W3. What is globalization? / Minseong kim

1.     Summary

 In this article, authors, Ronald Robertson and Kathleen E. White, want to answer a question – “What is Globalization.” As answering the question, they tried to characterize globalization with three sentences.

 First, globalization consists primarily of two major directional tendencies, increasing global connectivity and increasing global consciousness. Consciousness does not imply consensus, but see the world as a whole. In article, there are the details of process to be concluded like it.

In the past, there were thought that the most important single defining feature of globalization is that of increasing connectivity. Little attention is given to what could be considered as a combination of both subjective and cultural factors. It is maintained that increasing global consciousness runs in complex ways with increasing connectivity. In other words, there were the relative neglect of the latter in favour of the former. But after ‘terrorism’ problem, people have thought that there must not be relative neglect of the two.

Second, globalization has a particular form, one which has been consummated by the founding of the United Nations organization. This means that, like the operations of the UN, globalization is focused upon four points of reference: nation-states; world politics; individuals; and humankind. In the article, there is process to upper conclusion with Wallerstein’s point of view.

 Wallerstein says that the world could have become the singular ‘system’. From Wallerstein’s point of view, the present world-system has been produced primarily by the expansion of capitalism over the past 5 or 6 hundred years. This expansion is challenged by what he calls anti-systemic movement. In this reason, we start to think of the overall process of globalization in a more multifaceted way. From much of the present authors’ work on globalization after Wallerstein generation, the four points of reference are made.

 Third, globalization is constituted by four major dimensions – the cultural, the political, the economic and the social. Before thinking about globalization has been undertaken by sociologists, there were three major dimensions of such: the economic, the political and the cultural. Paradoxically, although the neglect of the social dimension is rather glaring, suffice to say that the social dimension has surely been crucial in the process of globalization. And these four dimensions are in reality heavily interacted. Furthermore, any one of these dimensions is not more important than the others.

2.     New, interesting or unusual items I learned

The most interesting point in the article is the expression about relationship between global and local. As mentioned in the article, I also have thought that the local is regarded as the opposite of the global. But the expression in the article “think of the two as not being opposites but rather as being different sides of the same coin.” is very unusual and interesting. I can more easily understand ‘glocalization’ with this point of view.

 There is another interesting item that I found in article. It is that seeing ‘Roman Empire’ as proto-globalization. I have thought that globalization was derived from technological development. But like the article mentioned, ‘Roman Empire’ can be classified as ‘globalization’ In this point, I want to discuss with you guys.

3.     Discussion

If ‘Roman Empire’ is regarded as kind of proto-globalization, which dimension constitute Roman Empire’s globalization, the economic? the cultural? the social? or the political? I think that there was another effective dimension beyond the four, ‘the violent’ such as power of army.

 I think America’s Iraq invasion is similar with Roman Empire’s globalization. I think that by making an ostentatious display of America’s military strength, U.S.A globalized the liberal democracy to Iraq dominated by Saddam Hussein.

 Another thing I want to discuss is that globalization by seizing with military power like Roman Empire is good thing because of being globalized? There was no choice to be globalized. If they didn’t want to, wasn’t that globalization bad thing?