Globalization is one of the most controversial and debatable questions today. Globalization processes bring benefits and opportunities to modern businesses and nations, thus it hides many threats and dangers for low developed countries and geographically isolated regions. Globalization can be defined as the expansion and the stretching of social relations, activities, and interdependencies. Today’s financial markets stretch around the globe, and electronic trading occurs around the clock.
Gigantic shopping malls have emerged on all continents, offering those consumers who can afford it commodities from all regions of the world – including products whose various components were manufactured in different countries.
Thesis Globalization reduces rather than contributes to inequalities giving low developed nations a chance to progress and grow, acquire new technologies and innovations in all spheres of life.
Globalization reduces inequalities as it involves the intensification and acceleration of social exchanges and activities. The Internet relays distant information in mere seconds, and satellites provide consumers with real-time pictures of remote events. The intensification of worldwide social relations means that local happenings are shaped by events occurring far away, and vice versa. In other words, the seemingly opposing processes of globalization and localization actually imply each other. The ‘local’ and the ‘global’ form the endpoints of a spatial continuum whose central portion is marked by the ‘national’ and the ‘regional’ (Germov and Poole 2008).
The creation, expansion, and intensification of social interconnections and interdependencies do not occur merely on an objective, material level. Globalization processes also involve the subjective plane of human consciousness. Hence, economists underline that globalization also refers to people becoming increasingly conscious of growing manifestations of social interdependence and the enormous acceleration of social interactions (Giddens, 2007). Their awareness of the receding importance of geographical boundaries and distances fosters a keen sense of becoming part of a global whole. Reinforced on a daily basis, these persistent experiences of global interdependence gradually change people’s individual and collective identities, and thus dramatically impact the way they act in the world (Conley 2008).
Globalization is an uneven process, meaning that people living in various parts of the world are affected very differently by this gigantic transformation of social structures and cultural zones. Hence, the social processes that makeup globalization have been analyzed and explained by various commentators in different, often contradictory ways (Germov and Poole 2008). Scholars not only hold different views concerning proper definitions of globalization, but they also disagree on its scale, causation, chronology, impact, trajectories, and policy outcomes. For example, the academic dispute over the scale of globalization revolves around the question of whether it should be understood in singular or differentiated terms. This notion of ‘multidimensionality’ appears as an important attribute of globalization in our own definition; still, it requires further elaboration (Conley 2008; Jureidini 2003).
Globalization reduces rather than contributes to inequalities because economic processes lie at the core of globalization. Others privilege political, cultural, or ideological aspects. Still, others point to environmental processes as the essence of globalization. Like the blind men in the parable, each globalization researcher is partly right by correctly identifying one important dimension of the phenomenon in question.
However, their collective mistake lies in their dogmatic attempts to reduce such a complex phenomenon as globalization to a single domain that corresponds to their own expertise. Some scholars consciously limit the historical scope of globalization to the last four decades of post-industrialism in order to capture its contemporary features (Giddens, 2007). Others are willing to extend this timeframe to include the ground-breaking developments of the 19th century. Still, others argue that globalization really represents the continuation and extension of complex processes that began with the emergence of modernity and the capitalist world system some five centuries ago. And a few remaining researchers refuse to confine globalization to time periods measured in mere decades or centuries (Germov and Poole 2008).
While the short chronology outlined below is necessarily fragmentary and general, it nonetheless gives us a good sense that globalization is as old as humanity itself. This brief historical sketch identifies five distinct historical periods that are separated from each other by significant accelerations in the pace of social exchanges as well as a widening of their geographical scope. In this context, it is important to bear in mind that my chronology does not necessarily imply a linear unfolding of history, nor does it advocate a conventional Eurocentric perspective of world history (Conley 2008).
Some globalization researchers believe that political globalization might facilitate the emergence of democratic transnational social forces anchored in this thriving sphere of global civil society. Predicting that democratic rights will ultimately become detached from their narrow relationship to discrete territorial units, these optimistic voices anticipate the creation of a democratic global (Giddens, 2007). Currently, structural adjustment has changed the conditions for small- and medium-sized enterprises, but it has not decreased the importance of adaptive strategies. The options available depend on the point of departure and the success of adaptive mechanisms depends on this as well (Germov and Poole 2008).
Therefore, it is important to consider carefully a number of case studies before developing a new generic model for small enterprise development, which can both accommodate recent theoretical advances and the new situation created by structural adjustment. local peripheries also owe their existence to the situation which prevailed before structural adjustment (Jureidini 2003). Protective barriers did not only benefit large-scale exporters and import substitution producers.
