UNDERSTANDING

GLOBALIZATION
Jose Ricarte B. Origenes
Department of Political Science
CONTEMPORARY WORLD –
INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES
■ The course aims to introduce students to the state of the world
today and the new global order. What does “globalization”
mean both theoretically and from the perspective of individuals
and societies affected by global firms, processes, and
movements? The phenomenon of globalization is thus
examined from a variety of perspectives as well as its effects
on traditional cultures and communities, nations and political
institutions, and local, national and regional economies.
CONTEMPORARY WORLD –
INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES
■ Students will be asked to identify the challenges posed by globalization
and consider the government’s responses to these challenges as
demonstrated by the experiences on the ground. For this purpose, the
students will produce case studies of communities (in the Philippines and
other countries) experiencing the impact of globalization and their
respective responses to issues that arise. Through a combination of
readings, class discussions, writing, and group presentations, the students
are expected to formulate an understanding of globalization that is
theoretically informed and rooted in the experiences of the communities
and nations.
FRAMING GLOBALIZATION
■ Beyond a problem-solving approach, especially a perspective of
“promoting international competiveness” (e.g. economic and
technological)
■ Beyond a buzzword: a process and discourse
■ Critical view: globalization as contested; understood and constituted in
different ways
■ Frames of meaning used to describe the world are part of a political
process
■ Words and meanings matter: some views become legitimate and define
what the world is…
Globalization: Levels of Debate
What are the starting premises?
Competing definitions
Varying measurements
Contrasting chronologies
Diverse explanations
What are the implications for social change?
Geography
identity
Production
Governance
Knowledge
Globalization: Levels of Debate
■ What are the impacts on the human condition?
Security
Equality
Democracy
■ What are the responses?
Neoliberalism (markets)
Rejectionism (localism/populism)
Reformism (public policies)
Transformism (social revolution)
Contending Perspectives
1. Liberal or hyperglobal
2. Conservative or skeptical
3. Critical or transformational
Liberal or Hyper-global perspective
1. “end of geography”; ‘end of the nation-state’ ; borderless world of
flows
2. Privileges an economic and technological logic
3. Globalization as mutually beneficial, progressive and benign
4. New, inevitable, levels off
5. A new modernization theory?
6. The end of the Cold War and the ‘end of history’: ‘there is no
alternative’ (TINA)
7. There is however a “pessimistic globalist” perspective that
emphasize both homogenization and its negative consequences
Conservative/Skeptical Perspective
1. Underplays globalization:
internationalization or regionalization
2. Certain types of Marxism/structuralism
adopt a strongly state-centric perspective
3. Rise of anti-global authoritarian
populism/nativism
Critical/Transformation Perspective
1. Recognizes dissolution of old structures and boundaries
(states, economies, communities)
2. “the state as a space of flows”: power and politics are
reconfigured; they flow through, across and around
territorial boundaries
3. Speed and magnitude of changes
4. Mobility, hybridity, complexity
5. Global-local nexus
6. Emphasis on unevenness and new hierarchies: inclusion
and exclusion; globalization of superficiality; globalization
of indifference
GLOBALIZATION: SOME DEFINITIONS

■ Globalization can thus be defined as the intensification

of worldwide social relations which link distant
localities in such a way that local happenings are
shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice
versa. (Giddens)
■ Internationalization and multinationalization are
phases that precede globalization because the latter
herald the end of the state system as the nucleus of
human activity. (Grupo de Lisboa)
GLOBALIZATION: SOME DEFINITIONS

■ Globalization as a concept refers both to the

compression of the world and the intensification of
consciousness of the world as a whole.(Robertson,
1992)
■ the 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 technologies
(Sunny Levin Institute)
GLOBALIZATION: SOME DEFINITIONS

■ The expansion and intensification of social relations

and consciousness across the world time and across
world space” (Steger)
– Expansion – the creation of new social networks
and the multiplication of existing connections that
cut across traditional political, economic, cultural
and geographic boundaries
– Intensification – expansion, stretching and
acceleration of these networks
GLOBALIZATION: SOME DEFINITIONS

