Globalization

I

Introduction

Globalization, concept that encapsulates the growth of connections between people on a planetary scale. Globalization involves the reduction of barriers to trans-world contacts. Through it people become more able—physically, legally, culturally, and psychologically—to engage with each other in “one world”.

Global connections take many forms. For instance, jet aeroplanes transport passengers and cargo across any distance on the planet within a day. Telephone and computer networks effect near-instantaneous interpersonal communication between points all over the Earth. Electronic mass media broadcast messages to world audiences. Countless goods and services (such as Nissan cars and Club Med holidays) are supplied to consumers in global markets. Moreover, some articles (including much clothing and electronics) are manufactured through trans-world processes, where different stages of production are located at widely dispersed locations on the Earth. The US dollar and the Euro are examples of currencies that have global circulation. In global finance, various types of savings and credits (for example, offshore bank deposits and Eurobonds) flow in the world as a single space. Many firms (for example, Exxon), voluntary associations (for instance, Amnesty International), and regulatory agencies (such as the World Trade Organization) operate across the globe. Climate change (so-called “global warming”) and stratospheric ozone depletion are instances of anthropogenic (that is, human-induced) ecological developments that unfold on a planetary scale. Finally, people experience global consciousness, inasmuch as we define the realm of our lives in trans-world, planetary terms.

Globalization is the trend whereby these various kinds of global relations emerge, proliferate, and expand. As a result of globalization, social geography gains a planetary dimension. “Place” comes to involve more than local, provincial, country, regional, and continental realms. With globalization the world as a whole also becomes a social space in its own right.

Thus global connections entail a different kind of geography. Whereas other social contexts are territorially delimited, global relations transcend territorial distances and territorial borders to unfold on planet Earth as a single social space. In this sense globalization might be characterized as the rise of “supraterritoriality”.

Of course globalization does not signal the end of other social spaces. The rise of supraterritoriality does not eliminate the significance of localities, countries, and regions. Nor does the spread of trans-world connections abolish territorial governments or dissolve territorial identities. The global coexists and interrelates with the local, the national, the regional, and other dimensions of geography.

Globalization has also not encompassed all of humanity to the same extent. In terms of territorial location, for example, global networks have involved the populations of North America, Western Europe, and East Asia much more than other parts of the world. In terms of class, global finance has been a domain of the wealthy far more than the poor. In terms of gender, men have linked up to global computer networks much more than women.

Needless to say, this unevenness of globalization has important implications for social power relations. People with connections to supraterritorial spaces have access to important resources and influence that are denied to those who are left outside. In this regard, some commentators have deplored “global apartheid”, as manifested in the so-called “digital divide” and other inequalities. Others have objected to a “cultural imperialism” of Hollywood and McDonald’s in contemporary globalization. Since the mid-1990s such discontents have provoked a so-called “anti-globalization movement” marked by regular mass protests against global companies, the International Monetary Fund, and other prominent agents of trans-world relations.

II

History

Historians have dated the onset of globalization at various points. Taking the longest view, we could say that globalization began a million years ago with the first transcontinental migration of the human species out of Africa. Alternatively, we could date the start of globalization from the 5th and 6th centuries bc with the birth of two of the earliest “world” religions, namely Zoroastrianism and Buddhism. A secular global imagination arose in the 15th and 16th centuries when, for example, voyagers first undertook a circumnavigation of the Earth (see Exploration, Geographical). Technologies for high-speed global connections initially appeared in the mid-19th century with the advent of intercontinental telegraph lines. The second half of the 19th century also saw the arrival of long-distance telephony, global commodity markets, global brand names, a global monetary regime, and global associations in several social movements, including labour and feminist activism. The consolidation of intercontinental colonial empires (see Colonies and Colonialism) in the late 19th century facilitated the development of many of these trans-world connections.

Whenever one dates the onset of globalization, it is clear that the process has unfolded on an unprecedented scale in contemporary history. Most manifestations of global connectivity have seen most of their growth during the past half-century. Consider the recent spread of jet travel, satellite communications, facsimiles, the Internet, television, global retailers, global credit cards, global ecological problems, and global regulations. To take but one indicator, the world count of radio receivers rose from fewer than 60 million in the mid-1930s to over 2,000 million in the mid-1990s. Today’s society is more global than that at any earlier time.

III

Forces Behind Globalization

What generates globalization? What makes it happen? Different social theories offer different interpretations of how and why trans-world connections have grown. For example, liberal economics stresses the role of unfettered market forces in a context of technological change and deregulation. In contrast, Marxist political economy highlights the dynamics of the international capitalist system as the engine of globalization. For many sociologists, meanwhile, globalization is a product of modern rationalism. Others find their explanation of globalization in a combination of these causes.

