Hyperglobalist Perspective on Globalization|

Skeptical perspective on globalization

Definition of Globalization

Globalization refers to the growing interconnectedness and integration of individuals, nations, and regions of the world and increasing awareness of these interconnections.

Main Causes of Globalization

• The leading causes of globalization are the growth of international trade and the creation of the global economy. There has been the development of enormous transnational or multinational corporations with a global reach, increasing power.

For example, if you take the giant American retailer Wal Mart, it’s an enormous transnational corporation. If you look at Walmart’s annual revenue, it’s more than the gross domestic product of many medium-sized countries.

• Another factor that is contributed to growing global economic integration. There are improvements in travel on shipping, which are now much cheaper and much safer than they ever were in the past. This ability to travel to remote places with more incredible speed and ease is sometimes referred to as time-space compression.
• Another factor that’s been integral to creating a global economy has been this practice of trade liberalization. This is where governments, often influenced by neoliberal ideology, have tried to create free trade by decreasing or removing tariffs and another trade barrier, so we’ve seen a move away from economic protectionism and more trade that moves across national boundaries.
• Another cause of growing global interconnectedness has been some of the important developments in I.T and Media Communications. The sociologist Anthony Giddens used the term to describe the effect of these technologies. Term Space -Distanciation. What Gideon means by this is that increasingly, our social relations are disembodied from the local context of interaction and rearranged across indefinite spans of time and space. Or, to put it in simple terms, it is now possible to beam or intimate with somebody on the other side of the world than somebody on the other side of the same room.

Perspectives on Globalization/Three Approaches to Globalization

There are Three approaches to globalization/perspectives on globalization. They include;

1. Hyperglobalist Perspective on Globalization
2. Skeptical perspective on globalization
3. Transformationists on globalization.

Hyperglobalist Perspective on Globalization (Global Optimist)

Hyperglobalists are those people who are positive about globalization and would be the argument that global capitalism has done a lot of good.

Hyperglobalism describes globalization’s positive perspectives. Most of these people tend to be politically on the right. They tend to be very pro-capitalism

Hyperglobalist Perspective on globalization would be ; 

1. Hyperglobalists would argue that people now healthier, live longer, and are a marked wealthier than 30 or 40 years ago, which applies not just to people in rich countries. Also, if you look a data from the World Bank, it shows that about 600 million people in poorer countries have moved out of extreme poverty over the last 30 years. This is partly down to manufacturing jobs moving from high wage countries to low wage countries, creating more economic opportunities for people in developing countries.
2. Hyper globalists would argue the economic liberalization is also often accompanied by a parallel process of political liberalization. The argument that they’re making here is that another positive feature of globalization has been the spread of ideas like democracy and individual freedom to different parts of the world, particularly from the end of the 19 eighties, when the Cold War came to an end.
3. Hyperglobalists are also upbeat and positive about some of the cultural effects of globalization. They talk about globalization, creating new, exciting hybrid or fusion cultures that bring together different cultures, different people from around the world. We can see that expressed in new forms of food, new forms of music, new forms of art, etc.
4. International trade is not a wholly new phenomenon; however, proponents of globalization would argue that what’s changed in recent decades is just the sheer scale in world trade.
5. Transnational companies investing in installing plants in other countries employ those in those countries, often helping them rise out of poverty.
6. Trade liberalization is associated with easing restrictions on capital flow and investment, along with eliminating government regulations that can be seen as unfair barriers to trade, including legal protections for workers, consumers, and the environment.

Skeptical Perspective on Globalization (Global Pessimists)

Those people who have been much more critical about globalization are the skeptics or the global pessimists.

These people tend to be more on the political left, linked either to dependency theory or other Marxist perspectives or people-centered approaches.

Skeptical Perspective on globalization would be ; 

