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CONTEMPORARY WORLD

Technology Evolving Perspective:


1956: The creation of the world’s first container ship Emerging Competition
1970: The introduction of the Boeing 747. - New global media giants, such as Al-Jazeera and Hollywood, are
- Arrival of a cargo version of the plane. challenging western media’s dominance.
- The founding of Federal Express (FedEx). Local Media Growth
1974: Creation of Universal Product Code (UPC). - Regional media have gained power, with many countries becoming self-
sufficient in media production.
Medical Technology Diverse Internet Content
- New health-care technologies have not only been created at a rapid rate, - The internet provides a wide range of content, further diversifying media
but because of global improvement in transport, they flow around the consumption.
world much more rapidly than ever before.
- Ex: MRIs, CT Scans, Pet Scans Media Were American
- In 1977 Jeremy Tunstall authored a book entitled The Media Are American.
Space-Based Technologies - Tell us much of what we need to know about the role of American in an
- The space that surrounds the globe is, by its very nature, global and increasingly globalized world.
already involves and will increasingly involve globalization. - Peaked in the mid-twentieth century and has been in decline ever since.
- Ex: Satellites
New Global Media
Leapfrogging - In spite of the arguments against media imperialism, the fact is that we
- Developing nations bypassing earlier technologies and adopting more have witnessed the rise of the “new” global media, with great power to
advanced technologies. impose their system on larger portions of the world.
- Ex: Mobile phone technology
Indymedia
India’s “One Lakh Car” or NANO - The movement in the direction of global media giants is countered, at
- A potentially dramatic new technological development in early 2008 was least to some degree, by the rise if Independent media (indymedia).
the unveiling, by the Indian Corporation. - Indymedia have come to be associated with globalization, especially the
- World’s least expensive car, priced at one lakh that is 100,000 rupees or globalization-from-below.
about $2,500. - Hacktivists – those who hack into computer programs in order to
further various causes.
Media
Media Imperialism The relationship between globalization and media has its roots in Marshall
- Refers to the dominance of western, particularly American, media on Mcluhan’s prescient ideas on the “global village”.
less developed nation and their cultures.
In the new media age, Mcluhan famously argued, the “medium is the message”.
CONTEMPORARY WORLD
The Frankfurt Theorists, the media were of economic significance as a new Civilization
source of capital realization. The Frankfurt thinkers tended to see media, and - Example of this theory is Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilization and
other components of what we called the “culture industry,” as foreclosing the the Remaking of the World Order.
possibility of emancipatory discourse and action. - He used civilization to describe the broadest level of culture and cultural
identities.
Globalization from above is a process that is created and disseminated by - He sees these civilization as deferring greatly on basic philosophical
large scale forces (such as the nation-state and the MNC). assumption, underlying values, social relations, customs, and overall
Globalization from below takes the form of individual actors, and groups of outlook on life.
actors, opposing and acting to oppose globalization in both developed and less - Huntington offers a modern grand narrative of the relationships among
developed countries. civilization:
 Phase 1: for more than 3,000 years civilization tended to be widely
The Internet separated in both time and space.
- Is one of the several digital technologies that have all had a profound  Phase 2: roughly from 1500 to the close of WW ll, was characterized by
effect on many things, including globalization. the sustained, overpowering, and unidirectional impact of western
Online Social Networking civilization on all other civilizations.
- Involved here are social-networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook,  Phase 3: WW II and until about 1990 was characterized by a clash of
twitter, and MySpace that involve communication, networking, and the ideas
creation of friendship networks among those involved.
- They are part of Web 2.0, is the fact that the material on it is generated Cultural hybridization
by the users/consumers rather than the producers of the system. - Is the mixing of cultures and the integration of the global and the local
- Those who operate Web 2.0 can be prosumers because they leading to unique combination.
simultaneously produce what they consume. - The process or actions of merging local culture with foreign culture
Spam through economic endeavor and making adaptations to meet cultural
- “spam is one of globalization’s true success stories” norms of adopted destination
- Unsolicited bulk e-mail, often of a commercial nature  Glocalization: interpenetration of the global and the local resulting in
- It is one of the flows that are defining feature of globalization. unique outcomes in different geographic areas.
Computer Viruses  Hybridization: external flows interact with internal flows producing a
- Made its first appearance in science fiction in the late 1960 and early unique cultural hybrid that combines elements of the two
1970s.  Creolization: involves a combination of language and cultures that
Chapter 7 were previously unintelligible to one another.
Cultural differentialism Muslim Girl Scout
- Involves barriers that prevent flows that serve to make cultures more - The idea of global culture and cultural flows because it shows how
alike, cultures tend to remain stubbornly different from one another. something from one part of the world can spread and change to fit other
places. It’s about sharing ideas but also making them work for your own
culture.
CONTEMPORARY WORLD
McDonaldization
Appadurai’s “landscapes” - Introduced by ritzer and this idea is based on Max Weber’s earlier theory
- These flows and disjunctures serve to produce unique cultural realities about how societies become mor rational and organized.
around the world; they tend to produce cultural hybrids. - Process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to
- Five Global Flows: dominate more of the world.
 Ethnoscapes: Actual movement, as well as fantasies about moving, of
mobile groups and individuals. Shift in Model
 Technoscapes: Fluid, global configurations of technology and the - While Weber focused on bureaucracy, McDonaldization uses fast-food
wide range of material that moves freely and quickly around the globe. restaurants as a model for understanding how efficiency and
 Financescapes: Processes by which huge sums of money move predictability spread in society.
through nation-states and around the world at grat speed.
 Mediascapes: Electronic capability to produce and transmit Homogeneity
information and images globally. - Because of McDonaldization, the world starts to look the same. The
 Ideoscapes: Flows of images primarily political in nature. “sameness” can be boring because it reduces the variety and uniqueness
of different cultures.
Cultural Convergence
- Is when cultures are subject to many of the same global flows and tend The Globalization of Nothing
to grow more alike. Central to this argument is the idea of Grobalization which is defined as the
imperialistic ambitions of nation-states, corporations, and organizations, and
Cultural Imperialism their imposition throughout the world.
- Culture imposing themselves, more or less consciously, on other cultures  Nothing: Social forms largely devoid of distinctive content.
thereby destroying local cultures.  Something: Largely full social forms; those rich in distinctive content.
- Indian sari weavers: one of the traditional crafts being threatened with  Non-places: Settings largely devoid of distinctive content.
destruction as a result of globalization is hand-woven silk sari- making in  Non-things: Objects largely devoid of distinctive content.
India.  Non-people: Those occupy positions that lead them to be devoid of
- Deterritorialization: the declining significance of the geographic location distinctive content at least in those positions.
which culture exists.  Non-services: Services largely devoid of distinctive content.