Technological innovation has contributed to globalization by supplying infrastructure for trans-world connections. In particular, developments in means of transport, communications, and data processing have allowed global links to become denser, faster, more reliable, and much cheaper. Large-scale and rapid globalization has depended on a host of innovations relating to coaxial and later fibre-optic cables, jet engines, packaging and preservation techniques, semiconductor devices, computer software, and so on. In other words, global relations could not develop without physical tools to effect cross-planetary contacts.

Next to technology, regulation has also played an enabling role for globalization. Supraterritorial links would not be possible in the absence of various facilitating rules, procedures, norms, and institutions. For example, global communications rely heavily on technical standardization. Global finance depends in good measure on a working world monetary regime. Global production and trade are greatly promoted by liberalization, that is, the removal of tariffs, capital controls, and other state-imposed restrictions on the movement of resources between countries. Tax laws, labour legislation, and environmental codes can also encourage (or discourage) global investment. In short, globalization requires supporting regulatory frameworks.

Capitalism has been a further force for globalization. Already in the 1850s, Karl Marx noted in his Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie (A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859) that “capital by its nature drives beyond every spatial barrier” to “conquer the whole Earth for its market”. More specifically, global markets offer prospects of increased profits through higher sales volumes. In addition, larger production runs to feed global markets promise enhanced profits due to economies of scale. Capitalists also pursue globalization since it allows production facilities to be sited wherever costs are lowest and earnings greatest. Furthermore, global accounting practices enable prices and taxes to be calculated in ways that raise profits. Finally, global connections themselves (telecommunications, electronic finance, and so on) create major opportunities for profit making.

Other impulses to globalization have come from rationalism as the prevailing modern mode of knowledge. With its secular character, rationalist thought orients people towards the physical world of the planet rather than spiritual realms. With its anthropocentrism, rationalist consciousness focuses on the Earth as the realm of the human species. With its faith in positivist science, rationalism posits that modern, objective ways of knowing have universal validity and can (and should) unite the world. With its instrumentalist logic, rationalism provides efficiency arguments for overcoming territorial barriers to solve human and social problems. In short, as a secular universalism, rationalism provides a knowledge foundation for globalization: a way of thinking that spurs the process.

Many theorists identify one of these forces as the primary engine of globalization and treat other elements as having secondary or no causal significance. Other analysts hold that globalization has a multi-causal dynamic involving the interrelation of several forces.

IV

Consequences

What, then, are the consequences of globalization? We have already noted the most direct impact, namely, that globalization changes the contours of social geography. However, since geography is intertwined with other dimensions of social relations, it is not surprising that globalization also has wider implications, inter alia for economics, politics, and culture.

In terms of economics, for example, globalization substantially alters the organization of production, exchange, and consumption. Many firms “go global” by setting up affiliates across the planet. Many enterprises also form trans-world alliances with other companies. Countless mergers and acquisitions occur as business adjusts to global markets. Questions of competition and monopoly can arise as a result. In addition, corporations relocate many production facilities as globalization reduces transport and communications costs. Globalization also expands the “virtual economy” of information and finance, sometimes at the expense of the “real economy” of extraction and manufacturing. All of this economic restructuring in the face of globalization raises vital issues of human security related to employment, labour conditions, poverty, and social cohesion.

In relation to politics, globalization has significant implications for the conduct of governance. Territorially based laws and institutions through local, provincial, and national governments are not sufficient by themselves to regulate contacts and networks that operate in trans-world spaces. Globalization, therefore, stimulates greater multilateral collaboration between states as well as the growth of regional and trans-world governance arrangements like the European Union and the United Nations. In addition, private-sector bodies may step in to regulate areas of global relations for which official arrangements are lacking, as has occurred regarding certain aspects of the Internet and trans-world finance, for instance. The resultant situation of multi-layered and diffuse governance raises far-reaching questions about the nature of sovereignty and democracy in a globalizing world.

With regard to culture, globalization disrupts traditional relationships between territory and collective identity. The growth of trans-world connections encourages the rise of non-territorial cultures, for example, on lines of age, class, gender, race, religion, and sexual orientation. As a result, identity tends—especially for people who lead more globalized lives—to become less fixed on territory, in the form of nation-states and ethnic bonds. Moreover, inasmuch as multiple cultures become densely intertwined in supraterritorial flows, globalization encourages more hybridity, where individuals develop and express a mix of identities. At the same time, other people—including those who have less opportunity to participate in global relations—react against globalization with defensive nationalism. In these various ways globalization calls the nature of community into question.

Of course the extent of social transformation connected with globalization must not be exaggerated. Hence traditional sectors like agriculture and manufacturing still matter in a globalizing economy. The state still figures centrally in the governance of global flows. Territorial cultures survive alongside—and in complex interrelations within—supraterritorial communities of meaning. Thus with globalization, as with any other trend, history involves an interplay of change and continuity.