W14. Economic Globalization/ Kang Ha Eun

Advertising and Public Relations, Kang Ha Eun

WHAT IS ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION?

       Many agree on the idea that the transnational corporation formed the global economy. And there is the widely held view that global corporations are emasculating the autonomy of nation-states which is actually not true. 

       In the early days of the international economic development, there were not many corporations which produce profit outside the home country. However, with their development, companies such as the East India Company created business empires which played an important role in the evolution of an interconnected political economy. They mostly did trading and exchanging, similar to that of today's global trading and service companies. Then, by the second half of the nineteenth century, companies manufacturing products outside their home country appeared.  They soon became transnationalized and the number of transnational corporations has increased exponentially. Modern transnational corporations have the power to coordinate and control operations in more than one country, even if it does not own them. If applied ownership criteria in this definition, 61,000 transnational corporations carry out international production in more than 900,000 foreign affiliates. Moreover, only 0.2% of the transnational corporations account for 14% of the sales of foreign affiliates worldwide. 

       TNC activity is measured using foreign direct investment(FDI) which is an investment in a firm in another country to gain control. This is different from portfolio investment, which is a purely financial investment. FDI is growing rapidly and this means that TNC is the integrating force in the global economy. 96 of the top 100 non-financial TNCs originate from the developed economies. Although FDI from developing countries has increased, it is less than one-third of the world FDI total. 

       Two reasons for TNC activity are a market-oriented investment and asset-oriented investment. First is the market-oriented investment. After reaching saturation point in the domestic market, the firm tries to find the new market and expand its territory. However, the transportation may be uneconomic or the market is restricted by the political and cultural regulations. So, it is desirable to appear to be embedded in a local market, and it becomes sensitive to the size and characteristics of markets. 

       There is a geographical imparity of markets and assets. Accordingly, early leading TNCs were mostly about natural resources and it was reasonable for them to locate at the source of supply. Development in transportation and communications technologies enabled firms to access other assets. Human labors are also unevenly distributed so industries such as textiles, garments, footwear, and consumer electronics moved in search of cheaper human resources. However, it is not the only driving force. Highly skilled and well-educated human capital has become more significant. 

       Firms develop transnational activities in two major ways. First is greenfield investment, which is the building of totally new facilities. It is favored by host countries, but it is risky for firms. Firms rather prefer the second way, merger and acquisition, and it has driven most of the growth in world FDI.  Another widely used way is the strategic collaboration with the competitors. This is different from M&A because identities of each firm don't disappear and the firms collaborate to solve the problem, such as sharing the risks of market entry. They are competitors but they can make synergy together.

       Geographic characteristics or firm's home country influence its behavior. Firms from countries with similar characteristics behave differently. However, the interconnectedness of the global economy transmits influences rapidly across boundaries. Involvement of other society brings modification of some of the practices. Thus, diversity continues to be the norm.
        

        The corporations do not stand alone as independent entities, they are rather embedded within complex and dynamic networks. The connection to the transnational networks inevitably creates tensions between TNCs and other organizations such as states, local communities, labor, consumers.

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION

     What interested me the most was how the imparity of resources played a role in economic globalization. I learn in Korean Geography that industries dealing with natural resources tend to locate near the resources because of high transportation cost. But I thought about that only in the national scale. Unevenly distributed resources made firms to move across the borders to seek their profit. Global firms are now in search of well-educated, highly skilled and strongly motivated workers, not just cheap labor costs. If I understand dynamics of economic globalization with political and cultural globalization as well, I could be the valuable human resource they are looking for.       

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION

       TNCs' transnational production networks are influenced by international regulatory systems. There are international institutions establishing technical standards, and sometimes they enable transnational networks to be feasible. 

       The author claims that they create problems of conformity to an international standard in specific places. What could be the possible problems and in what situation will it happen? 

W10. Political Globalization/ Kang Ha Eun

Advertising and Public Relations, Kang Ha Eun

WHAT IS POLITICAL GLOBALIZATION?

       According to this article, the concept of globalization refers to the multidimensional, accelerated and interconnected organization of time and space across national borders. As globalization proceeds, the concept of national borders blurs, and this stimulates political change as well as economical one. Political globalization specially deals with an approach to the social world which emphasizes post-national and transnational processes. In the political sphere of globalization, it is thought to have made the nation-state decline under the power of global forces. This article describes political globalization as a relational dynamic and highlights the multi-faced nature of globalization. Thus, political globalization can be explained by the relationship between three dimensions; global geopolitics, global normative culture, and polycentric networks. 

       As for the geopolitics of global power, we can look at the history of democracy. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, democracy spread worldwide and became the universally acceptable form of government. This phenomenon led to the proliferation of more and different kinds of political cultures. Despite the fact that the United States seems to have more global power, because of the political globalization, it is constantly challenged by many centers of power. Global normative culture, which is a dimension not specifically Western, is no longer confined to national borders. It includes not only human rights but also environmental concerns and this is based on political communication. Political acts are ever more related to global issues. The last dimension of globalization, polycentric networks, is associated with emerging forms of global governance. United Nations sees global political order based on the level of the nation-state, but there are other kinds which are associated with the notion of global civil society. The civil society is independent of global capitalism and its distinctive characteristic is that it is polycentric. These three dimensions of political globalization are interrelated with each other and do not exist separately.

       There are four social transformations which enable examination of the three dynamics of political globalization. The first one is the transformation of the nation-state, nationality, and citizenship. As the world becomes globalized, the notion of nation-state seems to decline, but it would be rather true to say that the idea is continuously transformed. It is not that states are losing its power, but in a globalized world, they just do not have a full control. And as global economy dominate a world economy, new economic forces, which have become a rival to states, are challenging the power of the nation-state. Sharing sovereignty with them leads to multi-governance, but it does not mean a loss of autonomy. In the transformation of nationality, global normative culture decoupled nationality and citizenship, and nationhood and statehood. International law is getting more power and the transformation of the nation-state increased subnational politics, for example, global cities resulted from the denationalization and the rise of non-territorial politics. 

       The public today, so-called a  'new public' is based on the open site of communication. The public sphere does not mean a mere spatial location but a discursive contestation process. It was originally conceived as a national public sphere, but with the rise of the commercial mass media, the new social theory arose. It viewed the public sphere wider as cosmopolitan and caused the emergence of the global public discourse in which the global public plays a key role. In this transformation of the public sphere and communication, global normative culture shapes political communication and makes it easier to see it in the public sphere. 

       The idea of civil society symbolizes the political potential of globalization and signals the onset of globalization. As Mary Robinson claims, the importance of the civil society lies in that democracy need pluralism and the civil society has a potential to regulate state not to become too intrusive or controlling. Moreover, global civil society is expected to resolve the contradiction arisen by globalization. First is the tendency to homogenize and to respect difference and the second is the power to individuate and to endow new communities with autonomy. As national norms have become universalized, the increase in transnational opportunities for interaction has activated and promoted growth in civil society. There is an ongoing debate, but global civil society is not just an aggregate of preexisting national civil society. The irony is the existence of a civil society is concertized by the ones who are skeptical about its efficiency. However, the civil society undermines the important aspect of territorial state and makes people feel less of the national citizen but also as cosmopolitan individuals.

       As the world becomes globalized, the meaning of political spaces and borders needed to be reassessed. Acknowledging the transformative power of globalization has increased the interest in the way social space is constructed. This has been stimulated by the blurred boundary and rising non-territorially based political forms fostered by globalization. The relationship between globalization and new political spaces has two dynamics. First, the network society is constituted by the social practices without geographical contiguity which exists in tension with a territorially defined form of spatial organization. Second is the idea of cosmopolitanization. Knowing the relationship between spaces and borders is essential to understand political globalization. Space is constituted of social and political relations, so managing just space is no longer important as it was to the nation-state. While undergoing globalization, the quantitative relationship between territory and borders has been inverted. The idea of the borderless world cannot be realized. But rebordering of globalization is different from that of a preexisting notion of the nation-state.

