CONTEMPORARY WORLD (GE 3)

LEARNING OUTCOMES

ARLYNE JOY A. HUGO

INSTRUKTOR

MODULE 1
 CONTEMPORARY WORLD (GE 3)
a. Writes a personal definition of globalization based on a concept map;
b. Differentiates the competing conceptions of globalization;
c. Identifies the underlying philosophies of varying definitions of globalization; and
d. Agrees on working definition of globalization for the course.

MODULE 1

INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF

GLOBALIZATION
Even after more than two decades of intense scholarly scrutiny, ‘globalization’ has
remained a contested and slippery concept. In spite of the remarkable proliferation of research
programs for the study of globalization, there are many different approaches to the study of
globalization. Since the beginning of self-conscious academic inquiries into multiple process of
globalization in the early 1990s, academics have remained divided on the utility of various
methodological approaches, the value of available empirical evidence for gauging the extent,
impact, and direction of globalization, and, of course, its normative implications. The failure to
arrive at a broad scholarly consensus on the subject attests not only to the contentious nature of
academic inquiry in general, but also reflects the retreat from generalizing initiated in the 1980s
by the influential ‘poststructuralist turn’ away from ‘grand narratives’. As Fredric Jameson
(1998) astutely points out, there seems to be little utility in forcing such a complex set of social
forces as globalization into a single analytic framework. Also, Rosow (2000) has pointed out,
many researchers approach globalization as if they were dealing with a process or an object
without a meaning of its own prior to its constitution as a conceptual ‘territory’.

It is the purpose of this chapter to provide a general overview of the principal academic
approaches to the subject proposed by leading global studies scholars since the 1990s. These
range from the suggestion that globalization is little more than ‘globaloney’, to conflicting
interpretations of globalization as economic, political, or cultural processes. Although such
different approaches are necessary for gaining a better understanding of globalization, I will
ultimately argue that these social-scientific approaches to the subject ought to be complemented
by interpretive explorations of the ideational and normative dimensions of globalization.

PRE-ASSESSMENT

DISCUSSIO
N
 CONTEMPORARY WORLD (GE 3)
Globalization as ‘Globaloney’
A small and rapidly decreasing number of scholars contend that existing accounts of
globalization are incorrect, imprecise, or exaggerated. The arguments of these globalization
critics fall into three broad categories:
1. Representatives of the first group dispute the usefulness of globalization as a sufficiently
precise analytical concept.
2. Members of the second group point to the limited nature of globalizing processes,
emphasizing that the world is not nearly as integrated as many globalization proponents believe.
In their view, the term ‘globalization’ does not constitute an accurate label for the actual state of
affairs.
3. The third group of critics disputes the novelty of the process while acknowledging the
existence of moderate globalizing tendencies.

Rejectionists
Scholars who dismiss the utility of globalization as an analytical concept typically
advance their arguments from within a larger criticism of similarly vague words employed in
academic discourse.
Scholarly suggestions for improvement point in two different directions. The first is to
challenge the academic community to provide additional examples of how the term
‘globalization’ obscures more than it enlightens. Such empirically based accounts would serve as
a warning to extreme globalization proponents.
The second avenue for improvement involves my own suggestion to complement the
social scientific enterprise of exploring globalization as an objective process with more
interpretive studies of the ideological project of globalism
Sceptics
The second group emphasizes the limited nature of current globalizing processes.
Modifiers
The third and final group of globalization critics disputes the novelty of the process,
implying that the label ‘globalization’ has often been applied in a historically imprecise manner.

GLOBALIZATION AS ECONOMIC PROCESS

The widespread scholarly emphasis on the economic dimension of globalization derives
partly from its historical development as a subject of academic study. Some of the earliest
writings on the topic explore in much detail how the evolution of international markets and
corporations led to an intensified form of global interdependence. These studies point to the
growth of international institutions such as the European Union, the North American Free Trade
Association, and other regional trading blocs. Economic accounts of globalization convey the
notion that the essence of the phenomenon involves ‘the increasing linkage of national
economies through trade, financial flows, and foreign direct investment … by multinational
firms’ (Gilpin, 2000: 299). Thus, expanding economic activity is identified as both the primary
aspect of globalization and the engine behind its rapid development.

