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The Elusive Concept of Globalisation

Cees J. Hamelink

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In order to explore the meaning of the globalisation concept, it is worth distinguishing between its use as an analytical tool and as a political programme.

Globalisation: The Analytical Tool

The concept of globalisation is used to describe and interpret contemporary social processes. In this application, it has both supporters and sceptics.

  • Supporters argue that since the 1980s (with the deregulatory policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and the demise of communism) more and more people around the globe have been living in, or are indirectly affected by, free‐market economies. Capitalism has spread from covering some 20 per cent of the world population in the 1970s to some 90 per cent in the 1990s. Large numbers of people have become integrated into the global capitalist economy.

    Sceptics respond that this is superficially true, but claim that the “global economy” is in fact the economy of just a few rich countries, in particular those belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD). They point out that if the world were a global village of one hundred residents, only six would be Americans. Yet these six would have half the village’s entire income, with the other ninety‐four existing on the other half.

  • Supporters argue that today there is more global trading than ever before. Sweeping reductions in the cost of air travel and shipping have facilitated a phenomenal expansion of crossborder trading. In the process, not only has the volume of trade increased enormously, but its character has also changed considerably. Firms are under strong pressure to take a global approach to their sales (e.g., through global brandnames and global advertising), thereby reinforcing the globalisation of markets.

    Sceptics protest that most world trading is not global, but takes place within geographical regions. Moreover, the volume of international trading by the industrialised countries has not increased dramatically since the early twentieth century. In fact, some sceptics even present trade figures which indicate that the world economy of the nineteenth century was far more internationalised than today’s so‐called global economy. Sceptics also note that the contribution of developing countries to international exports decreased from 30 per cent in 1950 to 20 per cent in 1990. Moreover, the share of the least developed countries in world trade decreased from 0.6 per cent in the 1970s to less than 0.3 per cent in the 1990s.

  • Supporters point to the growth of global financial markets and explain that this began in the 1970s with the rapid proliferation of offshore financial markets and the global circulation of vast amounts of money outside the jurisdiction of national authorities. They conclude that today there is unprecedented global financial mobility.

    Sceptics agree, but say these capital flows refer mainly to one type of capital: short‐term speculative investments, not productive capital. Financial mobility remains very limited where productive investments are concerned and the rapid money poses serious risks to Third World economies.

  • Another argument cited by supporters is the increased global mobility of people: there are more refugees and there is more migrant labour around the globe. But the sceptics reply that most people stay at home, most refugees stay in their own region, and most labour is not mobile.
  • Supporters refer to the global nature of the world’s leading corporations. They say that the multinational corporation of the 1970s is obsolete. A new type of global company is emerging that does business around the globe, carries out research and product development in many different sites and has shareholders from all over the world.

    However, sceptics say that most internationally operating companies largely retain national management as well as local research and development sites and investments. They argue that of the hundred largest companies in the world, not one can seriously be called “global”.

  • For supporters, globalisation as a social process refers to the intensification of global consciousness. Sceptics reply that while on the surface there is a CNN‐type global solidarity, the world is really more a collection of many local villages than a single global village. People may know the US president better than they do their neighbours, but in the end they will take sides with the parochial interests of their own tribe. Although more people may have become more cosmopolitan than ever before, this does not yet create a collectively shared cosmopolitan consciousness.
  • Supporters argue that growing economic interdependence leads to social interdependence. Sceptics reply that this thesis lacks empirical confirmation. While there may be some evidence of global solidarity, there are equal or even more indications that people across the world do not feel part of a global family. Whereas supporters like to assert that current social processes are inevitably leading to global integration, sceptics believe that the same forces propelling these processes may equally lead to disintegration. Sceptics wonder why the supporters completely ignore the fact that the world is very starkly divided and fractured on many counts. They point to the highly visible fissures in the growing economic disparities between both the North and the South and between different social groups within most countries. According to their analysis, greater interdependence does not necessarily merge nations into larger units, as the supporters seem to assume. The sceptics take the rather more reserved position that since interdependencies are often asymmetrical, a growing number of global transactions are as likely to create more competition and conflict as they are to create more co‐operation.
  • Supporters believe the intensification of contacts around the world creates more global cohesion. But sceptics think this may also lead to more cultural competition:The cultures themselves have been thrown into conflict, as communities in their struggle for political rights and recognition have drawn upon their cultural resources – music, literature, the arts and crafts, dress, food and so on – to make their mark in the wider political arena, regionally and internationally, and continue to do so by the use of comparative statistics, prestige projects, tourism and the like. These are veritable “cultural wars”, which underline the polycentric nature of our interdependent world.

    Globalisation means both integration and polarisation. It promotes both social movements that fight for the respect of human rights and social movements that further racism, ethnic divisions and fundamentalism.

  • Supporters maintain that global consciousness is fostered by the growing density of communication flows around the world. The growth of globe‐spanning communication networks (TV chains and data networks) cannot be denied and their importance should not be underestimated.

    Sceptics may agree with this and yet point out that there is at present an enormous disparity in access to these flows and networks. How “global” is global communication, they ask, when by early 1997 some 62 per cent of the world’s main telephone lines were installed in just twenty‐three affluent countries accounting for only 15 per cent of the world’s population? How “global” is global communication when more than 950 million households (65 per cent of the world total) had no telephone in 1997? Or when Internet host computers are distributed in such a way that the United States (51.5 per cent), European Union countries (23 per cent), Canada (6.1 per cent) and Japan (5.2 per cent) constituted 85.8 per cent of the world’s total in 1997?

  • Supporters say globalisation describes what happens to consumer markets worldwide. As the 1998 United Nations Development Programme report claims, “globalisation, the integration of trade, investment and financial markets, has also integrated the consumer market.” The opening of markets for consumer goods, mass production, mass consumption and advertising has both economic and social dimensions. The latter involve the alleged fact that “people all over the world are becoming part of an integrated global consumer market with the same products and advertisements”. As a result they begin to share the same standards of the “good life”.

    Against this, the sceptics say that this global integration is very unequally distributed around the world. The increasing visibility of consumer goods is not the same as their availability: “While the global elite are consumers in an integrated market, many others are marginalised out of the global consumption network.” On the global consumer market most people are merely gawking. As markets open worldwide and more advertising for consumer products arrives, there develops an explosive disparity between visibility and availability. In the global shopping mall the world spent in 1998 some US$24 trillion in consumer expenditures. Over 80 per cent of this was spent by 20 per cent of the world’s population.

Supporters and sceptics thus disagree about the appropriateness of globalisation as an analytical tool. They are also divided on the question of whether the driving force of contemporary social processes is primarily technological progress. Supporters see globalisation as the inevitable consequence of modern technological developments in transportation and communication. Sceptics argue that an explanation based upon technological determinism is too limited. Technologies undoubtedly play an enabling role but the crucial variables are decisions made by public and private institutions.

Related to this is also a serious disagreement about the significance of the national state. Supporters suggest that the national state has lost its sovereign powers. Economic processes propelled by transborder financial flows, offshore electronic markets and worldwide marketing of cultural products affect the decision‐making powers of individual states.

Sceptics say this is true only in a limited way. The financial capacities and political power of major transnational corporations have certainly increased. Some of these corporations have revenues that exceed the gross domestic product of important industrial nations. However, sceptics find the claim that governments have become impotent greatly exaggerated. Many powerful companies could not survive without state subsidies (e.g., Renault and McDonnell Douglas) or without state purchases of defence products (e.g., General Electric, Boeing, IBM) or of non‐defence products (e.g., Siemens and Alcatel).

Moreover, the role of law enforcement institutions is crucial for the efficient performance of large companies. National sovereignty helps transnational corporations to avoid the creation of genuine supranational regulatory institutions that might control their restrictive business practices. Transnational corporations need national governments to guarantee safe investment environments, to create market opportunities through foreign aid or to promote the trade of their “national” companies through their diplomatic missions. They may also benefit from supportive national regulations on technical standards, patent and trademark protection, or acquisitions and mergers.

In the analysis of the sceptics, powerful governments have voluntarily delegated primacy to the marketplace. The state is still decisive in determining the quality of health care, social services and education. The retreat of the state tends to be partial and from selected social domains such as social services, and not from intervention on behalf of the holders of intellectual property rights, for example.

Sceptics may not deny that states today play a lesser role, but they argue that this is not an inevitable process. National states have for a variety of political and economic reasons assisted in their own demise.

Globalisation: The Political Agenda

As a political programme, too, globalisation represents an agenda that has both its advocates and critics.

The advocates claim that globalisation creates worldwide open and competitive markets which promote global prosperity. The key justification of their political programme is that a global free market leads to greater employment, better quality of goods and services and lower consumer prices.

For critics, the globalisation agenda is a neoliberal political programme that primarily promotes the interests of the world’s most powerful players:

Globalisation has meant different things, at different levels, for different categories of people. Millions of farmers, immigrants, poorly qualified urban workers, youth and women suffer globalisation’s negative consequences; they are marginalised and excluded from the new world economy.

Against Leon Brittan, the former EU Commissioner for external trade, who believes that “globalisation is good for the planet”, the critics argue that the globalisation programme has disastrous consequences for sustainable development since it promotes the unhindered growth of consumer expenditure.

Globalisation advocates see the process as unstoppable and as ultimately beneficial. It will make all the world’s people more prosperous.

The critics disagree and say that if there is any globalisation at all, it is the “globalisation of poverty”. Among the empirical figures they cite for their argument is the sevenfold rise of poverty in eastern Europe since 1989. They also point to the fact that the ratio of the richest 20 per cent of people in the world to the poorest 20 per cent rose from 1:30 in 1960 to 1:80 in 1995. They further note that in the United States 1 per cent of the population owns 50 per cent of the wealth, whereas 60 per cent owns nothing.

Advocates and critics also disagree about the cultural dimensions of the globalisation programme. Advocates say globalisation promotes cultural differentiation while critics claim globalisation is merely a new guise for old‐fashioned cultural imperialism.

