How far has it been proved right the problem of globality is very likely to become a basis of major ideological

and analytical cleavages in social science? Evaluate the major theories explaining social processes at global level, bringing out the differential emphasis accorded in such theories to the material (economic), cultural and cognitive aspects.

Social and Public Policy 200020585

Essay for Advanced Sociological Theory Module SLSP 5105

Contents

Introduction: What is globalization? / 2 Economical aspects: A single cause of globalization? / 6 Cultural turn in the discourse of globalization / 13 Synthetic approaches / 18 Conclusion / 22 Bibliography / 24

Introduction: What is globalization?

Seoul, the capital of South Korea, is a big city with more than 10 million people either living or working everyday. Like other metropolitan cities you can find your ethnic cuisines no matter where you are from. Thanks to globalization people dont have to go to Thailand or to Mexico for exotic ethnic food. In fact since Chinese food became part of the Korean cuisine it doesnt seem Chinese at all. However, when the Asian financial crisis hit Korea and its people in 1997, literally pushing great number of people to the streets without jobs, people hardly thought that it was the impact of the economic process which shares the basis with the cultural process that had brought them the variety of world food. Indeed the multi-facets character of globalization makes it difficult for people to conceive what globalization really is, if you believe its existence.

The following definitions from different discipline of social science are clear proof of this character:

Term for the emergence of world-wide financial markets for bonds, money and currencies as well as credit, favored by new information and communications technology as well as financial innovations. (BrockhausEnzyklopdie cited in Busch 2000:21)

Globalization refers to a world in which, after allowing for exchange rate default risk, there is a single international rate of interest. (Brittan cited in

Busch 2000:22)

Globalization implies, first and foremost, a stretching of social, political and economic activities across frontier such that events, decisions and activities in one region of the world can come to have significance for individuals and communities in distant regions of the globe. (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt and Perraton, 1999: 15)

A social process in which the constraints of geography on economic, political, social and cultural arrangements recede, in which people become increasingly aware that they are receding and it which people act accordingly. (Waters, 1995: 3)

Others still put it as accelerating interdependence, action at a distance, compression of time and space and compression of the world and intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole (Ohmae, 1990 cited in Held et al 1999; Giddens, 1990, Harvey, 1989 cited at Holton, 1998:8; Robertson, 1992).

Globalization means many different things to many different people which renders an attempt to map out the debate on issues around its rather new (albeit not all agree on that) and seemingly mystified social process more difficult. The term, globalization, which came to business as well as academic field recently as 1960s, soon became one of most frequently used terms in todays life. Moreover the sheer amount and variety of literature covering globalization is simply stunning.

Regardless we want or not it is a clear example of the fact that globality is and unavoidable condition of human intercourse at the close of the twentieth century (Beck, 2000:15). Since globalization is an inescapable part of human condition for both who celebrate it and reject it (Robertson 1990 cited in Holton 1998:16).

All globalization literature attempt to answer one or more of the following questions: What is globalization?; When did it begin?; Is it good or bad?; If it is good, how can we promote it?; If it is bad how can we stop it?; What is the impact or implication of globalization?; Are there any counter tendencies?; Is there such thing as global culture?; Is globalization inevitable?

Many scholars, authors, intellectuals and leading thinkers try to answer those questions. However, the range of spectrum they find themselves is far wide and many times they argue conflicting ideas.

The aim of this essay is to explain the main theories or arguments of globalization and to map them with inter-relational perspective. Due to the complexity and quantity of globalization literature any effort to understand the ongoing globalization debate needs some kind of grouping or categorization. To bringing out emphasis accorded in the theories of globalization to material (economic), cultural and cognitive aspects they will be discussed three different groups in this essay:

(1) theories or arguments which view the material aspect as a single prominent factor of globalization;

(2) theories or arguments which criticize the above mentioned argument and emphasize more on the cultural aspect and its role in globalization; (3) and theories or arguments which attempt more synthesized approaches to globalization and the existence (or non-existence, or degree) of a homogeneous global society or mutual identity of the human being which both transcend national level.

Economical aspects: A single cause of globalization?

Thriving of transnational corporations is a flagship evidence of economic globalization. Recent estimates show that there are about 65,000 transnational corporations today, with about 850,000 foreign affiliates across the globe (UNCTAD, 2002). Foreign direct investment, one of the key indicators of global economy has increased from $ 0.5 trillion in 1980 to $ 6.6. trillion in 2001 occupying approximately 4.8% of the world GDP.

