By Prof Dr Sohail Ansari `Umar (ra) said, “Do not learn knowledge for three things and do not leave it for three things. Do not learn it to dispute over it, to show off with it, or to boast about it. Do not leave seeking it out of shyness, dislike for it, or contending with ignorance in its stead.”

Wisdom is needed to have consensus

· Everyone knows that consensus is obtainable by narrowly or broadly defining issues but quite a few people have the wisdom to make a right choice.

International Communication Theories

Posted on January 23, 2013 by Morgan Elizabeth Warner

In this week’s article discussing the shifting paradigms and theories of international communication, the authors begin by recalling the history and development of communication over time ever since its peak during the two world wars when there was a period of global connectedness. As discussed in last week’s readings and reinforced by Madikiza and Bornman’s article, the European powers embraced the newly developing communication technology in order to obtain more colonies and rule their empires, but also to “…foster Westernization and Europeanization around the world.” The differing views of the Western and European nations and the, “…bipolar division between capitalism and socialism” is clear in the controversial takes on free flow of information and the differing views of globalization. Free flow of information discusses the availability of unbiased information to the public and was supported by the West who believed in the concept of a “free marketplace of ideas” in which they could advocate for democracy. However, free flow of information was also feared by some countries who struggled to approve or censor information as easily as before, resulting in their authority and legitimacy being undermined. In terms of the theories discussed, globalization appeared to be one of the most controversial as it is a process of identification, assigning consequences and then addressing responses, however each of these steps of the theory have multiple definitions according to theorists. Overall though globalization is exciting as social, political, economic and many other changes take place worldwide that according to Rantanen can, “…change people’s lives and human society by introducing new forms of interaction and experience.”

After reviewing all the theories, I found it very interesting that something so many of them (such as modernization, dependency, world system and a few others) had in common was that they emphasized viewing the Western world as a model or identifying it as a core nation. Since this article was focused on international communication, I thought that more credit would be distributed among all the countries and their ideals and that there would be more encouragement to learn from different nations and their way of life. However, it seems as if the Western world is being put up on a pedestal as the first world or “core-zone nation state” and is receiving national attention for all aspects. To go from viewing the Western world in all its glory as mentioned in these theories, to thinking back to the class discuss we had today regarding the possible future decline of the Western world, it’s scary to image such a downfall.

Globalization refers to "the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole" (R. Robertson,Globalization, 1992: 8). ... Global interdependence and consciousness of the world as a whole precede the advent of capitalist modernity.

Globalization: theory and experience

Globalization: theory and experience.’Globalization’ is a favourite catchphrase of journalists and politicians. It has also become a key idea for business theory and practice, and entered academic debates. But what people mean by ‘globalization’ is often confused and confusing. Here we examine some key themes in the theory and experience of globalization.

Contents: introduction · globalization: delocalization and supraterritoriality · risk, technological innovation and globalization · globalization and the rise of the multinationals and branding · capitalism, markets, instability and division · conclusion · further reading and references · links · how to cite this article

‘Globalization’ is commonly used as a shorthand way of describing the spread and connectedness of production, communication and technologies across the world. That spread has involved the interlacing of economic and cultural activity. Rather confusingly, ‘globalization’ is also used by some to refer to the efforts of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and others to create a global free market for goods and services. This political project, while being significant – and potentially damaging for a lot of poorer nations – is really a means to exploit the larger process. Globalization in the sense of connectivity in economic and cultural life across the world, has been growing for centuries. However, many believe the current situation is of a fundamentally different order to what has gone before. The speed of communication and exchange, the complexity and size of the networks involved, and the sheer volume of trade, interaction and risk give what we now label as ‘globalization’ a peculiar force.

With increased economic interconnection has come deep-seated political changes – poorer, ‘peripheral’, countries have become even more dependent on activities in ‘central’ economies such as the USA where capital and technical expertise tend to be located. There has also been a shift in power away from the nation state and toward, some argue, multinational corporations. We have also witnessed the rise and globalization of the ‘brand’. It isn’t just that large corporations operate across many different countries – they have also developed and marketed products that could be just as well sold in Peking as in Washington. Brands like Coca Cola, Nike, Sony, and a host of others have become part of the fabric of vast numbers of people’s lives.

Globalization involves the diffusion of ideas, practices and technologies. It is something more than internationalization and universalization. It isn’t simply modernization or westernization. It is certainly isn’t just the liberalization of markets. Anthony Giddens (1990: 64) has described globalization as ‘the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa’. This involves a change in the way we understand geography and experience localness. As well as offering opportunity it brings with considerable risks linked, for example, to technological change. More recently, Michael Mann has commented:

… what is generally called globalization involved the extension of distinct relations of ideological, economic, military, and political power across the world. Concretely, in the period after 1945 this means the diffusion of ideologies like liberalism and socialism, the spread of the capitalist mode of production, the extension of military striking ranges, and the extension of nation-states across the world, at first with two empires and then with just one surviving. (Mann 2013: 11)

Globalization, thus, has powerful economic, political, cultural and social dimensions. Here we want to focus on four themes that appear with some regularity in the literature:

· de-localization and supraterritoriality;

· the speed and power of technological innovation and the associated growth of risk;

· the rise of multinational corporations; and

· the extent to which the moves towards the creation of (global) free markets to leads to instability and division.

