Читать книгу Sociology - Anthony Giddens - Страница 183

The concept of globalization is common currency in academic research, political debate, business strategy and the mass media. Yet, when the concept is invoked, it often refers to different things. For some, globalization is something like a political and economic project, pursued by elite groups in the Global North and aimed at promoting global trade to their own advantage. This is a version that provokes much anger and resistance. On the political right, globalization threatens and ultimately undermines precious national identities. On the left, globalization is often seen as a capitalist-led movement that plunders and exploits new regions, deepening inequalities and destroying good jobs in its wake (Crouch 2019a).

For many sociologists, globalization refers to a set of largely unplanned processes, involving multidirectional flows of things, people and information across the planet (Ritzer 2009). However, although this definition highlights the increasing fluidity or liquidity of the contemporary world, many scholars also see globalization as the simple fact that individuals, companies, groups and nations are becoming ever more interdependent as part of a single global community. As we saw in the introduction to this chapter, the process of growing global interdependence has been occurring over a very long period of human history and is certainly not restricted to recent decades (Nederveen Pieterse 2004; Hopper 2007). Therborn (2011: 2) makes this point well:

Segments of humanity have been in global, or at least transcontinental, transoceanic, contact for a long time. There were trading links between ancient Rome and India about 2,000 years ago, and between India and China. The foray of Alexander of Macedonia into Central Asia 2,300 years ago is evident from the Greeklooking Buddha statues in the British Museum. What is new is the mass of contact, and the contact of masses, mass travel and mass selfcommunication.

As Therborn suggests, contemporary sociological debates are focused much more on the sheer pace and intensity of contemporary globalization. It is this central idea of an intensification of the process that marks this period out as different, and this is the main focus of our discussion below. The process of globalization is often portrayed as primarily an economic phenomenon, and much is made of the role of transnational corporations, whose operations stretch across national borders, influencing global production processes and the international division of labour. Others point to the electronic integration of global financial markets and the enormous volume of global capital flows, along with the unprecedented scope of world trade, involving a much broader range of goods and services than ever before. As we will see, contemporary globalization is better viewed as the coming together of political, social, cultural and economic factors.