helloellen

www.wuolah.com/student/helloellen

1229

Unit-4-From-Global-to-Local.pdf
Global Society

1º Global Society

Grado en Global Studies

Facultad de Derecho
Universidad de Salamanca

Reservados todos los derechos. No se permite la explotación económica ni la transformación de esta obra. Queda permitida la impresión en su
totalidad.
a64b0469ff35958ef4ab887a898bd50bdfbbe91a-3320515

Global Society

UNIT 4. FROM GLOBAL TO LOCAL.

Introduction to rationalization
Rationalization is a term that refers to choosing the most efficient means to accomplish tasks.
Max Weber was the first sociologist to analyze rationalization. Writing in the late 19 th and early
20th century, Weber saw his society as the center of the ongoing process of rationalization and
the bureaucracy as its paradigm case.

The introduction of logic bureaucracy and rationalization means looking work in a cold way
and transforming it in a rational way without taking into account that workers are people.
Focus on profit. Evaluation of people according to their production: people become

Reservados todos los derechos. No se permite la explotación económica ni la transformación de esta obra. Queda permitida la impresión en su totalidad.
expendable tools.

The risk of being locked in what Weber calls the “iron cage of rationality”: getting trapped in
an extremely rationalized life  every aspect of our life rationalized.

Nowadays bureaucracy is not the reference in the application of rationalization in America, the
reference is fast-food restaurant industry. Its logic is applied to every aspect of our daily life.
The society characterized by rationality emphasizes:

 Efficiency
 Predictability
 Calculability: replacement of quality for quantity. The dominance of the bottom line.
 Substitution of human for non-human technology: in order to reduce human
mistakes.
 Control over uncertainty: rational systems are made to control the sources of
uncertainty in life.

Efficiency and McDonalization

The first pilar of rationalization is Efficiency: means the choice of the optimum means to a
given end  looking for the most efficient process.

 McDonald’s has sought to construct highly efficient systems to serve hamburgers and
McDonalization implies the search of maximum efficiency in increasingly numerous and
diverse social settings.
 The emphasis of McDonalization on efficiency implies that contrasting, non-rational
systems are less efficient or even inefficient.
 The search for more efficient restaurants led to the ancestors of fast food: dinners,
cafeterias, drive-throughs…
 Is rationalization and efficiency always better? No. But it is cheap. There is a correlation
between income inequality and the obesity in the population. Neighborhoods with more
deprivation are more likely to have fast-food restaurants.
 The home kitchen had to grow more efficient to save itself. They key to its salvation was
the microwave oven  it is far more efficient that a conventional over to prepare a meal
quickly.

Descarga la app de Wuolah desde tu store favorita

a64b0469ff35958ef4ab887a898bd50bdfbbe91a-3320515

Global Society

o Food companies now employ people who scout fast-food restaurants for new
ideas for foods that can be marketed for home  food for microwave takes ideas
from fast-food restaurants.
 The microwave oven is but one of many contributions to the increasing efficiency of home
cooking:
o Replacement of the hand beater by the electric beater.
o The invention of stand-alone freezers or refrigerator-freezers that allowed to store
food and the production of frozen food.
 The McDonalization of food preparation and consumption has been extended to the
booming diet industry:
o Diet books promising efficient shortcuts
o Preparation of low-calorie foods made more efficient
o Diet shakes

Reservados todos los derechos. No se permite la explotación económica ni la transformación de esta obra. Queda permitida la impresión en su totalidad.
 There is a strong emphasis on efficiency in modern health clubs. High level of calculability:
miles run, difficulty of the exercise, calories burned…
 The shopping mall: brings efficiency by introducing different stores in the same place.
Kowinsky describes the mall as “an extremely efficient and effective selling machine”.
o Cost-efficient for retailers.
o Efficient for costumers: wide range of services in the same place.
 Shopping became even more efficient with catalogue selling or e-commerce to buy
products from home.
 McDonalization has also affected traveling. The best example are package tours.
o Example: 30-day tour of Europe. To make this efficient, only the major locales in
Europe are visited; the tourist is directed toward the major sights.