Globalization: delocalization and supraterritoriality

Manuel Castells (1996) has argued persuasively that in the last twenty years or so of the twentieth century, a new economy emerged around the world. He characterizes it as a new brand of capitalism that has three fundamental features:

Productivity and competitiveness are, by and large, a function of knowledge generation and information processing; firms and territories are organized in networks of production, management and distribution; the core economic activities are global – that is, they have the capacity to work as a unit in real time, or chosen time, on a planetary scale. (Castells 2001: 52)

This last idea runs through a lot of the discussion of globalization.

Globalization and de-localization. Many of the activities that previously involved face-to-face interaction, or that were local, are now conducted across great distances. There has been a significant de-localization in social and economic exchanges. Activities and relationships have been uprooted from local origins and cultures (Gray 1999: 57). One important element in this has been the separation of work from the home (and the classic move to the suburbs – see Putnam’s discussion of the impact on this on local social relations). But de-localization goes well beyond this. Increasingly people have to deal with distant systems in order that they may live their lives. Banking and retailing, for example, have adopted new technologies that involve people in less face-to-face interaction. Your contact at the bank is in a call centre many miles away; when you buy goods on the internet the only person you might speak to is the delivery driver. In this last example we move beyond simple notions of distance and territory into a new realm (and this is what Scholte is especially concerned with when he talks of globalization). When we buy books from an internet supplier like Amazon our communications pass through a large number of computers and routers and may well travel thousands of miles; the computers taking our orders can be on a different continent; and the books can be located anywhere in the world. The ‘spaces’ we inhabit when using the internet to buy things or to communicate (via things like chatrooms and bulletin boards) can allow us to develop a rather different sense of place and of the community to which we belong.

Not everything is global, of course. Most employment, for example, is local or regional – but ‘strategically crucial activities and economic factors are networked around a globalized system of inputs and outputs’ (Castells 2001: 52). What happens in local neighbourhoods is increasingly influenced by the activities of people and systems operating many miles away. For example, movements in the world commodity and money markets can have a very significant impact upon people’s lives across the globe. People and systems are increasingly interdependent.

[T]he starting point for understanding the world today is not the size of its GDP or the destructive power of its weapons systems, but the fact that it is so much more joined together than before. It may look like it is made up of separate and sovereign individuals, firms, nations or cities, but the deeper reality is one of multiple connections. (Mulgan 1998: 3)

Businesses are classic example of this. As Castells (2001) noted they are organized around networks of production, management and distribution. Those that are successful have to be able to respond quickly to change – both in the market and in production. Sophisticated information systems are essential in such globalization.

Globalization and the decline in power of national governments. It isn’t just individuals and neighbourhood institutions that have felt the impact of de-localization. A major causality of this process has been a decline in the power of national governments to direct and influence their economies (especially with regard to macroeconomic management). Shifts in economic activity in say, Japan or the United States, are felt in countries all over the globe. The internationalization of financial markets, of technology and of some manufacturing and services bring with them a new set of limitations upon the freedom of action of nation states. In addition, the emergence of institutions such as the World Bank, the European Union and the European Central Bank, involve new constraints and imperatives. Yet while the influence of nation states may have shrunk as part of the process of globalization it has not disappeared. Indeed, they remain, in Hirst and Thompson’s (1996: 170) words, ‘pivotal’ institutions, ‘especially in terms of creating the conditions for effective international governance’. However, we need to examine the way in which national governments frame their thinking about policy. There is a strong argument that the impact of globalization is most felt through the extent to which politics everywhere are now essentially market-driven. ‘It is not just that governments can no longer “manage” their national economies’, Colin Leys (2001: 1) comments, ‘to survive in office they must increasingly “manage” national politics in such a ways as to adapt them to the pressures of trans-national market forces’.

The initiation, or acceleration, of the commodification of public services was… a logical result of government’s increasingly deferential attitude towards market forces in the era of the globalized economy… A good deal of what was needed [for the conversion of non-market spheres into profitable fields for investment] was accomplished by market forces themselves, with only periodic interventions by the state, which then appeared as rational responses to previous changes. (Leys 2001: 214)

In other words, the impact of globalization is less about the direct way in which specific policy choices are made, as the shaping and reshaping of social relations within all countries.

Risk, technological innovation and globalization

As we have already noted, a particular feature of ‘globalization’ is the momentum and power of the change involved. ‘It is the interaction of extraordinary technological innovation combined with world-wide reach that gives today’s change its particular complexion’ (Hutton and Giddens 2001: vii). Developments in the life sciences, and in digital technology and the like, have opened up vast, new possibilities for production and exchange. Innovations like the internet have made it possible to access information and resources across the world – and to coordinate activities in real time.

Globalization and the knowledge economy. Earlier we saw Castells making the point that productivity and competitiveness are, by and large, a function of knowledge generation and information processing. This has involved a major shift – and entails a different way of thinking about economies.