1. One of the main arguments that the skeptics would be that, reflecting dependency theory,  increased trade has had unequal benefits. The richer countries in the Northern Hemisphere benefited, but there are many other parts of the world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, that have largely been left behind.
2. One of the greatest skeptics, Ralph Dahrendorf, foresees a threat to social cohesion due to increased individualism and competition. He argues that people are becoming greedy and dishonest.
3. A skeptic would argue that even those developing countries with a lot of economic development have seen their gross domestic product go up significantly.  In those countries, that extra wealth produced has not always trickled down to society’s poorest sections.
4. One of the main problems with global capitalism is that it exacerbates inequalities between nations and, importantly, within nations worldwide.
5. Pessimists would also be skeptical of the idea that globalization necessarily leads to more democracy.  For instance, Noam Chomsky argues that globalization has seen the erosion of power from elected government and, by extension, the people who vote for them and that decisions are increasingly made globally by elites who are not accountable to the general population. Power is transferred from the nation-state to banks to multinational corporations.
6. Again, a process that sociologist George Ritzer has referred to as the McDonaldization of world society.
7. The most powerful criticism of globalization comes from environmentalism. As worldwide production and consumption increases, we used more resources, especially more water, land, fossil fuels. Therefore, globalization may have made the average human richer. But the problem is that rich people tend to use more at everything, especially energy.
8. The economic growth that has been recently experienced has been dependent upon unsustainable use of the planet’s resources, and from an environmentalist perspective, this can’t go on forever.
9. Globalization in its present form is unsustainable; it’s short-sighted itself, indulgent, and tremendously destructive.
10. While many countries have liberalized capital markets and eased barriers to transnational trade in goods and services under globalization, most have not eliminated labor flow barriers. Indeed, some developed countries, such as the United States, have implemented more restrictive immigration policies, leading to the detention and deportation of thousands of undocumented immigrants and national borders’ militarization. Despite these restrictions, however, migration has increased along with other processes of globalization.

Transformationalists Perspective on Globalization

What is Transformationalists

Transformationalists view globalization more moderately, emphasizing the ubiquity and linearity of the globalization process and assessing progressivism of its effects.

They argue that the flow of culture is not one way, from the west to the developing world; it is a two-way exchange in which Western culture is also influenced, changed, and enriched by cultures in the developing world.

Transformationalists are more moderate in emphasizing the ubiquity and linearity of the globalization process and assessing progressivism of its effects. But they do not accept skeptical views about globalization either. The indisputable fundamental changes in society’s organization that globalization brings are the growing overall integration and acceleration of socioeconomic dynamics through the “compression” of space and time.

However, their approach is multidimensional, taking into account mechanisms of globalization other than economic ones. In this sense, a sociologist of modernism, Anthony Giddens, considers globalization a phenomenon shaped by forces of “modern” capitalism: politics, military power, and industrialism.

These forces are the sources of dimensions of globalization. The four basic dimensions of globalization are the world capitalist economy, world military order, the national state system, and international division of labor. The specified dimensions of modernity have enabled western countries to become the leading force in the world.

According to Giddens, spreading dimensions of modernity to all countries in the world is identified as globalization. However, unintended effects of modernity forces are global risk and the new global threat.

To overcome the risks, it is necessary to create democracy and cosmopolitan confidence as an important dimension of reality. Without it, globalization represents only a facade for the game of imperialist powers.

Transformationalists take up a much more moderate position in progressivity and globalization outcomes than hyper globalists. Globalization is not linear-progressive in character but represents a stream of capitalistic development, subject to cycles and probabilism.

The underlying influence of globalization on socio-economic trends is not questioned, but its final effects are considered uncertain. In this sense, such an understanding of globalization is not deterministic.

Perspectives on Globalization Conclusion

Globalists vs. Skeptics and Transformationalist

Globalization is a megatrend that significantly shapes the contemporary economy. As such, globalization is subject to intensive theoretical debate in contemporary socio-economic theory.

Hyperglobalist comprehend globalization as a unique, lawful, and progressive process of unification of the world economy.

Transformationists view the process of globalization as uneven and uncertain in terms of results, whereby they insist on its multidimensionality.  Transformationalists agree that the impact of globalization but argues that it has been exaggerated by hyper globalists but notes that it is foolish to reject the concept out of hand.

 Skeptics challenge the effects, ubiquity, and sustainability of globalization. Economic globalization impacts are reflected in integrating the world economy through trade, investment, and financial flows.

Anthony Giddens favors hyper-globalizers but argues that both hyperglobalizers and skeptics are mistaken. According to him, globalization is not merely economic but overall changes in economic, social, cultural, and political spheres and, the sole driving force behind this change is the communication revolution.

Globalization is also characterized by a tendency towards unification, replacing existing heterogeneous cultural patterns with the unique framework eligible for global markets’ functioning.

Perfect mobility of production factors and a powerful information-communication potential of modern technology, and the growing influence of individualistic ideology, create the impression of a neoclassical approach to the economy. However, such a conclusion is premature.

Despite evident unification impacts of globalization, the modern economy is a pretty stable and evolutionary hierarchy system. That variability prevails at every level as an essential condition for the system’s survival.

The variability of the world economy is represented through the existence of various models of economic systems. Among them, the most influential is the Anglo-American, German and Japanese models of organizing economic activity. Their institutional versatility ensures that the world economy’s evolutionary processes oppose the tendency towards homogenization as a crucial feature of globalization.