Transcript Lecture Five. - University of Bath

Lecture Five.
Globalisation and the
compression of time and space.
Focus of lecture-concept of
globalisation.
 increased economic, political and cultural 'integration'
 engendered by technological, political and cultural
developments.
 impact of the forces of globalisation on human
subjectivity and identity.
 Are identities in the contemporary world radically
different to those of our predecessors?
 There are positive aspects of globalisation but it has a
'dark underbelly’.
 Key theorists -La Touche and Mc Grew, Arun
Appadurai, Marshall McLuhan, Anthony Giddens, Lash
and Urry, Zygmunt Bauman, and Roland Robertson.
Introduction
 Globalisation responsible for many changes
we are currently experiencing.
 Processes of globalisation -motor that
drives economic, political and cultural
changes we term post-modern.
 Not a totally new concept and experience a process that.
 In many ways, started to occur with the
first stirrings of modern societies
 A crucial idea in modern sociology
Two essential concepts tied up with
notions of globalisation:
 Movement of goods, capital, people
across nation-state boundaries,
incorporating some sense of the
world as a single place.
 Cultural Hybridisation, new
hybridised/ syncretic cultural forms,
and a contingent sense of the world
as a single, global society.
Post-Industrial Society
 Postmodern, globalised societies often referred to as
post-industrial
 Daniel Bell, (1974) Kerr al (1960) Francis Fukayama
(The End of History? 1989).
 Economic, political, cultural - convergence.
 Societies increasingly share common features
 democratic, capitalist -cultural homogeneity
(compare with postmodern theories of culture etc).
 theory of convergence.
 Motor of convergence- globalisation
Post-Capitalism
 Two basic ideas here.
1 Post-modern societies -different forms of
economic organisation to modern period.
Retains the basic features of modern
Capitalism – profit, private ownership of
property etc -But shift from production to
consumption.
2. Post-capitalism -a broader economic picture
of global forms of economic organisation.
Questions.
 Is the the ‘End of History?
(Fukuyama?)
 Can you link this to Lyotards
questions about the end of Metanarratives?
 For Fukuyama- no viable
metanarratives that will replace the
capitalist paradigm.
Giddens on Globalisation and
Late-Modernity.
 Giddens an optimist.
 Globalisation an equalising process - 'reverse
colonialism'.
 Globalisation- a set of processes.
 Affects individuals - identities, subjectivities and
material conditions of life.
 Modernisation spawned Globalisation.
 So no new era or epoch in human history as
Postmodernists suggest
 Globalisation and Postmodernity- a continuation of
trends set in motion by the processes of modernity
Four main 'institutional complexes
of modernity'.
 Basis of modernisation process.
 Administrative power;
 Military power;
 Capitalism
 Industrialism.
Administrative power
 Development of the secular nation-state
 Rational and bureaucratic forms of
administration
 Law and order.
 Surveillance of populations made possible.
 Links to sharing of knowledge and
technology.
 Can you link this to Foucault ?
Capitalism and industrialism
 New forms of production
 Factory and industrial
production.
 New forms of economic
calculation
 Decline in non-waged labour
and agriculture.
Militarism
 Based upon technology and
professional armies
 industrialisation of warfare
 Militaristic expansion of modern
states.
 Increasing uses of military alliance
in warfare.
Time-space distanciation.
 a) The historical movement from
traditional societies to modern
ones.
 b) The part played by
globalisation in speeding up the
processes that were set in motion
by the modernisation process.
Traditional Societies 1
 'Traditional' or ‘pre-modern’ societies -social
relations -embedded in time and space.
 Time -embedded in a local context.
 Identity ascribed at birth and more or less
fixed .
 Majority of the population living in small
local village communities
 sense of space, geographical and social
narrow and fixed
Traditional Societies 2
 sense of time and space embedded in local communities.
 'traditional' notions of time- local and narrowly defined.
 reduces the sense of social and cultural distance
between communities.
 Time in the modern era stretches across the world.
 Produces feeling that the world is shrinking.
 Distances shrink as communities calibrate their sense of
time with other communities on the other side of the
globe.
 Processes of modernisation lift out the individuals and
communities from narrow definitions of time, space and
status.
 Modernisation dis-embeds the feudal individual from
his/her fixed identity in time and space.
For Giddens modernisation
and modernity based upon
a process whereby a fixed
and narrow idea of 'space'
as 'place' is gradually
eroded by an increasingly
dominant concept of
universal 'time'.
Two types of dis-embedding
mechanisms:
1 Symbolic Tokens
2 Expert Systems.
Symbolic Tokens
 Peasant households in traditional societies
largely produced own means of subsistence.
 Tithe was often paid in kind- goods ,animals ,
labour.
 Money was of limited value
 Economic exchange -local and particularistic
 Modernisationreplaced local exchange with
universal exchange of money.
 Exchange of money establishes social relations
across time and space.
 Globalisation a speeding up of this process.
Expert Systems
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arise as a result of the scientific revolutions
increase in technical knowledge
increase in specialisation.
Claim to 'universal' and scientific forms of knowledge.
Establish social relations across vast expanses of time and
space.
social distance is created between professionals and their
clients.
Eg. modern medical model -based upon the universal claims
of science.
dominates across the globe
local perspectives become devalued.
Modern societies reliant on Expert Systems.
Trust increasingly the key to the relationship between the
individual and Expert Systems.