For countries in the vanguard of the world economy, the balance between knowledge and resources has shifted so far towards the former that knowledge has become perhaps the most important factor determining the standard of living – more than land, than tools, than labour. Today’s most technologically advanced economies are truly knowledge-based. (World Bank 1998)

The rise of the so-called ‘knowledge economy’ has meant that economists have been challenged to look beyond labour and capital as the central factors of production. Paul Romer and others have argued that technology (and the knowledge on which it is based) has to be viewed as a third factor in leading economies. (Romer, 1986; 1990). Global finance, thus, becomes just one force driving economies. Knowledge capitalism: ‘the drive to generate new ideas and turn them into commercial products and services which consumers want’ is now just as pervasive and powerful (Leadbeater 2000: 8). Inevitably this leads onto questions around the generation and exploitation of knowledge. There is already a gaping divide between rich and poor nations – and this appears to be accelerating under ‘knowledge capitalism’. There is also a growing gap within societies (see, for example, Stiglitz 2013). Commentators like Charles Leadbeater have argued for the need to ‘innovate and include’ and for a recognition that successful knowledge economies have to take a democratic approach to the spread of knowledge: ‘We must breed an open, inquisitive, challenging and ambitious society’ (Leadbeater 2000: 235, 237). However, there are powerful counter-forces to this ideal. In recent years we have witnessed a significant growth in attempts by large corporations to claim intellectual rights over new discoveries, for example in relation to genetic research, and to reap large profits from licensing use of this ‘knowledge’ to others. There are also significant doubts as to whether ‘modern economies’ are, indeed, ‘knowledge economies’. It doesn’t follow, for example, that only those nations committed to lifelong learning and to creating a learning society will thrive (see Wolf 2002: 13-55).

Globalization and risk. As well as opening up considerable possibility, the employment of new technologies, when combined with the desire for profit and this ‘world-wide’ reach, brings with it particular risks. Indeed, writers like Ulrich Beck (1992: 13) have argued that the gain in power from the ‘techno-economic progress’ is quickly being overshadowed by the production of risks. (Risks in this sense can be viewed as the probability of harm arising from technological and economic change). Hazards linked to industrial production, for example, can quickly spread beyond the immediate context in which they are generated. In other words, risks become globalized.

[Modernization risks] possess an inherent tendency towards globalization. A universalization of hazards accompanies industrial production, independent of the place where they are produced: food chains connect practically everyone on earth to everyone else. They dip under borders. (Beck 1992: 39)

As Beck (1992: 37) has argued there is a boomerang effect in globalization of this kind. Risks can catch up with those who profit or produce from them.

The basic insight lying behind all this is as simple as possible: everything which threatens life on this Earth also threatens the property and commercial interests of those who live from the commodification of life and its requisites. In this way a genuine and systematically intensifying contradiction arises between the profit and property interests that advance the industrialization process and its frequently threatening consequences, which endanger and expropriate possessions and profits (not to mention the possession and profit of life) (Beck 1992: 39).

Here we have one of the central paradoxes of what Beck has termed ‘the risk society’. As knowledge has grown, so has risk. Indeed, it could be argued that the social relationships, institutions and dynamics within which knowledge is produced have accentuated the risks involved. Risk has been globalized.

Globalization and the rise of multinational corporations and branding

A further, crucial aspect of globalization is the nature and power of multinational corporations. Such companies now account for over 33 per cent of world output, and 66 per cent of world trade (Gray 1999: 62). Significantly, something like a quarter of world trade occurs within multinational corporations (op. cit). This last point is well illustrated by the operations of car manufacturers who typically source their components from plants situated in different countries. However, it is important not to run away with the idea that the sort of globalization we have been discussing involves multinationals turning, on any large scale, to transnationals:

International businesses are still largely confined to their home territory in terms of their overall business activity; they remain heavily ‘nationally embedded’ and continue to be multinational, rather than transnational, corporations. (Hirst and Thompson 1996: 98).

While full globalization in this organizational sense may not have occurred on a large scale, these large multinational corporations still have considerable economic and cultural power.

Globalization and the impact of multinationals on local communities. Multinationals can impact upon communities in very diverse places. First, they look to establish or contract operations (production, service and sales) in countries and regions where they can exploit cheaper labour and resources. While this can mean additional wealth flowing into those communities, this form of ‘globalization’ entails significant inequalities. It can also mean large scale unemployment in those communities where those industries were previously located. The wages paid in the new settings can be minimal, and worker’s rights and conditions poor. For example, a 1998 survey of special economic zones in China showed that manufacturers for companies like Ralph Lauren, Adidas and Nike were paying as little as 13 cents per hour (a ‘living wage’ in that area is around 87 cents per hour). In the United States workers doing similar jobs might expect US$10 per hour (Klein 2001: 212).

