THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD Globalization is an expansion, and intensification of social

relations and consciousness across world time and world space. It is about
UNIT I growing worldwide connectivity according to Steger.
INTRODUCTION TO GLOBALIZATION
Further, globalization is considered a multi-dimensional process
GLOBALIZATION CONCEPTS, MEANINGS, FEATURES, AND involving economic, political, technological, cultural, religious and ecological
DIMENSIONS dimensions. It suggests a dynamic process of change that results in either
positive or negative development. It leads to the creation of something new;
Globalization is the process in which people, ideas and goods it involves the multiplication of social connections and various activities that
spread throughout the world, spurring more interaction and integration transgress traditional and political, economic, cultural and geographical lines.
between the world's cultures, governments and economies
ATTRIBUTES, QUALITIES OR CHARACTERISTICS OF GLOBALIZATION
Globalization is a process of interaction and integration among the
people, companies, and governments of different nations, a process driven GLOBALIZATION HAS FOUR CHARACTERISTICS OR QUALITIES. THESE
by international trade and investment and aided by information technology. ARE:
This process has effects on the environment, on culture, on political systems,
1. It involves both the creation of new social networks and the multiplication
on economic development and prosperity, and on human physical well-being
of existing connections that cut across traditional, political, economic,
in societies around the world
cultural, and geographical boundaries.
Globalization is about growing worldwide connectivity.
EXAMPLE:
EXAMPLE: Brazilian World Cup: Today's media combine conventional TV coverage with
multiple streaming feeds into digital devices and networking sites that
People are engaged in buying and selling from other places in far-away lands transcend nationally based services.
like the famed Silk Road across Central Asia that connected China and
Europe during the Middle Age for thousands of years and they also invested 2. Globalization is reflected in the expansion and the stretching of social
in enterprises in other countries for centuries. relations, activities, and connections.

There were similarities in features of those prevailing wave of globalization EXAMPLES:

before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 to the current wave. There • Reaching of financial markets around the globe
is an increase cross border- trade, investment, and migration due to policy • Occurrence of electronic around the clock
and technical developments in the past few decades. It is in the area of • Emergence of gigantic and virtually identical shopping malls in all
economic development that observers believe the world has entered a new continents to cater to consumers who can afford commodities all
phase. Today's globalization is farther, faster, cheaper, and deeper in over the world-including products whose various components were
compared to earlier wave of globalization manufactured in different countries. This process is called social
stretching.
EXAMPLE:

Since 1950, the volume of world trade has increased by 20 times and from COVERED IN THE PROCESS OF SOCIAL STRETCHING ARE:
1997 to 1999, flows of foreign investment nearly doubled from $468 billion to
• Non-governmental organization
$827 domestically.
• Commercial enterprises
In the years since the Second World War, and especially during • Social clubs
the past two decades, many governments have adopted free-market • Regional & global institutions and associations (UN, EU, ASEAN,
economic systems, vastly increased their own productive potential and Google and others)
created myriad new opportunities for international trade and investment.
Governments also have negotiated dramatic reductions in barriers to 3. Globalization involves the intensification and acceleration of social
commerce and have established international agreements to promote trade exchanges and activities.
in goods, services, and investment. Taking advantage of new opportunities in
EXAMPLES:
foreign markets, corporations have built foreign factories and established
• The worldwide web relays distant information in real time
production and marketing arrangements with foreign partners. A defining
• Satellites provide consumers with instant pictures of remote
feature of globalization, therefore, is an international industrial and financial
events
business structure
• Sophisticated social networking by means of Facebook or twitter
One principal driver of globalization is technology. Economic life has become routine activity for more than a billion people around
is dramatically transformed by advancement in information technology. All the globe.
sorts of individual economic actors like consumers, investors, and
businesses which are valuable new tools for identifying and pursuing The intensification of worldwide social relations means that local
economic opportunities, including faster and more informed analyses of happenings are shaped by events occurring far away, and vice versa. This
economic trends around the world, easy transfers of assets, and means that there is intermingling of local and global, with the national and
collaboration with far-flung partners are provided by information regional in overlapping horizontal scale.
technologies.
4. Globalization processes do not occur merely or an objective, material level
Globalization is the process of integration of economies across but they also involve the subjective plane of human consciousness. Without
the world through cross-border flow of factors product and information erasing local and national attachments, the compression of the world into a
single place has increasingly made global the frame of reference for human
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) globalization thought and action.
is the growing economic interdependence of countries worldwide through
increasing volume and variety of cross border transactions in goods and Globalization involves both the macro-structures of a global
services and of international capital flows and also through the more rapid community and the micro-structures of global personhood. It extends deep
and wide diffusion of technology into the core of the self and its dispositions, facilitating the creation of
multiple individual and collective identities nurtured by the intensifying 2. POLITICAL DIMENSION
relations between the personal and the global. They differ from each other by This refers to an enlargement and strengthening of political
acceleration in the speed of social exchanges and widening of geographical interrelations across the globe
scopes
POLITICAL ISSUES THAT SURFACE IN THIS DIMENSION
HISTORICAL PERIODS OF GLOBALIZATION 1. The principle of state sovereignty
2. Increasing impact of various intergovernmental organization
1. THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD (10000 BCE-3500 BCE) 3. Future shapes of regional and global governance
In this earliest phase of globalization, contacts among hunters and
gatherers - who were spread around the world -were geographically The globalization rendered almost powerless any political efforts to
limited. In this period due to absence of advanced forms of technology, introduce restrictive policies affecting individual states, with the results that
globalization was severely limited. the world in many ways turned into a borderless world. Governments often
seek to restrict the migration of peoples, especially those coming from the
2. THE PRE-MODERN PERIOD (3500 BCE- 1500 CE) poor countries in the global South.
In this period the invention of writing and the wheel were great social
and technological boosts that moved globalization to a new level. The In the development of supra-national structures and associations held
invention of wheel in addition to roads made the transportation of together by common concerns and mutually agreed upon norm, the most
people and goods more efficient. On the other handwriting facilitated obvious is political globalization.
the spread of ideas and inventions.
On the part of the involved parties, informal structures which are
3. THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD (1500-1750) considered binding, bring together world power centers due to common
It is the period between the Enlightenment and the Renaissance. In this interests.
period, European Enlightenment project tried to achieve a universal
EXAMPLE:
form of morality and law. This with the emergence of European
• Global cities like New York, London, Tokyo, and Singapore are closely
metropolitan centers and unlimited material accumulation which led
connected with one another than they are to various cities in their
to the capitalist world system helped to strengthen globalization.
own countries.
• European Union, United nations, NATO, The World Trade
4. THE MODERN PERIOD (1750-1970)
Organization
Innovations in transportation and communication technology,
population explosion, and increase in migration led to more cultural
3. CULTURAL DIMENSION
exchanges and transformation in traditional social patterns. Process of
This refers to the increase in the number of cultural flows across the
industrialization also accelerated.
globe. Cultural interconnections are at the foundations of contemporary
globalization.
5. THE CONTEMPORARY PERIOD (FROM 1970 TO PRESENT)
The creation, expansion, and acceleration of worldwide
Individualism and consumerism which are the dominant cultural
interdependencies occurred in a dramatic way, and it was a kind of leap
characteristics of our age and the drive for economic success stimulated by
in the history of globalization.
the internet and other technological devices circulate much more easily than
DIMENSIONS OF GLOBALIZATION they did in earlier periods. In the dissemination of popular culture,
There are six dimensions in globalization. These include economic, transactional media corporations play a major role which brought a sharp
political, technological, cultural, religious and ecological dimensions. rise in homogenized popular culture that is manifested in the dominance of
fast-food restaurant on more aspects of life throughout the world.
1. ECONOMIC DIMENSION
Cultural diversity often results hybridization- a constructive interaction
This refers to the extensive development of economic relations
process between global and local characteristics which is often visible in
across the globe as a result of technology and the enormous flow of
food, music, dance, film, fashion, and language. As a result, there is a
capital that has stimulated trade in both sources and goods.
scarcely any society in the world that expresses itself in its own self-
• Major players in the current century's global economic order
contained and authentic culture.
1. Huge international corporations (General Motors, Walmart,
Mitsubishi) Media empires generated and directed the extensive flow of culture.
• International Economic Institutions (IMF, World Bank, The World Examples of these are Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and Disney. Advertisement
Trade Organization) plays an important role in this cultural flow by featuring various celebrities in
• Trading Systems the television aside from transforming newscast into entertainment shows.

