Contemp

• Globalization


  The development of global or worldwide business activities, competition and markets and the increasing global interdependence of national economies
• Economic globalization


  The integration of economies around the world through the movement of goods, services, and capital across borders
• The global economic system reached its peak in 1914
• Transnational media corporations (TNMCs)


  • They produce media commodities, ideologies, and profit, as they also produce and reproduce the capital relation itself
  • They create giant, regional enterprises with complex links between film, video, television, telecommunications, animation, publishing, advertising, and game design
  • They acquire multinational talent and the cheapest creative labor possible
• TNMC production forces national governments, small media firms, and local workers to compete among themselves over wages, benefits, and working conditions
• In China, Mattel requires workers to be on the job 10-16 hours a day, seven days a week
• The autonomy and creative contribution of media workers is curtailed within transnational production structures that prescribe who does what and who makes decisions on what will be done
• The transnational production regime, Internet and all, keeps the average consumer blogger on the margins
• The cultural hegemony of transnational media is the economic and political reward obtained from rapacious free market policies that encourage individual entrepreneuralism and undermine social solidarity among workers
• As a result of increased in exports

  Economic globalization has ushered in an unprecedented spike in global growth rates
• Transnational production regime


  Keeps the average consumer blogger on the margins
• Outsourcing


  Chief asset is low paid skilled labor, chief benefit is access to techniques and norms of TNMC production
• Transnational media cultural hegemony

  Economic and political reward obtained from rapacious free market policies that encourage individual entrepreneuralism and undermine social solidarity among workers on all levels by temporarily but repeatedly subcontracting abroad will smaller independent studios and employing workers in different countries
• In the past, railroads and steamships were significant inventions but today airplanes have been transporting humans around the world
• The internet today made the world open to everyone
• In the recent decades, as a result of increased in exports, economic globalization has ushered in an unprecedented spike in global growth rates
• According to the IMF, the global per capita GDP rose over five-fold in the second half of the 20th century
• Economic globalization remains an uneven process, with some countries, corporations, and individuals benefiting a lot more than others
• Modern world system


  Larger than workers, classes, or even states. Through the global economic activity, countries around the world have been divided according to their economic power in the global arena
• The world-systems have existed before and not a unique feature of the contemporary world
• World empire


  In the past, the system that binds the world together is based on political and military domination
• Modern capitalist world-economy


  A system which relies on economic domination. It encompasses many states and a built-in process of economic stabilization
• Three-level hierarchy of the modern capitalist world-economy

  • Core
  • Periphery
  • Semi-periphery
• Core


  Areas that dominate the capitalist world-economy and exploit the rest of the system (e.g., US, Japan and Germany)
• Periphery


  Areas that provide raw materials to the core and are heavily exploited (e.g., many countries in African region, Eastern Europe (especially Poland) and Latin America)
• Semi-periphery


  A residual category that encompasses a set of regions somewhere between exploiting and the exploited (e.g., India, China, Indonesia, Mexico, Iran and Brazil)
• The pressure for incorporation into the world-economy comes not from the nations being incorporated but rather from the need of the world-economy to expand its boundaries
• In maintaining a good balance between maintaining state powers and being part of the modern world-system, the states must be strong enough to protect their own economies from external threats
• The strength of states which comes from their external sovereignty should not be too much for them to be able to stand on their own and refuse to act in accord with the demands of the capitalist world-economy
• Market integration


  A phenomenon in which markets of goods and services that are somehow related to one another being to experience similar patterns of increase or decrease in terms of the prices of those products
• Bretton Woods system


  • US dollar-based system
  • Adjustable peg system
  • Tight capital control
  • Good macroeconomic performance
• World Trade Organization (WTO)


  A multilateral organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland with 152 member nations as of 2008. Its focus on trade places it at the heart of economic globalization
• Nation


  A population who shares a similar culture and ideals, formed as a result of common race, religion, language, territory, history, culture or political aspirations
• State


  A political organization with four essential elements: government, territory, population, and sovereignty
• A state has police power and individuals who disobey are punished. A state is a political organization and it orders, coerces and punishes
• A nation doesn't possess strong powers. A nation is backed by spiritual, emotional and moral power and it appeals to its citizens and persuades them. It is a unity rather than a political organization
• Globalism


  Networks of connections spanning multicontinental distances, drawing them close together economically, socially, culturally and informationally
• Economic globalism


  Cross-border flows of goods and services, factors of production, financial assets; as well diffusion of technology takes place in a frictionless manner
• Internationalism


  A process among countries but not as wide as Globalization, limited to some countries
• Competing conceptions of internationalism

  • Liberal internationalism
  • Socialist internationalism