This more robust view of the ‘power of identity’ is one to which anyone surveying the dramatic rise of social movements based around identity positions (gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, nationality) might easily subscribe. So, recognizing the significant cultural sources of resistance to the power of globalization goes a long way towards getting this power in perspective. The impact of globalization thus becomes, more plausibly, a matter of the interplay of an institutional-technological force towards globality with counterpoised ‘localizing’ forces. The drive towards ‘globality’ combines a logic of capitalist expansion with the swift development of deterritorializing media and communications technologies. But this drive is opposed by various processes and practices expressing different orders of ‘locality’. Amongst these we can count the cultural identity movements that Castells focuses on, but also less formally organized expressions of identity, for example, those involved in local consumption preferences (Howes 1996 Furthermore, it is worth noting that we should consider the cultural effort implemented by nation-states in binding their populations into another cultural-political order of local identification.
This more complex formulation clearly implies that cultural identity is not likely to be the easy prey of globalization. This is because identity is not in fact merely some delicate communal-psychic attachment, but a considerable dimension of institutionalized social life in modernity. Particularly in the dominant form of national identity, it is the product of deliberate cultural construction and maintenance via both the regulatory and the socializing institutions of the state: in particular, the law, the education system and the media. The deterritorializing force of globalization thus meets a structured opposition in the form of what Michael Billig (1995) has called ‘banal nationalism’ – the everyday minute reinforcement; the continuous routinized ‘flagging’ of national belonging, particularly through media discourse – sponsored by developed nation-states.
For Robertson, globalization refers to "the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole" (R. Robertson, Globalization, 1992: 8). He argues that in thought and action, the world is a single place. This single place forces people to ask themselves what it means to live in this place and how we should structure it. The questions projected receive different answers from individuals and societies that define their position in relation to both a system of societies and the shared properties of humankind from very different perspectives. The confrontation of their world views means that globalization involves "comparative interaction of different forms of life" (Robertson: 27). Robertson’s view of globalization is often referred to as the ‘World Culture Theory’ as it gives a particular insight into how participants in the process of globalization become conscious of and give meaning to living in the world as a single place. In this explanation, globalization "refers both to the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole"; in other words, it covers the acceleration in concrete global interdependence and in consciousness of the global whole (Robertson 1992: 8). It engages in the concept of crystallization of four main components of the “global-human circumstance”: societies (or nation-states), the system of societies, individuals (selves), and humankind; this takes the form of processes of, respectively, societalization, internationalization, individuation, and generalization of consciousness about humankind (Robertson 1991: 215-6; 1992: 27).
Robertson claims that globalization has been occurring for centuries; in tandem with rather than as a consequence of the rise of modernity (1992: 8). In a “germinal” European phase (1992: 58), starting in the fifteenth century, ideas about national communities, the individual, and humanity began to grow. In the successive “incipient” phase, lasting until the late-nineteenth century, these ideas took more solid form; for example, unitary states now partake in “international” relations. In the critical “take-off” phase, from the 1870s to the 1920s, the main “reference points” of contemporary world society fully developed. World culture encompassed increasingly global conceptions of the correct kind of national society, thematization of individual rights and identities, inclusion of non-European societies in international relations, and greater formalization of ideas about humanity (1992: 59). Globalization in this period also included the growth of many other trans-national linkages and standards. A “struggle for hegemony” phase lasted from the 1920s until after World War II, giving way to a period of "uncertainty" since the 1960s.
