![]() How we define the process will very much depend on what theoretical perspectives we bring to bear on the definition. These normative issues, whether or not they are foregrounded, will loom large in any survey of theories of globalization. Others have trumpeted the process as creating newfound prosperity, freedom, emancipation and democracy. Nonetheless, it would be impossible to speak of globalization without reference to the highly conflictive nature of the process.ĭiverse actors have associated globalization with expanding worldwide inequalities, new modes of exploitation and domination, displacement, marginalization, ecological holocaust and anti-globalization. We cannot here, given space constraints, take up the political and the normative dimensions of the globalization debate and the relationship of distinct theoretical discourses on globalization to these debates. Nowhere is this clearer than with globalization theories. They are grounded in situated social and historical contexts, often in competing social interests. ![]() The contending battleground of such concepts is a leading edge of political conflict since the meanings of such concepts are closely related to the problems they seek to discuss and what kind of social action people will engage in. Considering the political implications of these claims it is clear that, at the least, globalization has become what we refer to as an essentially contested concept. Hence the very notion of globalization is problematic given the multitude of partial, divergent and often contradictory claims surrounding the concept. There is no consensus on what has been going on in the world denoted by the term ‘globalization’ competing definitions will give us distinct interpretations of social reality. If it is true that globalization is one of the key concepts of the twenty-first century, it is also true that it is one of the most hotly debated and contested. How do we theorize this phenomenon which we will call globalization? What types of theories have been developed to explain twenty-first century social change? Are our existing theories adequate to capture this change, or do we need new theoretical models? In a time when social relations and institutions are everywhere subject to rapid and dramatic change, and to the extent that this change is linked to globalization, theories of globalization are without doubt of major import to the contemporary world. We find two broad categories of research: (1) those studying specific problems or issues as they relate to globalization (2) those studying the concept of globalization itself – theorizing the very nature of the process. The proliferating literature on globalization reflects the intellectual enormity of the task of researching and theorizing the breadth, depth and pace of changes underway in human society in the early twenty-first century. This explosion of research points to the ubiquity of the effects of globalization.Īll disciplines and specializations in the academy, it seems, have become implicated in globalization studies, from ethnic, area and women’s studies, to literature, the arts, language and cultural studies, the social sciences, history, law, business administration, and even the natural and applied sciences. Recent research agendas have branched out into an enormous variety of topics, from transnational sexualities, to global tourism, changes in the state, the restructuring of work, transnational care-giving, globalization and crime, the global media, and so on. The scholarly literature on these phenomena has proliferated, as have specific studies of the impacts of globalization on particular countries and regions and on gender and ethnicity, not to mention much pop treatment of the subject. Yet a fifth was new social hierarchies, forms of inequality, and relations of domination around the world and in the global system as a whole. A fourth was the unprecedented multidirectional movement of peoples around the world involving new patterns of transnational migration, identities and communities. A third was global political processes, the rise of new transnational institutions, and concomitantly, the spread of global governance and authority structures of diverse sorts. A second was new transnational or global cultural patterns, practices and flows, and the idea of ‘global culture(s)’. ![]() One was the emergence of a globalized economy involving new systems of production, finance and consumption and worldwide economic integration. These globalization studies arose around several sets of phenomena that drew researchers’ attention from the 1970s onwards. Globalization is reshaping how we have traditionally gone about studying the social world and human culture and a field of globalization studies is now emerging across the disciplines (Appelbaum and Robinson, 2005). THEORY AND THE RISE OF GLOBALIZATION STUDIES ![]()
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