Sociological

Imagination
Charles Wright Mills
 Sociological Perspective
• An approach to the understanding of
human behavior by placing it within its
broader social context
• Central Question: How are people
influenced by the broader context in
which they live? (society, groups)
• Why do people do what they do?
 Sociological Perspective
•C. Wright Mills “ the sociological
perspective enables us to grasp
the connection between history
and biography”
•By history means, that each
society is located in the broad
stream of events.
• People don’t do what they do
because of inherited
characteristics like instincts but
because of external influences,
that is, the society in which we
grow up and our particular corners
or social location that we occupy.
Globalization
Manfred B. Steger
• The term Globalization is quite new
widely introduced and commonly
used only in late 1980s/ early 1990s

• Post-structuralist- CENTRE, a point

from which everything comes and
to which everything refers.
“influential (1980s)
•According to Nayan
Chanda (2007), the
number of items
mentioning Globalization
grew from a mere 2 in
1981 to a high of 57,235 in
2001-Stablizied at annual
average of 45,000
• For Resenau (2003) has defined
globalization in terms of what he
calls “fragmegrative dynamics”

• It means that he argues that the

world is undergoing an epochal
transformation
•Rosow (2000) has pointed
out, many researchers
approach globalization-as if
they dealing with a process
or an object without the
meaning of its own prior to
its constitution as a
conceptual territory.
 GLOBALIZATION
•These range from the suggestion
that globalization is little more
than ‘globaloney’, to conflicting
interpretations of globalization
as economic, political, or
cultural processes.
 Globalization as Globaloney
•Globaloney- silly, nonsensical or
absurd ideas or talk on global
issues
•Incorrect
•Imprecise
•Exaggerated
 Rejectionists

•scholars who dismiss the

usefulness of the term.
•Craig Calhoun (1993) , argues
that nationalism and its
corollary terms have proved
notoriously hard concepts to
define.
 Nationalism
•is a belief, creed or
political ideology that
involves an individual
identifying with, or
becoming attached to,
one's nation.
Susan Strange (1996), considers
globalization a prime example of
such a vacuous term, suggesting
that it has been used in
academic discourse to refer to
anything from the Internet to a
hamburger”
 Sceptics

•emphasize the limited nature

of it.
 Hirt and Thompson 2009

•Claim that the world

economy is not a truly global
phenomenon, but one
centred on Europe, eastern
Asia, and North America
 Problem with Sceptics
1. They set overly high standard for the
economy in order to be counted as
“fully globalized”
2. They see globalization as purely an
economic phenomenon as a result they
portray all dimensions of Globalization
as reflections of deeper economic
processes
 Modifiers
• scholars who believe it is a historically
imprecise concept.
• “Novelty of process” (it is nothing new)
• World-Sytem Theory
 Modifiers
• Wallestein 1979 and Andre Frank 1998
• Argue that the modern capitalist economy in
which we live in today has been global since
its inception five centuries ago
• Ancient empires of Persia, China and Rome
 Reject Globalization
1. The world economy in the late 1990s
appeared to be even less integrated in the
number of important respects than it was
prior to the out break of World War I
2. The Globalization of labour was much
greater prior to World War I, and
International migration declined
considerably after 1918
 Conclusion
1. All three groups make important
contribution to academic approaches
on the subject
2. Their intervention serves an important
reminders to Globalization
3. They focus to much to conceptualizing
Globalization (economic lines)
 Economic as Process
• Global Interdependence
-refers to the worldwide mutual dependence
between countries at international level
 International Trade
- Is the exchange of capital goods and services
across international borders or territories.
 Bretton Woods System
• Contributed greatly to the
establishment of “golden age of
controlled capitalism”
• Established a system of payments
based on the dollar, which defined
all currencies in relation to the
dollar, itself convertible into gold.
 Bretton Woods System