Second, multinationals constantly seek out new or under-exploited markets. They look to increase sales – often by trying to create new needs among different target groups. One example here has been the activities of tobacco companies in southern countries. Another has been the development of the markets predominantly populated by children and young people. In fact the child and youth market has grown into one the most profitable and influential sectors. ‘The young are not only prized not only for the influence they have over adult spending, but also for their own burgeoning spending power’ (Kenway and Bullen 2001: 90). There is increasing evidence that this is having a deep effect; that our view of childhood (especially in northern and ‘developed’ countries) is increasingly the product of ‘consumer-media’ culture. Furthermore, that culture:

… is underpinned in the sweated work of the ‘othered’ children of the so-called ‘Third World’. [W]ith the aid of various media, the commodity form has increasingly become central to the life of the young of the West, constructing their identities and relationships, their emotional and social worlds… [A]dults and schools have been negatively positioned in this matrix to the extent that youthful power and pleasure are constructed as that which happens elsewhere – away from adults and schools and mainly with the aid of commodities. (Kenway and Bullen 2001: 187).

Of course such commodification of everyday life is hardly new. Writers like Erich Fromm were commenting on the phenomenon in the early 1950s. However, there has been a significant acceleration and intensification (and globalization) with the rise of the brand (see below) and a heavier focus on seeking to condition children and young people to construct their identities around brands.

Third, and linked to the above, we have seen the erosion of public space by corporate activities. Significant areas of leisure, for example, have moved from more associational forms like clubs to privatized, commercialized activity. Giroux (2000: 10), for example, charts this with respect to young people

[Y]oung people are increasingly excluded from public spaces outside of schools that once offered them the opportunity to hang out with relative security, work with mentors, and develop their own talents and sense of self-worth. Like the concept of citizenship itself, recreational space is now privatized as commercial profit-making venture. Gone are the youth centers, city public parks, outdoor basketball courts or empty lots where kids call play stick ball. Play areas are now rented out to the highest bidder…

This movement has been well documented in the USA (particularly by Robert Putnam with respect to a decline in social capital and civic community – but did not examine in any depth the role corporations have taken). It has profound implications for the quality of life within communities and the sense of well-being that people experience.

Fourth, multinational companies can also have significant influence with regard to policy formation in many national governments and in transnational bodies such as the European Union and the World Bank (key actors within the globalization process). They have also profited from privatization and the opening up of services. As George Monbiot has argued with respect to Britain, for example: the provision of hospitals, roads and prisons… has been deliberately tailored to meet corporate demands rather than public need’ (2001: 4). He continues:

… biotechnology companies have sought to turn the food chain into a controllable commodity and [there is an] extraordinary web of influence linking them to government ministers and government agencies…. [C]orporations have come to govern key decision-making processes within the European Union and, with the British government’s blessing, begun to develop a transatlantic single market, controlled and run by corporate chief executives. (Monbiot 2001: 5)

While with globalization the power of national governments over macro-economic forces may have been limited in recent years, the services and support they provide for their citizens have been seen as a considerable opportunity for corporations. In addition, national governments still have considerable influence in international organizations – and have therefore become the target of multinationals for action in this arena.

Branding and globalization. The growth of multinationals and the globalization of their impact is wrapped up with the rise of the brand.

The astronomical growth in the wealth and cultural influence of multi-national corporations over the last fifteen years can arguably be traced back to a single, seemingly innocuous idea developed by management theorists in the mid-1980s: that successful corporations must primarily produce brands, as opposed to products. (Klein 2001: 3)

As Naomi Klein (2001: 196) has suggested, ‘brand builders are the new primary producers in our so-called knowledge economy’. One of the key elements that keeps companies as multinationals rather than transnationals is the extent to which they look to ‘outsource’ products, components and services. The logic underlying this runs something like the following:

…. corporations should not expend their finite resources on factories that will demand physical upkeep, on machines that will corrode or on employees who will certainly age and die. Instead, they should concentrate those resources in the virtual brick and mortar used to build their brands

Nike, Levi, Coca Cola and other major companies spend huge sums of money in promoting and sustaining their brands. One strategy is to try and establish particular brands as an integral part of the way people understand, or would like to see, themselves. As we have already seen with respect the operation of multinationals this has had a particular impact on children and young people (and education). There is an attempt ‘to get them young’.

Significantly, the focus on brand rather than the inherent qualities of the product as well as advantaging multinationals in terms of market development also has an Achilles heel. Damage to the brand can do disproportionate harm to sales and profitability. If a brand becomes associated with failure or disgrace (for example where a sports star they use to advertise their brand is exposed as a drug-taker; or where the brand becomes associated in the public’s mind with the exploitation of children – as for example has happened with some of the main trainer makers) then it can face major problems in the marketplace.

Globalization and the multinationals. While there is no doubting the growth in scale and scope of multinational corporations – the degree of control they have over the central dynamics of globalization remains limited.

In reality, they are often weak and amorphous organizations. They display the loss of authority and erosion of common values that afflicts practically all late modern social institutions. The global market is not spawning corporations which assume the past functions of sovereign states. Rather, it has weakened and hollowed out both institutions. (Gray 1999: 63)

While multinationals have played a very significant role in the growth of globalization, it is important not to overplay the degree of control they have had over the central dynamics.

