George Ritzer - Globalization

7 Held, David, and Anthony McGrew. 2000. “The Great Globalization Debate: An Introduction.” In David Heldand Anthony McGrew, eds., The Global Transformations Reader: An Introduction to the Globalization Debate. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 1–50.

8 Hoffman, Stanley. 2002. “Clash of Globalizations.” Foreign Affairs 81 (4): 104/15.

9 Ritzer, George, and Zeynep Atalay, eds. 2010. Readings in Globalization: Key Concepts and Major Debates. Oxford: Blackwell.

10 Stacey, Oliver, Giulia De Lazzari, Hilary Grayson, Hazel Griffin, Emily Jones, Amanda Taylor, and David Thomas. 2018. The Globalization of Science Curricula. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

11 Zürn, Michael, and Pieter de Wilde. 2016. “Debating Globalization: Cosmopolitanism and Communitarianism as Political Ideologies.” Journal of Political Ideologies 21 (3): 280–301.

1 1The title of this chapter is derived from an anthology the first author edited many years ago. See Ritzer (1972).

2 2Immigrants can be thought of as “transnational” when they are involved in a variety of relationships (e.g. social, economic, political) that cut across the nations of settlement and origin creating a new transnational field (Basch et al. 1994). While there are certainly many immigrants who fit into this category and their number is likely growing, there has been a tendency to overestimate their number and to conflate transmigrants and immigrants. Thus, Portes (2001a: 183) concludes: “It is more useful to conceptualize transnationalism as one form of economic, political and cultural adaptation that co-exists with other, more traditional forms [e.g. assimilation].” He usefully limits the idea of transnational activities to “those initiated and sustained by non-institutional actors, be they organized groups or networks of individuals across national borders. Many of these activities are informal, that is they take place outside the pale of state regulation and control… . they represent goal-oriented initiatives that require coordination across national borders by members of civil society. These activities are undertaken on their own behalf, rather than on behalf of the state or corporate bodies” (Portes 2001a: 186).

3 3By the way, this idea of such a basic “urge” is quite controversial and is critiqued by postmodernists (and others) as being suggestive of “essentialism,” or the notion that there is some fundamental characteristic of humans that lies at their essence and explains much of what they do. See Ritzer (1997).

4 4Robertson’s analysis ends at this point since his essay was published in 1990.

5 5Goffman (1961: 81). The quotation: “To be awkward or unkempt, to talk or move wrongly, is to be a dangerous giant, a destroyer of worlds. As every psychotic and comic ought to know, any accurately improper move can poke through the thin sleeve of immediate reality.”

Imperialism

Imperialism

Colonialism

Postcolonialism

Development

Westernization

Westernization

Americanization

A Broader and Deeper View of the Americanization of Consumer Culture,

Minimizing the Importance of Americanization

Anti-Americanism

Comparisons with Globalization

The Era of the “Posts”

Chapter Summary

Globalization has come to be the preeminent term for describing and thinking about processes that affect, and structures common to, large portions of the world today. However, there are many other concepts that either describe earlier historical, or contemporary, realities that deal with at least a portion of that which is encompassed by globalization. In this chapter we deal with several concepts that are related to globalization – imperialism, colonialism (and postcolonialism), development (and dependency), Westernization, Easternization, and Americanization (and anti-Americanization).

We devote much more attention to Americanization than the other processes even though there is much to indicate, and many scholars argue (and as will be discussed in many places in this book), that the era of American preeminence in the global arena is in decline and can only fall further in the future. For example, Fareed Zakaria (2008, 2011) argues that we are living in a “post-American world.” While there is much to recommend such arguments, the fact is that Americanization was of great global importance after WW II and until very recently. While it is greatly weakened, it remains to this day an important global force (Nye, Jr. 2015). Furthermore, even if it were to disappear tomorrow (a highly unlikely possibility), its effects throughout the world would linger and be felt for many years, decades, or even centuries to come. It is important to point out early on that while all of these concepts are discussed separately, many of them overlap, sometimes quite substantially. For example, imperialism is sometimes difficult to distinguish from colonialism; Americanization is a sub-type of Westernization and it has also involved imperialism, colonialism, and a commitment to development (and dependency). Similar overlaps abound among and between all of these concepts. Furthermore, globalization cannot be completely divorced from these other ideas. In some cases their past impact lingers in the global age and they continue to affect globalization. In other cases, they continue to be viable and to affect, and even to be part of, globalization.

Imperialismis a broad concept that describes various methods employed by one country to gain control (sometimes through territorial conquest) of another country (or geographic area) and then to exercise control, especially political, economic, and military control, over that country (or geographic area), and perhaps many other countries (as, most famously, did the British Empire) (Smith 2016). It is an idea and reality that came of age in the mid-to late-1800s (although its history, as we will see, is far more ancient), and is therefore rooted, at least since that time, in the idea of the nation-state and the control that it exercises over other nation-states as well as less well-defined geographic areas.

Imperialism can encompass a wide range of domains of control. In the era of the cultural turn in sociology, the latter is of increasing interest and concern and has come to be labeled cultural imperialism(Inglis 2017). More specific manifestations of cultural imperialism are sufficiently important to earn a label of their own with the most important being media imperialism(see Chapters 8and 9for a discussion of these two forms of imperialism).

The term imperialism itself comes from the Roman imperium (Markoff 2007) and was first associated with domination and political control over one or more neighboring nations. The term “empire” is derived from imperium and it was used to describe political forms that had characteristics of Roman rule, especially the great power of the leader (the Roman imperator or emperor) and the huge chasm between the power of the ruler and the ruled (Gibbon 1998). Over time, the notion of empire, and of the process of imperialism, came to be associated with rulership over vast geographic spaces and the people who lived there. It is this characteristic that leads to the association between imperialism and globalization. In fact, many of the processes discussed in this book under the heading of globalization – trade, migration, communication, and so on – existed between the imperial power and the geographic areas that it controlled.