around the globe than ever before,
especially through non-material digital forms. There are three perspectives on global
culture flows:
 o Cultural Differentialism,
o Cultural Hybridization
o Cultural Convergence.

CULTURAL DIFFERENTIALISM/DIFFERENTIATION
 The Cultural Differentialism emphasizes the fact that cultures are essentially different and
are only superficially affected by global flows.
 The interaction of cultures is deemed to contain the potential for “catastrophic collision.”
CULTURAL HYBRIDIZATION
 The Cultural Hybridization approach emphasizes the integration of local and global cultures
(Cvetkovich and Kellner, 1997).
 Cultural hybridization refers to the mixing of Asian, African, American, European cultures:
hybridization is the making of global culture as a global mélange.
 The very process of hybridization shows the difference to be relative and, with a slight shift
of perspective, the relationship can also be described in terms of an affirmation of
similarity.
 Hybridization as a perspective belongs to the fluid end of relations between cultures: the
mixing of cultures and not their separateness is emphasized (Pieterse, 2013).
CULTURAL CONVERGENCE
 The Cultural Convergence approach stresses homogeneity introduced by globalization.
 Cultural convergence is a trend where two cultures that interact a lot start to appear more
like each other. This is especially pronounced among cultures that have high degrees of
communication, relative ease of transportation between them, and are united under some
organizational system.
 Cultures are deemed to radically altered by strong flows, while culture imperialism happens
when one culture imposes itself on and tends to destroy at least parts of another culture.
GLOBALIZATION OF RELIGION AND THE HISTORY OF GLOBALIZATION
RELIGION
 From the Latin religio (respect for what is sacred) and religare (to bind, in the sense of an
obligation), the term religion describes various systems of belief and practice concerning
what people determine to be sacred or spiritual (Durkheim 1915; Fasching and deChant
2001).
 Pioneer sociologist Émile Durkheim described it with the ethereal statement that it consists
of “things that surpass the limits of our knowledge” (1915). He went on to elaborate:
Religion is “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say
set apart and forbidden, beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community,
called a church, all those who adhere to them” (1915).
 Some people associate religion with places of worship (a synagogue or church), others with
a practice (confession or meditation), and still others with a concept that guides their daily
lives (like dharma or
sin). All of these
people can agree
that religion is a
system of beliefs,
 values, and practices concerning what a person holds sacred or considers to be spiritually
significant.
TYPES OF RELIGION

GLOBALIZATION OF RELIGION (ALDAMA, 2018)

 Globalization has played a tremendous role in providing context for the survival and
resurgence of religion.
 Religions have spread and scattered on a global scale.
 Globalization provided religions a fertile milieu to spread and thrive.
 “Accelerated globalization of recent times has enabled co-religionists across the
planet to have greater direct contact with one another.” (Scholte, 2005)
 Global communications, global organizations, global finance, and the like have allowed
ideas of the Muslims and the universal Christian church to be given concrete shape as
never before.
 Information technologies, transportation, and media are deemed important in
dissemination of religious ideas.
 Globalization allowed religion or faith to gain considerable significance as non-territorial
touchstone of identity.
 Muslims, aspire to establish the Islamic Ummah, a community of believers.
 Due to free contact of religion, it provides flourishing and thriving but also brought a circle
of competition and conflicts.
  Globalization transforms the generic “religion” into a world-system of competing and
conflicting religions. This process of institutional specialization has transformed local,
diverse and fragmented cultural practices into recognizable systems of religion.
Globalization, has therefore, had the paradoxical effect of making more self-conscious of
themselves as being “world religions”. (Turner, 2007)
 It has been difficult for religion to cope up with values that accompany globalization like
liberalism, consumerism, and rationalism. Such phenomena advocate scientism and
secularism.
 Scholte equated rationalism with globalization and considered religion anti-rationalist, it can
be deduced that religion is anti-globalization.

ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF GLOBALIZATION (ALDAMA, 2018)