One particular ongoing debate within the theories of globalization is the prospects of democratic institutions at the global level. In his text ‘Democracy and Globalization’ David Held argues the case for what he calls “cosmopolitan democracy”. While democracy has become the standard of political legitimacy internationally, Held argues that more and more nations favour democracy although its strength is being progressively limited by the results of globalization. For Held, Regionalism as well as globalization both undermines the notion of the nation state. In a cosmopolitan mode, David Held maintains that globalization requires the extension of liberal democratic institutions (including the rule of law and elected representative institutions) to the transnational level. (The World Bank, Poverty in Age of Globalization, http://www.worldbank.org/globalization, 19.05.2005) Nation state-based liberal democracy is inadequately equipped to deal with adverse side effects of present-day globalization such as ozone reduction or growing material inequality. According to this model, “local” or “national” matters should remain under the backing of existing liberal democratic institutions. Power is fundamental to Held's analysis of global transformation, as he regards it as being shifted more and more to multi-level dimensions. National economies are depending on international trade and politics to a growing extent, so that an individual nation as a community of fate can no longer give meaning to itself on its own. It increasingly relies on the inclusion of other global players in its legitimating process. Held describes the future of democracy as cosmopolitan democracy, based on a global public sphere enabled by means of media and other forms of communication. He considers new institutions of effective transnational decision making need to be established. For Held, globalization is a multi-dimensional spectacle involving many different arenas of human activity where predictions of what will happen next become increasingly difficult.
In opposition to Held, Habermas, and other defenders of global democracy, communitarian-minded pessimists highlight the supposed utopian character of such propositions, arguing that democratic politics assumes deep feelings of trust, obligation, and belonging that remain uncommon at the transnational level. Largely non-voluntary commonalities of belief, history, and custom compose necessary preconditions of any viable democracy, and since these commonalities are missing beyond the sphere of the nation-state, global or cosmopolitan democracy is doomed to fail. In an analogous vein, critics inspired by Realist theory argue that cosmopolitanism obscures the fundamentally pluralistic, dynamic, and conflictual nature of political life on our divided planet. Even though its appeasing self- understanding, cosmopolitan democracy unintentionally opens the door to new and even more horrible forms of political violence. Cosmopolitanism’s universalistic moral discourse not only ignores the harsh and unavoidably agonistic character of political life, but it also tends to serve as a convenient ideological cloak for terrible wars waged by political blocs no less self-interested than the traditional nation state. For these critics, the fact that the recent Allied war against Iraq, conducted as a so-called “humanitarian intervention”, probably resulted in at least several thousand civilian deaths, vividly underscores the profound dangers intrinsic to the quest for novel forms of global democracy.
Held, now professor of political science at the London School of Economic (LSE) assured at the Dialogue “Globalization, Identity and Diversity” that, “globalization does not mean the end of states but rather new forms of power:” In his speech he said that the era of globalization does not “reduce politicians' power but simply complicates their tasks.” Held referred to the fact that historically man has been travelling, migrating and that process only stopped after the World Wars and has now started up again. According to Held, in the last decade we have experienced the greatest expansion of cultures and ideas. He clarified, however, that the globalization of communications does not mean the globalization of culture.
He believes that the current era of globalization is characterized by the appearance of a territorial policy, leadership that combines the local with the global, the deterritorilization of decision making, the development of international law, the appearance of new labour relations and the transnationalization of politics.
These characteristics are in “a context directed by the market and dominated by Neo-liberal ideology, “he pointed out and concluded by saying that “global problems should be solved globally, not unilaterally.” (David Held: Globalization does not mean the end of states but rather new forms of power, , 26/07/2004)
Within this approximate intangible theoretical framework, these theories coordinate with the three developed outlines of globalization; which include ‘The World System Theory’, ‘The World Polity Theory’ and ‘The World Culture Theory.’
According to Wallerstein in ‘Utopistics’, globalization is the process, completed in the twentieth century, by which the capitalist world-system proliferated across the actual globe. Since that world system has maintained some of its main features over several centuries, globalization does not constitute a new phenomenon. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the capitalist world economy is in crisis; therefore, according the likes of Wallerstein, the current “ideological celebration of so-called globalization is in reality the swan song of our historical system” (Wallerstein, Utopistics, 1998: 32).
It is a capitalist world-economy because the accumulation of private capital, through exploitation in production and sale for profit in a market, is its driving force; it is "a system that operates on the primacy of the endless accumulation of capital via the eventual co modification of everything" (1998: 10).
