THE

CONTEMPORARY
WORLD
GE 3
WHAT IS GLOBALIZATION?
GLOBALIZATION
- The expansion and intensification of
social relations and consciousness across
world-time and across world-space
(Manfred Steger)
 WHAT IS EXPANSION?
- Refers to “Both the creation of new
social networks and the multiplication
of existing connections cut across
traditional political, economic, cultural,
and geographic boundaries”.
These various connections occur at different
levels. Social media, for example, establish
new global connections between people,
while international groups of non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) are
networks that connect a more specific group-
social worker and activists- from different
corners of the globe.
WHAT IS INTENSIFICATION?
- Refers to the expansion, stretching,
and acceleration of this networks.
Not only are global connections multiplying, but
they are also becoming more closely-knit and
expanding their reach. For example, there has
always been a strong financial Market connecting
to London and New York. With the advent of
electronic trading, however, the volume of that
trade increases exponentially, since traders can
now trade more at higher speed.
Steger notes that “globalization processes do not
occur merely at an objective, material level but they
also involve the subjective plane of human
consciousness”.
In other words, people begin to feel that the world
has become smaller place and distance has
collapsed from thousands of miles to just a mouse-
click away.
One can now email a friend in another country and
get a reply instantaneously, and as a result, begins
to perceive their distance as less consequential.
Cable TB and the internet has also exposed one to
news from across the globe, so now, S/he has this
greater sense of what is happening in other places.
GLOBALIZATION
- Steger (2014) uses the term globalism
to mean globalization an ideology. He
identifies five core claims of globalism.
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
5. Globalization furthers the spread of democracy in
the world.
 Globalism
-Only an ideological component of
globalization.
-More on mindset and philosophy
Steger posits that his definition of globalization must be differentiated
with an ideology he calls globalism. If globalization represents the
many processes that allow for the expansion and intensification of
global connections, globalism is a widespread belief among powerful
people that global integration of economic markets is beneficial for
everyone, since it spreads freedom and democracy across the world. It
is a common belief forwarded in media and policy circles.
For Anthropologist Arjun
Appadurai
Different kinds of globalization occur in
multiple and intersecting dimensions of
integration that he calls “scapes”
 SCAPES
ethnoscape - Refers to the movement of the people
mediascape – about the flow of the culture
technoscape – refers the circulation of mechanical
goods and software
financescape – denotes the global circulation of money
ideoscape – it’s the realm where political ideas move
around