■ The expansion and intensification of social relations

and consciousness across the world time and across
world space” (Steger)
– Relates to the way people perceive time and space.
(both objective and subjective)
– Must be differentiated with an ideology called
GLOBALISM (belief)
Globalization: Key Themes and Characteristics (M. Steger)

1. Globality:
A social condition characterized by tight economic,
political, cultural and environmental interconnections
and flows, making currently existing borders and
boundaries irrelevant
Globalization: Key Themes and Characteristics (M. Steger)

2. Globalization
- A set of social processes that appear to transform
our present social condition of weakening
nationality into one of globality; human lives played
out in the world as a single place; redefining
landscape of sociopolitical processes and social
sciences that study these mechanisms
Globalization: Key Themes and Characteristics (M. Steger)

3. Global imaginary
- A concept referring to people’s growing
consciousness of belonging to a global community
- Destabilizes and unsettles the conventional
parameters of understanding within which people
imagine their communal existence
GLOBALIZATION AS A PROCESS,
CONDITION AND IDEOLOGY
GLOBALIZATION AS A PROCESS

■ Multidimensional set of social processes that generate and

increase “worldwide social interdependencies and exchanges
while at the same time fostering in people a growing awareness
of deepening connections between the local and the distant”
■ Start of globalization? – depends
GLOBALIZATION AS A CONDITION

■ Globality
■ Scholte’s transplanetary connectivity (establishment of
social links between people located at different places of the
planet – not geographic unit but as a space) and supra-
territoriality (social connections that transcend territorial
geography – renders borders and barriers irrelevant)
GLOBALIZATION AS AN IDEOLOGY
■ Exist in the people’s consciousness – ideas and beliefs about the
global order
■ 6 Core Claims
1. Globalization is about the liberalization and global
integration of markets.
2. Globalization is inevitable and irreversible.
3. Nobody is in charge of globalization.
4. Globalization benefits everyone in the long run
5. Globalization furthers the spread of democracy in the world.
6. Globalization requires a global war on terror.
THEORETICAL PARADIGMS
ASSOCIATED WITH
GLOBALIZATION
1. World Systems Theory
2. Global Capitalism Paradigm
3. The Network Society
4. Space, Time and Globalization
5. Transnationality and Transnationalism
6. Global Culture Paradigm
WORLD SYSTEMS PARADIGM
■ Immanuel Wallerstein
■ View globalization not as a recent phenomenon but as virtually synonymous with the
birth and spread of capitalism, c. 1500.
■ Globalization is not at all new process but something that is just continuing and
evolving.
■ Capitalist world system is divided into three categories:
1. Core - powerful and developed centers (Western Europe, North America and
Japan)
2. Periphery - those regions that have been forcibly subordinated to the core through
COLONIZATION (Latin America, Africa, Asia, Middle East and Eastern Europe)
3. Semi – periphery – states and regions that were in the core and are moving down
or those in the periphery and are moving up
GLOBAL CAPITALISM
■ Globalization is a novel stage in the evolving system of world capitalism.
■ Qualitatively new features that distinguish it from earlier epochs
■ New global production and financial system
■ Rise of processes that cannot be framed within the nation-state/interstate system
■ Sklair: “theory of the global system” at the core of which are transnational practices
(TNPs)
– TCC (transnational capitalist class) – new class that brings together several social
groups – executives of transnational corporations; globalizing bureaucrats,
politicians, professionals and consumerist elites in the media and the commercial
sector.
■ Robinson: theory of global capitalism involving three planks: transnational production,
transnational capitalists and transnational state: class relations
THE NETWORK SOCIETY
■ Technology and technological change instead of capitalism
■ Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society
■ New economy:
1. Informational, knowledge based
2. Global, production is organized on a global scale
3. Networked, productivity is generated through global network
■ “the networked enterprise makes material the culture of the
informational, global economy: it transforms signals into commodities by
processing knowledge”
SPACE, TIME AND GLOBALIZATION
■ Giddens “time-space distanciation”
– The intensification of worldwide relations which link distant
localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events
occurring many miles away and vice versa
■ David Harvey – time-space compression (produced by the very dynamics
of capitalist development”
■ Sassen’s “The Global City” – proposes a new spatial order is emerging
such as London, New York and Tokyo – sites of specialized services for
transnationally mobile capital that is so central to the global economy
■ Robert Robertson “Glocalization” – ideas about home, locality and
community have been extensively spread around the world
TRANSNATIONALITY AND TRANSNATIONALISM