GLOBALIZATION AS POLITICAL
PROCESS
Perspectives on globalization can hardly be discussed apart from an analysis of
political processes and institutions. Most of the debate on political globalization involves
 CONTEMPORARY WORLD (GE 3)
the weighing of conflicting evidence with regard to the fate of the modern nation-state.
Most of the debate on political globalization involves the weighing of conflicting
evidence with regard to the fate of the modern nation-state. In particular, two questions
have moved to the top of the research agenda. First, what are the political causes for the
massive flows of capital, money, and technology across territorial boundaries? Second,
do these flows constitute a serious challenge to the power of the nation state? These
questions imply that economic globalization might be leading to the reduced control of
national governments over economic policy.

Held and McGrew might respond to these criticisms by arguing that one major strength
of their approach lies in viewing globalization not as a one-dimensional phenomenon, but as a
multidimensional process involving diverse domains of activity and interaction, including the
cultural sphere. Indeed, any analytical account of globalization would be woefully inadequate
without an examination of its cultural dimension. A number of prominent scholars have
emphasized the centrality of culture to contemporary debates on globalization. As sociologist
John Tomlinson (1999: 1) puts it, ‘Globalization lies at the heart of modern culture; cultural
practices lie at the heart of globalization.’ The thematic landscape traversed by scholars of
cultural globalization is vast, and the questions they raise are too numerous to be completely
fleshed out in this short survey. Rather than presenting a long laundry list of relevant topics, this
section focuses on two central questions raised by scholars of cultural globalization. First, does
globalization increase cultural homogeneity, or does it lead to greater diversity and
heterogeneity? Or, to put the matter into less academic terms, does globalization make people
more alike or more different? And second, how does the dominant culture of consumerism
impact the natural environment?

Most commentators preface their response to the first question with a general analysis of
the relationship between the globalization process and contemporary cultural change. Tomlinson
(1999: 28), for example, defines cultural globalization as a ‘densely growing network of complex
cultural interconnections and interdependencies that characterize modern social life’. He
emphasizes that global cultural flows are directed by powerful international media corporations
that utilize new communication technologies to shape societies and identities. As images and
ideas can be more easily and rapidly transmitted from one place to another, they profoundly
impact the way people experience their everyday lives. Culture no longer remains tied to fixed
localities such as town and nation, but acquires new meanings that reflect dominant themes
emerging in a global context. This interconnectivity caused by cultural globalization challenges
parochial values and identities, because it undermines the linkages that connect culture to fixity
of location.

A number of scholars argue that these processes have facilitated the rise of an
increasingly homogenized global culture underwritten by an Anglo-American value system.
Referring to the global diffusion of American values, consumer goods, and lifestyles as
‘Americanization’, these authors analyse the ways in which such forms of ‘cultural imperialism’
are overwhelming more vulnerable cultures. The American sociologist George Ritzer (1993), for
example, coined the term ‘McDonaldization’ to describe the wide-ranging process by which the
principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American
society, as well as the rest of the world. On the surface, these principles appear to be rational in
their attempts to offer efficient and predictable ways of serving people's needs. Only toward the
end of his study does Ritzer allow himself to address the normative ramifications of this process:
when rational systems serve to deny the expression of human creativity and cultural difference,
they contribute to the rise of irrationality in the world. In the long run, McDonaldization leads to
the eclipse of cultural diversity and the dehumanization of social relations.
 CONTEMPORARY WORLD (GE 3)

The American political theorist Benjamin R. Barber (1996: 17) also enters the normative
realm when he warns his readers against the cultural imperialism of what he calls ‘McWorld’ – a
soulless consumer capitalism that is rapidly transforming the world's diverse population into a
blandly uniform market. For Barber, McWorld is a product of a superficial American popular
culture assembled in the 1950s and 1960s and driven by expansionist commercial interests: ‘Its
template is American, its form style … [m]music, video, theater, books, and theme parks … are
all constructed as image exports creating a common taste around common logos, advertising
slogans, stars, songs, brand names, jingles, and trademarks.’ For a more sceptical assessment of
the supposed ‘Americanness’ of globalization, see Marling (2006).

Barber's account of cultural globalization contains the important recognition that the
colonizing tendencies of McWorld provoke cultural and political resistance in the form of ‘jihad’
– the parochial impulse to reject and repel Western homogenization forces wherever they can be
found. Fuelled by the furies of ethnonationalism and/or religious fundamentalism, jihad
represents the dark side of cultural particularism. Barber (1996: 19) sees jihad as the ‘rabid
response to colonialism and imperialism and their economic children, capitalism and modernity’.
Guided by opposing visions of homogeneity, jihad and McWorld are dialectically interlocked in
a bitter cultural struggle for popular allegiance. For a neo-Marxist perspective on the rise of a
global capitalist monoculture, see Schiller (1995: 17–33). As might be expected, Barber's
dialectical account received a lot of public attention after the events of 9/11. They also helped to
resurrect Samuel Huntington's 1993 thesis of a ‘clash of civilizations’ involving primarily the
West and Islam (Huntington, 1997: 26–7, 45–8).