Trust the social glue which holds modern societies together.
Where trust is undermined individuals experience
ontological insecurity and a sense of insecurity with regard
to their social reality.
Bauman on subjectivity.
 The disembedding of time and space
has profound consequences for
human subjectivity.
 This is an age of radical uncertainty
with radical consequences for human
morality.
 Bauman's globalised world is not as
harmonious a place as Giddens’.
Lash and Urry - The dark side of
Globalisation.
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An emptying out of subjects and objects.
Objects for Lash and Urry progressively emptied out of
meaning.
This emptying out began to intensify when exchange
value was reduced simply to money value- when the
'gift' element of symbolic exchange in premodern times
was eroded.
Today sign value takes primacy- this is created through
the advertising, media and the dissemination of
commodities.
Value symbolic -but in a Baudrillardian sense.
Symbolic aspect attached to objects is illusionary.
Objects disembedded from original context and reembedded in a new unreal context.
Baudrillardian simulacrum- a symbolic dimension- laden
with meaning but paradoxically emptied of it to the
extreme.
A realm of falsity, deception and simulation.
An emptying out of subjects.
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Human subjects become disembedded also.
deterritorialization, decontextualizion of the subject
Individuals lose attachment to people and places in the
process of a disembedding of time and space.
Postmodern, globalised relationships -ephemeral, fleeting
and diverse.
More durable uniform relations in modern society
We are detached from the processes of production and from
our fellow humans
Time a disposable, pliable, manipulable thing
Time no longer a concrete frame of reference that roots us
in a particular context or milieu.
Multiple worlds, spaces and milieu that we can inhabit
simultaneously.
Time and space a fragmented order that we are constantly
creating and recreating.
From Modernity to
globalisation.
 For Lash and Urry a dark, sinister new
world order
 For Giddens a more positive thing.
 Giddens divides modernity into Two
phases: early modernity and ‘high’ or
‘late’ modernity.
 Late-modernity based upon
globalization, social reflexivity and
detraditionalisation.
Globalisation
 A contradictory and uneven process.
 Pulls away from local communities and nation-states
 Pushes down on those same communities and nationstates.
 supra-national political organisations weaken powers
of nation-states
 Local communities' beliefs and cultural values may be
globalised and universalised
 Individuals and groups may experience this
universalisation as a 'dilution' and 'corruption' of their
cultural beliefs
 Resististance to this process, sometimes with violence
 rise of fundamentalism, nationalism and terrorism
could be seen as a response to this
 Giddens - "Globalisation...is not just
'out there' - to do with very large-scale
influences. It is also an 'in here'
phenomenon, directly bound up with
the circumstances of local life."
(Giddens1994: 80-1).
 Roland Robertson - Globalisation is
the: ‘universalisation of the particular
and the particularisation of the
universal’. The universal is the global
and the particular is the local.
Reflexivity and Globalisation
 Modernity and late modernity based upon human
reflexivity.
 Individuals have to make choices and decisions in a
'rational' and secular manner
 All of our social activity needs to be revised in the
light of new information
 Increased notions of risk and uncertainty.
 Globalisation appears as a threat to certain social
groups and to their traditions and cultures.
 Resentment and resistance to processes of
globalization.
 Resistance to 'global culture'.
 Also hybrid cultural forms emerge ‘Glocalisation’.
De-traditionalisation
 Reflexivity- individuals question the
validity ideologies, opinions and
belief-systems
 Dissolution of traditional left- right
politics
Questions.
 Is globalisation an equalising process?
 Cultural forms and forms of economic and
political organization are more standardised
 BUT some economic, cultural and political
forms privileged over others
 Question of why certain economic, political
and cultural models come to dominate over
others?
 Does Giddens address this?
The Irresistible Rise of the
West 1.
 Latouche examines Western economic and cultural
expansionism.
 Traces the development of Western global domination.
 Certain type of social organisation have been imposed on
the world.
 This has come to be accepted as a common sense,
universally appropriate model for global development.
 Global society for Latouche, the harbinger of new forms
of domination and social, cultural, political and economic
control.
 Colonization of mind body and soul replaces physical
and coercive power of the empire. Globalization, for
Latouche, a new form of colonialism.
 West dominates in a symbolic sense.
The Irresistible Rise of the
West 2
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Values of progress, technological scientificism and liberal
economic model- powerful mechanisms for the colonization
of bodies and minds.
Technical superiority the ‘trump card of domination’
Modernism synonymous with 'technologism', Westernism
and industrialism.
Also a normative dimension -'the whole of society must be
fired with.a desire for limitless accumulation’.
Colonization, and Globalization two sides of the same coin.
The domination of the rest by the West.
Processes of C & G create a single world market, ‘drawing in
even the most primitive of communities and imprisoning all
participants’
Destiny of diverse societies determined by world market.
This modifies means of production but also transforms
whole social systems.
Conclusions and Questions
 Can societies be divided as Giddens suggest
into 'traditional', 'early modern' and 'late
modern'. This model fails to account
uneven development within and between
societies
 Giddens theory is one of a reasonably
harmonious process. Emphasises
integration, social order, unification, trust;
Bryan Turner
 The notion of self as reflexive has
a long history
 The early 17th century witnessed an
era of high levels of reflexivity.
(Historians also point to the high
degree of 'economic globalization'
in this period.
 Little evidence to support a
secularisation thesis.