■ Transnationalism – an umbrella concept encompassing a wide variety of

transformative processes, practices and developments that take place
simultaneously at a local and global level
■ Transnational processes and practices – broadly as the multiple ties and
interactions – economic, political, social and cultural – that link people,
communities and institutions across the borders of nation-states.
■ Transnational links – more intense due to speed and relatively
inexpensive character of travel and communications and their impacts
GLOBAL CULTURE
■ Emphasize the rapid growth of mass media and resultant global cultural
flows and images in recent decades (global village – Marshall McLuhan)
■ Focus: globalization and religion, nations and ethnicity, global
consumerism, global communications and the globalization of tourism
■ Ritzer’s Mcdonaldization of society (homogenization, Weber’s process of
rationalization)
– Efficient, predictable and standardized lines → alienation, waste,
low nutritional value and the risk of health problems
MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT
GLOBALIZATION (SCHOLTE)
■ GLOBALIZATION AS INTERNATIONALIZATION
■ GLOBALIZATION AS LIBERALIZATION
■ GLOBALIZATION AS UNIVERSALIZATION AND
WESTERNIZATION
GLOBALIZATION AS
INTERNATIONALIZATION
■ Globalization refers to global ■ Internationalization refers to the
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.
■ Includes a gamut of human activities
that do not require reference to a
state’s national border.
■ One
increasing importance of international
trade, international relations, treaties,
alliances, etc. Inter-national, of course,
means between or among nations.
■ Includes activities by entities such as
corporations, states, international
organizations, and even individuals
with reference to national borders and
national governments
■ Many
GLOBALIZATION AS LIBERALIZATION
■ Liberalization is the removal of barriers and restrictions imposed by national
governments so as to create an open and borderless world economy.
■ Globalization is realized when national governments “reduce or abolish regulatory
measures like trade barriers, foreign – exchange restrictions, capital controls and visa
requirements” (Scholte)
■ Problem with this misconception:
– Confines the study within the debate concerning the neoliberal macroeconomic
policies: pro and anti
– Political implication – neo-liberalism is the only available policy framework for
a truly global world.
– Debate about the pros and cons of laissez faire has been happening for centuries
GLOBALIZATION AS UNIVERSALIZATION & WESTERNIZATION

■ Universalization denotes a process of spreading various objects, practices and

experiences to the different parts of the planet
■ Globalization is when things, values and practices spread to the different parts of the
planet.
■ Implication: Homogenization of culture, politics, economy and laws. Destroys
indigenous practices and cultures.
■ When Western modernity spreads and destroys – Westernization
■ Issues arising from this misconception:
– Universalization is not a new feature of world history.
– Westernization is not the only path that can be taken by globalization
MULTIPLE GLOBALIZATION
■ Scholars found it simpler to avoid talking about globalization as a whole
■ Instead “multiple globalizations” instead of one process
■ Arjun Appadurai: Different kinds of globalization occur on multiple and
intersecting dimensions of integration – “SCAPES”
– “ethnoscapes” – global movement of people
– “mediascapes” – flow of culture
– “technoscapes” – circulation of mechanical goods and software
– “financescapes” – global circulation of money
– “ideoscapes” – realm where political ideas move around
■ Claudio: distinct windows into the broader phenomenon of globalization