GBTE-C01: Globalization: Conceptualization, Origins, and History §

Class: IS403 Created Time: October 22, 2021 3:58 PM Database: Class Notes Database Last Edited Time: January 14, 2022 7:33 AM Type: Lecture, Reading Notes

1. How does Ritzer (the author) define globalization? §

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• Globality: The concept of globality refers to the condition [in this case omnipresence] resulting from the process of globalization

2. What are the metaphors that Ritzer uses to conceptualize globalization and how does Ritzer use those metaphors to conceptualize globalization?

• A metaphor involves the use of one term to help us better understand another
• Author compared humans, information, products, and the environment before globalization as being solid
  • unchanging, restricted to one place, interacting only with the surrounding elements (people, product, info)
  • barriers exist and are erected to prevent the free movement of things (borders, great wall of China, Warfare&tension = Berlin Wall) ⇒ freezing relations between the two separated people
  • There are calls to create new walls now adays (Brexit, US-Mexican border)
• There are small liquidity of many things but not much until the last several decades that solid and divided things seemed to melt with globalization
  • transportation, communication, the Internet have made people, cargo, newspapers more liquid
• Flow: globalization is increasingly characterized by great flows of increasingly liquid phenomena of all types, including people, objects, information, decisions, places
  • Solid → Liquid
  • Flow can go even over state’s sovereignty through supra-territorial connections
• Structures: barriers
• Heavy → Light: information/knowledge are getting lighter, tools are getting easier to transport
  • People are lighter and easier to move with transportation technologies
  • Organization structures such as Al-Qaeda are lighter and less structured/held down than the US military therefore more flexible
• Challenges to flattening the world
  • Borders are still going up
  • Digital borders are getting more common (China’s firewall)
  • North and South Divide
• we may live in a more liquefied, more weightless world, but we do not live in a flat world

3. According to Ritzer, what factors expedite and impede globalization (flows)? §

• Challenges to the flow of the world
• Communication, internet info, are all things that can be monitored and restricted by the government
• Expediting factors: quickens the flow
  • Heavy/hard infrastructures (created by states (technologies, ICT, airports, ports, sea routes, express ways, regional/global mechanisms (free trade agreements,
    • they became weightless and flow very easily
  • the static paths that most world processes follow that impedes anyone not inside the reach of those paths
    • airline path, border process,
• Impeding factors: slows down the flow
  • States (state leaders, political leaders) erect barriers of the globalization process, ‘negative’ perceptions about the impacts of globalization (eg. border barriers, economic barriers, barriers concerning the movement of people.)
  • There are barriers created to only allow outflow but not inflow of things that can bring negative consequences
    • immigration, products, illegal goods still need to be used
    • Job/sales competition with locals
• Subtle Factors
  • Inequality makes it so people of different class and financial status makes them have different experiences in flow of products, info…
  • Economic, gender, political, geographical characteristics of people can cause discriminations from policy makers, businesses practices

History and Origins of Globalization §

Hardwired §

• Chanda: globalization stems from a basic human urge to seek a better and more fulfilling life
• Initial Globalization: since the Ice Age our ancestors walked out of Africa in search of better food and security, to oceans and settles on all continents
• Trade
• Missionary Work
• Adventures and Conquest: Politics and warfare

Cycles §

• Globalization evolves in a cyclical manner
  • People and things are born, get old, and disappears
  • Nothing is permanent and there’s not clear starting point

Phases §

Nederveen Pieterse sees 8 great phases of globalizations happened

1. Eurasian Phase (starting 3000 BCE). Agricultural and urban revolutions, migrations, increased trade, and ancient empires grew out of Eurasia.

• Agricultural revolution, ancient people moved from hunting gathering to farming and raising animals
• People started living in large gatherings, towns, cities

2. Afro Eurasian Phase (starting 1000 BCE). Commercial revolutions commenced in the Greco‐Roman world, West Asia, and East Africa.

• In Europe, the Roman Empire spread out far, trade routes appreared connecting previously isolated communities

3. Oriental Phase I (starting 500 CE). The world economy emerged alongside the caravan trade in the Middle East.

• The spread of globalization to the Asia continent or at least the middle east
• caravans of a group of merchants, pilgrims, or travelers journeying together move between cities in the middle east
  • The trade routes served principally to transfer raw materials, foodstuffs, and luxury goods from areas with surpluses to others where they were in short supply.”
  • usually for mutual protection in deserts or other hostile regions.

4. Oriental Phase II (starting 1100 CE). Improvements in productivity and technology emerged throughout East and South Asia, with increased urbanization and development of the Silk Routes.

• The silk roads connected East Asia and Western Europe and the Middle East

5. Multicentric Phase (starting 1500 CE). Trade expanded across the Atlantic Ocean and into the Americas.

• Christopher columbus, created cities, ports of English in American continent
• The new world: not start any colonies yet

6. Euro‐Atlantic Phase (starting 1800 CE). The Euro‐Atlantic economy developed through industrialization and the colonial division of labor.

• Industrial revolution in Europe
• Colonialization of the West all around the world, further connecting and influencing countries to foreign cultures and influences.

7. 20C Phase (starting 1950 CE). MNCs and global value chains emerged throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan, and the Cold War ended.

• Creation of global supply chain, where products are made, shipped, and assembled separately all around the world
• countries rely on each other to specialize in specific technology or production for their own prosperity

8. 21C Phase (starting 2000 CE). A new geography of trade encompasses East Asia and emerging economies, with a global rebalancing of power and economic flows.

• Emerging economies of East Asia, Japan, China, Korea challenging the strengths Europe and America had before this
• globalization is not unique to today’s world
  • The process of globalization isn’t continuous
• globalization won’t come in the same forms as past ones, but will globalization functions as growing connectivity, which develops and accelerates around various centres across time

Events §

• Globalization developed in a linear manner
  • any single event can boost the progress of globalization
  • list of events: political, economical, technological, militarily events that furthered globalization
    • Expansion of Roman Empire is the start of Globalization

Broader, More Recent Changes §

1. The emergence of the US as the global super power
   • Emergence of Institutions: League of Nations, UN, Brettenwood System
2. The emergence of MNCs
   • Technological companies that furthered communication, market, social connection
   • Amazon: Goods and products spread to all over the world
3. The end of the Cold War

💡 Notes:

• In social science there are no one correct answer, we must understand as many different perspectives as possible to clarify your own knowledge.