•According to this
interpretation, existing
mechanisms of state control
over international capital
movements expansion of
welfare state.
 IMF
• The international Monetary funds aims to
reducing global poverty, encouraging
international trade, and promoting financial
stability and economic growth
1. Overseeing economic development
2. Lending
3. Capacity development
 World Bank
•An international financial
institution that provides loans
and grants to the governments
of poorer countries for the
purpose of pursuing capital
projects.
 “Golden age of controlled
Capitalism”
• The postwar economic boom or
simply the long boom, was a period
of worldwide economic expansion
beginning after World War II and
ending with 1973-1975.
 The Rise of Neo-liberalism
(1980s)
•Neoliberalism is a policy model-
bridging politics, social studies,
and economics- that seeks
transfer control of economic
factors to the private sector
from the public sector.
 The Rise of Neo-liberalism
(1980s)
• Liberalization,
• Privitazation,
• Deregulation,
• Free trade,
• Reductions in government spending
 Boom and Bust Cycle
• During the BOOM the economy
grows, jobs are plentiful and the
market brings high returns to
investors
• In the subsequent BUST the
economy shrinks, people lose their
jobs and investors lose money.
 Southeast Asian Crisis
• Was one such disaster created by
unregulated speculative money
flows, followed by similar debacles
in Russia (1998 ), Brazil (1999),
Argentina (2000-3) and most
importantly, the Global Crisis (2008-
09)
Transnational Coorporations
• Any enterprise that undertakes
foreign direct investment, owns or
controls income generating assets
in more than one country, produces
goods or services outside its
country origin, or engages in
international production
(Biersteker 1978, p. xii)
Multinational Firms
 Outsource
• Their ability to outsource
manufacturing jobs- that is, to cut
labour costs by dispersing ecnomic
production processes into many
discrete phases carried out by low-
wage workers in the global south-
 Globalization as Political
Process
1. What are the political causes for
the massive flows of capital
money and technology across
territorial bounderies?
2. Do these flows constitute a serious
challenge to the power of the
nation-state?
 “Boarderless World”
• Refers to an open world which can bring
influences upon people
1. Culture
2. Beliefs
3. Traditions
 End of nation-state
• Nation (people with common
attributes and characteristics)
• State( an organised political system
w/ sovereignity over a defined
space, with borders agreed by other
nation-state
 John Perry Barlows

• Declaration of the independence of Cyber

Space (1996)
1. Built on libertarian principles
2. Censorships free
3. Decentralised
4. Borderless
5. Ubiquitous ( found everywhere)
 Donald trump Tweeted
“A nation without boarders is not a nation
at all. WE WILL make the America Safe
Again!”
• EU- members states received 1.2
Millions first time asylum applications in
2015
What if 200 million people?
 Globalization as Cultural
Process
• Hetorogeneity pertains to the creation
of various cultural practices, new
economies, and political groups.
 Globalization as Cultural
Process
1.Does globalization increase
cultural homogeniety?
2.Does it lead to greater
diversity and heterogeneity?
 Homogeneity

•Refers to the increasing

sameness in the world as
cultural inputs, economic
factors, and political
orientations of societies.
• Dominant Religion-Catholic
• Economy-neoliberalism, capitalism and the
market economy
• Americanization- the import by non-
Americans of products, images, technologies,
practices and behaviour that are closely
associated with America/Americans
 Cultural Globalization

•As a densely growing network

of complex cultural
interconnections and
interdependencies that
characterize modern life
 Media Imperialism
•Tv, books and movies are
perceived as imposed on
developing countries by the
West (Cowen 2002)
•Internet (Microsoft, Facebook,
Twitter, Google, and Apple
Itunes)
• The interconnectivity caused by
cultural globalization challenges
parochial values and identities,
because it undermines the linkages
that connect culture to fixity of
location
 McDonalization
• It is the process by which Western societies
are dominated by the principles of Fast foods
restaurants.
•Efficiency- optimum method for
getting from one another

•Calculability- emphasis on the

quantitative aspects of products
sold and services offered
• Predictability- assurance that
products and services will be the
same over time and in all locales

• Control – non-human technology

comes to exert control over human
workers and customers
 McWorld
• A soulless consumer capitalism that is rapidly
transforming the world’s diverse population
into a blandly uniform market
 Jihad

•The parochial impulse to

reject and repel Western
homogenization forces
wherever they can be found.
 Cultural Particularism
• This approach claims that each
society has its own unique historical
development and must be
understood based on its own
specific cultural and environmental
context.
 Glocalization
• A complex interaction of the global and
local characterized by cultural
borrowing

• Lead to a complex mixture of both

homogenizing and heterogenizing
impulses
 Hybridization/Creolization
• The processes of cultural mixing are
reflected in music, film fashion,
language and other forms of
symbolic expression.
 Global Cultural Flows
• Ethnoscapes- shifting populations made up of
tourists, immigrants, refugees and exiles
• Technoscapes- development of technologies
that facilitate the rise of TNCs
• Finanscapes- flows of global capital
• Mediascapes- electronic capabilities to
produce and desseminate information
• Ideoscapes –Ideologies of state and social
movements
 Ecological Problems
• Human –induced global Climate Change
• Global Warming and World Wide
Destruction of biodiversity
• Increase in temperature could lead to partial
meltdown of the polar ice caps
• 3 feet by 2100
 Loss of Biodiversity
• According to Franz Broswimmer (2002), A lot
of animals and plant species will disappear
from the global south by the end of the
century
• Biologist believe that our generation today is
the fastest mass extinction of species (4.5
billion years)