What about Globalization

1
What about Globalization?

• CRS 1001
• Introduction to Cultural Studies

2
Globalization

• Why talking about globalization?
• Every product we use, every person we meet, every
  day of work, every item of entertainment has a
  story of globalization behind it

3
Globalization ala Nike

• Tiger Woods Nikes top salesman
• earns 20 million a year for promoting the
  company's products by playing golf
• The Indonesian workers
• who make those shoes and sports clothes earn an
  average of 786 a year (far less than 1)

4
Nike a story of globalization

• Nike one of many American companies that makes a
  profit of the world's economic inequities
• contracts with 700 factories that employ 550,000
  workers in 50 (developing) countries
• For low wages
• Docile workforce
• low cost materials and operation
• Nike a marketing and design firm
• Producer contracted workers in the developing
  world, paid about 1 dollar a day
• Product sold to countries/cities at about 100 a
  pair

5
Globalization among us

• World brands Nike, Coca Cola, Hollywood films,
  Microsoft
• Global media CNN, ABC, BBC, etc.
• Entrepreneurs around the world
• All hooked up into the internet world
• Migrant workers around us
• tourism

6
Globalization in us

• Listens to reggae, watches Westerns, eats
  MacDonalds for lunch and local cuisine for
  dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and retro
  clothing in Hong Kong knowledge is a matter for
  TV games.
• The Unseen Gulf War (1990 1991)
• AH-64, B-52, E-3, F-117A, MIM-104 Patriot, Global
  Positioning System, etc.

7
Global cities

• In 1996 10 cities host the headquarters of 50
  worlds largest 500 transnational corporations
• 156 of these located in 4 centres London, New
  York, Tokyo and Seoul
• Emerging Sites for global accumulation,
  distribution and circulation of capital
• where significant roles in information and
  decision-making functions are played

8
A Globalizing Society

• Intensification of flows
• of money, idea, people and culture
• Increasing interpenetration
• Crossing of national boundaries
• Transnational corporation and market
• Interconnectedness
• Connecting the world on an unprecedented scale
• with previously unimaginable speed
• A radical change of the spatial frames
• Global institution of governance
• Political decisions taken at one place affect
  ordinary people far away, e.g. GATT/WTO, IMF,
  APEC, etc.

9
Globalization

• Technically
• New communications technology
• Information revolutionary innovations
• Affects industrial production, organization and
  the marketing of goods

10
Globalization

• Politically
• Weakening of the nation-state
• Emergence of global infrastructures
• Subordination to Western/American power
• Through consent, collaboration
• By use of force, economic threat

11
Globalization

• Culturally
• Economic domination of cultural industries
• the standardization of world culture
• Disnifyiation, McDonalization, Starbucks, etc
• destruction of specifically ethno-national ways
  of life

12
Globalization

• Traditional divisions no longer apply
• Commodity production becomes a cultural
  phenomenon (economic ? cultural)
• commoditization of politics, or even emotions and
  private life (cultural ? economic)

13
The Watchwords

• Continuous monitoring and audit of performance
  and quality
• A new culture a tightly integrated system of
  managerial discipline and control
• Caught in growing bureaucratization
• Traditional goals replaced by modernization of
  public service
• effectiveness and efficiency value added
• outcomes as a hallmark of quality economic
  growth
• Go international

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Global for whom?

• Whose dream? Whose progress?
• Whose world? Whose city?
• Whose threats? Whose battle?
• Whose opportunities?
• Are all the contenders given a fair chance or
  simply a chance?

15
Who is in control?

• Domination of the global market domination of
  the world
• Asian Economic Crisis
• A loss of 2 trillion from Asian cities was
  estimated from 1998-2000
• Authority of nation-state questioned (except US)
• Positioning of world law-making institutions

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Claiming back Our world

• Identifying a set of common-pluralistic goods
• Continuous questioning of hierarchies and
  domination
• Persistent demand for social equality and justice
• Eliminating hierarchical differences between men
  and women, racial groups, religions, classes and
  caste, regions of the world, etc.

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Mediations

• For Democratic, self-governing communities to
  envisage the small
• For ecologically friendly economy preservation
  of bio-diversity
• A need to mediate between global governance
  systems and the diverse communities

18
Local organizing

• Nike pays averages 65 a month in Indonesia,
  nearly double its minimum wage of 34 a month
• Some improvement mechanisms in working condition,
  environmental protection and use of materials
• Smaller sweatshops pay less with worse working
  conditions for "unbranded" shoes sold in Target
  or Walmart

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Opportunities

• Social relations stretched across space and
  national boundaries
• Local lives in an increasingly global context
• The possibilities of meeting strangers in our
  midst
• Global presents with a local face
• Connectivity allows cultures to be combined,
  hybridized and transformed
• Free flow of goods, ideas, technologies and
  social practices allow for global networking of
  people

20
http//adbusters.org/metas/corpo/blackspotshoes/
21
http//adbusters.org/metas/corpo/blackspotshoes/ho
me.php