[Assignment 1] what is globalization?

 1) Summary

Over time, as technology advances, all over the world people can contact each other through Internet, airplane, various media flatform and so on. And naturally we discussed the idea of globalization and It’s still ongoing. But until 1980s or 1990 early, globalization have not been fully accepted in academic part. Since The term globalization has not been widely used for a long time, and is being discussed in various ways and dimension, It’s hard to define straight one word or sentence what that is.

Velho(1997) said about globalization in objective and horizon perspective. According to his perspective, especially object approach, regard globalization as a thinking of single process. And he thinks even though world is undergoing globalization each country has different aspect.

There’s recognition difference between 1900s and 2000s about globalization. In the late 1900s, people who looked at globalization in economic perspective were more dominant. But after the late 1990 the movement called by antiglobalization raised, people had realized the inequalities in economic sense was caused by globalization. And In early 1990s policy that actually can execute open markets, free trade, deregulation and privatization was promoted by wealthy country. Which means transnational corporations occupied the position more significance in economic. As people focused on economy just like this the social scientific factors of globalization were relatively slighted. When Robertson said world becoming singular, his argument brought the development of various social sciences. It affected the sociology, political science and anthropology.

 

The thing we need to be careful when we discuss this is don’t think globalization’s mainly feature is just increasing connectivity. Not only connectivity but increasing global consciousness is also important. but increasing global consciousness could be gain by increasing connectivity in various way. These two feature was studied by scholar of different field. Connectivity has been usually considered by political scientist, international relations specialists and economists. On the other side, global consciousness has been studied more by anthropologists, sociologists and cultural historians.

 

Globalization is being discussed that has three dimensions which is economic, political and the cultural. In cultural dimension, Ritzer, who directly works on globalization of social customs and relationships, has been suggested the concept called Macdonaldization. It’s negative aspect of globalization. It presents uniform commodity or service that can be considered homogeneity. Ritzer was worried about the corporation similar with McDonald spread to other nation from specific nation in this case, America. There might be a few changes but still this phenomenon appears quite often all over the world. In conclusion, the expansion of capitalism around the world is seen to be needed the elevation of the cultural subjects.

 

About the form of globalization, Immanuel Wallerstein claimed that the world could have become as a single place; singular system. But It is not convincing enough to apply in real world where we live. It would have been possible if the ideology of world would be a Soviet Communist Party or German Fascism. Also he thought the present world system is made from expansion of capitalism. But, as we have been denied the simple economic approach we need to think the whole globalization process in a multifaceted way. So that National states should also discuss ways to embrace globalization. They have to be regarded as one of process of globalization. The concept of national identity is becoming multiculturality across the world. And the extensive migration had affected on this issue. with migration occurring around the world, the nation state often became a multicultural nation. Naturally the global norm had been changed to polyethnicity.

 

Meanwhile, according to Beck and Beck Gernsheim, the globalization has also had a great impact on self and individuality. Whole world is getting depend on inputs of individuals. It tends to be more clearly in the West like the manipulation of individuals identities by the state, but overall it occurs beyond the West. The manipulation of one’s identity mainly was caused by the anonymity of Internet. Self-identity can be expressed between similarity and uniqueness. For example, there’s always global trend on every side like fashion, hair style, life style, architecture and so on. But each individuals can show self-identity through accepting common trends by adding items with their own individuality.  

 

When we discuss about globalization, there’s a topic that cannot be omitted: Glocalization. This concept has been discussed in the business field and recently became main characteristic in globalization. Glocalization actually emerged from the discussion of global and local relations. Global and local is not extremely opposite side like binary idea. Even though globalization goes on, not uniformly the same thing but still contextual differences are necessary. Various service or goods market need to adapt their things in particular contextual. From a sociological and anthropological point of view, glocalization was caused by the concept of diffusion. Sometimes people misunderstand that world flows in a globalized world but actually it’s impossible. Because we don’t know what totally globalized world look like and its norm.

 

In conclusion, It’s important to increase global connectivity and global consciousness. And globalization should focus on nation states, world politics, individuals and humankind. and globalization is not ontological so it’s hard to explain or define what that is exactly. We should be wary of looking at globalization only negatively and using it as a source of all problems.

 2) New learning, interesting

The interesting is the antiglobalization part. I’ve heard a lot about globalization so this topic is quite used to me. But when I think about globalization, I didn’t thought there was an opposite opinion-antiglobalization. Of course globalization has many positive aspect but also has negative aspect. Through this article, I could have chance to think about also understand this both side and. Ironically, as the movement that against capitalistic globalization is spread all over the world, this phenomenon itself was accepted as a process of globalization.

And another thing that I could learn in this article is McDonaldization. As a person who enjoy McDonald, this standardization system gives us convenience and make us to expect more than a certain level of service that can be received anywhere. But also we need to caution about the spread of excessively uniformed practices that do not fit particular country or situation without flexibility. And remember that the people who work to provide the service or goods are doing highly repetitive work but still they are human being. As time goes by, more and more transnational corporations are emerging. But they shouldn’t just focus on efficiency. They have to keep considerate the way how to people work like human being and also how to adapt properly in every different situation. this expansion should care about cultural problems because all nations have different culture and economic system.

3) Discussion

     I have two topics I want to discuss with you. 

I kept in mind in this article that many people in developing countries are unwilling to accept the definition of globalization from a more privileged social context. and now I know that the anti-globalization movement also happened from this perspective. It is true that globalization leads the world in a more advanced direction, but as there are exceptions to everything, it does not apply to all countries. Rather, developing countries were wary of the globalization strategy led by advanced countries. because the world could flow to the center of nation that have great power. And indeed, if we look at the problems of modern society, where globalization is underway, advanced countries make great profits by installing factories in countries with relatively low manpower or land prices and producing goods they want cheaply and exporting them to other countries, but if we look at countries where factories are installed, there are overflowing people who work for cheap wages. Furthermore, harmful substances from factories pollute the environment and threaten the safety of the native people. In this case, developed countries will continue to be rich on the other hand, developing countries will even get the environmental problems. Isn't there a way win-win for everyone? what direction should globalization, which developing countries can all agree on, head to?

The second thing I want to discuss together is related to cultural relativism. Globalization has made it easy for us to access cultures and languages around the world. Not only can you experience it in person, but you can also experience it indirectly through the Internet or media. As a result, each country's unique traditional culture remained, also had a mixed lifestyle. And as we begin to understand the culture of other countries, we could have an attitude of understanding the culture of other countries as it is. In fact, in some countries, unethical things happen under the name of culture. For example, circumcision or honor murder. I personally think that culture or institution can’t be above people. Should we embrace this culture? There are global norms that followed all over the world, but the those examples are clearly inconsistent. So can we leave this issue just because it is a culture of another country? A lot of people are still suffering at this moment. Economic problems, environmental pollution, and these cultural problems are now difficult to solve within a single country because the world is complicated. How can we solve these problems? Is it something that can intervene or help from other countries? Let me know what you think