Globalization

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Globalization

• CMN 2168

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• Recap neo-liberalism
• Information technology and globalization (part
  I).
• Recap main concepts of globalization.

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Recap Neo-liberalism

• 1. Neo-liberalism aims at getting gouverments
  away from controlling or intervening in the
  affairs of business
• 2. each goverments reforms involved the
  reasonably predictable neoliberal goals of
  downsizing or privatizing public institutions,
  services and utilities such as airlines and
  telecommunications

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• 3. a failure to embrace the imperative to
  reform bureaucracies could involve negative
  consequences for those failing to comply (37).

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• Empire
• 1. Empire is a system and a hierarchy. It has its
  own logic.
• Sovereignty has taken a new form, composed of
  a series of national and supranational organisms
  united under a single logic of rule.
• The declining sovereignty of nation-states and
  their increasing inability to regulate economic
  and cultural exchanges is one of the primary
  symptoms of Empire (Hardt and Negri).

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• 2. Empire processes cultures, crises,
  ressources and power formations in order to
  reproduce and extend itself (33).
• The rule of Empire operates on all-registers of
  the social order extending down to the depths of
  the social world. Empire not only manages a
  territory and a population but also creates the
  very world it inhabits (Hardt and Negri).

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• For Bourdieu, one of the most influential doxa is
  neo-liberalism.
• Neo-liberalism has been established and imposed
  as a doxa through language and media.
• the process of naming that brings about this
  taken-for-grantedness is based on euphemisms
  which direct attention away from the negative
  social effects of economic competition and the
  goal of maximum profit, and which is consequently
  difficult to critique (35)

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• 3. Empire is decentred and boundless.
• Power is now diffused throughout different
  apparatuses, organizations, agents
• 4. Empire is constituted by, and constitutive
  of, the imbrication of the economic, political
  and cultural aspects of contemporary life (34).

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Technology and globalization

• According to many, contemporary society is no
  longer organized on the basis of material goods.
• Everything is supposedly organized on the basis
  of information and knowledge.
• This is the global information society, also
  called post-industrial or service society.

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• New information and communication technologies
  (ICTs) are supposed to be revolutionary
  innovations, which reshape the whole world.
• This means that grand narratives are over. Grand
  narratives are global discourses,
  all-encompassing stories that order individuals
  experiences and thoughts.

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• Central claims about the information society
• A social revolution
• Transformation of economic relations
• Transformation of political practices and
  communities involved
• Decline of the state

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Technology, informationalism and space / time

• The development of new technologies has led to
  the reduction of the effects of space and time on
  everyday life and on trade.
• The speed of transmission, and the mobility of
  capital, mean that both space and time seem to
  have been collapsed entirely (46).

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• A large number of analysts reduce the processes
  of globalization to the consequences of the
  development of new communication technologies
  (47).
• Wrong or right?

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• There are many connections between technology and
  globalization.
• Classic correspondance between progress and
  technological development.
• Belief that technology can transform the world
  for the better.
• Beliefs present at different periods of time.

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• Armand Mattelart many writers celebrated the
  ways in which science and technology would bring
  into being utopias marked by productive,
  attractive and fair working conditions, the
  abolition of child labour, universal
  emancipation, the domestication of climates,
  equality, an expanded public sphere, and the
  disappearance of poverty, ignorance, class, and
  cultural misunderstandings (48).

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• Freedom
• Progress
• as well as
• Anxiety
• Fear of uncontrollable aspects of technology.

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• As for globalization, there have different ways
  of understanding the place and the effects of
  technology on contemporary society.
• For Jean-François Lyotard, the ideology of
  communication transparency and the roles /
  responsabilities / functions of the state are
  bound to clash.

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• For Jacques Ellul, technologies have a powerful
  impact on social relations, the latter being
  mostly reduced to the interactions provided by
  the technologies in question.
• Beware of technological determinism!

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• Technological determinism is the notion that
  technology is independent of social contexts, and
  simultaneously imposes itself on to society and
  transforms it (219).
• Here the question is the following is technology
  a product of a particular social context or does
  technology produce society?

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• Schirato and Webb argue that it is misleading to
  try to make sense of the notion of globalization
  purely or even predominantly in terms of
  technical changes or developments there is a
  difference between pointing out that technology
  has affected the way many people live and think,
  and going on from there to argue that technology
  equals globalization (50).

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• social and cultural factors determine
  technological development at least as much as
  technology determines cultural development (55).
• we can see technology as operating within a
  context, transforming and being transformed by
  the larger assemblage of events and power in
  which it is being utilized and given meaning
  (55).

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Argument

• Technology is tied up to the society in which it
  is produced.
• There is no universal / universalizing
  technology.
• However

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Counter-argument

• the processes associated with globalization can
  be understood as a pledge of faith in the ability
  of science and technology to bring into being the
  freedom of circulation of ideas, goods and
  peoples. This is where technology comes to be
  seen as having a value independent of the
  contexts in which it is involved or deployed
  (56).
• Borders and barriers are consequently made
  irrevelant (supposedly).

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• technology allows an event to be taken out of
  time and place, since in a few seconds the real
  of the here and now of an exotic foreign location
  is available to another person (57).

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Recap what is globalization?

• The accelerating pace of globalisation is having
  a profound effect on life in rich and poor
  countries alike, transforming regions such as
  Detroit or Bangalore from boom to bust - or vice
  versa - in a generation.
• Many economists believe globalisation may be the
  explanation for key trends in the world economy
  such as
• - Lower wages for workers, and higher profits, in
  Western economies
• - The flood of migrants to cities in poor
  countries
• - Low inflation and low interest rates despite
  strong growth.

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• And globalisation has played a key role in the
  unprecedented increase in prosperity in the last
  50 years, which is now spreading from the United
  States and Europe to include many formerly poor
  countries in Asia, including China and India.

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• In economic terms, globalisation refers to the
  growing economic integration of the world, as
  trade, investment and money increasingly cross
  international borders (which may or may not have
  political or cultural implications).

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• Globalisation is not new, but is a product of the
  industrial revolution. Britain growing rich in
  the 19th century as the first global economic
  superpower, based on its superior manufacturing
  technology and improved global communications
  such as steamships and railroads.

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• But the pace, scope and scale of globalisation
  have accelerated dramatically since World War II,
  and especially in the last 25 years.
• The rapid spread of information technology (IT)
  and the internet is changing the way companies
  organise production, and increasingly allowing
  services as well as manufacturing to be
  globalised.

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The role of trade

• Trade has been the engine of globalisation, with
  world trade in manufactured goods increasing more
  than 100 times (from 95bn to 12 trillion) in
  the last 50 years since 1955, much faster than
  the overall growth of the world economy.
• Since 1960, increased trade has been made easier
  by international agreements to lower tariff and
  non-tariff barriers on the export of manufactured
  goods, especially to rich countries.

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• In the post-war years more and more of global
  production has been carried out by big
  multinational companies who operate across
  borders.
• Multinationals have becoming increasingly global,
  locating manufacturing plants overseas in order
  to capitalise on cheaper labour costs or to be
  closer to their markets.

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Western anxities

• The dizzying pace of change in the new world of
  globalization is unprecedented, and can be
  frightening.
• A recent poll by Deloitte in November 2006 showed
  a sharp increase in worries about outsourcing of
  white collar jobs in the UK.
• Just 13 said it was a good thing , compared to
  29 in January, while 82 of the public believe
  enough jobs have been sent abroad already, and
  32 wanted to force companies to bring jobs back
  to Britain.

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• Source http//news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/627967
  9.stm
• (very good summary of what globalization is and
  does)