Globalisation and Modernity

Objective of Lecture
• To offer an critical introduction to the work
of Giddens and Beck
 Structure of Lecturer
Section One: What is liberalism?

Section Two: Introduction to Giddens’ work

Section Three: Introduction to the distinctive

features of Beck’s work
Section Four: Critique and Conclusion
• Section One:
• What is Liberalism?
• Mainstream Political Debates tend to between
different forms of liberalism
• The next Prime Minister of UK will be a liberal
• None of Scholars we engage with today are
Ohmae type liberals
• In fact they would regard Ohmae as a ‘market
fundamentalist’
• There work is reprehensive of wider body
‘critical’ liberal scholarship
 Section Two
Tony Giddens
• Tony Giddens is close to Tony
Blair (has acted as policy
advisor). Wrote a book entitled
the ‘The Third Way’ and has
acted as a policy advisor.
Ennobled!
• Sociologist and a Polymath.
Famous in 1970s for serious
engagement with Marxism,
work on classical social theory
and the nation state and
violence
• The argument:
• Globalisation is ‘high’ modernity
• Modernity itself is marked by:

(1)Increased Pace of Change

(2) Increased Scope of Change
(3) The Creation of Modern Institutions
The Institutions of Modernity

Military Power Surveillance

Industrialism

Capitalism
• Giddens argues that phenomena of modernity
has been poorly understood by social theory for
four reasons
• (1) Reliance on monocausal explanation
• (2) Failure to embrace radical reflexivity
• (3)They take the concept of ‘society’ for given.
For Giddens’ the key point to examine the
creation of time and space to uncover how
‘society’ is formed
• (4)Failure to recognize fully the problems of
modernity. Nature of Risk and Danger.
• The third process is most interest to us for the
time being
• Modernity is accompanied by process of “time-
space distanciation”
• This involves the ‘emptying’ of time and space.
The separation of place from space and the
creation universal framework of time
• The establishment of symbolic token and expert
systems. Money “passed around without regard
to the specific characteristics of individuals and
groups”
• Globalisation essentially represents “stretching
process, in so far as the modes of connection
between different social contexts or regions
become networked across the earth’s service as
a whole”
• “Modernity is inherently globalising.. But what
exactly is globalisation and how might we best
conceptualise the phenomenon?
• Analysis must go beyond bounded entities
• Dimensions of Globalisation
• (1) Nation-state system
• (2) World Capitalism Economy
• (3) World Military Order
• (4) International Division of Labour
• “Globalisation can thus be defined as the
intensification of worldwide social relations
which link distinct localities in such a way
that local happenings are shaped by
events occurring many miles away”
• Giddens’ view on nation state complex
• On one hand maintains monopoly on key
types of power and one the other…..
In circumstances of accelerating
globalisation, the nation-state has become
“too small for the big problems of life, and
too big for the small problems of life”
• It is difficult to see what is distinctive about
‘globalised’ military order. Arguments
about global military first world are
problematic
• Can International Division of Labour and
Capitalism really be treated separately?
• Is globalisation really anything more than
capitalism? Does Giddens’ pluralism stand
up
 Ulrich Beck

• According to
Theorycards.org.uk “Beck
is like Giddens but not so
readable”.
• Second ‘modernity’. First
‘modernity’ national state
project modernity, the
second is global ‘project/
reality.
• Argee with much of Giddens’ framework. I
would argue he is significantly to the left of
Giddens’
• “The various autonomous logics of
globalization – the logics of ecology,
culture, economics, politics and civil
society- exist side by side and cannot be
reduced or collapsed into one another”
• His big ideas are transnational social
spaces, world risk society, glocalization,
the decline of work and the creation of
global rich and a local poor, and world
society
• Transnational Social
Space. New
transnational
(Imagined)
Communities
(‘African’ British,
Mexican Americans).
• World Risk Society: Acid Rain, Mad Cow
Disease, Rain Forests, AIDS. Politicisation
of previously de-political issues. Three
types of risk. Risks of affluence, poverty
and Weapons of mass destruction. War is
no longer localised.
• Glocalisation rather than McDonalisation
of Culture: British Grime Scene
• Decline of work: As result of technological
change the decline in need for labour and
fortunes global rich and local poor become
completely separate. In a world were
increasingly defined as consumers the
poor become non-people
• World Society comes into existence when
people conceive of themselves as global
subjects. The emergence of global risk
and transnational social spaces provides
material basis for the development of
world society
• Normative Solution to these problems is a
world state. Although its not exactly clear
what he means by ‘world state’
 Criticisms of Critical Liberal
Approach
• Giddens: Does not really explain globalisation.
Globalisation is a project of high modernity? So
what
• His reading of classical social theory and
modernity is questionable
• Marx on “Circulation Bursts through all the
temporal, spatial and personal; barriers imposed
by the direct exchange of products, and it does
so by splitting up the direct identity present in the
case between the exchange of one’s own
product and the acquisition of someone else’s”
• Weber “ No age has never experienced, in
the same sense as the modern Occident
the absolute and complete dependence of
its whole existence on a specially trained
organisation of officials”
• Problems with his pluralist framework.
• Ultimately time-space distinction itself becomes
source of explanation not the phenomena to be
explained.
• “The undue reliance which sociologists have
placed upon bounded systems, should be
replaced by a starting point upon analysing how
social life is ordered across time and space- the
problematic of time-space distantiation ”
• Ulrich Beck: Does really attempt to
establish cause of globalisation. Again
‘Globalisation theory rather than a theory
of Globalisation’. Ultra-pluralism
• More commentary than theory. No real
depth. Analysis is fragmentary
• Some arguments are just plain wrong. For
example, the ‘End of Work’
• His ideas about the contents of First
Modernity are problematic
• Underestimates conflicts of interest
between different state based groups
• Some of his arguments are vague beyond
belief. For example, the world state
argument. Again an undue privileging of
space.
 Conclusion
• In certain respects Giddens arguments are
unproblematic
• Equally the idea world risk society is fairly
unproblematic and he is correct in
highlighting transnational social spaces
• However, it is questionable if his
arguments really contain any great
analytical depth or originality, arguably
they are simply tautological
• Next week we seek to assess Marxist
accounts of Globalisation (which oddly
enough share a certain amount in
common with free market accounts)
• Whatever their weaknesses at least these
accounts give us a clear argument to react
against