Capitalism, free markets, instability and division

Amartya Sen (2002) has argued that ‘the market economy does not work by itself in global relations–indeed, it cannot operate alone even within a given country’. Yet, for some proponents of globalization the aim is to expand market relations, push back state and interstate interference, and create a global free market. This political project can be seen at work in the activities of transnational organizations like the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and has been a significant objective of United States intervention. Part of the impetus for this project was the limited success of corporate/state structures in planning and organizing economies. However, even more significant was the growth in influence of neo-liberal ideologies and their promotion by powerful politicians like Reagan in the USA and Thatcher in the UK.

A new orthodoxy became ascendant. In the USA a Democrat President renounced ‘big government’; in Britain, the Labour Party abandoned its commitment to social ownership. The ‘markets were in command’ (Frank 2002: xv). The basic formula ran something like the following:

Privatization + Deregulation + Globalization = Turbo-capitalism = Prosperity

(Luttwak quoted by Frank 2002: 17)

As various commentators have pointed out, the push toward deregulation and ‘setting markets free’ that so dominated political rhetoric in many northern countries during the 1980s and 1990s was deeply flawed. For example, the central tenet of free market economics – that unregulated markets ‘will of their own accord find unimprovable results for all participants’ has, according to Will Hutton (1995: 237), ‘now proved to be a nonsense. It does not hold in theory. It is not true’. Historically, free markets have been dependent upon state power. For markets to function over time they require a reasonable degree of political stability, a solid legal framework and a significant amount of social capital. The push to engineer free markets has contained within it the seeds of its own destruction.

The central paradox of our time can be stated thus: economic globalization does not strengthen the current regime of global laissez-faire. It works to undermine it. There is nothing in today’s global market that buffers it against the social strains arising from high uneven economic development within and between the world’s diverse societies. The swift waxing and waning of industries and livelihoods, the sudden shifts of production and capital, the casino of currency speculation – these conditions trigger political counter-movements that challenge the very ground rules of the global free market. (Gray 1999: 7)

Capitalism is essentially disruptive and ever-changing – and takes very different forms across the world. While it produces wealth for significant numbers of people, many others have suffered. The gap between rich and poor has widened as global capitalism has expanded. For example, David Landes (1999: xx) has calculated that the difference in income per head between the richest nation (he cited Switzerland) and the poorest non-industrial country, Mozambique, is now about 400 to 1. ‘Two hundred and fifty years ago, the gap between richest and poorest was perhaps 5 to 1, and the difference between Europe and, say, East or South Asia (China or India) was around 1.5 or 2 to 1’ (op. cit.).

The development of markets, the expansion of economic activity, and the extent to which growing prosperity is experienced by populations as a whole has been, and remains, deeply influenced by public policies around, for example, education, land reform and the legal framework for activity. Economists like Amartya Sen have argued that ‘public action that can radically alter the outcome of local and global economic relations’. For him the:

… central issue of contention is not globalization itself, nor is it the use of the market as an institution, but the inequity in the overall balance of institutional arrangements–which produces very unequal sharing of the benefits of globalization. The question is not just whether the poor, too, gain something from globalization, but whether they get a fair share and a fair opportunity. (Sen 2002)

Strong markets require significant state and transnational intervention. To be sustained across time they also require stable social relationships and an environment of trust. Moreover, they can be organized and framed so that people throughout different societies can benefit.

Conclusion

One commentator has argued that there is a very serious case not against ‘globalization’,

… but against the particular version of it imposed by the world’s financial elites. The brand currently ascendant needlessly widens gaps of wealth and poverty, erodes democracy, seeds instability, and fails even its own test of maximizing sustainable economic growth. (Kuttner 2002)

The gap between rich and poor countries has widened considerably. However, as Sen (2002) has commented, to ‘see globalization as merely Western imperialism of ideas and beliefs (as the rhetoric often suggests) would be a serious and costly error’. He continues:

Of course, there are issues related to globalization that do connect with imperialism (the history of conquests, colonialism, and alien rule remains relevant today in many ways), and a postcolonial understanding of the world has its merits. But it would be a great mistake to see globalization primarily as a feature of imperialism. It is much bigger–much greater–than that.

For example, while the reach and power of multinationals appears to have grown significantly, neither they, nor individual national governments, have the control over macro-economic forces that they would like. Ecological and technological risks have multiplied. Globalization in the sense of connectivity in economic and cultural life across the world, is of a different order to what has gone before. As we said at the start, the speed of communication and exchange, the complexity and size of the networks involved, and the sheer volume of trade, interaction and risk give what we now label as ‘globalization’ a peculiar force.

All this raises particular questions for educators. Has the process of globalization eroded the autonomy of national education systems? How has it impacted on the forms that education now takes? What is the effect of an increased corporate presence and branding in education? What response should educators make? We examine these and other issues in globalization and the incorporation of education.

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Stewart, J. (1992) ‘Guidelines for public service management: lessons not to be learnt from the private sector’, in P. Carter el. al. (eds.) Changing Social Work and Welfare, Buckingham: Open University Press.

Wolf, A. (2002) Does Education Matter. Myths about education and economic growth, London: Penguin.

World Bank. (1999) World Development Report 1998/99: Knowledge for Development. Washington: World Bank. [1999, 9 August]. http://www.worldbank.org/wdr/wdr98/contents.htm.