Since Bretton Woods three big intergovernmental organizations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization have been leading the world economy, encouraging and promoting free trade and open markets (Taybe, 2000:78). Thanks to these international organizations, the amount of transnational trade occupies 81% of world GDP in 1998 (World Bank, 2000 cited in Anheier et al. 2001).

The economic factor of social process has been one of the key elements for explaining the world as a system since the Marxian capitalism theory. For many people the economic factor still remains important and especially since it is sometimes regarded as a driving force of globalization. People both in the business sector and the field of social science research came to acknowledge the growing economic interdependency between countries.

This view of globalization has been popular in business world. People who follow this view argue that the emergence and growth of a single global market render nation-state

borders meaningless (Held et al. 1999:3). In this view the global flow of capital and labour and the integration of markets will accelerate the processes of globalization.

Within this group of people there is a divergence of ideas. One of them is the worldsystem theory.

As to these global economic interdependencies many researches utilized the worldsystem model elaborated by Immanuel Wallerstein (Kilminster, 1998:94). In this worldsystem theory world economies are divided into: core states, peripheral areas and semiperipheral areas (Wallerstein, 1979). The world-system theory starkly resembles neoMarxist theory. To put it simply the world-system theory is the global version of the Marixian theory.

There are the upper-class, rich, exploiting nations of the core and the lower-class, poor, exploited nations of the periphery, with a middle-class stratum in between, the semi-peripheral nations (Ragin & Chirot, 1985:298 cited in Kilminster, 1998:95)

According to Wallerstein (1979) in a given world economy, which is capitalism at the moment) the division of labor between these nations will be reinforced by profit-seeking logic and this in turn will increase the gaps among them (ibid.).

Similarly, the dependency theory views underdevelopment as the result of unequal relationships between rich, developed capitalist countries and poor, developing ones. In

the past colonialism embodied the inequality between the colonial powers and their colonies. As the colonies became independent the inequalities did not disappear. Powerful developed countries such as the US, Europe and Japan dominate dependent, powerless, and less developed countries via the capitalist system that continues to perpetuate power and resources inequalities (Biz/ed1, 2002).

As the world-system resembles the Marxian theory, so does its criticism. Even though Wallersteins effort for being the first to theorize the social process in a global level has been recognized (Foster-Carter, 1996:100), its criticism seems to outweigh its credit. The economic determinism is the most commonly cited evaluation by the critics of the worldsystem theory. The whole system is driven by economic forces, with other aspects (especially culture) seen as mere by-products (Foster-Carter, 1996:100). Robertson who has explained globalization with the emphasis of cultural aspects, compares his work to Webers: I have set out to provide, as Weber did in his Protestant Ethic thesis, an equally plausible cultural account of globalization, in the face of the materialism of world-system theory (Robertson, 1992:320 cited in Killminster, 1998:96).

Another arguments related to economic globalization is the liberalism. People who hold the liberal view argue that globalization assures efficiency and increases welfare throughout the world, and most of all that it is an unavoidable phenomenon (Busch, 2000:30). Mainly adopted by economists, this position seems to gain a momentum especially after the fall of socialist countries. The imperative, in this view, was to

Biz/ed (www.bized.ac.uk) is a service for students, teachers and lecturers of business, economics, accounting, leisure and recreation and travel and tourism.

liberalise national economies to the greatest possible level, minimise state interference in industry and encourage the maximum competitiveness, and flexibility, in financial services. Such a policy framework promised its own guarantees of success, while alternative approaches to economic and industrial policy were condemned as inappropriate, misconceived and doomed to failure (Jones, 1995:80 cited in Busch, 2000:31)

Regarding the debate of nation-state, the liberal view argues that the global economic integration undermines the national control of the economy, constrains the actions of national governments, and weakens the state (Fulcher, 2000:523). In a wide spectrum of nation-state debates, ranging from the stronger nation-state through the demise of the nation-state (Lash and Urry, 1994:325 cited in Fulcher, 2000:523) or the withering away nation-state (Bauman, 1998:57, cited in Fulcher, 2000:523) to the loss of national sovereignty, the liberal view appears to be located at the latter end.

