Globalization

• Globalization has led to increased economic growth, job creation, and improved living standards in many parts of the world.
• The term globalization refers to the increasing interconnectedness of people around the world through trade, communication, transportation, and cultural exchange.
• Attachment is a strong reciprocal emotional bond between an infant and a primary caregiver

  
• Schaffer and Emerson's 1964 study on attachment:

  • Aim: identify stages of attachment / find a pattern in the development of an attachment between infants and parents
  • Participants: 60 babies from Glasgow
  • Procedure: analysed interactions between infants and carers
  • Findings: babies of parents/carers with 'sensitive responsiveness' were more likely to have formed an attachment
• Freud's superego is the moral component of the psyche, representing internalized societal values and standards
• George Ritzer's book "Globalization: The Essentials" is a balanced introduction examining major issues and events in the history of globalization, designed to work alongside "Readings in Globalization"

  
• "Readings in Globalization" edited by George Ritzer and Zeynep Atalay introduces students to major concepts of globalization within key debates and disputes, designed to be used independently or alongside "Globalization: The Essentials"

  
• George Ritzer's "Globalization: The Essentials" and "Readings in Globalization" are cross-referenced and structured around core concepts of globalization
• The book "Globalization: The Essentials" by George Ritzer is an abbreviated version of "Globalization: A Basic Text" (2010), designed for courses on globalization, sociology, and social sciences
• Globalization is a transplanetary process involving increasing liquidity and multi-directional flows of people, objects, places, and information, encountering and creating structures that can either facilitate or hinder these flows
• Transnationalism interconnects individuals and social groups across specific geopolitical borders, while transnationality refers to the rise of new communities and social identities beyond traditional nation-states
• Transnationalism is often associated with immigrants who maintain connections with their home country, while globalization encompasses a broader range of transplanetary processes
• Baseball is a transnational sport, circulating across a few nations, while soccer is considered a global sport with a presence in almost every part of the world
• Globalization involves the omnipresence of the process, affecting almost everyone, everything, and every place in numerous ways
• Before the era of globalization, the world was characterized by greater solidity, with people, objects, and information tending to remain in place due to barriers and restrictions on movement
• Solidity refers to people, things, information, and places "hardening" over time, limiting their mobility
• Solid structures like the nation-state and its border and customs controls still exist, with demands for new forms of solidity arising due to increased fluidity
• Karl Marx's concept that "everything solid melts into air" describes the transformation of solid material realities into liquids, a process inherent in the new world and radically transforming it
• Marx's insight on the transformation of solid structures into liquids is more relevant today than ever, with the metaphor of melting icecaps reflecting the increasing fluidity associated with globalization
• Liquidity in the context of globalization refers to the increasing ease of movement of people, things, information, and places in the global age
• The concept of flows is integral to liquidity in globalization, with the idea that liquids flow more easily than solids, characterizing the movement of increasingly liquid phenomena in globalization
• Globalization involves the movement of people, objects, information, decisions, and places due to the increasing porosity of global barriers
• Examples of global flows include foods like sushi, Chilean produce, and Indian food spreading worldwide
• In globalization, flows have become raging floods that are increasingly less likely to be impeded by place-based barriers, including oceans, mountains, and borders of nation-states
• Ideas, images, information, legal (like blogs) and illegal (e.g. child pornography), flow virtually everywhere through interpersonal contact and the media, especially via the Internet
• Decisions of all sorts flow around the world, affecting products, securities prices, and personal interactions
• Places can be said to be flowing around the world as immigrants recreate the places from which they came in new locales
• Places like airports and shopping malls have become increasingly like flows, transitioning from "spaces of places" to "spaces of flows"
• Globalization has transitioned from heavy to light to weightless movements due to technological advancements
• The shift from heavy to light in globalization involves movement from that which is heavy to that which is light, making goods, people, and places easier to move
• The world today is characterized by liquidity and weightlessness in globalization, but it is not necessarily any flatter than it ever was
• Structures like borders between nation-states and the "Great Firewall" in China are examples of barriers in the globalized world
• The "digital divide" between North and South, with the relative absence of computers and supporting infrastructure in the South, creates a significant barrier
• People have historically erected structural barriers to protect and advance themselves, affecting others, and are likely to continue doing so
• Globalization involves both the liquefaction and increasing weightlessness of the social world, as well as the existence of heavy, material structures that impede or expedite flows
• Various routes or paths serve to expedite flows along their length and limit flows outside their confines
• Intercontinental airlines generally fly limited, defined routes to prevent mid-air collisions
• Illegal immigrants from Mexico often follow well-worn paths into the US, guided by smugglers who use proven routes
• Goods follow well-defined supply chains as they are exported and imported between countries
• Illegal products, like counterfeit drugs, follow established paths from manufacture to their final destination