It is one thing to acknowledge the powerful cultural logic of global capitalism, but it is
quite another to assert that the cultural diversity existing on our planet is destined to vanish. In
fact, several influential academics offer contrary assessments that link globalization to new
forms of cultural diversity. See Appadurai (1996) and Hannerz (1992, 1996). Berger and
Huntington offer a highly unusual version of this ‘pluralism thesis’. Emphasizing that cultural
globalization is ‘American in origin and content’, they nonetheless allow for ‘any variations and
sub globalizations’ on the dominant US cultural theme in various parts of the world (2002).
Roland Robertson (1995: 25–44) has famously argued that global cultural flows often
reinvigorate local cultural niches. Contending that cultural globalization always takes place in
local contexts; Robertson predicts a pluralization of the world as localities produce a variety of
unique cultural responses to global forces. The result is not increasing cultural homogenization,
but ‘glocalization’ – a complex interaction of the global and local characterized by cultural
borrowing. These interactions lead to a complex mixture of both homogenizing and
heterogenizing impulses.

Often referred to as ‘hybridization’ or ‘creolization’, the processes of cultural mixing are

reflected in music, film, fashion, language, and other forms of symbolic expression. Sociologist
Jan Nederveen Pieterse (2003: 117), for example, argues that exploring ‘hybridity’ amounts to
‘mapping no man's land'. For Nederveen Pieterse, the hybridity concept 'does not preclude
struggle but yields a multifocus view on struggle and by showing multiple identity on both sides,
transcends the “us versus them” dualism that prevails in cultural and political arenas'. Ulf
Hannerz (1992: 96), too, emphasizes the complexity of an emerging ‘global culture’ composed
of new zones of hybridization. See also Mendieta (2007).
 CONTEMPORARY WORLD (GE 3)
In addition to addressing the question of whether globalization leads to cultural
homogeneity or heterogeneity, scholars like Nederveen Pieterse, Hannerz, and Robertson seek to
expand the concept of globalization by portraying it as a multidimensional ‘field’. In their view,
globalization is both a material and a mental condition, constituted by complex, often
contradictory interactions of global, local, and individual aspects of social life. Cultural theorists
such as Ulrich Beck (2000: 102) and Arjun Appadurai (1996) have refined this argument by
contrasting common interpretations of globalization as a ‘process’ with the less mechanical
concept of ‘globality’, referring to ‘the experience of living and acting across borders.

Appadurai identifies five conceptual dimensions or ‘landscapes’ that are constituted by

global cultural flows: ethnoscapes (shifting populations made up of tourists, immigrants,
refugees, and exiles), technoscapes (development of technologies that facilitate the rise of
TNCs), finanscapes (flows of global capital), mediascapes (electronic capabilities to produce and
disseminate information), and ideoscapes (ideologies of states and social movements). Each of
these ‘scapes’ contains the building blocks of the new ‘imagined worlds’ that are assembled by
the historically situated imaginations of persons and groups spread around the globe (Appadurai,
1996: 33). Suspended in a global web of cultural multiplicity, more and more people become
aware of the density of human relations. Their enhanced ability to explore and absorb new
cultural symbols and meanings coexists in uneasy tension with their growing sense of
‘placelessness’. Focusing on the changing forms of human perception and consciousness brought
on by global cultural flows, Beck and Appadurai discuss subjective forms of cultural
globalization that are often neglected in more common analyses of ‘objective’ relations of
interdependence.

To some extent, then, scholars of cultural globalization have shown more willingness to
engage in sustained investigations of the normative dimension of globalization than their
colleagues in political science or economics. The same is true for those researchers who have
explored the connection between cultural globalization and the natural environment, especially in
light of the escalating problem of global climate change. After all, how people view their natural
environment depends to a great extent on their cultural milieu. For example, cultures steeped in
Taoist, Buddhist, and various animist religions often emphasize the interdependence of all living
beings – a perspective that calls for a delicate balance between human wants and ecological
needs. Nature is not considered a mere ‘resource’ to be used instrumentally to fulfil human
desires. The most extreme manifestations of this anthropocentric paradigm are reflected in the
dominant values and beliefs of consumerism. The US-dominated culture industry seeks to
convince its global audience that the meaning and chief value of life can be found in the limitless
accumulation of material possessions.