World Bank Research (2002) ‘Globalization, Growth and Poverty: Building an Inclusive World Economy’, The World Bank Group, http://econ.worldbank.org/prr/subpage.php?sp=2477

Links

The American Prospect – special segment on globalization: helpful collection of articles and links.

Development Gateway Foundation: Useful set of pages on the knowledge economy + plenty of other resources.

Global Policy Forum. Useful set of resources and links that explore the nature of globalization.

No Logo: website linked to Klein’s book with bulletin board and various resources.

World Bank Research on Globalization. Collection of topic papers and reports.

8 Theories of Globalization –

by Pooja Articles

All theories of globalization have been put hereunder in eight categories: liberalism, political realism, Marxism, constructivism, postmodernism, feminism , Trans-formationalism and eclecticism. Each one of them carries several variations.

1. Theory of Liberalism:

Liberalism sees the process of globalisation as market-led extension of modernisation. At the most elementary level, it is a result of ‘natural’ human desires for economic welfare and political liberty. As such, transplanetary connectivity is derived from human drives to maximise material well-being and to exercise basic freedoms. These forces eventually interlink humanity across the planet.

They fructify in the form of:

(a) Technological advances, particularly in the areas of transport, communications and information processing, and,

(b) Suitable legal and institutional arrangement to enable markets and liberal democracy to spread on a trans world scale.

Such explanations come mostly from Business Studies, Economics, International Political Economy, Law and Politics. Liberalists stress the necessity of constructing institutional infrastructure to support globalisation. All this has led to technical standardisation, administrative harmonisation, translation arrangement between languages, laws of contract, and guarantees of property rights.

But its supporters neglect the social forces that lie behind the creation of technological and institutional underpinnings. It is not satisfying to attribute these developments to ‘natural’ human drives for economic growth and political liberty. They are culture blind and tend to overlook historically situated life-worlds and knowledge structures which have promoted their emergence.

All people cannot be assumed to be equally amenable to and desirous of increased globality in their lives. Similarly, they overlook the phenomenon of power. There are structural power inequalities in promoting globalisation and shaping its course. Often they do not care for the entrenched power hierarchies between states, classes, cultures, sexes, races and resources.

2. Theory of Political Realism:

Advocates of this theory are interested in questions of state power, the pursuit of national interest, and conflict between states. According to them states are inherently acquisitive and self-serving, and heading for inevitable competition of power. Some of the scholars stand for a balance of power, where any attempt by one state to achieve world dominance is countered by collective resistance from other states.

Another group suggests that a dominant state can bring stability to world order. The ‘hegemon’ state (presently the US or G7/8) maintains and defines international rules and institutions that both advance its own interests and at the same time contain conflicts between other states. Globalisation has also been explained as a strategy in the contest for power between several major states in contemporary world politics.

They concentrate on the activities of Great Britain, China, France, Japan, the USA and some other large states. Thus, the political realists highlight the issues of power and power struggles and the role of states in generating global relations.

At some levels, globalisation is considered as antithetical to territorial states. States, they say, are not equal in globalisation, some being dominant and others subordinate in the process. But they fail to understand that everything in globalisation does not come down to the acquisition, distribution and exercise of power.

Globalisation has also cultural, ecological, economic and psychological dimensions that are not reducible to power politics. It is also about the production and consumption of resources, about the discovery and affirmation of identity, about the construction and communication of meaning, and about humanity shaping and being shaped by nature. Most of these are apolitical.

Power theorists also neglect the importance and role of other actors in generating globalisation. These are sub-state authorities, macro-regional institutions, global agencies, and private-sector bodies. Additional types of power-relations on lines of class, culture and gender also affect the course of globalisation. Some other structural inequalities cannot be adequately explained as an outcome of interstate competition. After all, class inequality, cultural hierarchy, and patriarchy predate the modern states.

3. Theory of Marxism:

Marxism is principally concerned with modes of production, social exploitation through unjust distribution, and social emancipation through the transcendence of capitalism. Marx himself anticipated the growth of globality that ‘capital by its nature drives beyond every spatial barrier to conquer the whole earth for its market’. Accordingly, to Marxists, globalisation happens because trans-world connectivity enhances opportunities of profit-making and surplus accumulation.

Marxists reject both liberalist and political realist explanations of globalisation. It is the outcome of historically specific impulses of capitalist development. Its legal and institutional infrastructures serve the logic of surplus accumulation of a global scale. Liberal talk of freedom and democracy make up a legitimating ideology for exploitative global capitalist class relations.

The neo-Marxists in dependency and world-system theories examine capitalist accumulation on a global scale on lines of core and peripheral countries. Neo-Gramscians highlight the significance of underclass struggles to resist globalising capitalism not only by traditional labour unions, but also by new social movements of consumer advocates, environmentalists, peace activists, peasants, and women. However, Marxists give an overly restricted account of power.

There are other relations of dominance and subordination which relate to state, culture, gender, race, sex, and more. Presence of US hegemony, the West-centric cultural domination, masculinism, racism etc. are not reducible to class dynamics within capitalism. Class is a key axis of power in globalisation, but it is not the only one. It is too simplistic to see globalisation solely as a result of drives for surplus accumulation.

