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Global Village

The notion of a “global village” is that of a community across borders. It is one version of the idea of transnationalism—interactions, interests, and loyalties beyond the tribe and nation that encompass the globe. The distinctive character of the global village is that it is based on communication and assumes that global information creates global consciousness. This entry traces the history, dynamics, and implications of the global village concept.

History

The earliest ideals of transnational community came from universalist religions, which were subsumed during the 18th-20th-century rise of the nation-state system. This period generally consolidated local identities around national boundaries, commodified social interaction with the development of global capitalism, and rationalized social roles. In the late 20th century, increasing levels of economic globalization and the communications revolution increased contact and interest among far-flung locales. The social change campaigns of the 1960s were facilitated by the increasing salience of world public opinion with real-time international broadcasts, summarized in the slogan “the whole world is watching,” coined by Todd Gitlin. Direct electronic communication culminated in the FAX uprisings of 1989 (the anti-Soviet movements facilitated by Facsimile machines), text-message movements of today, and Internet organization of all aspects of social life. Initial attempts to label this increasingly connected world, rapidly diffusing social ideals and cultural trends, called it a “global village.” Just as Ferdinand Tönnies famously depicted the transition from village-like, face-to-face community oriented by common values (gemeinschaft) to contingent broader functional associations based on self-interest (gesselschaft), the notion of a global village presages a third phase of postmodern reconstruction of virtual civil society by the global information economy.

A generation later, it seems clear that globalization creates winners and losers, projects some parochial loyalties, and even creates new ones, and it cannot single-handedly produce empowerment. But clearly something has changed; the pace, forms, and weight of information politics across borders have increased. Some key characteristics described by the global village concept—increasing connectedness, communication, and cosmopolitanism—have been accurate and consequential. Such relations have been variously conceptualized as “global civil society,” “world civic politics,” “transnational networks,” and “transnational social movements.” Common caveats are a systematic imbalance in North-South participation at the global level, and the reactive character of transnational forces to state power, like Internet censorship in China, and structural dynamics of political economy, like the economics of the global “digital divide” in electronic access.

Dynamics

Globalizing civil society may represent an aggregation of domestic actors, the emergence of a new stratum of nonstate global organizations and campaigns, some hybrid form, or something else entirely. Within the wider phenomenon, a variety of forms of civic internationalism illustrate some dynamics of the global village. The oldest tradition of humanitarian advocacy speaks globally for those who cannot speak for themselves: One of the oldest human rights organizations is the Anti-Slavery Society, founded in Britain almost two centuries ago. A second kind of internationalism unites people within common sectors—co-religionists, for example, or professional groups—around the activities of actors with sufficient resources to play a leading role. Often, they safeguard voice, diversity, and communication: For example, Reporters Without Borders monitors and protests harassment, prosecution, and assassination of journalists worldwide. Another bridging form of internationalism consists of nonhierarchical coalitions of human rights organizations within regions, which exchange information and construct common frameworks and appeals. In Africa, one of the few nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) credited with making some progress on the region-wide and culturally sensitive issue of female genital mutilation is a regional NGO network, the Inter-African Committee. There are also informal partnerships and coalitions between northern NGOs and grassroots groups, integrated by information. The Amazon Alliance, for example, unites northern environmentalists with Latin American indigenous peoples’ organizations. Ironically, the cosmopolitan “court of world public opinion” most envisaged by Marshall McLuhan and his peers has been the most uneven dynamic of the global village, with significant backlash from various nationalisms and fundamentalisms—each with their own website.

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