TCW

• Globalization


  The expansion and intensification of social relations and consciousness across world-time and across world-space
• Dimensions of globalization

  • Economic
  • Financial
  • Cultural
  • Political
  • Sociological
  • Technological
  • Geographic
  • Ecological
• Globalism


  A widespread belief among powerful people that the global integration of economic markets is beneficial for everyone, since it spreads freedom and democracy across the world
• The best scholarly definition of globalization is provided by Manfred Steger
• Scapes of globalization (Appadurai)

  • Ethnoscape (global movement of people)
  • Mediascape (flow of culture)
  • Technoscape (circulation of mechanical goods and software)
  • Financescape (global circulation of money)
  • Ideoscape (realm where political ideas move around)
• The International Monetary Fund regards "economic globalization" as a historical process representing the result of human innovation and technological progress
• Silk Road


  The oldest known international trade route; a network of pathways in the ancient world that snapped from China to Middle East and to Europe
• According to historians Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giraldez, the age of globalization began when "all important populated continents began to exchange products continuously – both with each other directly and indirectly via other continents – and in values sufficient to generate crucial impacts on all trading partners."
• In 1571, with the establishment of the Galleon Trade, as part of the age of Mercantilism, this was the first time the Americas were directly connected to Asian trading routes
• The United States and other European nations adopted the gold standard at an International Monetary Conference in Paris

  1867
• Gold standard


  Its goal was to create a common system that would allow for more efficient trade and prevent the isolationism of the mercantilist era
• Today, the world economy operates based on what are called fiat currencies – currencies that are not backed by precious metals and whose value is determined by their cost relative to other currencies
• Bretton Woods institutions

  • International Monetary Fund (IMF) - monitor exchange rates and lend reserve currencies to nations with balance-of-payments deficits
  • International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank Group) - provide financial assistance for the reconstruction after World War II and the economic development of less developed countries
• GATT

  General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, established in 1947, with the main purpose of reducing tariffs and other hindrances to free trade
• The stock market crashed in 1973-1974 after the United States stopped linking the dollar to gold, effectively ending the Bretton Woods System. The result was a phenomenon the Keynesian economics could not have predicted – a phenomenon called stagflation, in which a decline in economic growth and employment (stagnation) takes place alongside a sharp increase in prices (inflation)
• Milton Friedman


  Used the economic turmoil to challenge the consensus around Keynes's ideas
• 1980s onward, neoliberalism became the codified strategy of the Unites States Treasury Department, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and eventually the World Trade Organization – a new organization founded in 1995 to continue the tariff reduction under the GATT
• Criticisms of globalization


  • Developed countries are often protectionists, as they repeatedly refuse to lift policies that safeguard their primary products that could otherwise be overwhelmed by imports from the developing world
  • The beneficiaries of global commerce have been mainly transnational policies (TNCs) and not governments. And like any other business, these TNCs are concerned more with profits than with assisting with social programs of the governments hosting them. The term "race to the bottom" refers to countries' lowering their labor standards, including the protection of workers' interests, to lure in foreign investors seeking high profit margins at the lowest cost possible
• Aristotle: '"Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; Because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal."'
• International relations


  Scholars study political, military, and other diplomatic engagements between two countries
• Internationalization


  The deepening of interactions between states
• Attributes of the global system

  • Sovereignty
  • Diplomacy
  • International Organization
• Attributes of a state

  • Sovereignty
  • Citizens
  • Territory
  • Government
• Nation


  An "imagined community" or the people who have imbibed a particular culture, speak a common language, and live in a specific territory
• The Treaty of Westphalia was signed to end the Thirty Year's War

  1648
• The Treaty of Westphalia recognized that the treaty signers exercise complete control over their domestic affairs and swore not to meddle in each other's affairs
• Napoleon Bonaparte believed in spreading the principles of the French Revolution

  Challenged the power of kings, nobility, and religion in Europe
• The Napoleonic Wars lasted

  1803-1815
• The Napoleonic Code forbade birth privileges, encouraged freedom of religion, and promoted meritocracy in government service
• The Battle of Waterloo, where Anglo and Prussian armies defeated Napoleon


  1815
• The Concert of Europe was an alliance of the "great powers" - the United Kingdom, Austria, and Prussia - that sought to restore the world of monarchial, hereditary, and religious privileges of the time before the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars
• • The concept of ‘time-space compression refers to the processes that change the qualities of space and time that we experience and our conceptions of it.
• • Compression is meant, the speed-up in the pace of life and the overcoming of spatial barriers.
• Economic Globalization - is the development of trade systems within transnational actors such as corporations or NGO (Non-Governmental Organization)
• Financial Globalization - can be linked with the rise of a global financial system with international financial exchanges and monetary exchanges.
• Cultural Globalization - refers to the interpenetration  of cultures which, as a consequence, means nations adopt principles, beliefs, and costumes of other nations, losing their unique culture to a unique, globalized supra-culture.
• Political globalization - the development and growing influence of international organizations such as the UN or WHO means governmental action takes place at

  an international level.
• Sociological Globalization - information moves almost in real-time, together with the interconnection and interdependence of events and their consequences. People move all the time too, mixing and integrating different societies.
• Technological Globalization -the phenomenon by which millions of people are interconnected thanks to the power of the digital world via platforms such as

  Facebook, Instagram, Skype or Youtube.
• Geographic Globalization - is the new organization and hierarchy of different regions of the world that is constantly changing. Moreover, with transportation and flying made so easy and affordable, apart from a few countries with demanding visas, it is possible to travel the world without barely any restrictions.