In one way the world-system theory, and recently, radical critics of neoliberalism on the one hand and liberal view on the other, they seem completely opposite because the latter celebrates globalization while the former emphasize exploitative aspects of globalization. However, despite divergent ideological convictions, there exists a shared set of beliefs that globalization is primarily an economic phenomenon; that an increasingly integrated global economy exists today; that the needs of global capital impose a neoliberal economic discipline on all governments such that politics is no longer the art of the possible but rather the practice of sound economic management (Held et al. 1999:4).

These theories of with strong emphasis of a economic globalization have been criticized for several reasons. Among the criticism of those views Hay and Marsh (2000:8-9) argue that evidences for the global economic intergration in the business globalization literature are only unscrupulous and/or selective. Some factors pointed out by Hay and Marsh are:

the rather exaggerated claims made about the hyper-mobility of, particularly, foreign direct investments and productive capital; the fact that international flows of capital (such as foreign direct investment, FDI) tend to be extremely concentrated within the core triad (of Europe, North America and Pacific Asia) providing evidence of regionalization, triadization or internationalization but hardly of globalization; that far from inhabiting a world defined purely by global economic relations, productive capitals continue to act primarily within the more familiar confines of national economic spaces, suggesting in turn that national economic regulation is very far from obsolete.

Another economically related issue of globalization is its implication on the welfare state. Governments welfare policy is seen as a negative interference with the market system. Rodrik (1997:4-6) identifies three sources of tension between the market, governments and social groups:

Reduced barriers to trade and investment increase the unbalance between groups

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that can move more freely across national borders and those who cannot; Globalization engenders conflicts within and between nations over domestic norms and the social institutions that embody them; Globalization has made it exceedingly difficult for governments to provide social insurance one of their central functions and one that has helped maintain social cohesion and domestic political support for ongoing liberalization.

Hyperglobalists or extreme globalizers, who emphasize especially the high degree of global economic integration view globalization as the unprecedented, recent transformation, a wholly new phenomenon. Albrow defines globalization as the transition between the Modern and Global Ages during 1945-89 (cited in Fulcher, 2000:525). Others argue that globalization has a much longer history. Robertson (1992:58) considers its beginning back in the early fifteenth century despite his recognition of the present circumstance of a very high degree of global density and complexity.

Hirst and Thompson (1999:2) indicate that the certain period in the past showed more intensity of globalization in terms of economy than now.

The present highly internationalized economy is not unprecedented: it is one of a number of distinct conjunctures or state of the international economy that have existed since an economy based on modern industrial technology began to be generalized from the 1860s. In some respects, the current international economy is less open and integrated than the regime that prevailed from 1870 to 1914.

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Evidence for this view doesnt seem to be confined to the economical aspect. The recent development of the communication technology including internet, satellites, and mobile phones is quite impressive though, the development of such technology in the past including steam travel, the telephone and the submarine cable in the nineteenth century, and the compass in the fifteenth century, which had made the global voyage possible, is not less significant than the recent development (Spybey cited in Fulcher 2000:525).

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Cultural turn in the discourse of globalization

One of the reactions against economic determinism leads the debate to the cultural turn. Other factors than material one have come to the stage of globalization debate and played a significant role. Culturally embedded global cogitation could go back to McLuhans significant formulation of the global village (McLuhan 1964). According to Waters (1995:12) McLuhan was possibly the first to notice that the industrial media, transportation and money are being displaced by electronic media that can restore the the collective culture of tribalism but on an expansive global scale.

Roland Robertsons role of inserting the cultural aspect into the globalization talk is regarded significant in a sense that he emphasizes the meaningful and interpretative aspects of social life, including the world images in which globalization is represented (Holton, 1998:15).

In relation to culture the focal problem of current global processes seems to be the tension between cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization (Appadurai, 1990). In the homogenization argument, instantaneous images brought by communication technology such as TV and global media, and spread of symbolic representations throughout the world are seen as major forces of homogenization. These images and experiences shared by global population could formulate a collective identity. However, people who hold the position of capitalist world system or neoliberalism may argue that economic globalization causes its version of the cultural globalization, regarding the

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cultural globalization as a by-product of the economic globalization.

Homogenization of culture often means cultural dominance of a specific culture. One of several popular arguments relating to cultural dominance is that globalization is in fact Westernization. Westernization suggests that global processes function to impose Western cultural imperialism on the non-Western world. Such Western traits are taken to include capitalism and the profit-centred market economy, democratic politics, secular thought embodied in scientific reason, individualism, and human rights (Holton, 1998:163). The critics contend that the dominance of Western culture significantly destroys the diversity of local culture. The reaction to the cultural dominance often render local people look for the alternative values and sometimes it could lead to religious fundamentalism. Additionally in the discourse of the Westernization of non-Western world, the diversity of non-Western world is reduced to just not being Western and the differences between countries are often overlooked.