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT POLITICAL GLOBALIZATION

       When I first thought of political globalization, it seemed so far from my life and assumed it to be difficult. But it was actually something closely related to my daily life. Especially it was interesting to know that the power of international law is getting stronger. International law does not possess a coercive power so I doubted its power. In the process of globalization, even the regional norms proliferate and the generalized norms begin to gain power. Norms about human right should definitely be followed by every people with no exception. But as even what most of the people around the globe think to be right might not be right, we should share one another's idea through public discussion. That is the reason why global communication is so important and political globalization is essential. 

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT POLITICAL GLOBALIZATION

       According to this article, the idea of the public sphere declined as commercial mass media arose. This was interesting because what I major is advertising and I take classes about the power of advertising and mass media. Usually, there is negative perspective about commercial mass media for in many times, manufacturer deceives and tries to manipulate people to buy their products, but there is another perspective that mass media's power on people is not that strong. People still have the power to think based on their reason. Even though I cannot deny mass media's negative effect on the public forum, but I still think that it has a positive power to make people know and care about the issues happening on the other parts of the globe. 

W6. Cultural globalization/ Kang Ha Eun

Advertising and Public Relations, Kang Ha Eun

WHAT IS CULTURAL GLOBALIZATION?

       To introduce meaning and character of 'cultural globalization', this article first describes the defining features of the two terms: culture, and globalization. 

       Beginning with globalization, the author mentioned that it is a multidimensional process which occurs within the broad field of the economy, politics, technology, environmental change, and culture. Globalization also has to do with the increasing global connectivity. The network of interconnections and interdependencies is getting denser. Moreover, this process is accelerating in a modern world. Now, increasing connectivity can be said as part of our daily lives. Connectivity connotes both our use of communication technologies and perplexing urban environments. There is no doubt that we are living in a much more globally connected world today. All dimensions are important in the global world, but the most crucial element can be the economy for the world is mostly dominated by a capitalist system. However, according to the author, we have to resist the temptation to economic reductionism because it works on just a narrow idea of the economic and, it distorts the understanding of the area of culture. 

       The common phrase like 'the impact of globalization on culture' or 'the cultural consequences of globalization' implies the assumption that globalization is somewhat lying outside of the culture. This idea of cultural globalization comes out from cultural imperialism. In that concept, the culture seems to be passive: something that people experience but do not themselves produce. According to Clifford Geertz, culture is not a power, something to which social events can be causally attributed." However, to the question 'what is culture for?' it could be rather right to say that it is to generate meaning in life. Culture motivates people to make certain choices and actions. To understand cultural globalization, we have to think about how culturally informed local actions can have globalizing consequences. As the sum of individual actions consists the social institutions and has the power to govern our lives, it is important to understand, as a part, the globalized market and consumer activities. 

       To sum up, culture can be said as a dimension which globalization has an impact on but also the background which globalization is generated and shaped. 

       Globalization process seems to lead the world to a single global culture, as it seems to have a general unifying character among diverse dimensions. Therefore it is by no means surprising that there are assumptions that cultural globalization implies a form of cultural imperialism and claims that globalization is pushing people to make a 'global culture' However, increasing global connectivity doesn't necessarily mean that the world is economically or politically unified. There is an anxiety toward 'a kind of totalitarianism of culture': the total domination of world cultures by the iconic global brands such as Disney and Coca-Cola. But we have to distinguish between cultural goods and practice of culture. Thus, connectivity of globalization brings disparate cultures into closer contact, not installing Western culture as a global culture.