It also seeks to explore identities and investigate meanings. People develop global weapons and pursue global military campaigns not only for capitalist ends, but also due to interstate competition and militarist culture that predate emergence of capitalism. Ideational aspects of social relations also are not outcome of the modes of production. They have, like nationalism, their autonomy.

4. Theory of Constructivism:

Globalisation has also arisen because of the way that people have mentally constructed the social world with particular symbols, language, images and interpretation. It is the result of particular forms and dynamics of consciousness. Patterns of production and governance are second-order structures that derive from deeper cultural and socio-psychological forces. Such accounts of globalisation have come from the fields of Anthropology, Humanities, Media of Studies and Sociology.

Constructivists concentrate on the ways that social actors ‘construct’ their world: both within their own minds and through inter-subjective communication with others. Conversation and symbolic exchanges lead people to construct ideas of the world, the rules for social interaction, and ways of being and belonging in that world. Social geography is a mental experience as well as a physical fact. They form ‘in’ or ‘out’ as well as ‘us’ and they’ groups.

They conceive of themselves as inhabitants of a particular global world. National, class, religious and other identities respond in part to material conditions but they also depend on inter-subjective construction and communication of shared self-understanding. However, when they go too far, they present a case of social-psychological reductionism ignoring the significance of economic and ecological forces in shaping mental experience. This theory neglects issues of structural inequalities and power hierarchies in social relations. It has a built-in apolitical tendency.

5. Theory of Postmodernism:

Some other ideational perspectives of globalisation highlight the significance of structural power in the construction of identities, norms and knowledge. They all are grouped under the label of ‘postmodernism’. They too, as Michel Foucault does strive to understand society in terms of knowledge power: power structures shape knowledge. Certain knowledge structures support certain power hierarchies.

The reigning structures of understanding determine what can and cannot be known in a given socio-historical context. This dominant structure of knowledge in modern society is ‘rationalism’. It puts emphasis on the empirical world, the subordination of nature to human control, objectivist science, and instrumentalist efficiency. Modern rationalism produces a society overwhelmed with economic growth, technological control, bureaucratic organisation, and disciplining desires.

This mode of knowledge has authoritarian and expansionary logic that leads to a kind of cultural imperialism subordinating all other epistemologies. It does not focus on the problem of globalisation per se. In this way, western rationalism overawes indigenous cultures and other non-modem life-worlds.

Postmodernism, like Marxism, helps to go beyond the relatively superficial accounts of liberalist and political realist theories and expose social conditions that have favoured globalisation. Obviously, postmodernism suffers from its own methodological idealism. All material forces, though come under impact of ideas, cannot be reduced to modes of consciousness. For a valid explanation, interconnection between ideational and material forces is not enough.

6. Theory of Feminism:

It puts emphasis on social construction of masculinity and femininity. All other theories have identified the dynamics behind the rise of trans-planetary and supra-territorial connectivity in technology, state, capital, identity and the like.

Biological sex is held to mould the overall social order and shape significantly the course of history, presently globality. Their main concern lies behind the status of women, particularly their structural subordination to men. Women have tended to be marginalised, silenced and violated in global communication.

7. Theory of Trans-formationalism:

This theory has been expounded by David Held and his colleagues. Accordingly, the term ‘globalisation’ reflects increased interconnectedness in political, economic and cultural matters across the world creating a “shared social space”. Given this interconnectedness, globalisation may be defined as “a process (or set of processes) which embodies a transformation in the spatial organisation of social relations and transactions, expressed in transcontinental or interregional flows and networks of activity, interaction and power.”

While there are many definitions of globalisation, such a definition seeks to bring together the many and seemingly contradictory theories of globalisation into a “rigorous analytical framework” and “proffer a coherent historical narrative”. Held and McGrew’s analytical framework is constructed by developing a three part typology of theories of globalisation consisting of “hyper-globalist,” “sceptic,” and “transformationalist” categories.

The Hyperglobalists purportedly argue that “contemporary globalisation defines a new era in which people everywhere are increasingly subject to the disciplines of the global marketplace”. Given the importance of the global marketplace, multi-national enterprises (MNEs) and intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) which regulate their activity are key political actors. Sceptics, such as Hirst and Thompson (1996) ostensibly argue that “globalisation is a myth which conceals the reality of an international economy increasingly segmented into three major regional blocs in which national governments remain very powerful.” Finally, transformationalists such as Rosenau (1997) or Giddens (1990) argue that globalisation occurs as “states and societies across the globe are experiencing a process of profound change as they try to adapt to a more interconnected but highly uncertain world”.

Developing the transformationalist category of globalisation theories. Held and McGrew present a rather complicated typology of globalisation based on globalization’s spread, depth, speed, and impact, as well as its impacts on infrastructure, institutions, hierarchical structures and the unevenness of development.

They imply that the “politics of globalisation” have been “transformed” (using their word from the definition of globalisation) along all of these dimensions because of the emergence of a new system of “political globalisation.” They define “political globalisation” as the “shifting reach of political power, authority and forms of rule” based on new organisational interests which are “transnational” and “multi-layered.”