Both advocates and critics may have a point here as the global landscape is made up of homogenising global tendencies, heterogenising local developments and hybrid forms that are sometimes referred to as “glocalisation”. The worldwide proliferation of standardised food, clothing, music and TV shows, and the spread of Anglo‐Saxon business style and linguistic conventions, create the impression of an unprecedented cultural homogenisation. Yet, despite the McDonaldisation of the world, there remain forcefully distinct cultural entities, to which the manifold inter‐ethnic conflicts that beset the globe are dramatic testimony. There has certainly been an increase in cultural contacts and of cultural movements that go beyond national boundaries, but this has not yet brought about a global culture. Parallel with the homogenisation of consumer lifestyles there is also local cultural differentiation.

Whereas advocates see a positive link between globalisation and employment, critics argue that employment conditions worldwide are rapidly worsening. The demand for labour diminishes and the supply increases. Neoliberal capitalism can make do with a very limited labour force. Economic growth does not lead to more but rather to less employment (“jobless growth”). Characteristic of the capitalist economic system, particularly since the Industrial Revolution, is that more economic productivity is achieved with less input of labour. There is no empirical indication that the new so‐called service economies provide higher‐skilled jobs for more people. What they do is create large numbers of data processors in poor countries at minimal wages.

It is precisely in such new service industries as telecommunications that increasing numbers of people are being laid off. It has been suggested that in some countries (e.g., the United States) employment figures have risen, but this refers mainly to part‐time, flexible and temporary jobs that are usually low paid and have limited social security.

The critics thus conclude that in the end the globalisation programme is a propagandistic ploy to mask the politico‐economic objectives of neoliberal capitalism. It diverts public attention from the fact that this agenda creates new monopolists and oligopolists rather than free competitive markets, and that it increases unemployment worldwide as privatised enterprises – no longer controlled by employment policy objectives – tend to lay off large numbers of people because they find it possible to operate with a smaller labour force and hence reduce costs.

Globalisation as Humanitarian Concern

Positions on the use of the globalisation concept as an analytical tool and/or as the central plank of a political agenda are thus strongly divided. Even so, it would seem worthwhile to explore briefly whether the concept could derive meaning as a guide to the kind of world we want to live in and in which we want to see our children grow up.

The concept “globalisation” could be used to represent the aspiration of a world community that respects universal standards of fundamental human rights and is characterised by a sensitivity to the need for global solidarity and a recognition and acceptance of sociocultural differences.

This aspiration requires the worldwide development of a human rights culture. This is a tall order. We have to learn to become global citizens. People around the world need to learn the sensitivity for living in a multicultural arena. Global citizenship does not come with our genetic structure but is acquired only through extensive training.

Global citizenship implies knowledge about the world that is different from what today’s mass media and educational systems offer. Our educational systems pose formidable obstacles to the goal of global citizenship because of their highly specialised, fragmented, piecemeal approaches to knowledge. Our current university systems do much to discourage any unconventional, multidisciplinary exploration.

Multidisciplinarity, which would be a prerequisite of any attempt at global understanding and knowledge, remains a solemn recommendation in numerous academic memorandums. In reality, most universities do not train students to speak the language of sciences other than those they study.

The mass media are equally ill equipped to enhance global consciousness. They commonly stress the priority of the local over the global, deal with problems as isolated incidents, leave large parts of the globe outside their audience’s reach and report in superficial, often biased if not racist ways, about foreign peoples and cultures.

If we aspire to “global citizenship” and want to educate ourselves to implement it, it is essential to overcome a complex moral challenge.

The Moral Challenge

The philosopher Richard Rorty argues that in today’s international reality,

no foreseeable applications of technology could make every family rich enough to give their children anything like the chances that are taken for granted in the lucky parts of the world. Nor can we expect that the people in the industrialised democracies will redistribute their wealth in creating bright prospects for children of the underdeveloped countries in such a way as to threaten the prospects of their own children…The only way the rich can think of themselves as part of the same moral community with the poor is through some scenario which gives hope to the children of the poor without threatening that of their own children.

In other words: the rich are only willing to act in accordance with such moral principles as human solidarity provided their own interests are not threatened. If the prospects of their own children are at stake the choice will be against the moral principles.

The challenge here is that the aspiration of a globalisation for the poor cannot be realised without seriously limiting the prospects of the rich. This represents a classical case of a hard moral choice since, given the ecological constraints of our globe, the prospects of the poor can only improve at the expense of those of the rich. It is impossible to raise the living standards of the majority of “unlucky people” in the world to those of the privileged minorities without creating an unprecedented ecological disaster! The plight of the poor cannot be changed without reducing the privileges of the rich. If the poor and rich continue to live in different moral universes, education to produce global citizens is doomed to fail.

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Note

  1. Original publication details: Cees J. Hamelink, “The Elusive Concept of Globalisation,” in Global Dialogue 1 (1), Summer 1999, pp. 1–7. Reproduced courtesy of Cees J. Hamelink.