The Contemporary World
RELEVANCE OF THIS COURSE
1. A cure to parochialism.
• outlook - limited to one’s immediate community
• Close-minded
RELEVANCE OF THIS COURSE
2. Teach you more about yourself.
- The experience of communities
- outside our own may provide solutions to many of our problems…or provide warnings.
- Knowledge of other societies’ economic growth can be a model in policy making. (NZ’s dealing with COVID
19)
RELEVANCE OF THIS COURSE
3. You need to study the world because you will be interacting with it.
▪ 2009 - 4,018 - Filipinos per day left to become OFW/OCW
▪ 2015 – 6,092 – OFW left the country / day to work abroad.
▪ This is the reality that an aspiring OFW should be oriented with
▪ But those who choose to stay in Philippines, must always be confronted with the phenomenon of globalization,
i.e. become employee of foreign companies; will use internet; will use foreign products and technologies, etc.
RELEVANCE OF THIS COURSE
4. The phenomenon of globalization occurs subjectively.
▪ We think about the world (#PrayforPhils.)
▪ We associate ourselves with global trends (fan of K-Pop)
▪ Hopefully, we feel some sense of responsibility (i.e., climate change, Covid 19 cases)
A WORKING DEFINITION
Mostly, globalization is viewed as
▪ primarily an “economic process.”
▪ usually refers to “the integration of the national markets to a wider global market signified by the
increased free trade.”
Anti-globalization – the activists’ term for movement in 1990s resisting trade deals among countries facilitated by
global organizations like WTO.
WTO = World Trade Organization
Globalization scholars (academics) do not disagree with the Anti’s, they are sympathetic because they see it in a broader terms.
They view the process through various lenses that consider multiple theories and perspectives. Academics call this an
INTERNDISCIPLINARY APPROACH - the approach used in the context of general education (GE) courses. And so, the
best “scholarly” description of globalization is provided by Manfred Steger, see next slide.
• Globalization scholars (or the academics) do not disagree with the Anti’s perspective, they are sympathetic because
they see it in a broader terms. They view the process through various lenses that consider multiple theories and
perspectives.
• Academics call this an Interdisciplinary Approach - the approach used in the context of general education (GE)
courses. And so, the best “scholarly” description of globalization is provided by the scholar Manfred Steger.
A WORKING DEFINITION
Manfred Steger described Globalization as:
▪ “an expansion and intensification of social relations and consciousness across world-time and world-space.”
• expansion: means both the creation of new social networks and the multiplication of existing connections that
cut across traditional political, economic, cultural and geographic boundaries.
• intensification: refers to expansion, stretching, and acceleration of these networks.*
A WORKING DEFINITION
Manfred Steger differentiated “globalization” with the term “globalism.”
• globalization: the many processes that allow for the expansion and intensification of global connections
• globalism: is a widespread belief among powerful people that the global integration of economic market is
beneficial for everyone, since it spreads freedom and democracy across the world.
A WORKING DEFINITION
*Intensification and Acceleration of Social Exchanges and Activities
▪ From snail mail to Facebook
▪ Live television broadcast
▪ Increased travel (cheap flights)
A WORKING DEFINITION
For the economist, globalization means:
▪ Increased free trade
▪ Speed of trade (milliseconds to trade shares)
▪ Formation of global economic organizations
▪ Setting up of regional economic blocs
To understand more about the nature / objectives of GEO/REB, click the Apec image to play video as an example.
DRIVERS OF GLOBALIZATION PROCESSES
“driver”
• the one that makes it possible for a thing to run.
• in computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device in a PC
• Politics – e.g. laws, regulations – visa free countries etc.
• Economics – interconnectedness of trades; stocks, $, etc.
THE 5 SCAPES OF GLOBALIZATION
Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai said that there are different kinds of globalization that occur on multiple and
intersecting dimensions of integration that he calls SCAPES
1. Ethnoscape – refers to the global movement of people.
2. Mediascape – flow of culture.
3. Technoscape – circulation of mechanical goods and software.
4. Financescape – global circulation of money.
5. Ideoscape – realm where political ideas move around.
KEY CONCEPTS OF GLOBALIZATION
Globalization is not new in the modern context.
▪ Cuturela (2012) cited a published work, Towards New Education, which used the term “globalization” in 1930.
▪ Globalization - to designate an overview of the human experience in education.
KEY CONCEPTS OF GLOBALIZATION
▪ After the Cold War the term was already used to define an interdependent world when it comes to its economical
and informational dimensions.
▪ As it is defined by Webster, globalization is the development of an increasingly integrated global economy marked
by free trade, free flow of capital, and the tapping of cheaper foreign labor markets.
KEY CONCEPTS OF GLOBALIZATION
▪ Roland Robertson* (1992) – described globalization as the compression of the world and the intensification of the
perception of the world as a whole.”
▪ Martin Albrow and Elizabeth King (1990) - Globalization is “all those processes by which the people of the world are
incorporated into a single world society (borderless community).”
Roland Robertson – professor of Sociology at the University of Aberdeen.
KEY CONCEPTS OF GLOBALIZATION
Globalization has exerted a tremendously serious impact on each sovereign state.
▪ transnational spread of capital
▪ formation of the global markets
Global markets mean the disintegration of economies of various countries).
KEY CONCEPTS OF GLOBALIZATION
Anthony Giddens* (1991), > 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.
