Читать книгу Sociology - Anthony Giddens - Страница 191

The spread of information technology has both expanded the possibilities for cultural contact between people around the globe and facilitated the flow of information about people and events. Every day, news and information are brought into people’s homes, linking them directly and continuously to the outside world. Some of the most gripping (and disturbing) events of recent times – the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, pro-democracy protests and the crackdown in China’s Tiananmen Square (also in 1989), terrorist attacks on America in 2001 and the occupation of Egypt’s Tahrir Square in 2011 as the ‘Arab Spring’ developed – have unfolded before a truly global audience. The interactive character of digital technologies has led to ‘citizen journalists’ helping to produce the news by reporting ‘direct from the scene’ of world events over the internet.

The shift to a global outlook has two significant dimensions. First, people increasingly perceive that their responsibility does not stop at national borders. Disasters and injustices facing people around the world are no longer misfortunes that cannot be tackled but legitimate grounds for action and intervention. A growing assumption has arisen that ‘the international community’ has an obligation to act in crisis situations to protect the human rights of individuals. In the case of natural disasters, interventions take the form of humanitarian relief and technical assistance. There have also been stronger calls in recent years for intervention and peacekeeping forces in civil wars and ethnic conflicts, though such mobilizations are politically problematic compared to those for natural disasters.

Second, a global outlook seems to be threatening or undermining many people’s sense of national (or nation-state) identity. Local cultural identities are experiencing powerful revivals at a time when the traditional hold of the nation-state is undergoing profound transformation. In Europe, people in Scotland and the Catalonia region of Spain may be more likely to identify as Scottish or Catalan – or simply as Europeans – rather than as British or Spanish. A referendum on Scottish independence from the UK in September 2014 was lost, but 45 per cent of the population voted ‘Yes’. An unofficial vote in Catalonia in October 2017 saw 92 per cent voting for independence from Spain. In some regions, nation-state identification may be waning as globalization loosens people’s orientation to the states in which they live.