GLOBALIZATION:
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
Dr. Roluahpuia,
Assistant Professor,
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences,
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee
1
WHEN DID GLOBALIZATION START?
IS GLOBALIZATION GOOD OR BAD?
WHY DID GLOBALIZATION BECOME A
POPULAR IDEA?
GLOBALIZATION
• Globalization is not any one thing but is composed of several
interrelated economic, political, social, and cultural processes.
• Globalization involves processes that span the whole world, the globe,
and as such it is qualitatively different to the international relationships,
trade relations, migration patterns, and political communication that have
long existed between particular countries.
• Globalization is the move away from national isolation and economic
and cultural protectionism toward a transnational openness and
engagement.
• The process of integrating nations and peoples – politically, economically,
and culturally – into larger communities (Eckes and Zeiler 2003: 1).
GLOBALIZATION
• What is new about globalization is the simultaneous
circulation and flow of people (migration); of money; of
things, including illicit things such as drugs; of ideas – e.g.,
about gender equality; and of information (e.g., via the
internet) about all sorts of people and things, between and
among all sorts of people.
• Globalization processes are driven by, among other
factors, advances in communication technology,
exponentially accelerated by the continuing advances in
internet and digital technology.
Space-time convergence between Boston and New York,
showing different modes of transportation
WHAT IS NEW?
• Technological advances, especially communications and transportation, have
spurred the compression
• When transportation costs are high, only high-end goods can be traded
• Early navigation led to a concentration of economic activities in coastal
regions
• Sea-going vessels, railways, and canals each successively cut time and costs of
transport
THE SOCIOLOGY OF GLOBALIZATION
• Globalization may appear as a macro phenomenon and distant, unlike micro issues that
have more of an impact on daily life.
• Large-scale global processes of economic restructuring and international political power
have a big impact on our individual lives (how different will it be if you were born 30 years
before?)
• The global economy and distribution of wealth affect, for example, our chances of
employment, alongside our material circumstances generally.
• Identity and cultural experience are forged out of global inputs, from media to music,
migration, and food.
• Culture is affected by economic and political factors– for instance, mergers and
diversification in the media industry and government deregulation impact our cultural
experiences as consumers.
PERSPECTIVES ON GLOBALIZATION
1. Globalist:
• national economies are much less significant, or even no longer exist, because of
the free movement of capital, MNCs, and economic interdependency.
• reduced political restrictions on the movement of money and technological change in
the form of the computerization of financial transactions
• many corporations are seen now to be multinational in their ownership and
worldwide production facilities, workforces and consumers, from Coca-Cola and
McDonald’s to News Corporation.
• The global economy has opened up, integrated, and included more parts of the
world, although whether this has been a positive thing or not is debated.
PERSPECTIVES ON GLOBALIZATION
• The globalist perspective is sometimes seen as economistic, with economic changes having
political and cultural effects.
• Nation-states lose power and influence or even sovereignty because they tailor their
policies to the needs of mobile capital. Social democracy and the welfare state are curtailed
to fit in with the wishes of business interests
• Nation-states are superseded by international organizations such as the United
Nations (UN) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), social movements that are global, or
even a global civil society
• Globalization is said to lead to homogenized or hybridized global cultures, where national
differences become less marked as people consume culture from around the world
rather than exclusively from their own nation
PERSPECTIVES ON GLOBALIZATION
2.Sceptics:
• Sceptics argue that globalist perspectives can be quite abstract and thin on empirical
substantiation, making sweeping claims about processes as if they affect all areas of the world evenly
and with the same responses.
• Areas of sub-Saharan Africa are much less integrated than East Asia, Europe, and North America.
• The skeptics see evidence of the continuing role of nation-states within their own boundaries and as
agents of globalization, through which they both lose and maintain power.
• National identities have a history and a hold on the popular imagination that global identities cannot
replace, evolving rather than being swept away.
• Politically, the effects of globalization are uneven – states have gained as well as lost power in the
processes of globalization. Many states are more globally powerful than others, and some are able to
continue with more socially democratic policies despite hyperglobalist perspectives that see globalization as
requiring compliance with neoliberalism.
FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO GLOBALIZATION
• Information Flows:
• The post-World War II era has seen a transformation in
the scope and intensity of telecommunications flows.
• Advances in technology and the world’s
telecommunications infrastructure have facilitated the
explosion in global communication.
• The Internet is the fastest-growing communication ever
developed
• A total of 5.56 billion people around the world were
using the internet at the start of 2025, equivalent to 67.9
percent of the world’s total population.
FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO GLOBALIZATION
• Information Flows:
• This impressive figure means that internet users are now a
“supermajority”, with more than twice as many people using the
internet as not.
