Socialist- the process of transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones. It can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together. This process is a combination of economic technological, sociocultural and political forces.
Capitalist- the elimination of state-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that has emerged as a result
"Covering a wide range of distinct political, economic, and cultural trends, the term “globalisation” has quickly become one of the most fashionable buzzwords of contemporary political and academic debate. In popular discourse, globalisation often functions as little more than a synonym for one or more of the following phenomena: the pursuit of classical liberal (or “free market”) policies in the world economy (“economic liberalisation”), the growing dominance of western (or even American) forms of political, economic, and cultural life (“westernisation” or “Americanisation”), the proliferation of new information technologies (the “Internet Revolution”), as well as the notion that humanity stands at the threshold of realising one single unified community in which major sources of social conflict have vanished (“global integration”)."
-Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
'American sociologist George Ritzer coined the term 'mcdonaldisation' to describe the wide ranging sociocultural processes by which the principles of the fast food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of american society as well as the rest of the world'
-Manfred B Streger, Globalisation: A very short Introduction, page 71.
Marshall McLuhan
'Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned (1964)
Rapidity of Communication echoes the senses. We can experience instantly the effects of our actions on a global scale.
Centripetal forces - bringing the world together in uniform global society
Centrifugal forces - tearing the world apart in tribal wars.
Three problems of globalisation:
sovereignty - challenges to the idea of the nation state
accountability - transnational forces and organisations: who controls them?
identity - who are we? nation, group, community
Cultural Imperialism
If the 'global village' is run with a certain set of values then it would not be so much an integrated community as an assimilated one.
key thinkers:
-schiller
-chomsky
Rigging the 'Free Market'
Media conglomerates operate as oligopolies . Liberalisation of the worlds community.
American culture starts to simulate companies all over the globe.
New corporations divide world into territories of descending market
important
1. north america
2.western Europe, japan and australia
3. developing economies and regional producers (china, india, brazil)
4. rest of the world
us media power can be thought of as a new form of imperialism
-local cultures destroyed in this process and new forms of cultural dependency shaped, mirroring old school colonialism
-schiller - dominance of us driven commercial media forces US model of broadcasting onto the rest of the world but also inculcates US style consumerism in societies that cant afford it.
Big Brother - Mono-culture. Meaningless gameshow, mindless public (ringing in and making money for these corporations)
Chomsky & Herman (1998) Manufacturing Consent
See news as a giant system of propaganda for capitalism especially US capitalism, public take everything as fact.
Propaganda model - Five basic filters
-ownership (eg. Rupert Murdoch- dictates news, political backing- Blair/Labour)
-funding
-sourcing
-flak
-ideology (eg. Anti-Islam
Flak
US- based Global Climate Coalition (GCC)
- comprising fossil fuel and automobile companies such as exxon, texaco and ford. the gcc was started up by Burson-Marstekkar, one of the worlds largest public relations companies to rubbish credibility of climate scientists and scare stories about global warming. Flak is characterised by concerted and intentional efforts to manage public information.
Al gore, 'an inconvenient truth' raises moral awareness
Jim Inhofe 'Global warming is one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetuated on the American public'
Sustainable Development - economic development that is conducted without depletion of natural resources.
'most things are not designed for the needs of the people but for the needs of manufacturers'
You cant place man as the dominator and the creator.
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