Globalization as Economic Process

- the increasing linkage of national economies through trade, financial flows, and foreign
direct investment … by multinational firms’ (Gilpin, 2000: 299)

“Most scholars of economic globalization trace the accelerating integrationist tendencies of the global
economy to the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s and the rise of ‘neo-liberalism’
in the 1980s and its ascendancy to dominance with the 1989–91 collapse of command-type economies in
Eastern Europe.”

Neo-liberalism- a belief in free market and opposition of state intervention. Its key components
include the deregulation of interest rates, the removal of credit controls, and the privatization of
government-owned banks and financial institutions (primarily done to attract foreign investments and
businesses).

“While the creation of international financial markets represents a crucial aspect of economic
globalization, many scholars utilizing this approach point to another important economic development of
the last three decades that involves the changing nature of global production: powerful transnational
corporations (TNCs) with subsidiaries in several countries.”

Transnational corporations (TNCs)- companies that has subsidiary branches on other countries.
For example, Wal-Mart, Starbucks, McDonalds, Samsung, iPhone etc.

Globalization as Cultural Process

According to Tomlinson (1999: 28), cultural globalization is the densely growing network of
complex cultural interconnections and interdependencies that characterize modern social life.
Global cultural flows are directed by powerful international media corporations that utilize new
communication technologies to shape societies and identities and they profoundly impact the way
people experience their everyday lives. This interconnectivity caused by cultural globalization challenges
parochial values and identities, because it undermines the linkages that connect culture to fixity of
location.

Does globalization increase cultural homogeneity, or does it lead to greater

diversity and heterogeneity?
A number of scholars argue that these processes have facilitated the rise of an increasingly
homogenized global culture underwritten by an Anglo-American value system. This due to:
1. Americanization – global diffusion of American values, consumer goods, and lifestyles.
2. McDonaldization - the wide-ranging process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant
are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society, as well as the rest of the
world.
3. McWorld - product of a superficial American popular culture (music video, theater, books and
theme parks) assembled in the 1950s and 1960s and driven by expansionist commercial
interests.
In addition to addressing the question of whether globalization leads to cultural homogeneity or
heterogeneity, scholars like Nederveen Pieterse, Hannerz, and Robertson seek to expand the concept of
globalization by portraying it as a multidimensional ‘field’. In their view, globalization is both a material
and a mental condition, constituted by complex, often contradictory interactions of global, local, and
individual aspects of social life. Cultural theorists such as Ulrich Beck (2000: 102) and Arjun Appadurai
(1996) have refined this argument by contrasting common interpretations of globalization as a ‘process’
with the less mechanical concept of ‘globality’, referring to ‘the experience of living and acting across
borders.

How does the dominant culture of consumerism impact the natural

environment?
The two most ominous ecological problems connected to the global spread of consumer culture are
human-induced global climate change, such as global warming, and the worldwide destruction of
biodiversity. Further increases in global temperatures could lead to partial meltdowns of the polar ice
caps, causing global sea levels to rise by up to three feet by 2100 – a catastrophic development that
would threaten the many coastal regions of the world. About the loss of biodiversity, many biologists
today believe that we are now in the midst of the fastest mass extinction of living species in the 4.5-
billion-year history of the planet. Environmental sociologist Franz Broswimmer (2002), for example,
fears that up to 50 per cent of all plant and animal species – most of them in the global south – will
disappear by the end of this century.

Globalization as Political Process

 intrinsically connected to the expansion of markets.

What are the political causes for the massive flows of capital, money, and technology across
territorial boundaries?

The advances in computer technology and communication systems such as the World Wide Web are
seen as the primary forces responsible for the creation of a single global market. It broke down many
physical barriers to worldwide communication which used to limit how much connected or cooperative
activity of any kind could happen over long distances.

Do these flows constitute a serious challenge to the power of the nation-state?

Yes. According to even more extreme technological-determinist explanations, politics is rendered

powerless in the face of an unstoppable and irreversible technoeconomic juggernaut that will crush all
governmental attempts to reintroduce restrictive policies and regulations. The government will lose its
role as a meaningful unit of participation in the global economy.