Globalization Theories

Globalization as a Sociological Construction

Two globalization concepts—or what we might call paradigms—had already been established in sociology by the late 1990s, when communication studies had just begun to debate these new, complex phenomena. The first approach represents the critical paradigm of the skeptics, who question the concept of globalization itself and consider globalization as an outcome of neoliberalism. Skeptics consider globalization primarily as a “Western project.” These approaches strongly believe in the centrality of the modern nation-state and primarily address the implications of globalization for the nation-state. Ulrich Beck is one of the key proponents of this paradigm and was the first theorist who identified the implication of globalized “risks” for nation-states in the late 1980s. Beck argued that these new forms of globalized risks transform the nation-state because they can be solved only through new forms of international cooperation, that is, cooperation between nations, decreasing the political power of the nation per se. Other globalization skeptics, such as Anthony Giddens, argue that globalization is characterized by new forms of distanciation of time and place, a complex but powerful process that intensifies “world relations” as local happenings are influenced by things that occur in some other place, or vice versa. This new notion of “place” of a nation, along with the availability of an enlarged communication space, challenges, according to Giddens, traditional social and political structures of nations. These in turn lead to complex forms of national disembedding of individuals from cultural traditions and the “lifting out” of social structures. Another famous skeptic is Jürgen Habermas; his most recent primary work addresses the processes of denationalization and normative public reasoning through the emergence of new spheres of supranational legitimacy.

The second group of globalization theories, following David Held and Anthony McGrew's model, can be described as a “globalist” or “transformationalist” paradigm that claims a somewhat pragmatic view. Proponents of this paradigm analyze the transformation of modern social, economic, political, and cultural structures from globalization through new forms of globalized “difference.” A major theorist of this transformational paradigm is Roland Robertson, whose work has greatly influenced today's conceptualization of globalization. Robertson was the first sociologist who identified globalization as a differentiated transnational process with more than national implications. His work is less concerned with globalization as an influential factor on Western nations or modernity than with the profound transformation of local cultures worldwide. It is this interesting dialectic between the global and the local for which Robertson coined the term glocal, highlighting globalizations—the differentiated local perceptions of globalizing processes. Robertson's notion of globalization as “globalization of difference” relates not only to the identification of diverse globalizing implications on local cultures but also to a variety of globalizing “spheres,” including individuals, societies, and worldwide systems of societies. This differentiated notion of globalization has influenced discussions of a new relationship of not only global and local cultures but also new forms of globalized local phenomena, such as diasporic cultures—those spread out across various parts of the globe.

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