UNIT 1 ACTIVITY 4 Blogging
UNIT 1 ACTIVITY 4
Blogging
FIVE DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES REGARDING THE ORIGIN OF GLOBALIZATION
GLOBALIZATION - is a transplanetary process or a set of processes involving increasing liquidity and multidirectional flows of people, objects, places and information as well as the structure they encounter and create that are barriers to, or expedite those flows.
Generally, this definition assumes that globalization could bring either or both integration and or fragmentation.
Moreover, globalization is the process by which ideas, knowledge, information, goods and services spread around the world. In business, the term is used in an economic context to describe integrated economies marked by free trade, the free flow of capital among countries and easy access to foreign resources, including labor markets, to maximize returns and benefit for the common good.
1. HARDWIRED
Nayan Chanda ( 2007) argues that “ globalization stems, among other things,
from a basic human urge to seek a better and more fulfilling life ” (2007). This
leads him to trace “ the initial globalization of the human species, to when in the
late Ice Age, a tiny group of our ancestors walked out of Africa in search of better
food and security. In fifty thousand years of wandering along ocean coasts and
chasing game across Central Asia, they finally settled on all the continents. ”
Chanda focuses on four specifi c aspects of globalization that relate to a basic
“ urge ” for a better life – trade or commerce, missionary work, religion, adventures and conquest politics and warfare. All of these are key aspects of globalization, all can be traced to early human history, and all, as well as much else, will be dealt with in this volume. However, Chanda’s view that globalization is hardwired into humans is not the one accepted here since we argue that we are now living in a distinctive global age.
2. CYCLES
The second perspective is that globalization is a long - term cyclical process. It is not only diffi cult in this view to fi nd a single point of origin, but the effort is largely irrelevant since there have long been cycles of globalization and it is those cycles that are of utmost importance, not any particular phase or point of origin (Scholte 2005 ).
This view, like Chanda’s, tends to contradict the idea that we live today in a
new “ global age. ” Rather, this suggests that there have been other global ages in the past and that what now appears to be a new global age, or the high point of such
an age, is destined to contract and disappear in the future. Eventually, it, too, will be replaced by a new cycle in the globalization process.
3. EPOCH
In an example of the third approach to the beginnings and history of globalization, Therborn ( 2000 ) sees six great epochs, or “ waves, ” of globalization,
that have occurred sequentially, each with its own point of origin:
1. The fourth to the seventh centuries which witnessed the globalization of reli-
gions (e.g. Christianity, Islam).
2. The late fifteenth century highlighted by European colonial conquests.
3. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries during which various intra -
European wars led to globalization.
4. The mid - nineteenth century to 1918; the heyday of European imperialism.
5. The post - World War II period.
6. The post - Cold War period.
From this, Therborn concludes that globalization today is not unique. However, his historical or epochal view also rejects the cyclical view of globalization.
Past epochs are not returning, at least in their earlier form, at some point in the
future.
4. EVENTS
A fourth view is that instead of cycles or great epochs, one can point to much more
specifi c events that can be seen as the origin of globalization and give us a good sense of its history.
In fact, there are many such possible points of origin of globalization, some of which are;
Rosenthal (2007) gave premium to voyages of discovery of America in 1942.
Vasco da gama in Cape of Good Hope in 1948 Ferdinand Magellan’s completed circumnavigation of the globe in 1522
The recent years could also be regarded as the beginning of globalization with
reference to specific technological advances in transportation and
communication.
Some examples include:
1. First transatlantic telephone cable (1956)
2. First transatlantic television broadcast (1962)
3. The founding of the modern internet (1988)
4. The terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York (2001)
5. Broader, More Recent Changes
The fifth view focuses on broader, but still recent, changes. There is a sense in this
view that a sea change occurred in the last half of the twentieth century. Three of
these momentous changes have been identifi ed by scholars as the point of origin of globalization as it exists today.
1. The emergence of the United States as the global power (post-World WarII)
2. The emergence of multinational corporation (MNC)
3. The demise of the soviet Union and the end of the Cold War
SUMMITED BY: CHRISTINE I. YABO
CLASS SCHEDULE: GE-CW (T-TH) 1:00-2:30 pm
SUMMITED TO: PROF MARICEL ADRIATICO