These organisational interests combine actors identified under the hyper-globalist category (namely IGOs and MNEs) with those of the sceptics (trading blocs and powerful states) into a new system where each of these actors exercises their political power, authority and forms of rule.

Thus, the “politics of globalisation” is equivalent to “political globalisation” for Held and McGrew. However, Biyane Michael criticises them. He deconstructs their argument, if a is defined as “globalisation” (as defined above), b as the organisational interests such as MNEs, IGOs, trading blocs, and powerful states, and c as “political globalisation” (also as defined above), then their argument reduces to a. b. c. In this way, their discussion of globalisation is trivial.

Held and others present a definition of globalisation, and then simply restates various elements of the definition. Their definition, “globalisation can be conceived as a process (or set of processes) which embodies a transformation in the spatial organisation of social relations” allows every change to be an impact of globalisation. Thus, by their own definition, all the theorists they critique would be considered as “transformationalists.” Held and McGrew also fail to show how globalisation affects organisational interests.

8. Theory of Eclecticism:

Each one of the above six ideal-type of social theories of globalisation highlights certain forces that contribute to its growth. They put emphasis on technology and institution building, national interest and inter-state competition, capital accumulation and class struggle, identity and knowledge construction, rationalism and cultural imperialism, and masculinize and subordination of women. Jan Art Scholte synthesises them as forces of production, governance, identity, and knowledge.

Accordingly, capitalists attempt to amass ever-greater resources in excess of their survival needs: accumulation of surplus. The capitalist economy is thoroughly monetised. Money facilitates accumulation. It offers abundant opportunities to transfer surplus, especially from the weak to the powerful. This mode of production involves perpetual and pervasive contests over the distribution of surplus. Such competition occurs both between individual, firms, etc. and along structural lines of class, gender, race etc.

Their contests can be overt or latent. Surplus accumulation has had transpired in one way or another for many centuries, but capitalism is a comparatively recent phenomenon. It has turned into a structural power, and is accepted as a ‘natural’ circumstance, with no alternative mode of production. It has spurred globalisation in four ways: market expansion, accounting practices, asset mobility and enlarged arenas of commodification. Its technological innovation appears in communication, transport and data processing as well as in global organisation and management. It concentrates profits at points of low taxation. Information, communication, finance and consumer sectors offer vast potentials to capital making it ‘hyper-capitalism’.

Any mode of production cannot operate in the absence of an enabling regulatory apparatus. There are some kind of governance mechanisms. Governance relates processes whereby people formulate, implement, enforce and review rules to guide their common affairs.” It entails more than government. It can extend beyond state and sub-state institutions including supra-state regimes as well. It covers the full scope of societal regulation.

In the growth of contemporary globalisation, besides political and economic forces, there are material and ideational elements. In expanding social relations, people explore their class, their gender, their nationality, their race, their religious faith and other aspects of their being. Constructions of identity provide collective solidarity against oppression. Identity provides frameworks for community, democracy, citizenship and resistance. It also leads from nationalism to greater pluralism and hybridity.

Earlier nationalism promoted territorialism, capitalism, and statism, now these plural identities are feeding more and more globality, hyper-capitalism and polycentrism. These identities have many international qualities visualised in global diasporas and other group affiliations based on age, class, gender, race, religious faith and sexual orientations. Many forms of supra-territorial solidarities are appearing through globalisation.

In the area of knowledge, the way that the people know their world has significant implications for the concrete circumstances of that world. Powerful patterns of social consciousness cause globalisation. Knowledge frameworks cannot be reduced to forces of production, governance or identity.

Mindsets encourage or discourage the rise of globality. Modern rationalism is a general configuration of knowledge. It is secular as it defines reality in terms of the tangible world of experience. It understands reality primarily in terms of human interests, activities and conditions. It holds that phenomena can be understood in terms of single incontrovertible truths that are discoverable by rigorous application of objective research methods.

Rationalism is instrumentalist. It assigns greatest value to insights that enable people efficiently to solve immediate problems. It subordinates all other ways of understanding and acting upon the world. Its knowledge could then be applied to harness natural and social forces for human purposes. It enables people to conquer disease, hunger, poverty, war, etc., and maximise the potentials of human life. It looks like a secular faith, a knowledge framework for capitalist production and a cult of economic efficiency. Scientism and instrumentalism of rationalism is conducive to globalisation. Scientific knowledge is non-territorial.

The truths revealed by ‘objective’ method are valid for anyone, anywhere, and anytime on earth. Certain production processes, regulations, technologies and art forms are applicable across the planet. Martin Albrow rightly says that reason knows no territorial limits. The growth of globalisation is unlikely to reverse in the foreseeable future.

However, Scholte is aware of insecurity, inequality and marginalisation caused by the present process of globalisation. Others reject secularist character of the theory, its manifestation of the imperialism of westernist-modernist-rationalist knowledge. Anarchists challenge the oppressive nature of states and other bureaucratic governance frameworks. Globalisation neglects environmental degradation and equitable gender relations.

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Dr Sohail Ansari

Consensus is obtainable by a right choice