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,

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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
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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)

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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.
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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

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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References:

1. searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/globalization

2. http://www.globalization101.org/what-is-globalization/

3. Thomas Friedman. (2012). International Politics: Concepts, Theories, & Issues. Sage publications.
Edited by Rumki Basu

4. https://www.globalization101.org/what-is-globalization/

5. Cherunilam, Francis (2010). International Business: Text and Cases. 5th Edition.PHI Learning Private
Limited. New Delhi.

6. Cited by Charles Michell (2000). International Business Culture. World Trade Press. California

7. Steger. Manfred Globalization: A Very Short Introduction Published by OUP Oxford

8. Pereira, Carlos and Vladimir Teles (2011). Political Institutions, Economic Growth, and Democracy:
The Substitute Effect. https:// www. brookings. Edu/ opinions/ political- institutions –economic-
growth- and- democracy- the – substitute- effect/. January 19

9. Rodrik, D. (2007). One Economics Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic
Growth Princeton: Princeton University Press.

10. Book Review on Globalization: a very short introduction. Faculties of American Studies. http:// www.
American. Mcgill.ca/nast/; http:/ /www. American. Edu/sis /cnas.

11.(a,b,c,) Seazolts, Kevin R (2012). A Virtuous Church: Catholic Theology, Ethics, and Liturgy for the
21st Century

12. Samuel P. Huntington (1997). The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York:
Touchstone/Simon and Schuster

13. Johnston, Douglas M. Religion and Culture: Human Dimensions of Globalization. http:// indian
strategic knowledge online. com/ web/ C31 Johns. pdf

14. Seazolts, Kevin R (2012). A Virtuous Church: Catholic Theology, Ethics, and Liturgy for the 21st
Century

16. (a,b) Steger, Manfred. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. Published by OUP Oxford

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