Globalization is the process of increasing interdependence and integration among the economies, markets, societies, and cultures of different countries worldwide. It can be attributed to a series of factors, including the reduction of barriers to international trade, the liberalization of capital movements, the development of transportation infrastructure, and the advancement of information and communication technologies. The term globalization first appeared in the early 20th century, but came into popular use in the 1990s to describe the growing international connectivity of the post–Cold War world.
Large-scale globalization began in the 1820s, and in the late 19th century and early 20th century drove a rapid expansion in the connectivity of the world's economies and cultures. The origins of globalization can be traced back to the 18th and 19th centuries, a period marked by significant advancements in transportation and communication technologies following the Industrial Revolution. These developments increased global interactions, supporting the growth of international trade and the exchange of ideas, beliefs, and cultures.
Between 1990 and 2010, globalization progressed rapidly, driven by the information and communication technology revolution that lowered communication costs, along with trade liberalization and the shift of manufacturing operations to emerging economies (particularly China). Academic literature commonly divides globalization into three major areas: economic globalization, cultural globalization, and political globalization.
Proponents of globalization point to economic growth and broader societal development as benefits, while opponents claim globalizing processes are detrimental to social well-being due to ethnocentrism, environmental consequences, and other potential drawbacks.
Etymology and usage The word globalization was used in the English language as early as the 1930s, but only ever in the context of education, and the term failed to gain traction. Over the next few decades, the term was occasionally used by other scholars and media, but it was not clearly defined. One of the first uses of a term resembling the more common meaning and usage of the modern word was by French economist François Perroux in his essays from the early 1960s (in his French works he used the similar yet distinct term , translated as mundialization). Theodore Levitt is sometimes inaccurately cited as having invented the term in the mid-1980s, although he can more confidently be credited with popularizing the term and bringing it into the mainstream business audience during that time.
Though often treated as synonyms, in French, globalization is seen as a stage following , a stage that implies the dissolution of national identities and the abolishment of borders within the world network of economic exchanges.
Since its inception, the concept of globalization has inspired competing definitions and interpretations. Its antecedents date back to the great movements of trade and empire across Asia and the Indian Ocean from the 15th century onward.
In 1848, Karl Marx noticed the increasing level of national interdependence brought on by capitalism, and predicted the universal character of the modern world society. He states:
Sociologists Martin Albrow and Elizabeth King define globalization as "all those processes by which the people of the world are incorporated into a single world society." In The Consequences of Modernity, Anthony Giddens writes: "Globalization can thus be defined as the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa." In 1992, Roland Robertson, professor of sociology at the University of Aberdeen and an early writer in the field, described globalization as "the compression of the world and the intensification of the consciousness of the world as a whole."
In Global Transformations, David Held and his co-writers state:
Held and his co-writers' definition of globalization in that same book as "transformation in the spatial organization of social relations and transactions—assessed in terms of their extensity, intensity, velocity and impact—generating transcontinental or inter-regional flows" was called "probably the most widely-cited definition" in the 2014 DHL Global Connectiveness Index.
Swedish journalist Thomas Larsson, in his book The Race to the Top: The Real Story of Globalization, states that globalization:
Paul James defines globalization with a more direct and historically contextualized emphasis:
Globalization is the extension of social relations across world-space, defining that world-space in terms of the historically variable ways that it has been practiced and socially understood through changing world-time.
Manfred Steger, professor of global studies and research leader in the Global Cities Institute at RMIT University, identifies four main empirical dimensions of globalization: economic, political, cultural, and ecological. A fifth dimension—the ideological—cutting across the other four. The ideological dimension, according to Steger, is filled with a range of norms, claims, beliefs, and narratives about the phenomenon itself.