A more specific version of Westernization might be Americanization of global culture. This argument is partly built on empirical evidence of US dominance in the cultural industry in both Western and non-Western countries such as film, news broadcasting, television programme, etc. However, Americanization is not limited to the cultural industry. It includes life style, structure of economy and way of thinking (Holton, 1998:167). McDonaldization, captured by George Ritzer explains the penetration of Americanization into many cultures in the world (Ritzer 1993 cited in Holton 1998:167).

The criticism of Americanization could be:

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It is capitalism rather than Americanization that is becoming globalized although many aspects of capitalism may be seen as having American origin; The global field is multicentred rather than dominated by a single centre (Appadurai, 1990); The global culture is not Americanized or homogenized in general but heterogenized, decentralized, localized, and retribalized.

It might be worth to mention more about the last point made above. The heterogenization or the cultural divergence of the world has shown its strength since the end of Cold War. Issues like ethnicity, nationalism, religion or specific local cultures are far from withering away as some homogenizer would expect, instead they are continuously growing. There are salient examples: migrant ethnic groups, keeping their own language and cultural practice instead of assimilating into the local culture; the separatists movements in many different places in the world; the rise of fundamentalism; any form of effort to protect their own identity against the homogenized global culture.

Recognizing the importance of the counter-trend towards fundamentalism in beliefs and lifestyle, Kilminster (1998:110) cites that this counter-current has arisen in opposition to the intermingling of Western and traditional attitudes and behavior. It is likely to be prominent in nations that find themselves, through no fault of their own, structurally at the lower end of the international stratification ladder which is dominated by the Western and Western-oriented nations.

Regarding these seemingly conflicting phenomena, Roland Robertson introduced the

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practical term, glocalize which coined by Japanese and used mainly in business area (Robertson 1992:173). An attempt to understand two contradictory streams was made by Roland Robertson. He argues that we are, in the late twentieth century, witness to and participate in a massive, twofold process involving the interpenetration of the universalization of particularism and the particularization of universalism (Robertson, 1992:100).

While this may highlight the complexity of globalization, Hay and Marsh (2000:6) suggest to view globalization not so much as a process or end-state, but as a tendency to which there are counter-tendencies. In this way the studies on globalization would be to reveal the dynamic and contingent articulation of processes in certain spatial contexts at certain moments in time to yield effects which might be understood as evidence of globalization (Hay and Marsh, 2000:6).

According to them this insertion of subject (certain space and certain time) would help to account the phenomenon often recognized as globalization, instead of searching general causation of globalization. In this sense it would be possible to avoid the causal process which the logic of necessity and inevitability so widely associated with the notion of globalization (Hay and Marsh, 2000:6-7).

In the same line Holm and Sorensen indicate the importance of how simultaneously to draw attention on the development of the world as a single society, while doing justice to evidence of differentiation in the conditions of existence and forms of identity that the worlds inhabitants express (cited in Holton, 1998:14-5).

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Acknowledging the controversial nature of globalization with centripetal and centrifugal forces, which bring about convergence and divergence of culture at the same time, searching for the global culture, which transcends homogenization of culture, is one of the current topic of globalization debates. Human rights could be regarded as the global culture. However, it is controversial because on the one hand some could argue against the universality of human right in the favour of the relativistic notion of human rights or the specific character of a certain culture such as Muslim or Chinese but on the other hand there are human rights activists in these countries (or cultures), trying hard to raise issues on human rights and to draw attention of world citizen. There is even fuzzier concept of cosmopolitan culture, which is moving into the globalization debates.

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Synthetic approaches

So far I have discussed the various arguments of globalization with emphasize the economical and cultural aspects respectably. Now I will look at the attempts of several commentators who take multi-dimensional approaches or rather holistic approaches to globalization.

It can be argued that the explanation of the global process via culture is too much of cultural determinism just as the neo-Marxian or the neoliberal view of globalization is to economic determinism. Moreover there is a risk of separating the inseparable (FosterCarter 1996:101).

Once one enters the field attempting to correct, via culture, for the material emphasis of world-system theory, then one has automatically reproduced the culture/structure dualism and its correlates (Kilminster 1998:107).

