Wednesday 9 January 2013

Lecture 12- Globalization


Globalisation & the Media Richard Miles 2013

„Covering a wide range of distinct political, economic, and cultural trends,
the term “globalization” has quickly become one of the most fashionable buzzwords of contemporary political and academic debate. In popular discourse, globalization often functions as little more than a synonym for one or more of the following phenomena: the pursuit of classical liberal (or “free market”) policies in the world economy (“economic liberalization”), the growing dominance of western (or even American) forms of political, economic, and cultural life (“westernization” or “Americanization”), the proliferation of new information technologies (the “Internet Revolution”), as well as the notion that humanity stands at the threshold of realizing one single unified community in which major sources of social conflict have vanished (“global integration”)‟

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/globalization/
„If we are talking about the “cultural”, we are concerned with the symbolic construction, articulation, and dissemination of meaning. Given that language, music, and images constitute the major forms of symbolic expression, they assume special significance in the sphere of culture ... Yet cultural globalization did not start with the worldwide dissemination of rock „n‟ roll, Coca-Cola, or football‟
Manfred B. Steger, Globalization: A very Short Introduction, page 69
„American sociologist George Ritzer coined the term “McDonaldization” to describe the wide-ranging sociocultural processes 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‟
Manfred B. Steger, Globalization: A very Short Introduction, page 71
„Does globalization make people around the world more alike or more different? ... A group of commentators we might call “pessimistic hyperglobalizers” argue in favour of the former. They suggest that we are not moving towards a cultural rainbow that reflects the diversity of the world‟s existing cultures. Rather, we are witnessing the rise of an increasingly homogenized popular culture underwritten by a Western “culture industry” based in New York, Hollywood, London and Milan‟
Manfred B. Steger, Globalization: A very Short Introduction, page 70
Key Concepts
Global Village
Globalisation
Cultural imperialism
Ecologism / Deep Green ideology 



















Definitions of globalisation
- socialist
- the process of transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones
- it can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together
- this process is a combination of economic technological, sociocultural and political forces

- capitalist
- the elimination of state-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that has emerged as a result

Globalisation - stanford encyclopaedia of philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/globalization
- spreading of free market

"Covering a wide range of distinct political, economic, and cultural trends, the term “globalization” has quickly become one of the most fashionable buzzwords of contemporary political and academic debate. In popular discourse, globalization often functions as little more than a synonym for one or more of the following phenomena: the pursuit of classical liberal (or “free market”) policies in the world economy (“economic liberalization”), the growing dominance of western (or even American) forms of political, economic, and cultural life (“westernization” or “Americanization”), the proliferation of new information technologies (the “Internet Revolution”), as well as the notion that humanity stands at the threshold of realizing one single unified community in which major sources of social conflict have vanished"

- removal of barriers to trade
- not just a neutral market, kind of market that's dominated by the West
- start to introduce a kind of dominant Western, American culture which is starting to take over rest of the globe
- Americanisation of the world
- all inter connected in some way - communications - made us more globalised
- different political agendas to each definition of globalisation

McDonalds
- 'American sociologist George Ritzer coined the term McDonaldization to describe the wide ranging sociocultural processes 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' - Manfred B. Steger
- principle of hierarchy, parts of a machine
- accurately describes situation going on currently

Marshall Mcluhan
- 'today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned' (1964)
- rapidity of communication echoes the senses
- we can experience instantly the effects of our actions on a global scale

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