George Ritzer - Globalization

In a related debate, some scholars argue that rather than globalization, we have transnationalism

Transnationalism:(Mitchell 2017) or regionalism(Holden 2016). Transnationalism refers to “processes that interconnect individuals and social groups across specific geo-political borders” (Giulianotti and Robertson 2007: 62). A related concept is transnationality, or “the rise of new communities and formation of new social identities and relations that cannot be defined through the traditional reference point of nation-states” (Robinson 2007).

Globalization and transnationalism are often used interchangeably, but transnationalism is clearly a more delimited process than globalization. Transnationalism is limited to interconnections that cross geo-political borders, especially those associated with two, or more, nation-states. 2An example is Mexican immigrants in the US sending remittances home to family members in Mexico. Globalization includes such connections, but is not restricted to them and encompasses a far wider range of planetary processes (e.g. direct relationships between people in many places in the world networking via the Internet). Further, geo-political borders are only one of the barriers encountered, and often overcome, by globalization. Some phenomena, labor unions for example, are better thought of as transnational than as global. That is, the relationship between labor unions in, for example, the US and Sweden is more important than are moves toward a global labor movement (see Chapter 15). Transnationalism is most often used in thinking about, and research on, immigrants who move from one country to another, but who continue to be involved in various ways with the country from which they came (Portes 2001b).

The case of baseball is useful in clarifying the distinction between globalization and transnationalism (Kelly 2007). Baseball is a transnational sport because many of its fundamentals – techniques, strategies, etc. – and players have circulated across the borders of a small number of nations, especially Japan, Taiwan, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and, of course, the US. However, it is not global because it has not flowed on a planetary basis to a large portion of the world.

In contrast, football (soccer) would be much more clearly a global sport because it exists in virtually every area of the world. For example, over 200 of the world’s nations are members of a global organization, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). Another example of globalization in the realm of sports is the summer (and winter) Olympics sponsored by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in which about the same number of nations participate (for more on this see Chapter 8).

Like transnationalism, regionalism is more delimited than globalization but in a more intuitive manner. A region is a “limited number of states linked by a geographical relationship and by a degree of mutual interdependence” (Kacowicz 1998: 8). The linkages are typically reinforced by political and legal arrangements for mutual benefit (Holden 2016). One clear regional example is the European Union, which is connected via political ties (e.g. the European Parliament and Council), legal arrangements (carried out through the EU’s “Ordinary Legislative Procedure” and its resulting laws and regulations), economy (the EU Single, or Common, Market), and culture (e.g. a set of shared cultural and linguistic roots).

As globalization skeptics, regionalists contend that much of what we refer today as globalization would be better described as regionalization, or even inter-regionalization. Regionalization refers to “the process of dividing or sub-dividing a given territorial area into smaller units called regions for administrative purposes” (Holden 2016: 57). As noted above, skeptics emphasizing a regional perspective don’t view MNC’s as truly global. They argue that most of the world’s largest firms have the vast majority of their operations in their home region. Consider the example of Wal-Mart. As one of the world’s largest MNCs, it is often referred to as a global company. However, the bulk of its operations are in North America (1.5 million of 2.2 million workers are in the US alone [Wal-Mart 2019]); its only European locations are in Great Britain; most of its international locations are in Mexico and Canada, which borders the US; and it has failed to enter many new markets, such as Germany.

We can again clarify this distinction through other examples. Trade deals such as NAFTA or the Trans-Pacific Partnership are better thought of as regional, while institutions such as the IMF and World Bank are global. McDonald’s is a far more global corporation than Chipotle (with locations only in North America and Europe). In contrast to Wal-Mart’s regional focus described above, Mazda is a global automobile manufacturer with at least 20% of its sales across each of North America, Europe, and Asia. K-pop and hip-hop are cultural phenomena that have become global, while chutney music (an indigenous music now drawing upon Indian dholak beats mixed with the soca beat) has been focused largely in the southern Caribbean and is therefore regional.

From the perspective of this book, the reality is that transnationalism, regionalization, and globalization are all present in the world today. Some phenomena can be considered transnational while others regional, and still others are truly global; the nuances are subtle but the distinction helps clarify the ubiquitous nature of globalization.

We will offer in this section five different ways of thinking about what turns out to be a very complex issue – the origin of globalization.

Nayan Chanda (2007: xiv) argues that “globalization stems, among other things, from a basic human urge to seek a better and more fulfilling life.” This leads him to trace “the initial globalization of the human species, [to] when in the late Ice Age, a tiny group of our ancestors walked out of Africa in search of better food and security. In fifty thousand years of wandering along ocean coasts and chasing game across Central Asia, they finally settled on all the continents.” Chanda’s view that globalization is hardwired into humans is not the one accepted here since we argue that we are now living in a distinctive global age.

Chanda focuses on four specific aspects of globalization that relate to a basic “urge” 3for a better life – trade (or commerce), missionary work (religion), adventures and conquest (politics and warfare). All of these are key aspects of globalization, all can be traced to early human history, and all, as well as much else, will be dealt with in this volume.

The second perspective is that globalization is a long-term cyclical process. It is not only difficult in this view to find a single point of origin, but the effort is largely irrelevant since there long have been cycles of globalization and it is those cycles that are of utmost importance, not any particular phase or point of origin (Scholte 2005). This view, like Chanda’s, tends to contradict the idea that we live today in a new “global age.” Rather, this suggests that there have been other global ages in the past and that what now appears to be a new global age, or the high point of such an age, is destined to contract and disappear in the future. Eventually, it, too, will be replaced by a new cycle in the globalization process.

In an example of the third approach to the beginnings of globalization, Nederveen Pieterse (2012) sees eight great epochs, or “phases,” of globalization, that have occurred sequentially, each with its own point of origin: