Credits, references, and bibliography
"Globalization is defined as the spread of worldwide practices, relations, consciousness, and organization of social life. Globalization theory emerged as the result of real world concerns with the dramatic transformations of globalization as well as a reaction against the earlier perspective of modernization theory. Globalization can be analyzed culturally, economically, and politically. Across each of these foci, theorists are divided over whether globalization results in homogenization or heterogenization. Some cultural theorists see globalization as producing homogeneity as a consequence of cultural imperialism. Others see it as producing distinctive local forms. Among economic theorists, some assert that globalization produces homogeneity as a result of the spread of the market economy with the aid of international organizations such as the IMF. Others focus on the heterogeneity of local markets and the existence of flexible specialization (glocalization). Some political/institutional perspectives focus on the growth of a single model of governance around the world. Others assert that globalization has resulted in intense nationalist retrenchment."(1)
Noam Chomsky, "What is Globalization"
Major Contemporary Theorists on Globalization
Cultural Theory
Shift Happens (the original, "Did you Know")
Economic Theory
"Many of the most important perspectives on the economic aspects of globalization are associated with Marxian theory. Leslie Sklair describes two systems of globalization. The capitalist system is now dominant but it is shadowed by an antiglobalization movement fed by the problems of class polarization and ecological instability. Sklair accords priority to transnational corporations and a class of transnational capitalists which share global interests and perspectives that transcend national origins. Within capitalist globalization the culture-ideology of consumption is particularly important because it creates a global mood that is beneficial to transnational corporations. Sklair hopes that national protectionism and new social movements will succeed in countering the negative consequences of capitalist globalization in the coming century. Integrating Marxism with postmodernism, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri offer a postmodern interpretation of the global economy centered on the concept of empire. They suggest the globalization is governed by an empire that cannot be traced to any single nation or place and is omnipresent. Lacking territorial and temporal boundaries, empire seeks to control thought, action, interaction, groups, and even biopower. It seeks to be a juridical power based on such things as norms, ethics and truth which compels it to incorporate new places, to affirm differences, and to stratify and manage these differences. Hardt and Negri suggest that the multitude which sustains empire in various ways may be a force that is capable of overthrowing empire and creating a counter-empire." (1)
Political Theory (James Rosenau)
"James Rosenau's ideas about distant proximities and fragmegration are illustrative of the thinking of political scientists on the subject of globalization. With distant proximities Rosenau seeks to capture the paradoxical sense that what seems remote is also close at hand in a global world. Fragmegration holds another uneasy opposition: the idea that the world is both fragmenting and integrating at the same time. Rosenau sees fragmegration arising from a number of sources including new technology, a new emphasis on analytical skills, an explosion of voluntary organizations with global reach, the vigorous activities of subnational and transnational organizations, intensified mobility via travel and migration, the weakening of nation-states, the transfer of loyalties away from nation-states, and the globalization of national economies. These changes have created new challenges for states seeking to find new ways to govern in a fragmegrating world." (1)
Contemporary Application: Al-Jazeera and Globalization (2)
Internet Exercises
Exercise 1 (1)
Go to http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Facts.asp and read the global poverty fact sheet. Then, answer the following questions:
Weblinks
Works Cited
1.
Much of this page comes from the "Instructor's Manual" to accompany Contemporary
Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics, Second Edition,
George Ritzer, Mcgraw-Hill, 2007. The Instructor's Manual was prepared by James
Murphy, University of Maryland, College Park and Todd Stillman, Fayetteville
State University. These excerpts are from chapter 10.
2. Ritzer, George. 2007/2010/2013. Contemporary Sociological
Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics. 2nd/3rd/4th editions. St. Louis: McGraw-Hill
Unless otherwise noted, all pages within the web site http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/ ©2015 by
Robert O. Keel.
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