Locally oriented firms were also relieved from competitive pressures and could operate at technology levels significantly below those of the industrialized North, and approach issues such as standardization, quality control, and timely delivery rather offhandedly. As protective barriers are lifted, cheap mass-products and second-hand imports from elsewhere severely constrain their options, even to the point of making local production unfeasible (The Globalization Debate 2008).
Structural adjustment to do in this case is to create a new (but not necessarily any more level) ground for the relations between the local core and its local periphery. The shock of structural adjustment seems in most cases to have increased the divide rather than narrowed it, and the peripheral firms have become even more peripheral or even degenerated into day-to-day crisis management, although exceptions can be found. The core firms have either adjusted quickly utilizing their own, often considerable, resources or if they were extremely dependent on or even owned by the state, more or less folded down, leaving the way free for imported substitutes (Jureidini 2003).
However, as the after-effects of the shock die down, possibilities emerge for entrepreneurs to take advantage of the situation, as documented in numerous studies (Germov and Poole 2008). Yet, this area remains underresearched if only because the long-term effects of structural adjustment in combination with other developments in the global economy have not yet manifested themselves fully. This issue, therefore, remains a major concern for a future research agenda, not least the question of whether structural adjustment regimes will, in the medium term, encourage subcontracting and therefore, increased integration of core and periphery, in spite of the opposite trends in the immediate aftermath of the shock, observed by virtually all the economists (Conley 2008).
There are also producers who receive their orders from other producers in the cluster whenever the orders they accept exceed their own production capacity. In contrast, there are traditional producers who sell directly to final consumers. In these cases, they organize the transport of tiles to the customer by truck drivers (Van Krieken et al 2006).
However, these transformative social processes must challenge the current oppressive structure of global apartheid that divides the world into a privileged North and a disadvantaged South. If that happens, globalization will have ushered in a truly democratic and egalitarian global order (The Globalization Debate 2008). Each of these concepts stresses the importance of clustering, innovation, and cooperation among firms. However, the mechanism assumed to stimulate innovation differs. In the flexible specialization paradigm, innovation is the result of the combination of skilled labor, multi-purpose equipment, and an innovative mentality (Conley 2008).
Further, much of the earlier research on flexible specialization, clustering of small enterprises, and networks of small entrepreneurs have had a very local focus, and although the economists transcend this partially through their emphasis on the effects of global economic processes and of nationally constructed economic programs, much work remains to be done in order to facilitate comparative analysis (The Globalization Debate 2008).
It is therefore imperative to go beyond flexible specialization and industrial districts cum ideal types and focus the attention of researchers squarely on the components or to put it another way, the basic mechanisms of growth, and how they operate in different contexts (Van Krieken et al 2006). One can ask, for example, what is the role of the concentration of economic activities, and focus on that, and ignore for the moment, for example, whether craft production is prevalent or not. Innovations and their dissemination is another possible candidate for comparative study as well as querying the role of different networking strategies (Germov and Poole 2008). Innovation diffusion cannot be understood without noting patterns of inter-firm linkages. Technological indivisibilities are the key to understand the deepening of these linkages, while the emergence of traders and large firms, which are placing large orders, have stimulated the development of a flexible but skilled labor force.
In sum, globalization reduces inequalities proposing low developed nations and regions an opportunity to innovate and adopt new technologies and innovative processes in all spheres of life. The new market is highly dynamic but unstable which has stimulated early adopters to develop flexible employment strategies and certain traditional producers become their additional wage workers during peak periods.
The innovation adoption process is in this case characterized by the introduction of new designs and gradual upgrading of equipment allowing step-by-step improvement of the quality of output. In general, marketing new output was indeed a barrier that had to be overcome since new products could no longer be marketed through the local village market. Consequently, a much more active approach is required to reach new groups of urban and, occasionally, international buyers.
Bibliography
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Germov, O., Poole, M. 2008, Sociology. Web.
Giddens, A 2007, Sociology, 5th edn, Polity, Cambridge, UK. The Globalization Debate. Trade and Global Markets. Web.
Jureidini, R., Kenny, S., and Poole, M. (eds) 2003, Sociology: Australian Connections, Allen and Unwin, St. Leonards, NSW.
Van Krieken, R., Habibis D, Smith P, Hutchins B, Haralambos M, Holborn, 2006, Sociology: Themes and Perspectives 3rd edition, Longman Pearson, Frenchs Forest, NSW.