What struck me the most in this weeks reading was the article by Colin Sparks ”What’s wrong with globalization.” Therefore I would take the opportunity to show where I think Sparks is failing in his arguments and show my view of the globalization concept.
In the article, Sparks criticizes five of the main elements that usually are seen as consensus among different globalization scholars.
The overall problem I think this article is facing is that Sparks is trying to look at globalization from a rather narrow prospective, he is not considering the change of the world structure and the role of all international actors. Throughout the article he is arguing that the only driving factor is the American imperialism over the rest of the world. According to Sparks globalization is not a new phenomena, instead he choose to call it ‘capitalist development.’
Even though he recognize the different aspects of globalization he is constantly coming back to the economic impact that the US has, if it is over the media, the global institutions like the IMF, World Bank or the WTO, he is also arguing that culture is being commercialized.
In some aspects he is raising some interesting and points, although at times it feels like Sparks is comparing apples to oranges. He is talking about the frame of the globalization but he is forgetting to look at the actual process, what is really happening within these different sectors that we are analyzing. Not to forget is that most globalization scholars are sociologists and anthropologists. Therefore it is even more crucial to look at the impact of the individual while studying the process of globalization.
I view globalization as a process that not necessarily a straightforward process, it can take many turns since globalization is build-up by and contains many different sectors, for example, economy, politics, culture, media, communication etc. This view would be in lines with Appadurai. That means that the process of globalization does not have affect us in the same way all over the world. Many critics argue that we are moving in the same direction and that the whole world is going to be dominated by the evil West/US.
I would say that due to globalization we have the opportunity to pick and choose and many times the local and national get a more significant role. Many times called ‘glocalization,’ it could either be something local being lifted to a global level or something global being adopted by the local. That brings us to another point regarding ‘contra-flow’ that Castell is mentioning, which means that it is not just the US that pick and choose and make it their own (if it is a TV show, movie, product, newspaper, etc). Instead the influence in coming from all over, from many different directions and angles which make the end product something that could be globally looked upon instead of ‘Americanized’.
At the same time as I do agree with Appadurai and his argument of the importance of the culture and the process flow but I have to combine this concept with what Ronald Robertson says, ‘that globalization makes us aware of ourselves as being a part of the world.’ To take it a step further is to connect it to the concept of cosmopolitanism. With the notion of us being a part of the world we could also work for and change the world as a whole. As stated in previous posts I would say that being a global citizen is to take it too far, although since the individual has got a more powerful role within the international system today, we are able to embrace our subcultures and form new structures that are not state-bound. I would like to argue that in the lines of cosmopolitanism I think that human rights and environmental rights have got itself a new forum on the international arena and this might be an embryo of cosmopolitanism.
If you don't agree with Sparks's dismissal of globalization theories, do you think that in general we should drop theories if they are disproven on one account? For example, if the theory of transnation and the decline of the nation applies in all sectors like cultural and social sectors but not in political sectors, is it no longer valid? Does one disproving example of a theory falsify it entirely? I suppose if we were using strict Popper logic, it would be. But because we are examining a situation that is unfolding presently, is there a little leeway? Do we have to discard these theories because they have not happened yet or because they didn't happen everywhere? Do you think that there are core elements of these theories that are valuable enough to hold onto while we perfect the others?
ReplyDeleteThe reason why I personally don't agree with Sparks is because I do not think that his arguments are responses to the concept/concepts of globalization that he is examining in this article. Although I think he raises some important aspects, even though I would argue that it is false to say that everything can be related back to the economic factors since they are not the only ones shifting and turing the process. It would be the same to argue that only the cultural aspects matter. It has been argued many times before that the economic factors might be the most evident and some might say dominant. Just to swallow the whole concept of globalization would be wrong and that is why it is important to get the input from the critics that sometimes are the extremes. I think the best way to approach the globalization concept is to examine it from as many angles as possible. To see the back-side of globalization will give us a chance to change and correct things within the process and make things work for the better for everyone involved.
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