KEY CONCEPTS OF GLOBALIZATION
Rapid interconnection worldwide that links people
▪ local
▪ national
▪ regional context.
This interconnectedness is created because of the ff:
▪ social
▪ economic relationships
▪ networks which are relevant in the global interactions.
Steger (2005) pointed out that globalization should be confined to a set of complex, social processes that are changing out
current social condition derived from the modern independence of nation-states.
KEY CONCEPTS OF GLOBALIZATION
Key concepts of globalization:
▪ multidimensional set of social processes that create, multiply, stretch, and intensify worldwide social
interdependencies and exchanges while at the same time fostering in people a growing awareness of deepening
connections between the local and the distant.
KEY CONCEPTS OF GLOBALIZATION
▪ International Monetary Fund (IMF) identified some overviews of various areas of globalization. Globalization ‘offers
extensive opportunities for truly worldwide development, but it is not progressing evenly (why?)’.
▪ IMF conveyed that there are some countries that have been able to integrate into the global market rapidly, yet there
are also some that have not yet integrated. Those countries that were able to integrate in the global market grow fast
and able to reduce problems of poverty.
KEY CONCEPTS OF GLOBALIZATION
▪ Globalization is not a recent phenomenon and there is nothing mystifying about it.
▪ In the 1980’s, the term “globalization” has become a common word manifesting advances in modern technologies
that have made international transactions, in both trade and finances, convenient, accessible, and easy.
IMF (2000) noted that globalization refers to an extension beyond national borders of the same market forces that have
operated for centuries at all levels of human economic activity which includes village markets, urban industries, or financial
centers.
KEY CONCEPTS OF GLOBALIZATION
Will Hutton & Anthony Giddens, as cited by Cuturela (2009) emphasized that globalization is the interplay of extraordinary
technological innovation mixed with influence of the world that gives today’s changing complexity.
KEY CONCEPTS OF GLOBALIZATION
▪ They expressed that the balance between science or knowledge and resources has changed in such a way that science
and knowledge have become perhaps the most significant factor in the determination of the country’s standard of
living.
▪ The countries with the most advanced economies are the countries with the most modern technology based on
science and knowledge.
OTHER PERSPECTIVES OF GLOBALIZATION
5 CORE CLAIMS OF MARKET GLOBALISM
Steger (2014) pointed out that in the mid-1990’s, more population in the global north and south had accepted globalism’s core
claims, thus internalizing large parts of its overarching neo-liberal framework that advocated the deregulation of markets, the
liberalization of trade, the privatization of state-owned enterprises, and, after 9/11, the qualified support of the global ‘War on
Terror’ under US leadership.
1. Globalization is about the liberalization and global integration of market. This is absolutely anchored in the
neo—liberal ideal of self-regulating market as the normative basis for a future global order.
▪ This perspective explains the relevant functions of free market – its rationality and efficiency, as well as its
alleged ability to bring about greater social integration and material progress-can only be realized in a
democratic society that values and protects individual freedom.
2. Globalization is inevitable and irreversible. The market-globalist perspective sees globalization as the spread of
irreversible market forces driven by technological innovations that make the global integration of national
economies inevitable. As a matter of fact, market globalism is always interlaced with a belief that markets have the
capacity to use new technologies to solve social problems.
3. Nobody is in charge of globalization. This claim highlights the semantic link between ‘globalization-market’ and the
adjacent idea of ‘leaderlessness’. Robert Hormats (1998) opined that ‘
▪ The great beauty of globalization is that no one is in control.’ This only means that no individual, no
government or no institution has the control over globalization.
▪ Similarly, Thomas Friedman (1999:112-3) emphasized that the most basic truth about globalization is this: ‘No one
is in charge…But the global marketplace today is an Electronic Herd of often anonymous stock, bond, and currency
traders and multinational investors, connected by screens and networks.’
▪ Globalization benefits everyone. This lies at the heart of market globalism and represents a ‘good’ phenomenon. AT
the 1996 G-7 Summit in Lyons, France, the heads of state and government of the world’s seven most powerful
industrialized nations issued a joint Economic Communique (1996) that exemplifies the principal meaning of this
claim:
▪ Economic growth and progress in today’s interdependent world is bound up with the process of globalization.
Globalization provides great opportunities for the future, not only for our countries, but for all others, too.
▪ Its many positive aspects include an unprecedented expansion of investment and trade; the opening up to
international trade of the world’s most populous regions and opportunities for more developing countries to improve
their standards of living; the increasingly rapid dissemination of information, technological innovation, and the
proliferation of skilled jobs.
▪ Globalization furthers the spread of democracy in the world. Francis Fukuyama (2000) stressed that there exists a
‘clear correlation’ between the country’s level of economic development and successful democracy.
▪ There is a correlation between a country's level of economic development and successful democracy. Recently, a study
was done that examined the transitions to democracy of several nations. Once equivalent GDP per capita in 1992
purchasing power parity dollars reached $6,000, there's no country in history that has become a democracy and then
lapsed back into authoritarianism.
▪ While globalization and capital development do not automatically produce democracies, ‘the level of economic
development resulting from globalization is conducive to the creation of complex civil societies with a powerful
middle class. It is this class and societal structure that facilitates democracy’.
The former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton (1999) praised the Eastern Europe’s economic transition towards capitalism by
saying, “The emergence of new businesses and shopping centers in former communist countries should be seen as the
‘backbone of democracy.’
