1. What is Globalization?

What is Globalization?

1)     Many scholars have been trying to define ‘globalizations’ on their own, but it has so many different topics under this, and it also has many disputes about the definition. Especially, people from developing countries don’t agree with the definition made by or from more privileged societal contexts. Hence, it’s natural to think that not only one definition we can get from Globalization.

However, there was a person who thought this term as a single process. Vello understood globalization as the direction which the whole world is moving, and this term used widely after the fall of the Berlin Wall. At that time, there were two kinds of people who took globalization economically or had a broader view. Because that somehow meant collapse of communism, there was the anti-globalization movement. Through this movement, people became more aware of the great inequalities produced by globalization in mainly economic sense, but ironically, it helped globalization to be spread in the world. At that time, people thought that globalization was becoming a single place.

The most common idea of globalization might be increasing connectivity, and regarding of this, Samuel Huntington said the world would more focused on civilizational issues, as like people’s reaction on Bush’s proclaim about 9/11. He mentioned that civilizational conflicts would prioritize of all profound differences.

Globalization was seen to have three dimensions, which are the economic, the political, and the cultural. As time went by, with the development of technologies, people from all over the world are able to communicate either directly or through the internet, and it has brought the increase of social interaction. Therefore, more and more people think the dimensions of globalization are the economical, the political, the cultural, and the social. Speaking of the economic globalization, there are several things to talk about. Ritzer announced a new term ‘McDonaldization’, which means spread of goods or services to all around the world from America in a homogeneous way. But at the same time, they need to adapt their stuff to local circumstances to succeed, and we also got another term ‘glocalization’. It’s about the relationship between the global and the local and definitely one of consequences that globalization has brought. People foresee that it will be a more and more important and inevitable project to cope this issue globally with local circumstance. In order to do that, the two words ‘global’ and ‘local’ need to be seen as being different sides of the same icon than being apposite.

Immanuel Wallerstein raised an issue of the form of globalization and he said that the modern world could be systematized and coordinated along imperial lines. But without thinking of imperial lines, he insisted that globalization has been produced by the expansion of capitalism. Many authors see the 4 forms of globalization such as : the international-systemic aspect, the concept of humanity, individual selves, and the nation-state.

Globalization can be characterized by increasing global connectivity and increasing global consciousness.

2)     I found it ironic but interesting that anti-globalization movement actually contributed to spread of globalization. After reading this article, that fact made sense to me because I figured that globalization is not only global connectivity, but also global consciousness.

I want to think further whether we can see glocalization separately from globalization or not.

I am impressed that one of forms of globalization is the concept of humanity. Because globalization is criticized mainly that it causes inequality. If the humanity is one of the forms, there might be some ways to make that gap smaller and I think that’s all of our responsibility.

3)     I am not clear about international systemic aspect of globalization, and imperial lines in what Wallersetin said.