• Internet users continue to grow, too, with the latest data indicating
that the world’s connected population grew by 136 million over the
past 12 months.
• Technology facilitates the compression of time and space
FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO GLOBALIZATION
• Political Change:
• The fall of Communism
• One of the most significant is the collapse of Soviet-style communication,
which occurred in Eastern Europe in 1989 and in the Soviet Union in 1991.
• Countries in the former Soviet bloc-including Russia, Ukraine, Poland,
Hungary, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states, and the states of the
Caucasus and Central Asia--have been moving toward Western-style
political and economic systems and are increasingly integrated into the
global community.
FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO GLOBALIZATION
• Transnational Corporations: The world is our audience; think globally, act locally……..
• The terms ‘global’ and ‘globalization’ came from the financial sector in the early 1980s to describe how
capital was internationalized in that period
• The terms were also performative insofar as they were used to justify globalization strategies by transnational
corporations and to encourage investments abroad
• ‘Global’ and ‘globalization’ were closely tied to the launch of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the
multiplication of international trade agreements, and increasing economic integration within the European
single market: internationalization of markets (single market)
• The opening of many countries to international trade, especially ‘emerging’ countries from Eastern Europe,
East and South Asia, and South America. In that sense, globalization referred to the rise of global trade
• Liberalization of economies has become the new mantra of development
FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO GLOBALIZATION
• Transnational Corporations:
• Transnational corporations became a global phenomenon after World
War II.
• Expansion initially came from firms based in the United States, but
by the 1970s, European and Japanese firms also began to invest
abroad.
• In the late 1980s and ‘90s, transnational corporations expanded
dramatically with the establishment of three powerful regional
markets.
• Transnational corporations based in industrialized economies
have been expanding their operations in countries in the global
south as well as in countries that were part of the former Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe
• The rise of East Asian Tigers and then now Asia’s emerging economy.
If globalization is about opening up, is Trump anti-globalization?
FACTS ABOUT GLOBALIZATION
• The number of air passengers has increased very steadily from 1975 to 2015, from 500
million to 4 billion, according to World Bank figures. International migrations also seem to
have increased greatly, according to UN figures, from 75 million migrants in 1960 to 177
million in 2000, and 258 million in 2017
• According to World Bank figures, the amount of monetary remittances increased from
about US$30 billion in 1990 to more than US$200 billion in 2005
• Manufactured goods now account for more than half of international trade, while
agriculture and raw materials were still dominant in the nineteenth-century
• Trade in commodities quadrupled to US$19 trillion between 1980 and 2014, and trade in
services increased tenfold to US$4 trillion in the same period
Has globalization increased or
decreased inequality?
DECODE IMAGE BELOW
GLOBALIZATION AND GLOBAL INEQUALITY
• States, consumers, and companies (manufacturing corporations, financial firms, and banks)
depend upon production for profit.
• The standard of living of millions of people across the globe has been vastly improved by
capitalist globalization in ways unimaginable to an earlier generation, this achievement has
not eliminated class inequality.
• Alongside the integration of the world economy, there is a growing inequality.
• The increased global flow in trade and consumer products, whereby, for example,
Chinese manufacturers and suppliers – whether of fashion apparel, children’s toys, or
flowers – have become highly significant players in the global economy, is frequently at
the expense of workers laboring under dangerous sweatshop conditions to meet
production demands
GLOBAL INEQUALITY
• Global inequality refers to the systematic differences in wealth and power between countries. These differences exist alongside
differences within countries.
• High-income countries
• High-income countries are generally those that industrialized first, a process that began in England some 250 years ago and then spread
to the rest of Europe, the United States, and Canada.
• They have 14.2 percent of the world’s population, yet they command 66 percent of the world’s total income.
• Middle-income countries
• Middle income countries are primarily found in East and Southeast Asia and also include the oil-rich countries of the Middle East and North
Africa, a few countries in the Americas.
• Begun to industrialize relatively late in the twentieth century, most are not yet as developed (nor as wealthy) as the high-income countries.
• In 2020, middle income countries were home to 71.7 percent of the world’s population (4.91 billion) but accounted for only 31 percent
of the output produced that year.
• Low-income countries
• The low income countries include much of eastern, western, and sub-saharan African; Cambodia, and North Korea in East Asia, Nepal and
Bangladesh in South Asia; and Haiti in the Caribbean.
• They have mostly agricultural economics and are just beginning to industrialize. In 2011 the low-income countries include nearly 12 percent
of the world’s population (816 million people) but just 7 percent of the world’s GNI.
