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Summary Key Concepts - Globalising Cultures (7332C004AY)
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List of all key concepts from the course Globalising Cultures
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Key Concepts Globalising CulturesWeek 1: Introduction: What is globalisation, how to think about it
sociologically, does it really exists & if so, since when?
Learning goals week 1:
o Familiarity with & understanding of different definitions of globalisation
(lecture).
o Ability to think critically about the start and the historical development
of globalisation (lecture & Mintz).
o Ability to see globalisation as a relational process (Mintz).
o Ability to understand this process in terms of strongly patterned and
highly unequal cross-border flows of many different kinds (e.g., people,
goods, and ideas) which come into being when they are transformed
from ‘solid’ into ‘liquid’ (Ritzer).
Summary of Time, Sugar, and Sweetness by S. W. Mintz:
o Sidney Mintz proposes combining anthropology and history to explore
the relationship between production and consumption of specific
ingestibles throughout history.
o During and after the Age of Discovery, Europe experienced a flood of
new substances.
Two of the most important introductions came from the non-
European Old World, Tea and Coffee.
o The consumption of sugar and other tropical ingestibles in Great Britain
was at differing rates for different regions, groups, and classes.
o Mintz identified three principal ways in which the potential contribution
of the plantations of West India to capitalist growth in the metropolises
(especially Brittain) has been viewed:
1) In direct capital transfers of plantation profits to European
banks for reinvestment.
2) The demand created by the needs of the plantations for such
metropolitan products as machinery, cloth, torture instruments,
and other industrial commodities.
3) And possibly, the European enterprise accumulated
considerable savings by the provision of low-cost foods and food
substitutes to the European working classes.
o According to Mintz, the overseas trade rested on three things:
1) In Europe, the rise of a market for overseas products for
everyday use, whose market could be expanded as they
became available in larger quantities and more cheaply.
2) Overseas, the creation of economic systems for producing
such goods (e.g., slave-operated plantations).
, 3) The conquest of colonies designed to serve the economic
advantage of their European owners.
o The rise of industrial production and the introduction of gigantic
quantities of new ingestibles occurred simultaneously in Britain.
o According to Mintz the relationship between these two phenomena is
fairly straightforward:
1) People produced less food by themselves, thus they
consumed more food that was produced elsewhere.
2) People spent more time away from home, thus the kind of
foods they ate changed.
o Mintz proposed that the availability of commodities like sugar is a result
of political and economic "forces" that progressively seeped down
through the class system. This percolation, in turn, most likely
brought social occasion and substance together in line with evolving
ideas about labour and time.
Additionally, it's likely that people in lower social classes imitated
those in higher positions within the system.
Summary of Globalization: Chapter 1: Liquids, Flows, and Structures by
G. Ritzer:
o According to George Ritzer, we live in a – or even the – global age.
o You could even argue that globalisation is the most important change in
human history, especially in social relationships and social structures.
o Ritzer defined globalisation as “a trans-planetary process or set of
processes involving increasing liquidity and the growing multi-
directional flows of people, objects, places, and information as well as
the structures they encounter and create.”
o Before the era of globalisation, one of the things that characterised
people, things, information, places, etc., was their solidity.
People did not go far from where they were raised and their
social relationships were restricted to those who were nearby.
o The nation-state was most likely to create solid barriers (e.g., walls,
border gates, and guards) and grew resistant to change.
Solidity is far from dead in the contemporary world.
o Often demands for new forms of solidity are the result of increased
fluidity.
o Elites are – and always have been – better able to move around,
especially now with advances in transportation.
o In recent years, that what once seen solid has tended to ‘melt’, they
are becoming increasingly liquid.
o These liquids are as this process continues, increasingly turning into
gases.
, o According to Ritzer, because so much of the world is in the process of
‘melting’ and has become liquefied, globalisation is characterised by
flows.
o Because of their immateriality, ideas, images, and information (both
legal and illegal) flow everywhere through interpersonal contact, the
media, and via the internet.
o According to Ritzer, you can also argue that places can flow around the
world (e.g., immigrants re-create their homes in new locales) and that
places themselves have become increasingly like flows (e.g., airports
and shopping malls).
o However, not all flows go everywhere in the world, and they also affect
different areas in varying degrees and ways.
Thus, is ‘flowing’ an inappropriate metaphor?
Instead, does globalisation ‘hop’ from one place to another.
o Another possible metaphor is that of ‘heavy’, to ‘light’, to
‘weightless’.
(Digital) information can be viewed as weightless.
The “digital divide” is another example of a barrier.
o According to Ritzer, when we study globalisation we should look at
both that which flows, and that which blocks or expedites flows
(structures).
o According to Ritzer, networks can expedite different things but are best
suited for the flow of information.
o Global cities are interconnected with one another directly, rather than
through the nation-states in which they exist.
For example, think of the financial markets of big cities.
o The world is not just in process, there are also many material
structures which promote or block mobility.
E.g., trade agreements, regulatory agencies, borders, etc.
o NOT FINISHED PAGE 18
Marx on slavery (Mintz):
o According to Karl Marx, direct slavery is as much the pivot of the
industrialism today as machinery is.
o Without slavery, no cotton, without cotton, no modern industry.
o Slavery, the value of colonies, world trade, large-scale
machine industry.
o “Thus slavery is an economic category of the highest importance.”
Globalisation:
o NOTE: There is not one single definition of globalisation, instead
there are different ones that each allow you to see another aspect of
the globalisation process.
o NOTE: The starting point of globalisation varies depending on which
definition you use.
, o 1) Increasing cross-border flows (Ritzer, 2009):
“Processes involving increasing liquidity and growing multi-
directional flows, as well as the structures they encounter and
create.”
This theory is essentially about something that initially is local
and fixed at one point, and later on becoming more liquid.
An example of a starting point of globalisation, from this
perspective, could be during the 1600s, with the start of larger-
scale international trade.
o 2) Long-term historical process of growing worldwide
interconnectedness (Jan Nederveen Pieterse, 1995):
An example of a starting point of globalisation, from this
perspective, could be the crusades.
o 3) Intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole,
compression of space and time (Roland Robertson, 1992):
An example of a starting point of globalisation, from this
perspective, could be the inventions of the telephone, telegraph,
the newspaper, etc.
o 4) World Systems Theory (Immanuel Wallerstein, 1974):
The process, completed in the 20th century, by which the
capitalist world-system spread around the globe.
A critical perspective with Marxists roots.
An example of a starting point of globalisation, from this
perspective, could be how the compass and better ships made
long-distance trips possible, which in turn made colonialism
possible.
Often associated with Cultural Imperialism Theory about cultural
convergence.
World System Theory is about the competition for hegemonic
power among nations.
These scholars think about a global division of labour, which is
directed at transferring surplus value from the periphery to the
core (where the capital accumulation takes place).
Capital versus labour intensive.
o 5) World Polity Theory (Frank J. Lechner & John Boli, 2005):
Also known as Neo-Institutionalist Theory.
Formation of world society, composed of nations, international
organisations, and populated by citizens with a distinct world
culture.
Neo-institutionalist theorists argue that organisations such as
the United Nations (UN) are an important player in how the
world is organised.
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