James and Steger stated that the concept of globalization "emerged from the intersection of four interrelated sets of 'communities of practice' (Wenger, 1998): academics, journalists, publishers/editors, and librarians." They note the term was used "in education to describe the global life of the mind"; in international relations to describe the extension of the European Common Market, and in journalism to describe how the "American Negro and his problem are taking on a global significance". They have also argued that four forms of globalization can be distinguished that complement and cut across the solely empirical dimensions. According to James, the oldest dominant form of globalization is embodied globalization, the movement of people. A second form is agency-extended globalization, the circulation of agents of different institutions, organizations, and polities, including imperial agents. Object-extended globalization, a third form, is the movement of commodities and other objects of exchange. He calls the transmission of ideas, images, knowledge, and information across world-space disembodied globalization, maintaining that it is currently the dominant form of globalization. James holds that this series of distinctions allows for an understanding of how, today, the most embodied forms of globalization such as the movement of refugees and migrants are increasingly restricted, while the most disembodied forms such as the circulation of financial instruments and codes are the most deregulated.
The journalist Thomas L. Friedman popularized the term "flat world", arguing that globalized trade, outsourcing, supply-chaining, and political forces had permanently changed the world, for better and worse. He asserted that the pace of globalization was quickening and that its impact on business organization and practice would continue to grow.Friedman, Thomas L. "The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention". Emerging: A Reader. Ed. Barclay Barrios. Boston: Bedford, St. Martins, 2008. 49
Economist Takis Fotopoulos defined "economic globalization" as the opening and deregulation of commodity, capital, and labor markets that led toward the present neoliberal globalization. He used "political globalization" to refer to the emergence of a transnational élite and a phasing out of the nation-state. Meanwhile, he used "cultural globalization" to reference the worldwide homogenization of culture. Other of his usages included "ideological globalization", "technological globalization", and "social globalization".Fotopoulos, Takis. (2001). "Globalization, the reformist Left and the Anti-Globalization 'Movement.'" Democracy & Nature: The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, 7:(2) (July 2001).
Lechner and Boli (2012) define globalization as more people across large distances becoming connected in more and different ways.
"Globophobia" is used to refer to the fear of globalization, though it can also mean the fear of balloons.
History
There are both distal and proximate causes that can be traced in the historical factors affecting globalization. Large-scale globalization began in the 19th century.
Archaic
The phrase "Archaic globalization" conventionally refers to a phase in the history of globalization including globalizing events and developments from the time of the earliest civilizations until roughly the 1600s CE. This term covers the relationships between communities and states and how they developed through the geographical spread of ideas and social norms at both local and regional levels.
In this schema, three main prerequisites are posited for globalization to occur: The first is the idea of Eastern Origins, which shows how Western states have adapted and implemented learned principles from the East. Without the spread of traditional ideas from the East, Western globalization would not have emerged in the way that it did. The interactions of early states were not on a global scale and most often were confined to local regions: Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, and certain parts of Europe. With early globalization, it was difficult for states to interact with others that were not close. Eventually, technological advances allowed states to learn of others' existence and thus another phase of globalization could occur. The third prerequisite has to do with inter-dependency, stability, and regularity. If a state is not dependent on another, then there is no way for either state to be mutually affected by the other. This is one of the driving forces behind global connections and trade; without either, globalization would not have emerged the way it did and states would still be dependent on their own production and resources to work. This is one of the arguments surrounding the idea of early globalization. It is argued that archaic globalization did not function in a similar manner to modern globalization because states were not as interdependent on other states (as they are today).
Also posited is a "multi-polar" nature to archaic globalization, which involved the active participation of non-Europeans. Because it predated the Great Divergence in the nineteenth century, where Western Europe pulled ahead of the rest of the world in terms of industrial production and economic output, archaic globalization was a phenomenon that was driven not only by Europe but also by other economically developed Old World centers such as Gujarat, Bengal, coastal China, and Japan.
The German historical economist and sociologist Andre Gunder Frank argues that a form of globalization began with the rise of trade links between Sumer and the Indus Valley civilization in the third millennium BCE. This archaic globalization continued during the Hellenistic Age, when commercialized urban centers enveloped the axis of Greek culture that reached from India to Spain, including Alexandria and the other Alexandrine cities. Early on, the geographic position of Greece, Greek demographics and the necessity of importing wheat encouraged Greek city-states to found outpost coloniesFor example: and to engage in maritime trade. Trade in ancient Greece was largely unrestricted: the state controlled only the supply of grain.Frank, Andre Gunder. (1998). ReOrient: Global economy in the Asian age. Berkeley: University of California Press. Greek style, culture and art spread in a "form of Mediterranean globalization".For example: