definitions of globalization
'Globalization' has become a buzzword. It has also become a key idea for business theory and practice, and entered academic debates. But how might we define globalization? We explore Jan Aart Scholte's discussion of five, key, broad definitions of globalization that are in common usage.
This piece is an appendix to a larger article in the encyclopedia of informal education on globalization. There is a further article on globalization and education.
Much of the talk of 'globalization' is confused and confusing. 'Globalization' has become a buzzword - and those using the term often have contrasting understandings of what it means. In the table that follows we have summarized Jan Aart Scholte's discussion of what he identifies as the five, key, broad definitions of globalization that are in common usage. They are related and overlap, but the elements they highlight are significantly different.
| Globalization - some definitions Jan Aart Scholte (2000: 15-17) has argued that at least five broad definitions of 'globalization' can be found in the literature. Globalization as internationalization. Here globalization is viewed 'as simply another adjective to describe cross-border relations between countries'. It describes the growth in international exchange and interdependence. With growing flows of trade and capital investment there is the possibility of moving beyond an inter-national economy, (where 'the principle entities are national economies') to a 'stronger' version - the globalized economy in which, 'distinct national economies are subsumed and rearticulated into the system by international processes and transactions' (Hirst and Peters 1996: 8 and 10). Globalization as liberalization. In this broad set of definitions, 'globalization' refers to 'a process of removing government-imposed restrictions on movements between countries in order to create an "open", "borderless" world economy' (Scholte 2000: 16). Those who have argued with some success for the abolition of regulatory trade barriers and capital controls have sometimes clothed this in the mantle of 'globalization'. Globalization as universalization. In this use, 'global' is used in the sense of being 'worldwide' and 'globalization' is 'the process of spreading various objects and experiences to people at all corners of the earth'. A classic example of this would be the spread of computing, television etc. Globalization as westernization or modernization (especially in an 'Americanized' form). Here 'globalization' is understood as a dynamic, 'whereby the social structures of modernity (capitalism, rationalism, industrialism, bureaucratism, etc.) are spread the world over, normally destroying pre-existent cultures and local self-determination in the process. Globalization as deterritorialization (or as the spread of supraterritoriality). Here 'globalization' entails a 'reconfiguration of geography, so that social space is no longer wholly mapped in terms of territorial places, territorial distances and territorial borders. Anthony Giddens' has thus defined globalization as ' the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa. (Giddens 1990: 64). David Held et al (1999: 16) define globalization as a ' process (or set of processes) which embodies a transformation in the spatial organization of social relations and transactions - assessed in terms of their extensity, intensity, velocity and impact - generating transcontinental or inter-regional flows and networks of activity'. |
Of these five approaches/definitions it is only the last, according to Scholte, that offers the possibility of a clear and specific definition of globalization. The notion of supraterritoriality (or trans-world or trans-border relations), he argues, provides a way into appreciating what is global about globalization. His argument runs something like the following:
- There is no need to replace the 'internationalization' by 'globalization' where it refers to a growth in interaction and interdependence between people in different countries. This process of internationalization has been going for centuries - and it adds nothing theoretically to describe it as globalization.
- To describe the process of breaking down regulatory and other barriers to trade as globalization is similarly flawed. 'The liberal discourse of "free" trade is quite adequate to convey these ideas' (Scholte 2000: 45).
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The notion of globalization as universalization also fails to provide new insight. The move towards universalization is a long-running one - and so little or nothing is added by substituting the notion of globalization.
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The understanding of globalization as westernization has developed particularly in the context of neocolonialism and post-colonial imperialism. It is, again, difficult to see what advance the notion of globalization provides as against the discourse of colonialism, imperialism and 'modernization'. As Scholte (ibid.: 45) convincingly argues, 'we do not need a new vocabulary of globalization to remake old analysis'.
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Important new insight can, however, be gained from approaching globalization as the growth of 'supraterritorial' or transworld relations between people. It allows for us to explore deep-seated changes in the way that we understand and experience social space.
The proliferation and spread of supraterritorial... connections brings an end to what could be called 'territorialism', that is a situation where social geography is entirely territorial. Although... territory still matters very much in our globalizing world, it no longer constitutes the whole of our geography. (Scholte 2000: 46)
The first four approaches are all compatible with territorialism, the fifth is not. Within a territorial orientation 'place' is identified primarily with regard to territorial location. However, we have witnessed a fundamental change. There has been a massive growth in social connections that are unhooked in significant ways from territory.
This argument, or rather the focus on supraterritoriality, is not without its critics. For example, Martin Shaw (2001) has argued that Scholte's focus falls into the trap of confusing a shift in the content of social relations for changes in their spatial form, 'a question of sociology for one of geography'. He suggests that Scholte's argument:
... misses the maximum sense of the global: the recognition of human commonality on a worldwide scale, in the double sense that the world framework is increasingly constitutive of society, and of emergent common values. It is not that supraterritorial spaces are growing more important, but that both territorial and supraterritorial spaces - more fundamentally national-international as well as supranational-transnational relations - are both globalized in this double sense.
In other words, the current scale, scope and speed of change in the spheres that Scholte labels as universalization and internationalization is such that it is possible to talk of our being in a qualitatively different situation. This shift, has a profound effect on the way we experience place (and vice versa).