The result of these powerful forces resulted in the wide gap between the 4. RELIGIOUS DIMENSION
rich and the poor countries. Religion is a personal or institutionalized set of attitudes, beliefs, and
practices relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged
MAJOR SOURCES OF ECONOMIC GROWTH ACROSS COUNTRIES
ultimate reality or deity. It is the most important defining element of any
1. Property rights
civilization as contrasted with race, language, or way of life. As such, it is also
2. Regulatory institutions
portrayed as a defining element in future conflicts. Whether the root cause
3. Institutions for macro-economics
of a particular conflict or merely a vehicle for the mobilization of nationalist
4. Stabilization
or ethnic passions, religion is certainly central to much of the strife currently
5. Institutions for social influence
taking place around the globe.
6. Institutions for conflict management
Jihadist globalism is a religious response to the materialist assault by
Economic institutions have decisive influence on investment in physical and
the ungodly West in the rest of the world. Coming out of what they consider
human capital, technology, and industrial productions. It is also important for
a pure form of Islam; its disciples seek to destroy all those alien influences
resource distribution.
that have been imposed on Muslim people. It applies to those extremely
violent strains of religion that convert the global imaginary into very concrete
political agendas and terrorist tactics. It is also applied to those violent
fundamentalists in the West who seek to transform the world into a Christian 2. GLOBALIZATION IS INEVITABLE AND IRREVERSIBLE.
Empire. Globalists believe that spread of market forces driven by
technological innovations is inevitable in globalization.
EXAMPLE: Neoliberals use this claim to convince people to adopt the
• Bin Ladin understands umma as a single community of believers natural discipline of the market if they want to prosper, which
professing faith in the one and only God, but at the same time implies the elimination of government controls over the market.
committed to destroying not only alien invaders but also corrupt
Islamic elites in order to return power to the Muslim masses. 3. NOBODY IS IN CHARGE OF GLOBALIZATION.
• Since one third of the world's Muslim population lives in non- This claim seeks to depoliticize the public debate on
Islamic countries, the restoration of God's proper reign must be a globalization and neutralizing anti -globalist movements.
global event. Hence, Al-Qaeda established jihadist cells in
various parts of the world. 4. GLOBALIZATION BENEFITS EVERYONE.
Globalists talk about the benefits of market liberalization such as
ROMAN CATHOLIC TEACHING OF GLOBALIZATION rising global living standards, economic efficiency, individual
freedom, and technological progress. But the reality is that the
There are eight (8) principles that summarize the Roman Catholic
opportunities of globalization are spread unequally, and power
Teachings
and wealth are concentrated among a specific group of people,
1. Commitment to universal human rights
regions and corporations.
2. Commitment to the social nature of the human person
3. Commitment to the common good
5. GLOBALIZATION FURTHERS THE SPREAD OF DEMOCRACY
4. Solidarity (The principle of Solidarity affirms that membership in the
IN THE WORLD.
human family means that all bear responsibility for one another.)
For the globalists democracy and free markets are synonymous.
5. Preferential option of the poor (In the Theology of the Incarnation-
The neoliberal explanation of globalization is ideological
Christ God became poor for us so as to enrich us by his poverty. The
because it is politically motivated and contributes to the
poor are susceptible to the effects of environmental irresponsibility
construction of particular meanings of globalization which
because they live in countries where cheap building materials and
stabilize existing power relations. Globalism tries to create
cheap labor are readily available. They regularly work in farming,
collective meaning and shape people's identities.
fishing, and forestry, areas which suffer environmental damage).
6. Subsidiary (The Catholic Church teaches that decisions should be
made at the lowest level in order to achieve the common good. UNIT II
7. Justice THE STRUCTURES OF GLOBALIZATION
8. Integral Humanism- is concerned with whole person
THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
Economic globalization refers to the increasing interdependence
JUSTICE IS DIVIDED IN THREE (3) CATEGORIES:
of world economies as a result of the growing scale of cross-border trade of
1. COMMUTATIVE JUSTICE commodities and services, flow of international capital and wide and rapid
This aims at fulfilling the terms of contracts and other promises on both spread of technologies. It reflects the continuing expansion and mutual
personal and social level. integration of market frontiers and is an irreversible trend for the economic
2. DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE development in the whole world at the turn of the millennium.
This ensures a basic equity in how both the burden and the goods of According to the International Monetary Fund economic
society are distributed and that ensures that every person enjoys a globalization is a historical process, the result of human innovation and
basically equal moral and legal standing apart from differences in technological progress. It refers to the increasing integration of economies
wealth, privilege, talent and achievements around the world, particularly through the movement of goods, services, and
3. SOCIAL JUSTICE capital across borders. It also refers to the movement of people (labor) and
This refers to the creation of the conditions in which the first two knowledge (technology) across international borders.
categories of justice can be realized and the common good identified
In economic terms, globalization is nothing but a process making
and defended.
the world economy an organic system by extending transnational economic
According to catholic teaching, a just society is one which these processes and economic relations to more and more countries and by
forms of justice are assured because they are required by human dignity. deepening the economic interdependencies among them.

5. IDEOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS TWO MAJOR DRIVING FORCES FOR ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION

Ideology is a system of widely shared ideas, beliefs, norms and values
1. The rapid growing of information in all types of productive
among a group of people. It is often used to legitimize certain political
activities
interests or to defend dominant power structures. Ideology connects
2. Marketization (A restructuring process that enables state
human actions with some generalized claims. Globalization is a social
enterprises to operate as market-oriented firms by changing the
process of intensifying global interdependence while globalism is an
legal environment in which they operate and can be achieved
ideology that gives the concept of neo-liberal values and meanings to
through reduction of state subsidies, organizational restructuring
globalization.
of management such as corporatization, decentralization, and
MAJOR IDEOLOGICAL CLAIMS OF ADVOCATES OF GLOBALISM privatization.

1. GLOBALIZATION IS ABOUT THE LIBERALIZATION AND Rapid development of science and technologies served as basis for
GLOBAL INTEGRATION OF MARKETS. immediate globalization of the world economies which in turn provided an
The problem with this claim is that liberalization and integration environment where there is a swift spreading of market economic system all
of markets happen through political project of engineering free over the world. It is also developed based on the increasing cross-border
markets by interference of centralized state power, and it is in division of labor which penetrates within the enterprises of different countries
contrast to the neoliberal ideal of limited role of governments. on the level of production chains.
DIMENSIONS OF ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION
1. The globalization of trade of goods and services
2. The globalization of financial and capital markets
3. The globalization of technology and communication
4. The globalization of production

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION FROM

INTERNATIONALIZATION
Economic globalization is a functional integration between
internationally dispersed activities which means that it is a qualitative
transformation rather than a quantitative change while internationalization is
an extension of economic activities between internationally dispersed
activities.
Economic globalization produces its own major players in the
form of transnational corporations (TNCs), the main driving forces of
economic globalization of 20 the last 100 years or roughly two-thirds of world
export. Transnational corporation otherwise known as multi -national
corporation is a corporation that has a home base, but is registered, operates
and has assets or other facilities in at least one other country at one time.
Examples are the US-based General Electric (GE), the Coca-Cola Company
of Atlanta, Georgia, US Nike and others.

ORIGIN OF ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION

Economic globalization is a process that creates an organic
system of the world economy.
In the 16thcentury world system analysts identify the origin of modernity and
globalization through long distance trade in the 16th century (25). This best-
known example of archaic globalization is the Silk Road, which started in
western China, reached the boundaries of the Parthian empire, and
continued onwards towards Rome (26). It also connected Asia, Africa, and
Europe.

In the 17th and 18th century global economy exists only in trade and
exchange rather than production as the world export to World GDP did not
reach 1 to 2 percent.

In the 19thcentury the advent of globalization approaching its modern form is

witnessed. A short period before World War I is referred to as golden age of
globalization characterized by relative peace, free trade, financial and
economic stability. Growth in international exchange of goods accelerated in
the second quarter of the 19th century. Global economy in the 19th and 20th
centuries grew by an average of nearly 4 percent per annum, which is roughly
twice as high as growth in the national incomes of the developed economies
since the late 19th century.

International Monetary Systems and Gold Standard

International monetary system (IMS) refers to a system that forms
rules and standards for facilitating international trade among the nations. It
helps in reallocating the capital and investment from one nation to another. It
is the global network of the government and financial institutions that
determine the exchange rate of different currencies for international trade. It
is a governing body that sets rules and regulations by which different nations
exchange currencies with each other.

IMS as rules, customs, instruments, facilities, and organizations

for effecting international payments with the main task of facilitating cross-
border transactions, especially trade and investment. It also reflects
economic power and interests, as money is inherently political, an integral
part of high politics or diplomacy.