World Culture Chapter 8: Global Flows of Migrants


- A distinctive theoretical approach to convergence in general, and cultural Migrants: Populations on the move, both vagabonds and tourists.
convergence in particular Vagabonds: Those likely to move because they are forced to.
- Includes the spread of global models that leads to global convergence Tourists: People who move about the world because they want to; because
- Isomorphism: A series of global models has led to a great uniformity they are “light.”
throughout the world.
CONTEMPORARY WORLD
International migration has four components: Diaspora
 The in-migration of persons to a country other than that of their place - Involves the large-scale dispersal of a population.
of birth or citizenship.
 The return migration of nationals to their home country after residing Chapter 10: Negative Global Flows Processes
abroad. Dangerous Imports
 The out-migration of nationals from their home country - The flow of all sorts of products from every corner of the world has
 The out-migration of foreigners from a foreign country to which they made it near-impossible to know precisely the true nature of the product
had previously immigrated. entering a country.
Borderless Disease
A combination of Pull and Push factors is usually used to explain migration. - Have become much more common in recent years, they are not a new
Push factors: are the motivations of the migrants, contextual issuesin the home phenomenon.
country making it difficult or impossible for them to achieve their goals. - Diseases such as plague, malaria, tuberculosis, and sexually transmitted
Pull factors: favorable immigration policy in the host country, higher pay and infections (STIs) of various types have long spread globally.
lower unemployment. HIV/AIDS
- Spreads in various ways, but it is its spread through sexual human
Various types of migrants but focused on vagabonds: contact.
 Refugees: those forced to leave their homeland, or who leave involuntarily, - The globalization of the disease is a result of the increasingly heightened
because they fear for their safety. flow, or movement, of people throughout much of the world.
 Asylum seekers: refugees who seek to remain in the country to which they Avian Flu
flee. - There has been fear of a pandemic of avian flu that, because of
 Labor migrant: one who is forced to search for work outside his/her globalization, would spread faster and affect more people and more
home country by “push” or “pull” factors. parts of the world than the last flu pandemic, the Spanish flue of 1918.

