GLOBALISATION

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LA 1280Globalisation and Society

• Lecture 1
• February 8,2017

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How do we explain this?
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https//qz.com, Jan 16, 2017
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• The journey of a T-shirt!

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Journey Of a T shirt
Photo- http//shirahime.ch/2010/10/a-t-shirt-that-
means-the-world/
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Routes travelled by a piece of cotton

• Picked from Texas
• Shirt made in China
• Second-hand selling in Tanzania
• Lobbyists in Washington DC
• Shops in New York

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Globalisation from a social perspective

• (predominantly) Qualitative approach
• Data - through surveys, interviews, fieldwork
• Analysis- critical (NOT criticize)
• Look at an issue from multiple perspectives
• Focus on disadvantaged and marginal groups
• Explore issues at both macro and micro level

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What is Globalisation?

• Is it a process?
• Does it have a clear beginning and an end?
• Is it only in one form or is it multiple?
• Should we say globalisations?
• Is it only about business? And money and stocks
  etc?
• Is the world really flat?
• Is the movement one way or cyclical?
• Is globalization also about non-economic
  transactions?
• Has globalisation failed?

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In this course, we will look at

• How globalization occurs
• How does it impact peoples everyday lives?
• How do peoples behaviours influence the process?
• Its effect on the environment
• Empirical data

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Assessment

• Attendance- 10
• (Non-academic) Journal article on a topic- 20
• Analysis of one globalised material object-20
• Final Exam- 50 (March 22nd)

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Is globalisation new?

• Voyages across the world- Marco Polo, Ibn
  Battuta, Columbus, Magellan
• Silk Road- From Antioch (Turkey) to China, via
  Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia
• Rise of empires

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Eric Wolf. Europe and the people without history.
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http//www.silkroadproject.org/tabid/177/defaul.as
px
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A brief history

• Production among indigenous peoples-
  kin-ordered (Eric Wolf)
• Feudalism in Europe- 11th century
• Western form of Capitalism- 16th century
• Crusades- 11th-13th century
• Discovery of the New World
• Colonialism- colonies and empires
• Industrial revolution- 18th century
• Wage labour- work as commodity
• Money- universal value
• Property as private
• Slave trade and Plantations (coffee, sugar,
  cotton)

18000 tons of silver and 200 tons of gold into
Spain from 1521-1600
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Some definitions

• Time-space compression- David Harvey, 1989
• Widening, deepening, and speeding up of
  world-wide interconnectedness in all aspects of
  contemporary social life, the cultural to the
  criminal, the financial to the spiritual- Held
  (1999)
• A spatio-temporal process of change that links
  local or national social relations and networks
  with worldwide global ones and thereby transforms
  the organisation of human affairs- Assayag and
  Fuller (2005)

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• Contemporary Globalisation is the increasing
  flow of trade, finance, culture, ideas, and
  people brought about by the sophisticated
  technology of communications and travel and by
  the worldwide spread of neoliberal capitalism,
  and it is the local and regional adaptations to
  and resistances against these flows
• - Lewellen, 2010, p.8

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Harveys view of Globalisation

• Globalisation shrinking of space and
  shortening of time- David Harvey
• After 1970s- Post-Fordist regime of flexible
  accumulation
• Decrease turnover time
• Infrastructure and Communications
• Turnover of goods and capital
• 24/7 work culture
• Food packaging
• Recreation and leisure activities

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David Harvey, 1992 The condition of postmodernity
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Eugene Staley, 1939 World Economy in Transition
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Giddens view of globalisation

• Time-space distanciation
• Impact of globalization on social relations
• Relationship possible in presence and absence
• Interlocking of global and local
• Globalisation defined as

the intensification of worldwide social relations
which link distant localities in such a way that
local happenings are shaped by events occurnng
many miles away and vice versa"
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• Globalization as a concept refers both to the
  compression of the world and the intensification
  of consciousness of the world as a whole . . .
  both concrete global interdependence and
  consciousness of the global whole in the
  twentieth century
• -Roland Robertson 19928

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Global and Local

• Roland Robertson- 'glocalisation'
• Appadurai- local a 'phenomenological property of
  social life'
• Burawoy- 'Global ethnography' ethnographys
  concern with concrete, lived experience can
  sharpen the abstractions of globalization
  theories into more precise and meaningful
  conceptual tools

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Cultural Homogenisation

• Ritzer- Mcdonaldisation (1993)
• Hyper-consumerism
• Western uniformity
• Globalisation of nothing

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Summary

• Globalisation is about
• Speeding up
• intensification of links
• stretching of social, economic and political
  practices
• heightened entanglement of global and local
• -Inda and Rosaldo, The Anthropology of
  Globalisation, 2002

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Cultural Impact of Globalisation

• Culture- a system of shared meanings
• Importance of roots- territorial
• Challenge of global to locality
• world of culture in motion
• Therefore, need to look at culture as
  simultaneously deterritorialised and
  reterritorialized
• Convergence of styles- homegenisation
  (Westernization)
• cultural imperialism
• Locate human agency
• Is globalization unidirectional?
• Possibilities provided by movement
• World as a dislocated cultural space
• -Inda and Rosaldo, 2002

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• Fridays class- cancelled (GATE duty)
• Will be rescheduled