Definitions of globalisation
- socialist
- the process of transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones
- it can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together
- this process is a combination of economic technological, sociocultural and political forces
- capitalist
- the elimination of state-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that has emerged as a result
Globalisation - stanford encyclopaedia of philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/globalization
- spreading of free market
"Covering a wide range of distinct political, economic, and cultural trends, the term “globalization” has quickly become one of the most fashionable buzzwords of contemporary political and academic debate. In popular discourse, globalization often functions as little more than a synonym for one or more of the following phenomena: the pursuit of classical liberal (or “free market”) policies in the world economy (“economic liberalization”), the growing dominance of western (or even American) forms of political, economic, and cultural life (“westernization” or “Americanization”), the proliferation of new information technologies (the “Internet Revolution”), as well as the notion that humanity stands at the threshold of realizing one single unified community in which major sources of social conflict have vanished"
- removal of barriers to trade
- not just a neutral market, kind of market that's dominated by the West
- start to introduce a kind of dominant Western, American culture which is starting to take over rest of the globe
- Americanisation of the world
- all inter connected in some way - communications - made us more globalised
- different political agendas to each definition of globalisation
McDonalds
- 'American sociologist George Ritzer coined the term McDonaldization to describe the wide ranging sociocultural processes 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' - Manfred B. Steger
- principle of hierarchy, parts of a machine
- accurately describes situation going on currently
Marshall Mcluhan
- 'today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned' (1964)
- rapidity of communication echoes the senses
- we can experience instantly the effects of our actions on a global scale
Global Village Thesis
- 'as electrically contracted, the globe is no more than a village. Electric speed at bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden implosion has heightened human awareness of responsibility to an intense degree' (1964)
- should make us more aware of our responsibilities to each other and the rest of the world
- right and wrong
- new technology has expanded our senses, has expanded our ability to see, know now that whether we are we can see major events, see through close focus of a jet flyer
BUT hasn't brought us together in a global village where we're all friends and all understand the effects of our actions
The internet
- 'electric technology...would seem to render individualism obsolete and corporate interdependence mandatory' 1962)
- we live mythically and integrally...in the electric age
Jihad v.s. McWorld
- centripetal forces bringing the world together in uniform global society
- centrifugal forces tearing the world apart in tribal wars
Problems of globalisation
- sovereignty - challenges to the idea of the nation-state
- accountability - transnational forces and organisations: who controls them?
- identity - who are we?
Manfred B. Steger, globalisation: a very short introduction, pg 70
- 'does globalisation make people around the world more alike or more different...?''
Cultural imperialism
- if the global village is run with a certain set of values then it would not be so much an integrated community as an assimilate one
- key thinkers:
Schiller
Chomsky
Rigging the 'free market'
- media conglomerates operate as oligopolies (a state of limited competition, in which a market is shared by a small number of producers or sellers)
- control direction shape and content of media we receive but also what the rest of the world receives as well
- companies split up world into hierarchies of importance
- concentrate efforts on interests and ideas of areas of the globe that will give them the most profit e.g. North America has all the money
- hype up and focus on American culture
1. North America
2. Western Europe, Japan and Australia
3. Developing economies and regional producers (India, China, Brazil, Eastern Europe)
4. The rest of the world
US media power can be thought of as a new form of imperialism
- local cultures destroyed in this process and new forms of cultural dependency shaped, mirroring old school colonialism
- Schiller - dominance of US driven commercial media forces US model of broadcasting onto the rest of the world but also inculcates US style consumerism in societies that can ill afford it
- e.g. way Big Brother has been spread out onto every country in the world
Chomsky and Herman (1998) 'Manufacturing Consent'
- five ways news act as propaganda:
- ownership
- funding
- sourcing
- flak
- anti communist ideology
Ownership
- Rupert Murdoch, selected media interests
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