Globalization Essay - 2,174 words

Globalization Today more and more places around the world are being connected in more and more ways. Contemporary researches
called this process globalization So, what is globalization? There are many attempts to give a definition to the term globalization.
Douglas Kellner points, the term globalization is thus a theoretical construct that is itself contested and open for various meanings
and inflections.(Imade) The majority of researchers state that the term globalization is the term used to describe the increasing links
in economy, policy and culture between human beings around the world. They think that globalization is a phenomenon of
technological, economic, political and cultural exchanges produced by modern communication, transportation and legal infrastructure.
It was also produced by political choice to open cross-border links in the international trade and finance. So, globalization has such
aspects as economic, political, cultural and technological.

Since World War II a serious of agreements on free trade have been signed. But interest in globalization as a concept began to
develop quickly during the 1990s. According to the Social Sciences Index the term globalization appeared in the 1980s, but only in
1992 it started to be used frequently. Nowadays, it is one of the dominant new theoretical concepts of the social sciences in the last
years. Talcott Parsons is considered to be a primary theorist whose theory was in the center of debates over modernity,
postmodernity, and globalization. He points social processes as the main ones of modernization on a global scale.

In his theory, structural functionalism, Parsons emphasized that economists tend to take social order for granted, we... "place" a
dynamic process structurally in the social system. But beyond this we must have a test of the significance of generalizations relative
to itThe test is to ask the question, what would be the differential consequences for the system of two or more alternative outcomes
of a dynamic process? Such consequences will be found to fit into the terms of maintenance of stability or production of change, of
integration or disruption of the system in some sense. (Parsons, 24) Talcott Parsons notices that in some circumstances social order
does not affect economic reasoning. Economists' attention should be directed toward geographic areas and spheres of human
activity. In these cases social order is either unknown or unstable, It follows that any important change in our knowledge of fact in
the field in question must of itself change the statement of at least one of the propositions of the theoretical system and, through the
logical consequences of this change, that of other propositions to a greater or lesser degree. This is to say, the structure of the
theoretical system is changed. (Parsons, introduction) Contemporary researches state that the first era of globalization began in the
19th century.

During that time the countries of Europe, America and Oceania that engaged in that ear, flourished. Inequality between those states
fell. Goods, capital and labor flew freely between the nations of these countries. Emma Rothschild points, one way of looking at
globalization from an historical perspective has to do with the economic and social history of international relationships, and in
particular with the history of earlier periods of rapid increase in international trade, investment, communication, and influence.
(Imade) The process of globalization and its after-effects were studied by a great number of theorists. There were three main
conceptions that provide their points of view as for understanding globalization. These theories are realism, liberalism, and Marxism.

Han Morgethau, Kenneth Waltz, and Edward Carr are the most famous representatives of the realist school. Their theory was based
on three fundamental assumptions, states are the most important actors, that they seek power, and that they pursue their policies in
an essentially rational manner, calculating costs and estimating benefits, typically in a logical fashion. (Imade) The next approach is
liberalism. The writings of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and W.W. Rostow played the most important role in the developing of the
theory. They had another view of the process. They thought globalization was a natural outgrowth of capitalist development.

They pointed that a state was not a dominant player. The main power and the primary stimulus was trade. Liberals considered that
trade helps to increase productivity and raise income levels in developing countries. The process stimulates growth of new
technologies, generate investments, and transform traditional social-cultural practices. The classical theory of production is
formulated under essentially static assumptions which freeze-or permit only once-over change- in the variables most relevant to the
process of economic growth. (Imade) One of the well-known liberal theorists was W.W.

Rostow. Rostow considered that less developed countries would undergo a series of changes in their socioeconomic system like well-
developed ones, As modern economists have sought to merge classical production theory with Keynesian income analysis they have
introduced the dynamic variables: population, technology, entrepreneurship etc. But they have tended to do so in forms so rigid and
general that their models cannot grip the essential phenomena of growth, as they appear to an economic historian. (Rostow, 7) The
theorist marked out several stages of the modernization process: traditional society, precondition for takeoff, takeoff, drive to
maturity, and age of mass consumption; and emphasized that liberals, ..require a dynamic theory of production which isolates not
only the distribution of income between consumption, saving, and investment (and the balance of production between consumers and
capital goods) but which focuses directly and in some detail on the composition of investment and on developments within particular
sectors of the economy. The argument that follows is based on such a flexible, disaggregated theory of production (Rostow, 9) The
third approach was the Marxist one. According to the theory globalization was regarded as a process of absorption of the
industrialized nations of the North and the underdeveloped nations of the South. Marxist scholars viewed globalization as
synonymous with imperialism, the latest stage in the development of international capitalism.

In the Communist Manifesto, 1848, Marx wrote about main demands for capitalism to survive, it must nestle everywhere, settle
everywhere, and establish connections everywhere In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have
intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. (Imade) Marxists considered that globalization leads to
monopoly in some fields. As the result, it would be an obstacle for free competition. Lenin wrote in Imperialism: The Highest Stage
of Capitalism, Monopoly is exactly the opposite of free competition; but we have seen the latter being transformed into monopoly
before our very eyes, creating large-scale industry and eliminating small industry, replacing large-scale industry by still larger scale
industry, finally leading to such a concentration of production and capital that monopoly has bee
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