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Globalization

Globalization. A contested phenomenon Political, economic, social, cultural, historical dimensions. Historical background. The Roman empire The Middle Ages Pre-WWI period. In search of a consensus. Idealist approach: identity, ideology, invention as some of the chief causes

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Globalization

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  1. Globalization A contested phenomenon Political, economic, social, cultural, historical dimensions

  2. Historical background • The Roman empire • The Middle Ages • Pre-WWI period

  3. In search of a consensus • Idealist approach: identity, ideology, invention as some of the chief causes • Resulting theories: social constructivism, postmodernism, postcolonialism

  4. Still searching • Materialist approach: production, technology, laws, institutions • Theories: liberalism, political realism, social ecology

  5. Further methodological approaches • Individualist vs structuralist understanding of globalization • Social actors (businesspeople,officials, politicians) decisive? • Social forces/social order (capitalism, state systems, nationalism) decisive?

  6. Knowledge • Objectivist position: (politically) neutral knowledge • Subjectivist position: knowledge emanating from the experience of the researcher • Scholte attempts to reach a compromise in all of the above cases

  7. Analytical Framework • These preliminary reflections provide a necessary set of starting premises leading to a series of attempts at defining globalization

  8. Definitions • Circulation of people, goods, capital, ideas • Accepting the vagueness of the concept?

  9. (Failed) attempts at defining globalization:Internationalization - mainly transactions between states - border-crossing activities: global same as international? Continuity?

  10. Liberalization • - removing constraints; abolishing regulatory movements; • Critics: increasing poverty, inequality, ecological damage; • - anti-globalization movement opposing neoliberalism

  11. Universalization • - spreading products, experiences, ideas, values round the world • Resulting in standardization, homogenization • - earlier instances? ”global prehistory”; world religions; transoceanic trade

  12. Westernization • Universalization on Western terms: interpreted as colonization, Americanization • Modernization • Counter-examples: Buddhist/Confucian/Islamist globalizations

  13. A fifth attempt • Globalization referring to a ”shift in the nature of social space” • Globalization as ”growing transplanetary connectivity”

  14. New features • Transplanetary connectivity leading to supraterritoriality (transnational instead of international dimension) • ”transworld simultaneity/instantaneity” (3000 cups of Nescafé supposedly being drunk round the planet every second) • Reconfiguration of space

  15. The changing nature of territorialism • Methodological territorialism: economics, politics, literature being perceived in terms of national-territorial frameworks • Non-territorialist premises • Post-territorialist premises

  16. Examples of globality • Fields • Activities • Inadvertent effects

  17. Opposites coexisting • Territorial social space not excluding supraterritorial social space • The local not excluding the global (and the other way round) • Social space: ”an interrelation of spheres within a whole”.

  18. Multiple globalizations • Competing (political) interests and values • Understanding globalization ”as a respatialization of social life”

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