Week 3

Americanisation, the new globalisation

Americanisation continues to grow, just look at the word ‘globalisation,’ even Microsoft word wants to change it to globalization. Has globalisation been replaced by americanisation?

Between 1980 and 1991 the world trade in goods with cultural content almost tripled, with the United States at the forefront of this with their growing dominance of products and trading. Globalisation now is seen by many as American culture being dumped on the rest of the world.

We clearly see aspects of this in the way that the majority drink coca-cola world-wide, watch American movies and Television shows, Eat food from American chains, enjoy American sports, listen to American music and we even adopt different American slang like ‘y’all’ and ‘holler.’

“Globalisation is in so many ways Americanisation: Globalisation wears Mickey Mouse ears, it drinks Pepsi and Coke, eats Big Macs, does its computing on an IBM laptop with Windows.” (Friedman T, 2006 NP)

To fully understand Americanisation as a concept and reasons as to why it’s evolving, I’ve broken it up into 3 categories; Economic, Political and Cultural.
Economy: Dominance of American industrial model and hegemony of corporate interests
Politics: Increasing unilateral political action by USA and its allies
Culture: Dominance of American consumer and media culture on the world stage (Ulrich B, 2003, p36) 
 
References

Friedman T, 2006, ‘Americanization or Globalization?’ Globalenvision.org, NP

Ulrich B, 2003, ‘Global America? The Cultural Consequences of Globalization, Liverpool University Press, p36

Week 2

Globalisation…huh?

Globalisation is a term that most struggle to define, with myself included. The deeper you dive into Globalisation, the more there is to know regarding it, whether it be economic, political or cultural. To illustrate how much globalisation as a theory has evolved, 20 years ago it was defined as this:

“Globalisation refers to all those processes by which the people’s of the world are incorporated into a single world society, global society” (Albrow, 1990:45).

Now this definition is still a valid one, his view on the world becoming homogenized is one that is shared by most and is hard to argue against. However it is missing some key notions that I think are very important in a definition that covers all basis.

Mainly, the definition given by Albrow is missing the “distinction between the phenomenon itself and the consequences” (Rantanen T, 2005 p 6), there is no mention of how events that happen miles away shape local events. It lists that processes occur, but does not specify on what the processes are.   

There is no perfect definition out there; however by joining the main ideas of a number of experts and authors you can construct a decent summary. For Giddens it is the intensification of social relations, Thompson is the interaction and dependency and for Robertson and Waters they focus on the consciousness in which people are aware of their social and cultural arrangements receding.

References

Rantanen, T 2005, ‘Theorizing media globalization’, The media and globalization, Sage, London, pp. 1–18.

Week 1

Globalisation and State Sovereignty

One of the greatest aspects that needs to be considered when discussing globalisation is the erosion of state sovereignty with the reconfiguration of states. Globalisation is seen as the process in which the world becomes a global society, but this ultimately means a ‘border-less’ world.

Stephen Kobrin brings up the fact that “a critical issue raised by globalisation is the lack of meaning of geographical rooted jurisdictions when markets are constructed in electronic space. (Nederveen, p4 2004)”

This is not to argue that Microsoft or Goldman Sachs should be given seats at the UN General Assembly, but it does mean including representatives of such organizations in regional and global deliberations when they have the capacity to affect whether and how regional and global challenges are met. (Richard Haass)

However, crossing borders in the act of giving aid to countries that cannot help themselves is seen as both a good and bad thing. NATO’s Kosovo intervention saw a number of governments break the state sovereignty of Kosovo to prevent any further genocides and ethnic cleansings. This was controversial due to the bombings on state owned factories seen as a way for a free market-based reconstruction by wealthy foreign powers.

On the other hand during the Rwanda Genocide when the UN chose to stand idly by and not intervene, they were criticized over letting the slaughter of thousands happen under their watch.    

NATO bombing of Kosovo

References

Haass R, Feb 2006,  Taipeitimes: State sovereignty must be altered in globalized era, np

Nederveen Pieterse, J 2004, ‘Globalisation: consensus and contreversies’. Globalisation and culture: global mélange 2004, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanman, Md, p 4

Intro

My name is Michael Flynn and i’m in 2nd year Media and Comms at Deakin Uni. Writing a blog regarding globalisation, different concepts and my own view points on each matter. Hope you enjoy! In short i am the straw that broke the camels back, the curiousity that killed the cat, the big fish in a small pond and the bull in a china shop. So holler if you’re down for some awesomeness