Side Effects
 Fast-food restaurants offer employees a dehumanizing setting within which to work  few
skills are required on the job.
o Workers are asked only to use a minute proportion of all their skills and abilities.
o Employees are not allowed to think nor be creative.
o Low salaries.
 Another dehumanizing effect is they minimize contact among human beings:
o How customers and employees relate: fleeting relationships, worker-customer contact
is of a very short duration.
o Other potential relations: satisfying personal relationships between employees are
unlikely to develop, there is no solidarity among workers and relationships among
customers are largely curtailed as well.
 Homogenization around the country and world: fast food restaurants are everywhere.
Diversity is being reduced or eliminated by the fast-food logic: different fast-food
restaurants producing ethnical or regional food.

Global Cities
Factors that allowed this phenomena:

Descarga la app de Wuolah desde tu store favorita

a64b0469ff35958ef4ab887a898bd50bdfbbe91a-3320515

Global Society

 Global economy  from the 1970s there is a tendency in dismantling industrial centers
and replacing them with a long and global chain of production. Internationalization of a
global assembly line. Spatial dispersion and global integration, and creation of a global
network of financial transactions.
 Globalization of specialty labor  not only highly skilled labor but labor which has
become exceptionally high demanded around the world.
 High-level professional labor

Reservados todos los derechos. No se permite la explotación económica ni la transformación de esta obra. Queda permitida la impresión en su totalidad.
 Artists, designer, performers
 This type of workers doesn’t have barriers. At the same time, the market for unskilled
labor is highly restricted by national barriers  only an elite specialty labor force of great
strategic importance is truly globalized.

Now

 New economy is polarized: creative workers and high-skilled workers travel around the
world and low-skilled workers can’t move from their country.
 London, Tokyo, NY, San Francisco, Madrid  these are the destinations. They control
financial markets and production.

Sassen. The role of global cities in management in world economy.

First Thesis:

“The geographic dispersal of manufacturing, which contributed to the decline of old industrial
centers, created a demand for expanded central management and planning and the necessary
specialized services, key components of growth in global cities”

 The Spatial dimension of the current economic changes: new strategic role for these cities,
they are key locations for finance, specialized services and economy centers. The most
advances sites of production of specialized services: legal and public relations,
technology…
o Example: Telefónica. Headquarters in Madrid, works around the world. To solve
legal problems around the world and problems of management because of
different law. The company needs centers to control its chain of production.
 These big cities are centers of global trade and also centers of control for
this companies.
 Cities have parallel changes because of the transformation in the world economy. Two
tendencies:
o Global cities are both production sites and marketplaces necessary to produce and
reproduce the power of banks and corporations.
o Decentralization of economic activity has expanded geographically the chain of
production, not its control and management.

Second Thesis: The political implications. The relationships between global cities and the
countries they belong to.
a64b0469ff35958ef4ab887a898bd50bdfbbe91a-3320515

Global Society

 Global cities are in a certain way independent. What is good for global cities is not always
good for the country.
 Global cities are included in capital networks, workforce flow networks… Chart on
globalization  Global cities don’t imply equal countries. There is a contradiction between
the exponential growth of these cities and the distribution of wealth across the country.

Third Thesis: The social dimension. How has the consolidation of a world economy affected
the economic base and associates social and political order in major cities?

 The new structure of economic activity has brought about the need for not only managers
and professionals but also for low-wage jobs (waiters, cleaners… services for the high-paid)
 This new structure means the decrease of the middle earning jobs characterizing old
industries  polarization. In these cities there is a small percentage of high income

Reservados todos los derechos. No se permite la explotación económica ni la transformación de esta obra. Queda permitida la impresión en su totalidad.
workers.
 Castells  Polarization inside the geography of global cities. Cosmopolitanism of the elites
in one side, on the other side, tribalism of local communities  ghettos, etc. that don’t
participate in this cities’ decisions.
 Cultural capacity (in terms of production and control of knowledge and information) is the
key source of wealth and power in the new global economy.
 Local communities who used to live in the city center have been moved away from the
decision procedures of their city.

Descarga la app de Wuolah desde tu store favorita