A world system is any historical social system of interdependent parts that form a bounded structure and operate according to distinct rules, or "a unit with a single division of labour and multiple cultural systems" (1974a: 390).
The capitalist world-economy has no single political center: it "has been able to flourish precisely because [it] has had within its bounds not one but a multiplicity of political systems," which has given capitalists "a freedom of maneuver that is structurally based" and has "made possible the constant expansion of the world-system" (1974b: 348).
The world polity theory looks at globalization as the growth and enactment of world culture. A rationalized world institutional and cultural order has crystallized that consists of universally applicable models that shape states, organizations, and individual identities (J. Meyer et al., "World Society and the Nation-State," American Journal of Sociology 1997)
Sovereignty, rights, and the like, have acquired great authority. Global disputes have a common framework in the structure of actions of states and individuals. A polity is a "system of creating value through the collective conferral of authority" (Meyer 1980: 111-2). This system is constituted by a set of rules whereby actors in the system are "entities constructed and motivated by enveloping frames" (Boli and Thomas 1997: 172). The world polity contains no single actor or institution defining what is valuable for the world as a whole. "Instead of a central actor, the culture of world society allocates responsible and authoritative actor hood to nation-states" (Meyer et al. 1997: 169). Their authority is rooted in a world culture: a set of universally applicable models that define who are legitimate actors in world society, what goals they can pursue and how they can pursue them. While world polity models define sovereign states as key actors, enabling authorities to construct collective goals and devise the means or programs to produce them, state officials are not the only ones engaged in such authoritative creation of value (1980: 112).
The approach to world culture theory, advocated by Robertson, states that globalization is “the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole” (R. Robertson, Globalization, 1992: 8)
This theory places emphasis on the way in which participants in the process become conscious of and give meaning to living in the world as a single place. Globalization therefore “refers both to the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole (Robertson 1992: 8).
It involves the crystallization of four main mechanisms of the “global-human circumstance”: societies (or nation-states), the system of societies, individuals (selves), and humankind; this takes the form of processes of, respectively, societalization, internationalization, individuation, and generalization of consciousness about humankind (Robertson 1991: 215-6; 1992: 27). Rather than referring to a multitude of historical processes, the concept above all captures "the form in terms of which the world has moved towards unicity" (1992: 175). This form is practically contested. Closely linked to the process of globalization is therefore the "problem of globality" or the cultural terms on which coexistence in a single place becomes possible (1992: 132). World culture denotes the multiple ways of defining the global situation, conceived as responses to this shared predicament. (http://www.sociology.emory.edu/globalization/theories03.html)
(Word Count 2, 697)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
• The World Bank, Poverty in Age of Globalization, http://www.worldbank.org/globalization, 19.05.2005)
• David Held: Globalization does not mean the end of states but rather new forms of power, http://www.barcelona.com/2004/eng/common/enviar_amigo2/portada.cfm?plantilla=pl_noticias&idNoticia, 26/07/2004
• J. Meyer et al., "World Society and the Nation-State," American Journal of Sociology 1997
• Bronner, S. Eric, 2005. Human Rights, Terror, and Global Society. Oxford. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc
• Nash K, 2005. Contemporary Political Sociology. Oxford. Blackwell Publishing
• Waters, M. (1995) Globalization. London. Routeledge.
• Ritzer, George. 2004. Globalization of Nothing. California. Thousand Oaks.
• Smith, David, 1999. States and sovereignty in the global economy. London. Routledge.
• Deepak Nayyar, 2002. Governing globalization: issues and institutions. Oxford. Oxford University Press.
• Holdon, Barry. 2000. Global Democracy: Key Debates. Routledge.
• Keane, John. 2003. Global Civil Society. Cambridge Press.
• Urry, John. 2003. Global Complexity. Polity Press.
• R. Robertson, 1992. Globalization.
• http://www.sociology.emory.edu/globalization/theories03.html