The two most ominous ecological problems connected to the global spread of consumer
culture are human-induced global climate change, such as global warming, and the worldwide
destruction of biodiversity. Indeed, the US Union of Concerned Scientists has presented data
suggesting that the global average temperature increased from about 53.3o F in 1880 to 57.9o F
in 2000. Further increases in global temperatures could lead to partial meltdowns of the polar ice
caps, causing global sea levels to rise by up to three feet by 2100 – a catastrophic development
that would threaten the many coastal regions of the world. The potential economic and political
ramifications of global climate change are dire, particularly for people living in developing
countries in the global south. With regard to the loss of biodiversity, many biologists today
believe that we are now in the midst of the fastest mass extinction of living species in the 4.5-
billion-year history of the planet. Environmental sociologist Franz Broswimmer (2002), for
example, fears that up to 50 per cent of all plant and animal species – most of them in the global
south – will disappear by the end of this century. For a comprehensive overview of facts and data
 CONTEMPORARY WORLD (GE 3)
related to global climate change, see Philander (2008). For a more readable account, see Gore
(2006).

An interesting crossover among economic, political and ecological dimensions of

globalization is the use of market-based policy instruments to manage environmental problems.
Initiatives such as carbon ‘taxes’, ‘trading’, and biodiversity ‘banks’ have emerged in policy
discussions at national and global levels about approaches to global warming, species extinction,
and overpopulation. Implicit in the use of these market-based policy tools, however, is still the
driving neoliberal ideological assumption that the market can self-regulate and solve all
problems, that capitalist-based consumerism is a sustainable way to live, even an appropriate
way to address ecological problems created by capitalist over-consumption in the first place.

GLOBALIZATION
Most of the definitions will view the globalization as an economic process. Globalization
actually refers to the integration of the national markets to a wider global market. The best
scholarly description of globalization is provided by Manfred Steger who describes the process
as “the expansion and intensification of social relations and consciousness across world-time and
across world-space.”

Expansion refers to both creation of new social networks and the multiplication of
existing connections that cut across traditional political, economic, cultural, and geographic
boundaries.

Example: In social media, establish new global connections between people, while international
groups of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are networks that connect a more specific
group – social workers and activists – from different corners of the globe.

Intensification, this means to expand, stretch and accelerate these networks. Global
connections are not only multiplying but also, they are expanding their reach. Intensification of
worldwide social relations linking distant localities in such a way that local happenings, events,
that occurs several thousand miles away and vice versa.

Example: There has always been a strong financial market connecting London and New York
with the use of electronic trading. However, the volume of that trade increases exponentially,
since traders can now trade more at higher speeds. Thus, connection is accelerating. Apart from
faster trade, the world becomes more financially integrated. The intensified trading network
between may expand and stretch to cover more and more cities. After China committed itself to
the global economy in the 1980s, Shanghai steadily returned to its old role as a major trading
post.

Steger also gives definition that relates in how the people perceive time and space.
According to him, “globalization processes do not occur merely at an objective, material level
but they also involve the subjective plane of human consciousness”. That is to say, because of
the use of modern technology people begin to feel that the world has become smaller place and
distance has collapsed from thousands of miles away to just one click away. People now can
send their pictures in another country and get a reply immediately, they begin to perceive that
their distance as less consequential. Another is, the internet has also exposed one to news across
the globe, now, and people have this greater sense of what is happening in other places.

Steger asserts 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 the global integration of economic markets is beneficial for everyone.
 CONTEMPORARY WORLD (GE 3)

APPLICATION

ACTIVITY #1

Instructions: Find and read two newspaper (local or international) discussing

globalization. Write 50-word summaries of each article, identifying what definitions of
globalization based on the article you gather.
GRADING RUBRIC

Appropriate article *Screenshot or evidence SCORE COMMENT

regarding of article you find in the
globalization (30 internet.
points)

Summary of article (20

points)

Personal reflection.
How this article
changed your view?

Instructions: In MS Word answer these following questions in essay form, minimum of 200 words per
questions and maximum of 250 words.

1. How have you experienced globalization? Justify.

2. Why it is crucial to emphasize that globalization is uneven?
3. What is the difference between globalization and globalism?

EVALUATION
CONTEMPORARY WORLD (GE 3)