• In many low-income countries, people struggle with poverty, malnutrition, and starvation. Most people live in rural areas, although
recently hundreds of millions of people have been moving to densely populated cities, where they live either in dilapidated housing or on
the streets.
GLOBAL INEQUALITY
• Global trade remains fundamentally unequal where the terms of trade are being decided and controlled by
the Global North– favoring the interest of the West.
• For the most part, we have seen income inequality between countries improve in the last 25 years, meaning
that the average incomes in developing countries are increasing at a faster rate. This can be accredited to
strong economic growth in China and other emerging economies in Asia. However, the gap between countries
is still considerable. For example, the average income of people living in North America is 16 times higher than
that of people in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Income inequality between countries has improved, yet income inequality within countries has become
worse. Today, 71 percent of the world’s population live in countries where inequality has grown.
• Since 1990, income inequality has increased in most developed countries and in some middle-income
countries, including China and India.
According to the UBS Global Wealth Report, in 2023, the world’s richest 1 percent, those with more than $1
million, owned 47.5 percent of all the world’s wealth – equivalent to roughly $214 trillion. Adults with less than
$10,000 make up nearly 40 percent of the world’s population but hold less than 1 percent of the world’s wealth
The world’s 26 richest billionaires, according to the latest UBS Global Wealth Report, owned an astonishing
$2.872 trillion in wealth as of 2023. This combined wealth is greater than the total goods and services most nations
produce on an annual basis
GLOBAL INEQUALITY
• An Oxfam report shows that the number of billionaires has nearly doubled in the 10 years since the financial
crisis, and the fortunes of the world’s super-rich have reached record levels. In 2018, the 26 richest people in
the world in the world held as much wealth as half of the global population (the 3.8 billion poorest people),
down from 43 people the year before.
• At family or society level, who are you matters?: There are also inequalities within communities – and even
families. Up to 30 percent of income inequality is due to inequality within households. When it comes to
women and girls, progress is uneven, with 12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work performed by women such as
caring for children or nursing someone who is ill, as well as indirect care, like cooking and cleaning
• Some 10 percent of the world’s population owns 76 percent of the wealth, takes in 52 percent of income and
accounts for 48 percent of global carbon emissions.
BEYOND ECONOMIC INEQUALITY
• All individuals contribute to emissions, but not in the same way; however, climate impacts are not equally
distributed across the world: on average, low- and middle-income countries suffer greater impacts than their
richer counterparts.
• At the same time, the climate crisis is also marked by significant inequalities within countries. Recent research
reveals a high concentration of global greenhouse gas emissions among a relatively small fraction of the
population living in emerging and rich countries. In addition, vulnerability to numerous climate impacts is
strongly linked to income and wealth, not just between countries but also within them.
• The top 10% of global carbon emitters generate almost half of all greenhouse gas emissions and the global top
1% of emitters are responsible for more emissions than the entire bottom half of the world’s population.
• Over 780 million people globally are currently exposed to the combined risk of poverty and serious flooding,
mostly in developing countries.
BEYOND ECONOMIC INEQUALITY
• Poverty and vulnerability to climate hazards are correlated and mutually enforce each other. Many low-income regions are
facing agricultural productivity losses of 30% and more due to climate change which aggravates poverty and food insecurity.
• Climate change contributes to economic and material deprivations in myriad ways, now very well documented. It
aggravates water scarcity and creates water insecurity
• Extreme heat has had significant effects on mortality, causing tens of thousands of additional deaths every year. These
deaths occur mostly in tropical and subtropical regions
THE INDIAN CASE
• Following the introduction of economic reforms in the early 1990s, India today is achieving unprecedented per capita growth
rates.
• At the national level, inequality broadly rose in India between 1983–2012, particularly in the early 2000s. However, this has
happened at differing degrees depending on the dimension being considered and the measurement method employed.
• In 2022-23, 22.6% of national income went to just the top 1%, the highest level recorded in our series since 1922, higher
than even during the inter-war colonial period. The top 1% wealth share stood at 40.1% in 2022- 23, also at its highest
level since 1961 (Bharti et. al 2024)
• Based on data from the National Sample Survey Organization’s (NSSO) consumption expenditure survey (CES) rounds in
1993-94 and 1999-2000, Deaton and Dreze` (2002) found that economic inequality markedly increased during the 1990s
in several forms – strong divergence across states, rising urban-rural inequality, and growing disparities within urban
areas
• Inequality of opportunity: Inequality trends are shaped by patterns of income mobility. Income mobility has been rising, but
the large numbers who have exited poverty in recent decades remain vulnerable.
• Furthermore, intergenerational mobility is low and shows no clear sign of rising
