1.

1_ INTRODUCTION TO THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

Global age

- A period or epoch of interconnectedness of human beings from different parts of the world

Globalization

- Liberation and integration of markets through the use of information technology

- Inevitable and irreversible
- Nobody is in charge of it
- benefitsts everyone in the long run
- Spreads democracy (values majority rule)
- Requires global war on terror

Contemporary World

- The current/modern world we are living in

Process of Globalization

1. Transnational – process that interconnects individual and social groups across specific geo-
political borders.
2. Transnationality – The rise of new communities and the formation of new identities and
relations that can not be defined as nation-states.
3. Globality – Omnipresence of the process of globalization.

Connections among people – Creation of communities – Creation of social conditions

Metaphors

- Direct comparison between things

1. Solidity – people, things, information, and places “harden” over time and therefore have
limited mobility.
2. Liquidity – Increase ease of movement of people, things, information, and places in the
global age.
3. Heavy – Difficult to move
4. Light – easier to move
5. Flows – a movement of people, things, information, and places die, in part, to the increasing
porosity of global barriers.

(Basically, globalization flows from Solid to Liquid, Heavy to Light.)

Economic Globalization

- Growing economic linkages at the global level.

 - “The global capitalist system has produced a very uneven playing field” (Soros, 2000) because
we create social classes.

Structural barriers

- Social class
- Race
- Ethnicity
- Gender
- Region of the World
- Brain Drain (a global phenomenon and it most often takes the form of highly trained people
leaving the south and moving to the north.)

1.2_ ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF GLOBALIZATION

1. Hardwired Theory – the urge of having a good life. Newspapers to mobile news. Human beings
have endless needs in life.
2. Cycle – there have been other global ages in the past, which now appears to be a new global
age.
3. Epoch – Six great epochs: 4th and 7th Centuries (Medieval Period, globalization of Christianity),
15th Century (European colonial conquests—God, gold, and glory), 18 th and 19th Centuries
(Wars), mid-19th century (European imperialism), post-World War ii period, post-cold war
period.
4. Recent Changes
- Emergence of the US as a global power.
- Emergence of multi-national corporations (MNCs)
- Demise of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War.
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