27 November 2011

“Despite huge differences in distance, upbringing and social context, many of us now listen to the same music, read the same books and watch the same films and television. Youth in Soweto listen to LA rap; viewers in southern China’s Guandong province watch pirated tapes of Jackie Chan; Sri Lankan refugee kids in Toronto come home from school to settle down in front of Tamil movies rented from the local grocery store. Teenagers and their young siblings in almost every place on earth know Bart and Lisa Simpson. I can sit at my home computer downloading the latest comminqués from Mexico’s indigenous Zapatista rebels and out of the corner of my eye watch the World Cup live from Korea on the TV in the next room.”

Peter Steven (2004, p16-17) is describing the communication aspect of globalisation. Alan Cochrane & Kathy Pain (2000) describe other aspects:-

“Drugs, crime, sex, disease, people, ideas, images, news, information, entertainment, pollution, goods and money now all travel the globe. They are crossing national boundaries and connecting the world on an unprecedented scale and with previously unimaginable speed. The lives of ordinary people everywhere in the world seem increasingly to be shaped by events, decisions and actions that take place far away from where they live and work.”

Globalisation can be described as the emergence of a global economic and cultural system which is integrating the peoples of the world into a single global society.

Transformations of the World

Robin Cohen & Paul Kennedy (2000) argue that key areas of mutually-reinforcing ‘transformations’ drive globalisation:-

• Technical advances collapsing the barriers of time and space
  Mobile phones, the Internet, satellite TV, etc, etc, make communication around the world virtually instantaneous. Mass media developments such as television – especially the development of 24-hour news and sports channels - films and music enable people to encounter and experience a greater range of other cultures The phenomenal expansion of tourism has a similar effect. One result of these interactions with new and different experience is a cross-pollination of ideas in such fields as fashion, literature and food.

• Increasingly producing in one country for markets in others
  The massive growth in international trade, with production in one country for sales in markets in other countries, has been facilitated by the New International Division of Labour, the increasing influence of transnational corporations (TNCs) and  global dominance of the World Trade Organisation and similar institutions – see also TNCs, NGOs & International Agencies.
   
• More and more shared problems – eg:-

• Economic
  Decisions made about lifestyle preferences and leisure pursuits in one country can affect debt issues in another country thousands of miles away and cause unemployment and the loss of livelihoods for workers and peasants in yet other countries. The financial problems experienced by the Asian tigers in 1998-1999 contributed to unemployment in the UK. The 2008 implosion of several American banks, due to overlending in the sub-prime housing market, was the catalyst for a global recession.
• Environmental
  The Soviet Union’s Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 led to acres of land in England’s Lake District and parts of Wales still registering high levels of radiation more than 20 years later due to the fall-out from an accident thousands of miles away.
  Environmental degredation is attributed to the developing world as well as the West, with deforestation and overcultivation having major impacts on gobal climate change
• Health
  It might have its highest incidence in sub-Saharan ‘Black’ Africa but there is no doubt that HIV/AIDS is a worldwide problem
• Crime
  By their very nature, drug trafficking and people trafficking have no respect for national borders
• Terrorism
  Eg: al-Qaeda’s Afghanistan-based 9/11 attack on the United States took terrorism onto the international stage in a BIG way, eclipsing such localised issues as Britain’s problems with the IRA in Northern Ireland or Spain’s attempts to close down ETA’s violent campaign for an independent Basque region
• Violent suppression of internal dissidence
  A basic presupposition of the United Nations Charter is that the UN will not approve one state interfering in the internal affairs of another. While the UN has authorised interventions from time to time – with the major (and very American-manipulated) exception of the Korean War (1950-1953) – their purposes have been largely to impose and/or maintain peace between countries as opposed to pursuing a war of agression against the government of a country. That changed with the ‘first humaniatarian war’ in 1999 – NATO, acting rather broadly on a UN resolution, aggressively bombed Yugoslav military units and Serb-Kosovan paramilitaries in the Kosovan conflict – even communication assets such as a Belgrade TV station. A similar approach to a UN resolution authorising force to protect civilians was taken in 2011 by NATO in their bombing of Libyan government forces, effectively turning NATO into the airforce of the rebel movement in what very rapidly turned into a civil war.

Cohen & Kennedy conclude that such ‘transformations’ lead to a new depth of appreciation that the world is a single place. Anthony Giddens (1999) characterises globalisation as a ‘runaway world’ featuring common tastes and interests, change and uncertainty, and a common fate. Giddens (1990) and Ulrich Beck (2002) postulate that the immediacy of global communication means it is difficult for people to avoid acknowledging that we live in a world characterised by risk eg: terrorism, global warming and war. This awareness may result in a broadening of identities - especially where people champion particular causes around issues such as debt relief or the environment.

