What is globalization

What is globalization

1.     Summary

I think globalization is a term of the phenomenon which is created by impact of different nations or local societies. So it has various concepts. The interactions between different country extremely increased because of development of transportation and communication. And local groups have showed various different positions with other countries. Through this process, various kinds of phenomenons are occurred. The main academic concepts of globalization like global connectivity and global consciousness are emerged from this. Roland Robertson defined globalization as ‘the compression of the world and the intensification of the consciousness of the world as a whole’. And I think his comment is explanation about these things(Phenomenons by interactions between different nations). Area of perception is increased with development of technology. In 20th century, mankind widened the physical connecting area by air-plane and also widened communication distance by phone and internet. Nowadays, we can make a communication all over the world anytime by smartphone. Also, there are many multi-national place in online. People make interaction with other country quite easily. This is why the globalization is issued these days.

Like we learned in class, globalization can be divided three main topics. Cultural globalization, political globalization and economic globalization.

Cultural globalization is the easily observed phenomenon. I think almost of us already heard teams like ‘Westernization’, ‘Americanization’ and ‘Orientalism’. These academic terms are based on western view because western countries took the lead of modern times. Almost of modern cultural assimilation and acculturation are led by western nations because they had more military force and economic power. And imperialism underpinned this. Until comparatively lately, many people believe western culture is progressive than eastern culture. Nowadays importance of cultural relativism is raised to issue and various culture came to the fore. But I think there still exist phenomenon about leading of advanced countries.

We can find the example of political globalization in the political infrastructure of global governance. There are so many multi-national or supranational organizations were founded such as OECD, IMF, NATO, WTO and Red-cross. Increasing of International exchange make necessity of these organizations and they have various purpose. I think almost of multi-national organizations are made by good purpose. But both profit organization or non-profit organization, such member nation has different initiative. Like the cultural globalization, I think almost political globalization is led by advanced countries.

Economic globalization can be observed by increasing of trade flows, investment flows and other financial indicators. With the development of transportation, nations actively trade their resource for mutual interest. But like preceding, I think economic globalization is also led by advanced countries. In many case, advanced country has consumer position and developing country has seller position. Because developing country’s price of resource and human resource are cheaper than advanced country. And in this circumstance, concentration and centralization of capital is occurred. So inequality of capital is progressively increasing and this phenomenon seems to be permanent.

The academic concept of globalization is comparatively modern term and the importance of it admits of no doubt. It will rapidly expand its academic area and I feel responsible to pay attention to it as a info-sociology student.

2.     What was interesting/what did you learn:

 Learning about globalization is interesting. Because I often use concept about globalization in other class but this is first class mainly handled globalization. Globalization is proceeding in various areas and various forms but I received an impression that the globalization is usually led by advanced countries. I think globalization is impact between different nation’s influence so it is necessarily asymmetry. This is not about positive or negative effect but actually cultural assimilation and cultural disappearance are occurred because of this. So I think we have to pay attention for cultural relativism. On the other hand, the raise of oriental cultural power is also interesting. Recently, Korean wave(K-pop, K-drama) received attention. Although the development of Korean cultural power was because of economic development, it is still interesting because it has more influence than Korea’s other barometers. So I also feel responsible to more study about cultural globalization and various culture of world.

3.     Discussion Point:

 In the class we already discussed about many interesting topics but I want to discuss about ‘boundary of cultural relativism’.

 Nowadays cultural relativism is considered important issue of globalization. But if the local citizens want to follow the other countries culture, what should we do? For example, in the process of interaction between advanced country and less developed local natives, natives want to follow the advanced country’s culture and rules. Do we still protect their culture against cultural extinction? Is the toadyism unquestioningly bad thing? I’m curious about it. And this is also issue about cultural relativism, the ‘boundary of universal values’. There are still on the rise about human right of women in Muslim countries. But it is rooted in their main culture. How far can we be involved in this? I also curious about this this issue.