Defining Globalization

Introduction
• Globalization is a very important change, the “most
important” change (Bauman, 2003)
• The reality and omnipresence makes us see ourselves as
part of what we refer to as the “global age” (Albrow, 1996)
(internet – Google, mass media)
Defining Globalization
•Encompasses a multitude of processes that involves the
economy, political systems, and culture.
•Process of “world shrinkage, of distances getting shorter,
things moving closer” (Thomas Larsson)
•Occurring through and with regression, colonialism and
destabilization.
•Globalization as colonization (Martin Khor – former President
of Third World Network (TWN) in Malaysia)
Definitions could be classified as:
a. Broad and inclusive – include a variety of issues that deal
with overcoming traditional boundaries
b. Narrow and exclusive – limiting, adhere to only particular
definitions
• Globalization means the onset of the borderless world
(Ohmae, 1992)
• The characteristics of the globalization trend include the
internationalizing of production, the new international division
of labor, new migratory movements from South to North, new
competitive environment that accelerates these processes, and
the internationalizing of the state… making states into agencies
of the globalizing world (Robert Cox)
Definitions deal with either economic, political, or social
dimensions
• “Globalization is a transplanetary process or a set of processes
involving increasing liquidity and the growing multidirectional
flows of people, objects, places, and information as well as
the structures they encounter and create that are barriers to,
or expedite, those flows (Ritzer, 2015)
• Assumes that globalization could bring either or both
integration and/or fragmentation
3. Globalization is a reality. It is changing as human society
develops (has happened before, still happening today, and continue
to happen in the future; its future is more difficult to predict)

4. Globalization is not easy to define because in reality,

globalization has a shifting nature. It is complex, multifaceted,
and can be influenced by the people who define it.
Metaphors of Globalization
Solid and Liquid
• Solidity – barriers that prevent or make difficult the
movement of things
Solids can either be natural or man-made
Natural solids
• Landforms and bodies of water

Man-made barriers
• Great Wall of China
• Berlin Wall
• Nine-dash line
Great Wall of China
Berlin Wall
Solid and Liquid
• Liquidity – refers to the increasing ease of movement of
people, things, information and places in the contemporary
world.
Characteristics:
- Change quickly and are in continuous fluctuation (global
finance – stock market)
- Movement is difficult to stop (videos in Youtube & FB)
- Forces made political boundaries more permeable to the
flow of people and things (decline/death of the nation-state)
• Liquidity and solidity are in constant interaction. However,
liquidity is the one increasing and proliferating today.
• Liquidity is the metaphor that could best describe
globalization
Flows
• Movements of people, things, places, and information
brought by the growing “porosity” of global limitations
(Ritzer, 2015)
• Foreign cuisines
• Global financial crises can bring ramifications to other regions of
the world – spread of the effects of American financial crisis on
Europe in 2008
• Poor illegal migrants flooding many parts of the world
• Virtual flow of legal and illegal information (blogs and child
pornography)
• Filipino communities abroad and the Chinese communities in the
Philippines
GLOBALIZATION THEORIES
• Theories see globalization as a process that increases either
homogeneity or heterogeneity
• Homogeneity – refers to the increasing sameness in the
world as cultural inputs, economic factors, and political
orientations of societies expand to create common practices,
same economies, and similar forms of government.
• Homogeneity in culture is often linked to cultural
imperialism
A given culture influences other cultures.
Ex. Christianity brought to us by Spaniards, Americanization, spread
of neoliberalism, capitalism and the market economy in the world
GLOBALIZATION THEORIES
• Existence of “McWorld” – only one political orientation is
growing in today’s societies
• Media imperialism
• Process of McDonaldization – Western societies are
dominated by the principle of fast food restaurants
• Global spread of rational systems (efficiency, calculability,
predictability and control)
• Grobalization – process wherein nations, corporations, etc.
impose themselves on geographic areas in order to gain
profits, power, and so on.
• Heterogeneity – creation of various cultural practices, new
economies and political groups because of the interaction of
elements from different societies in the world.
• It refers to the differences because of either lasting
differences or of the hybrids or combinations of cultures that
can be produced through the different transplanetary
processes.
• Heterogeneity in culture is associated with cultural
hybridization
• Glocalization – As global forces interact with local factors or
a specific geographic area, the “glocal” is being produced
(Roland Robertson)
• Economy
- Commodification of cultures and “glocal” markets
• Political institutions
- The “Jihad” - alternate of McWorld
- refers to political groups that are engaged in an
“intensification of nationalism and that leads to greater
political heterogeneity throughout the world.”
Dynamics of Local and Global Culture
Global flows of culture tend to move more easily around the
globe than ever before, especially through non-material digital
forms.
Three Perspectives on Global Cultural Flows
1. Cultural differentialism – cultures are essentially different
and are only superficially affected by global flows
2. Cultural hybridization – emphasizes the integration of local
and global cultures
Globalization is considered to be a creative process which
gives rise to hybrid entities that are not reducible to either the
global or the local.
3. Cultural convergence – stresses homogeneity introduced by
globalization.
Cultures are deemed to be radically altered by strong flows,
while cultural imperialism happens when one culture imposes itself
on and tends to destroy at least parts of another culture.
John Tomlinson – critique of cultural imperialism
Deterritorialization of culture – means that it is much more difficult
to tie culture to a specific geographic point of origin