Theories of Globalisation

However, there are issues in trying to define just what ‘globalisati on’ is, with John Wiseman (1998) commenting: “Globalisation is the most slippery buzzword of the late 20th Century because it can have many meanings and can be used in many ways.”

Wiseman’s reservations about a hard definition of ‘globalisation’ are reflected in Cochrane & Pain’s identification of 3 basic positions on the issue of globalisation:-

• Globalists work on the basis that globalisation IS occuring and has real consequences for people and organisations across the world. Cochrane & Pain see local culture and the power and authority of nation-states as being eroded by a homogenous global culture and economy.
  However, globalists tend to fall into 2 distinct camps when it comes to anticipating the consequences of globalisation.
  ‘Optimistic globalists’’ (aka ‘hyperglobalists’ or ‘positive globalists’) welcome globalisation in the belief that it will eventually produce tolerant and responsible world citizens. Cohen & Kennedy predict globalisation will lead to human rights being respected more around the world, universal access to education and communications, and multicultural understanding. However, they do conceed (p372) that “globalisation has so far done little to diminish the blight of poverty and wretchedness in which about half the world’s inhabitants live.”
  Postmodernists tend to side with the hyperglobalists, perceiving globalisation as a positive phenomenon. They argue it creates a new class of global consumers who have a greater range of choice, from which they can construct a hybridised global identity.
  ‘Pesimistic globalists’, such as Jeremy Seabrook (2005), argue that globalisation is damaging because it is basically a form of Western – and particularly American – imperialism. Seabrook characterises globalisation as swamping local and regional cultures with a superficial and homogenous mass form of Western/American culture. Benjamin Barber & Andrea Schulz (1995) raise the concern that the planet is turning into a ‘McWorld’ where cultures and consumption will be standardised.
  Pessimistic globalists also tend to view globalisation as a one-way process, leading inevitably to dystopia. Damien Kingsbury et al (2004) posit that until globalisation leads to the widescale relief of poverty, conflict, especially between East and West, is likely to grow.

• Traditionalists reject the idea that globalisation is happening. They argue that it is a myth or, at best, is exaggerated. They point out that Capitalism has been an international phenomenon for hundreds of years. So-called ‘globalisation’ is merely a continuation or evolution of Capitalist production and trade.

• Transformationalists occupy a middle ground between globalists and traditionalists. They accept that the impact of globalisation has been exaggerated by the globalists but argue that there is a globalisation process happening as a complex set of interconnecting relationships by which power is exercised indirectly for the most part. Transformationalists also contend that the negative effects of globalisation can at least be controlled and perhaps even reversed.

Responses to Globalisation

Seabrook identifies 3 main responses to globalisation:-

• Fatalistic - globalisation is inevitable and irreversible.
  Most Western leaders  adopt this position, demonstrating what Seabrook calls an ‘impotence of convenience’ - as this apparent powerlessness disguises the fact that the forces of globalisation economically advantage their own countries
   
• Welcoming - globalisation represents hope for all humanity and the development of a techno-scientific culture that will liberate people from poverty (Amartya Sen, 2002).
  Mario Vargas Llosa (2002) argues that much war and conflict arises from local cultural differences. Therefore, the sooner local cultures are meshed into a single global culture the better.
  Roland Robertson (1992) postuates that global and local can work together and suggests that local people tend to take from the global only that which suits them - which they modify to fit in with the local anyway. Cohen & Kennedy call this ‘indigenisation’ - ie: the local ‘captures’ from the global and turns into a form acceptable to the local. An example of this is the way the Indian ‘Bollywood’ film industry combines Western ideas on entertainment with stories based on traditional Hindu myth, history and culture.
   
• Resistance - forms of which include:-

• Reassertion of local identities through attempts to preserve local folklore and language
• Commodification of local cultures, making it saleable and packaging it up for tourists
• “Vehement” reaction in the developing world to what is perceived as ‘violation of identity’ - Seabrook argues that the rise of old nationalisms and fundamentalisms are not arbitrary but the response of people under overwhelming pressure

Of course, the Traditionalists tend to deny globalisation, as portrayed by the globalists, is happening at all. So is it?

Certainly there is economic activity on a worldwide scale, with global consequences, and certainly there is a some considerable homogenisation of culture across the world – eg: from its early days, the English language dominated the internet (Jukka Korpela, 2003).

However, evidence tends to suggest that hybridity – cultural borrowing and mixing – is occurring rather than blanket homogeneity. An example of this would be the way World Music fuses Western dance beats with traditional styles from North Africa and Asia.