       Another aspect of globalization is 'deterritorialization'. The promising way of approaching cultural globalization is via understanding the effects of globalization. The globalization is changing our local lives most of us are living. This change can be explained by the idea of deterritorialization. According to Nestor Garcia Canclini, deterritorialization implies 'the loss of the natural relation of culture to geographical and social territories.' This means that the importance of the geographical location of a culture is becoming smaller. Thus, the culture is no longer tied to the limitations of locality. If the globalization is described as the diffusion of social economic connections throughout the world, deterritorialization can be explained as the reach of the connectivity into the local everyday life. Local culture is no longer constrained in its region. Deterritorialization can integrate distant culture into our daily lives and it can be felt in everyday practices. Of course, it can transform our local experience, it opens wider cultural horizons to the people, so events happening in the distant world is getting more and more significant. So it can be said that deterritorialization promotes the cultural openness.

       Cosmopolitan cultural politics is the attempt to reconcile the values of a different culture with the global-human community. However, this has a dilemma of universal human rights versus cultural difference. Considering cultural identity, it is the aspect of differentiating, institutionalizing and socially regulating nature of modern life. Globalization has been having an impact on creation and proliferation of cultural identity. People who regard identity as existential possession, rather than noticing its institutional features, tend to think of globalization as a threat to cultural identity. But, those who think like that are making a mistake of confusing Western-modern form of cultural imagination with a universal form of human experience.  


INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT CULTURAL GLOBALIZATION

       Most interesting fact I learned from this article is the new perspective of viewing a relationship between culture and globalization. Before reading this article, I just thought that globalization has an impact on cultural dimension. But the fact that "culture is a dimension in which globalization both has its effects and simultaneously is generated and shaped" was very interesting because culture seemed like a much more active dimension than I thought. Moreover, compared to last article emphasizing globalization's impact on economic sphere, this article dealt more with our daily cultural life with the question like "what is culture for?".


THINGS TO THINK ABOUT CULTURAL GLOBALIZATION

       Throughout this article, many scholars have insisted that the western culture has more power on globalization, but is it true? It seems that nowadays, different cultures have an impact on a different part of the culture. For example, Korean Bingsu became a globally popular dessert. Additionally, what makes local culture globally popular?

       I saw one student commenting on the cultural superiority of western culture, but as I mentioned above, I don't think western culture is not "always" superior to the rest of the world nowadays. There are many examples showing it is not. Like music, foods, and festivals.

W3. What is globalization?/ Kang Ha Eun

Advertising and Public Relations
Kang Ha Eun

WHAT IS GLOBALIZATION?
  According to google dictionary globaliztion is the process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale. Indeed, globalization affects every nation around the world. So it is important to know what globalization is and what its meanings are, along with its pros and cons. Globalization has been started 5~6 hundred years ago(Wallerstein's point of view), but it began to eccelerate since the development of Internet. It can be devided by three dimentions; political, economic, and cultural. Though cultural part of globalization seems prominent in our daily lives, all three dimentions of globalization are equally important.
  The concept regarding relationship between global and local is called glocalization. It is thought as the opposite concept of globalization, but it is rather in a relationship of head and tail of a coin. It seems that the diffusion/glocalization constrain homogenizing force of globalization. However, as Ritzer says, globalization doesn't limit itself and it is an ongoing process.

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT GLOBALIZATION.
  I haven't studied about globalization before this class, so I haven't thought about global franchise being a part of economical globalization. It is not just a global brand but the spread of consumption of goods. It seems homogenous but it is somehow adapted to the region it is located. For example, McDonald's have different menues in different countries
It was very interesting and made me think more about the meanings of globalization.

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT GLOBALIZATION.
  From the article, I've learned that globalization is misunderstood as the cause of global problems. The conflicts over the material resourses are all over the world. It sometimes developes as a war. We cannot destribute the resourses equally to every countries around the world. So there is a international law. But the problem is that it cannot force countries to follow the law. What can be other option to restrict the behaviors of them?