How have sociologists explained the process of globalisation in the modern world?
To explain the process of Globalisation is not an easy task, as the process is multi layered and can be seen to affect different social and cultural groups in different ways (Lechner and Boli 2004). Sociologists, however, have reached a general consensus on what Globalisation as a phenomenon and process constitutes, and why it is appropriate to conceptualise it, and as such, allow it to be treated as a qualitatively different mode of social development.
Sociological explanations of Globalisation tend to concentrate on two related areas of social change peculiar to the modern world, which in this essay is to be defined as the world post World War Two. The first of these areas is the institutional, socio-economic and technological developments that the world has witnessed in this period, and the second is the cultural, subjective or consciousness related effects upon individuals and previously distinct societies that these changes have wrought.
The institutional changes that are viewed as the political foundations of Globalisation can be witnessed in the aftermath of the Second World War, with the creation of supra-national bodies such as the United Nations (Marshall 1998; Lechner and Boli 2004;) and its sub-body UNESCO in 1946 (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) (Cohen and Kennedy 2000; Lechner and Boli 2004), which stresses the commonness of humanity (Cohen and Kennedy 2002 Sociological explanations of the “objective” or structural developments are in general agreement that the process of Globalisation has relied heavily on the development of the expansion of the capitalist system (and hence industrialisation and modernity), the development of supra-national institutions, and the development and proliferation of high-speed communications technologies such as the telephone, television and the Internet.
The emphasis on the economic basis of Globalisation, known as world systems theory, is not surprisingly, adopted by sociologists of the Marxist tradition. In a sociological expansion of the International Political Economy world systems theories advocated by thinkers such as Hobsbawm and Wallerstein, Sklair (2002) views the expansion of global capital as fundamentally linked to the growth of media technologies, with world-wide media systems merely viewed as the instruments of the transnational capitalist class to inculcate an ideological representation of consumerism as the only system of economic and social existence (Sklair 2002). Other social-structural sociological explanations of Globalisation offer the view that the world is being standardised by a rational application of western bureaucratic methods. Ritzer (1993) in his book The McDonaldization of Society, portends that the world is becoming socially uniformed through the widespread applications of these methods of productive organisation.
Whilst the apparent power and global nature of Trans National Corporations is hard to deny (Cohen and Kennedy 2000), thinkers in the Marxist and Weberian tradition mentioned above have a limited explanation to offer as to the cultural nature of Globalisation, as they assume communication technologies to be essentially a one-way flow, proliferating the value system of consumerism, and lacking in any reciprocity.
This view is refuted by World Culture Theory that sees the process of globalisation as a process of interaction at a number of levels (see Appadurai 1996). Different cultures, due to communications technologies, the growth in international travel and tourism are increasingly brought into contact with one another, and this “time-space compression” (Harvey 1989) allows for the creation of new global identities, which previously would have been constrained by geographical limitations. The view of the world becoming culturally compressed, or squeezed together is echoed by Robertson (1992) and the importance of this approach is in the way that the process of Globalisation is not seen to be simply the creation of world political institutions or an imposition of a dominant class interest, but an ever-changing interaction of millions of conscious individuals. Media technologies and population flows, have given rise to a sense of consciousness and identity that can be argued to be entirely new – that people increasingly view themselves as members of a world society. It is this cultural process of interchange, allowed for by the interconnected nature of new media technologies, and the growth specifically of a world consciousness, that many sociologists utilise to explain, or interpret, the phenomenon of Globalisation (Harvey 1989; Lechner and Boli 2004; Cohen and Kennedy 2002). The formative stages of this view can be seen in Marshall McCluhan’s vision of the world becoming a “Global Village”. The idea of the global village is useful, as it views the world as essentially becoming smaller due to electronic technologies. However, unlike the idea we might have of, for example, a quaint English village, the movement towards the global village does not imply cultural homogenisation. Sociologists are keen to explain the process of globalisation, on the cultural level as the cultural expansion of the local to the global stage, as well as the impact of all other interconnected cultures on the local (Back 1998). This means, for example, that cultural products, such as music, TV programs and films, from less economically powerful nations such as Brazil can be exported to a world wide audience (Sreberny-Mohammadi 1991; cited in Back 1998)
In conclusion then, there are a wide range of sociological explanations for the process of Globalisation, ranging from the more structural approaches of sociologists in the classical Marxist and Weberian traditions and those who are more concerned with the cultural manifestations of Globalisation as a process of reflexive cultural interaction. The latter of these approaches has been particularly successful as explaining the rise of a global consciousness, which paradoxically involves the creation of more complex local cultural identities.
The problems of “explaining” such a process however is complicated by the age old sociological debates surrounding agency and structure – to what extent is the process related to power and the expansion of capitalist economies, and to what extent do conscious reflexive actors shape the future of the process through their own meaningful actions? These questions must be addressed fully if sociology is to attain a truly integrated explanation of the process of Globalisation.
Bibliography:
Lechner, F. L. & Boli, J. (2004). The Globalization Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Marshall, G. (1998). Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. Second Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cohen, R and Kennedy, P. (2000). Global Sociology. London: Macmillan.
Sklair, L. (2002). Sociology of the Global System. In Lechner, F. L. & Boli, J. (2004). The Globalization Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Ritzer, G. (1993) The McDonaldization of Society. London: SAGE.
Harvey, D. (1989). The Condition of Post Modernity. Oxford: Blackwell.
Robertson, R. (1992). Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: SAGE.
Back, L. (1998). Chapter Entitled Local/Global. In Jenks, C. (Ed). (1998). Core Sociological Dichotomies. London: SAGE.
Appadurai, A. (1996). Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. In Lechner, F. L. & Boli, J. (2004). The Globalization Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
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