Career of a Concept

3 General Categories of Globalization

1. Hyperglobalist Thesis

2. Sceptics Thesis

3. Transformationalist Thesis

Hyperglobalist Thesis

Sceptics

Transformationalist

I. Sees globalization as a new epoch of human

history, where traditional views of political structures are

"unnatural," "outdated."

II. Privileges economic logic.

III. Tends to celebrate a single global labor market.

IV. Globalization is brinning about "denationalization,"

"decententralization," and "deterritorialization."

V. 'Borderlessness' (Transboundaries)

National Economies/ National gov't. (transmission belts).

I. Is the dawn of a new millennium.

II. Globalization is the central force

behind rapid social, political,

economic, and cultural change.

III. Economic, Militarily, (Im)migration,

technological, and cultural flows are

unprecedented.

I. Draws heavily on statistical evidence of

world trade flows and trends.

II. Integrated worldwide economy in

which the 'law of one price' prevails.

III. Economy has under gone a significant

'regionalization' of financial spheres,

trading blocs, and trade agreements.

Geography and Consciousness

Globalization Debates

Globalization is a contested concept!

Five (5) Broad Concepts:

1. Internationalization-Cross-border relationships.

2. Liberalization-removing state imposed restriction/ barriers.

3. Universalization-planetary synthesis of cultures in a Global Humanism.

4. Westernization (modernization)- Diffusion of social structures of capitalism, rationalization, industrialization, bureaucratization, individualism, epitomized by Americanization.

5.Respatialization-(re)configuration of social geography with increased transplanetary connections between people.

Categories, & Career of a Concept Globalization

"On any sober intellectual reckoning, this is a curious outcome indeed. For the very idea

of globalisation as an explanatory schema in its own right is fraught with difficulties"

(Rosenberg, 92).

Career of a Concept

"The term 'globalisation', after all, is at first sight merely a descriptive category, denoting

either the geographical extension of social processes or possibly, as in Giddens'

definition, 'the intensification of worldwide social relations" (Rosenberg, ibid).

Giddens, calls modernity, as a purveyor of globalization.

In 1960, the term Globalization began to take an intense popularity, in 1961 Merriam-Webster Third International Dictionary offered the first definition; soon after, there was a rise in news paper articles, professional articles, books, and part of the general lexicon. .

Substantial dictionaries and encyclopedias of

globalization as well as multi-volume anthologies of globalization, including by the present

authors (James et al., 2007–2014; Steger, 2011; Steger, Battersby, & Siracusa, 2014), have

been published, which explore the phenomenon in all its complexities (James & Steger, 419).

"Globalization can thus be defined as the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa," according to Giddens (60).

7 Now, since no-one

denies that 'worldwide social relations' do indeed exist today in ways and to a degree

that they never did before, there can be no objection to calls for a theory of globalisation,

if that means an explanation of how and why these have come about. But such

an explanation, if it is to avoid empty circularity, must fall back on some more basic

social theory which could explain why the phenomena denoted by the term have become

such a distinctive and salient feature of the contemporary world. (Globalisation as an

outcome cannot be explained simply by invoking globalisation as a process tending

towards that outcome.) Yet if that were so, and if, for example, time-space compression

were to be explained as