Recognizing this problem there has been effort to link between economic and cultural aspects. Ngai-Ling Sum posits the need for a new cultural political economy sensitive to the complex and dialectical interplay between discursive-cultural dynamics on the one hand and economic-institutional factors on the other (Hay and Marsh, 2000:12). This rather interdisciplinary or even post-disciplinary analysis of globalization is well presented by Nigel Thrifts term, cultural circuit of capitalism (ibid.)

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On the other hand Giddens, criticizing Wallersteins much too mechanical model of globalization, suggests other dimensions such as the political dimension, are equally important, since the world capitalist economy and the nations-state system are connected in various ways, neither can be explained exhaustively in terms of the other (Giddens, 1990). Four dimensions contended by Giddens are:

World capitalist economy; Nation-state system; World military order; International division of labour.

However, Robertson argues that Giddenss view of globalization as a consequence of modernity is inappropriate to account comparative interaction in globalization, especially in relation to the global-human condition. For Robertson globalization involves the interplay of four major aspects of global field: national societies; individuals or selves; the world system of societies (or relationships between national societies); humankind (Robertson, 1992:25-6).

In another attempt to approach globalization in a multi-dimensional way Appadurai identifies five dimensions of global flows (Appadurai, 1990):

Ethnoscapes: the landscape of persons who constitute the shifting world in which we live. They include tourists, immigrants, refugees, exiles, guestworkers and other moving groups and persons;

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Technoscapes: the flows of technology and communication which moves across boundaries; Finanscapes: the landscape of global capital movement such as currency markets, national stock exchanges, and commodity speculations; Mediascapes: the distribution of electronic capabilities to produce and disseminate information and images created by these media; Ideoscapes: the political and ideological complexity of images by states and its opposite movements.

In an effort of integrating those approaches Malcolm Waters suggests three regions of social life through which globalization is traced (Waters, 1995:17):

The economy: social arrangements for the production, exchange, distribution and consumption of land, capital, goods and labour services; The polity: social arrangements for the concentration and application of power that can establish control over populations, territories and other assets; Culture: social arrangements for the production, exchange and expression of symbols that represent facts, affects, meanings, beliefs, commitments, preferences, tastes and values.

Along with the multi-dimensional approaches there is another group of people who look more closely at the effect of globalization on identity building. Some argues that the awareness of economical and environmental danger in global level will form the peoples identity of we as potential victims (Beck 2000:12). Also Robertson (1992:8) in his

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definition of globalization highlights the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole.

According to Kilminster (1998:96) Elias made more synthetic approach, which is known as figuration. This approach attempts to starts from the structured process of interwoven interdependent people in the plural (ibid.) and at the same time to overcome the abstract analytical social spheres, regions, or dimension. Figuration approach involves the recognition that the social processes increasingly take place above the level of nationstate, and the macro sociological concepts such as social system, social structure and total society were non the less effectively synonyms for nation (Elias, 1968 citied in Kilminster, 1998:103).

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Conclusion

Having discussed various globalization talks some emerging tendencies become obvious. Among these tendencies I may arguably identify the followings:

The tendency that single cause thesis of globalization is avoided; The tendency that more efforts is made for searching multi-dimensional approaches or synthetic approaches to globalization; The tendency to comprehend the contradictory (convergence and divergence) directions of social process; The tendency to emphasize the particularity of global social process with consideration of time and space subjectivity rather than universal globalization.

Robertson (1992:55) argues that the problem of globality is very likely to become a basis of major ideological and analytical cleavages of the twenty-first century. Ten years after his argument it seems to me that his anticipation became true. The use of the term global and the image of globe have become a part of daily life for many people. In almost all kinds of social science disciplinary the sheer amount and scope of discussions has considerably increased, while their implications spreading all different, and sometimes conflicting, directions. As Rosamond notes these notions of globalization are obviously not value free:

Conceptions of globalization carry with them not just understandings of

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what the world is like, but also what can be done. Globalization has clearly become a site of political contestation. ... the hegemonic liberal narrative of globalization is being increasingly challenged by a cosmopolitan progressive leftism and a recidivist autarchic conservatism (Rosamond, 2000).

Discourses of globality have long been utilized by policy makers, business people, antiglobalists, economists and social activists to their tastes. The phenomena identified as globalization processes in many parts of the world are not likely to stop in any near future and so is not the discourse of globalization.

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