Socialist
The process of transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones. It can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together. This process is a combination of economic, technological, sociocultural and political forces.
Capitalist
The elimination of the state-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that has emerged as a result.
Globalisation
- Consciousness, the way of thinking about the world and each other
- Spread of the western way of life
Cultural globalisation
- Western cultural values
- Big companies are all over the world
- taking over the markets all over the world
- particular american idea of organising the world
- Fast food vs. Slow Food - Not bonding over food
- "McJob" - Meaningless work
Marshall McLuhan
- 'Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system in a global embrace, abolishing space and time as far as our plant is concerned' (1964: P.3)
- Rapidity of communication echoes the senses
Global Village Thesis
- 'As electrically contracted, the globe is no more than a village. Electric speed at bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden implosion has heightened human awareness of responsibility to an intense degree.'
The Internet
- We live mythically and integrally... in the electric age, when our central system is technologically extended to involve the whole of mankind.
- Centripetal forces - Bringing the world together in uniform global society
- Centrifugal forces - Tearing the world apart in tribal wars
- Slow creeping of dominance of one culture over the world
Three problems of Globalisation
- Sovereignty - Challenges to the idea of the nation-state
- Accountability - Transnational forces and organisations: Who controls them?
- Identity - Who are we? Nation, group, community
- Businesses can act out of the control of the government.
- Multi-national business are more powerful than the government
- 'Does globalisation make people around the world more alike or more different? A group of commentators we might call "pessimistic hyperglobalizers" argue in favour of the former.
Cultural Imperialism
- if the global village' is run with a certain set of values then it would not be so much an integrated community as a assimilation of one
Rigging the 'Free Market'
- Media conglomerates operate as oligopolies (giant clusters of businesses in control of one central business/individual) - All of which are American
- Effectively five or six oligopolies are controlling the worlds media
- Time Warner - One company that controls a vast majority of the world media. An american take on the world, by proxy.
News corporations divide world ino 'territories' of descending 'market importance'
- North America
- Western Europe. Japan and Australia
- Developing economies and regional producers (India, China, Brazil)
- The rest of the world
US media power can be thought of as a new form of imperialism
- Local cultures destroyed in this process and new forms of cultural dependency shaped, mirroring old school colonialism
- Schiller - Dominance of the US driven commerical media forces US model of broadcasting onto the rest of the world but also inculcates US style consumerism in societies that can ill afford it. Eg. Big Brother, packaged all over the world, presented as something uniques
- Argues that the media is a form of propaganda
- This is how you should act, this is the 'good' way of life
Propaganda - 5 basic Filters
Ownership
- Most of our newspapers are owned by one man, who has a political agenda.
- Most of the newspapers run stories which are presented as factual but are in fact written in the interests of New Corp.
- Rupert Murdoch boasts that The Sun influenced the UK general elections.
- Made deals with Labour in order to be able to but more companies etc.
- Things that are reported are only what is 'allowed' to be reported
- Stories in the interests of politics
Funding
- Advertiser will withdraw their advertisements
- Have to keep the advertisers happy
Flak
- US-based Global Climate Coalition
- Comprising fossil fuel and automobile companies such as Exxon, Texaco and Ford. The GCC was started up by Beurson-Maarsteller, one of the world's largest public relation companies, to rubbish the credibility of climate scientists and 'scare-stories' about global warming
- Flak is characterised by concerned and international efforts to manage public information
- Propaganda disguised as news
Al Gore, (2006) 'An Inconvenient Truth' Dir. Davis Guggenheim
- The media is a powerful way to influence the consciousness
- Retreat of glaciers
- Since 1880 temp on the rise
- Solutions to the worlds problems? Buy more stuff, make money for the capitalist businesses
'Flat Earthers' - Deny global warning
- Jim Inhofe
- Nigel Lawson
Sustainability
- 'sustainable development is the development that meets the need of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs' - Brundtland Commisssion. (1987) 'Our Common Future)
- Needs (particularly of the poor)
- Limitations of technology
Erin Balser, 'Capital Accumulation, Sustainability and Hamilton, Ontario: How Technology and Capitalism can Misappropriate the Idea of Sustainability
- BIOX - Largest production plant, 2004
- Situated in the poorest area of Ontario, Hamilton
- Negative social and environmental outcomes
- Causes more problems than it solves
Greenwashing
- Market products to make it seem more ethical
- Companies make 'green' products. Consumers will buy things if they are green
- That you can buy something eco is a myth
'Most things are not designed for the needs of the people but for the needs of the manufacturers to sell to people' Papanek, 1983, p46
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