SARS
- An outbreak of SARS occurred in 2003 when the virus spread-largely via
Flow of Migrants to and from the US airline passengers.
Illegal Mexican migrants to the US
- The outbreak had only limited effect, it demonstrated that globalization
- Mexican Immigrants: about one-third of the illegal immigrants in the contributes to the spread of such diseases.
US come from mexico Ebola Virus
- Returning to Mexico: some immigrants return to Mexico, where they - Is a viral disease that was first identified in Sudan and Zaire in 1976.
face hardship.
- The disease is highly virulent, killing between 50 percent and 90 percent
of those contract it.
Remittances
Tropical Disease in Europe
- Those who are successful often end up sending money back to their
- Indicates not only the importance of borderless diseases, but also that
country of origin for the care and support of various family members.
the impact of such disease is not restricted to the south.
CONTEMPORARY WORLD
Crime - Is the systematic difference in wealth and power that exist between
- Has increased in concert with the growth of globalization. countries.
Terrorism “Bottom Billion”
- Certainly not new, but there does seem to be something different about - Paul collier argues that in the making that gross distinction we ignore
its most recent and most important manifestation such as al-Qaeda. the poorest people in the world, what he calls the bottom billion.
War Migration
- Has not received a great deal of attention in globalization studies. - One of the consequences of inequality is migration, usually from the
- However, it clearly deserves more attention and not only because of its South to the North.
great social and political importance. - Those who can will generally try to move from poor areas to more
affluent areas.
Global Military Structures - South-to-South migration: movement of people from poorer Southern
- Many international military organization and alliances have been formed countries to somewhat better-off Southern countries.
over the centuries, but the most important and most global of such - Push factors such as war and political crises at home
organization, at least until the end of the cold war, was the North Atlantic - Pull factors such as the availability of work with higher pay in the
Treaty Organization. destination country.
- NATO was formed in 1949 as a reaction against growing threat of the E-waste and Inequality
Soviet Union and its allies. - E-waste or electronic waste, which is laced with all sorts of hazardous
Technology and toxic materials.
- One of the things that make war today increasingly likely to be global is
the existence of advanced ICTs. Global digital divide
Information War - One of the most important contemporary consequences and causes of
- Information and information technology increasingly permeating warfare global inequality.
in developed countries.
Cyber-War Race and Ethnicity
- The increasing importance of computers and the internet has had, as we - We tend to think of race and ethnicity as being objective in the sense
have seen various places in this book, many implications for that they are based on such seemingly objective, phenotypic
globalization. characteristics as the color of one’s skin.
- One of the potentially most important and devastating is the possibility  Race: defined on the basis of real or pre-sumed physical, biological, or
of cyber-war. phenotypical characteristics.
 Ethnicity: these are socially constructed categories based on cultural traits
Chapter 11: Inequality than a society finds important, rather than strictly biological traits.
Global Inequality  Ethnic Group: social group defined on the basis of some cultural
- Global realities make it clear that inequalities among and between areas characteristic.
of the world (especially North and South) exist and are extraordinarily  Racism: belief in the inherent superiority of one racial group and the
dramatic and disturbing. inferiority of others.
CONTEMPORARY WORLD
 Xenophobia: beliefs, attitudes, and prejudices that reject, exclude, and Rural
vilify groups made up of outsiders or foreigners. - The south encompasses about four billion people has been seen as being
 Apartheid: a formal system of separate development for whites and in the “vortex of globalization”.
blacks. - Most generally, these new relations of agricultural production have come
 Pluralism: the idea and fact that different races and ethnic groups can live to be defined by the “ law of comparative advantage”
together, can coexist. Urban
 Genocide: acts committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, - The world has always been predominantly rural, but sometime between
racial, or religious group. 2000 and 2010 a “watershed in human history” occurred as for “the first time
 Ethnic cleansing: forcibly removing people of another ethnic group. the urban population of the earth” outnumbered the rural.
- Cities were seen as “cosmopolitan” and therefore inherently global because
Gender they encompassed a range of cultures, ethnicities, languages, and
- Gender distinctions are used to organize the social world and to affect, consumer products.
often adversely, women. - Global cities: key cities in the global, especially capitalist, economy.
- Sex: physical differences between males and females.
- Gender: differences between males and females based on social
definition and distinction.
Feminization of labor: increasing participation of women in the formal and
informal global paid labor force.
Export Processing Zone: independent area controlled by corporations and
free of national control.
Global Care Chain: series of personal relationship between people across the
globe based on the paid or unpaid work of caring.
- Arlie Hochschild argues that migration of domestic workers is part of a
global care chain.

Trafficking in the sex industry


- The increased global flow of people creates a greater opportunity for
traffickers to transport women for the purposes of sexual exploitation.
Mail-order brides
- Another aspect of global trafficking in women involves mail-order
brides. Business has become multimillion-dollar global industry thanks,
to the internet.

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