What is Globalization / Angela Wibowo / 1

Sociology of globalization

Blog assignment 1

Summary :

According to Roland Robertson and Kathleen E. White, in this article we will not talking about global gorvenance, global citizenship, or others, but we are talking about globalization as the main topic and general frame. We are going to produce a systematic way to analyse the globalization as a concept. Many books and articles claim that there is no accepted definition of globalization but the author and authors provide at least one definition, because maybe there are some country that is not too eager to accept the definition of globalization because of the different perspective, especially for developing countries that have some privileged societal contexts.

According to the article, Velho (1997) said that globalization as an object, perspective and a horizon. The object is about thinking of globalization as a single process. Globalization is about perspective, Velho argues that the world takes on the different complexion when it is viewed in global terms, indeed, this is one of the primary goals of the growing field in the global education. Globalization was discussed by the explicit name in sociology and anthropology, and religious study, but now as times goes by, globalization now is concerned.

During 1990s, there is a movement called antiglobalization, that is not just in western societies, and the movement grew, sometimes there are violent, and demonstration at the meeting of WTO (World Trade Organization), International Monetary Fund, and G7/8 increased the using of Internet as the facilitation of global movement, so the development of the global consciousness produced by globalization, especially for economic sense, and until now globalization grow rapidly.

Global consciousness runs in complex way, so with speak, will increasing connectivity. While the connectivity has been considered by political scientists, international relations specialist and economists as the defining feature globalization. Consciousness has beem studied more by anthropologist, sociologists, and cultural historians. According to the article, Samuel Huntington predicted that, with the assumed end of the cold war, the conflict between US and USSR, the major world conflicts are more focused on civilizational issues, and when President Bush proclamation a few hours after the tragedy, it had been seen as the against of huntington’s well-known (controversial) thesis about clash civilization.

There are so many books and articles about globalization that is written by sociologists, specify that there are  three major dimensions of globalization. There are the economic, the political, and the cultural. The cultural has come increasingly because of the concern of economic globalization, such as Ritzer that influentially call McDonaldization in 2000. According to the articles, Ritzer was not speak od McDonaldization as a form of cultural globalization , but he at least has an important contributions of his ideas. He has been concerned with the spread from America and economic practice that have been spread, not just McDonalds but there are Nike, Starbucks, Gap, KFC, and others, and it is spread for goods or services, and necessary to adapt the brands to local condition. McDonalds has had to Maybe in India it is taboo to eat beef, that’s why they have to do localization to adapt with local circumstance. This issue is discussed under the concept of glocalization. The major dimensions of glocalization are indeed the cultural, the social, the political, and the economic, and it focused on the social dimensions that is more important.

The form of globalization issue was raised mostly by Immanuel Wallerstein about the important point about modern world-system – the world capitalist system. He argued that the world has not become a single place under the shelter, and he said that modern world could be systemized and coordinated along imperial lines. There is a great discussion of the new imperialism, that focusing to the part that played by ancient empires.

Glocalization is one of the concerned especially for business studies. This is one of the central concept that recently discussed. Glocalization was concerning about the relationship between global and local. According to The article, there are some some characteristic of globalization. First, globalization consists two major of directional tendencies, increasing global connection and consciousness, sedond, globalization has particular form that focused on four points: nationstates, world politic, individual and human kind, thirs, globalization is a part of four major, cultural, social, political and economic.

What I learn/ interesting topic :

After I read and summarized the article, I feel a little bit hard to summarized because of the topic that can’t be directly explained, and it has to be explained by the example and the history of the concept, but I learned  more and I got more information about globalization, and about some movement that take my attention, like anti-globalization, and manymore. And I’m interested more about glocalization, and it is related with economy studies because of the products that should be adapt with the environment of the country that products has to be delivered, such as India that can’t eat beef because it is taboo, and the companies have to make strategy especially for restaurants about how peoples in India can consume their products. They have to adapt their product from general, to the spesific culture that just followed by some groups or people.

Discussion :

Is there another example about glocalization that is related to other than economy study?