18.3. Phenomenon of Globalization in Modern Civilized Development

The term “globalization” has only become commonplace in the last two decades, and academic commentators who employed the term as late as the 1970s accurately recognized the novelty of doing so because the term covers a wide range of distinct political, economic, and cultural trends. In popular discourse, globalization often functions as little more than a synonym for on or more of the following phenomena:

• the pursuit of “free market” policies in the world economy (“economic liberalization”);

• the growing dominance of western (or even American) forms of political, economic, and cultural life (“westernization” or “Americanization”);

• the proliferation of new information technologies (the “Internet Revolution”),

• as well as the notion that humanity stands at the threshold of realizing one single unified community in which major sources of social conflict have vanished (“global integration”).

Although sharp differences continue to separate participants in the ongoing debate, most contemporary social theorists endorse the view that globalization refers to fundamental changes in the spatial and temporal contours of social existence, according to which the significance of space or territory undergoes shifts in the face of a no less dramatic acceleration in the temporal structure of crucial forms of human activity. Geographical distance is typically measured in time. As the time necessary to connect distinct geographical locations is reduced, distance or space undergoes compression or “annihilation”. The human experience of space is intimately connected to the temporal structure of those activities by means of which we experience space. Changes in the temporality of human activity inevitably generate altered experiences of space or territory.

Theorists of globalization disagree about the precise sources of recent shifts in the spatial and temporal contours of human life. According to the Canadian researcher M. McLuhan, the unabated proliferation of high-speed technologies is the main source of the numerous references in intellectual life since the 1950s to the annihilation of distance. He introduced a new term “global village” to describe a technologically based society, generated by social “acceleration at all levels of human organization”. But it was probably German philosopher M. Heidegger who most clearly anticipated contemporary debates about globalization. M. Heidegger did not only describe the “abolition of distance” as a constitutive feature of our contemporary condition, but he linked recent shifts in spatial experience to no less fundamental alterations in the temporality of human activity: “All distances in time and space are shrinking. Man now reaches overnight by places, places which formerly took weeks and months of travel”. M. Heidegger also accurately prophesied that new communication and information technologies would soon spawn novel possibilities for dramatically extending the scope of virtual reality: “Distant sites of the most ancient cultures are shown in film as if they stood this very moment amidst today’s street traffic… The peak of this abolition of every possibility of remoteness is reached by television, which will soon pervade and dominate the whole machinery of communication”.

Nowadays social theorists have moved beyond the relatively underdeveloped character of previous reflections on the compression or annihilation of space to offer a rigorous conception of globalization. They reached a consensus about the basic characteristics of globalization.

First, contemporary analysts associate globalization with deterritorialization, according to which a growing variety of social activities takes place irrespective of the geographical location of participants. Globalization refers to increased possibilities for action between and among people in situations where latitudinal and longitudinal location seems immaterial to the social activity at hand. Business people in different continents now engage in electronic commerce; television allows people situated anywhere to observe the impact of terrible wars being waged far from the comfort of their living rooms; academics make use of the latest video conferencing equipment to organize seminars in which participants are located at disparate geographical locations; the Internet allows people to communicate instantaneously with each other notwithstanding vast geographical distance separating them. Territory in the traditional sense of a geographically identifiable location no longer constitutes the whole of “social space” in which human activity takes place. In this initial sense of the term, globalization refers to the spread of new forms of non-territorial social activity.

Second, recent theorists conceive of globalization as linked to the growth of social interconnectedness across existing geographical and political boundaries. Globalization in this sense is a matter of degree since any given social activity might influence events more or less faraway: even though a growing number of activities seem intermeshed with events in distant continents, certain human activities remain primarily local or regional in scope. Also, the magnitude and impact of the activity might vary: geographically removed events could have a relatively minimal or a far more extensive influence on events at a particular locality.

Third, globalization must also include reference to the speed or velocity of social activity. Deterritorialization and interconnectedness initially seem chiefly spatial in nature. Yet it is easy to see how these spatial shifts are directly tied to the acceleration of crucial forms of social activity. High-speed technology plays a pivotal role in the velocity of human affairs.

Fourth, even though analysts disagree about the causal forces that generate globalization, most agree that globalization should be conceived as a relatively long-term process. The triad of deterritorialization, interconnectedness, and social acceleration hardly represents a sudden or recent event in contemporary social life. The impact of recent technological innovations is profound, and even those who do not have a job directly affected by the new technology are shaped by it in innumerable ways as citizens and consumers.

Fifth, globalization should be understood as a multi-pronged process, since deterrirorialization, social interconnectedness, and acceleration manifest themselves in many different (economic, political and cultural) arenas of social activity. Although each facet of globalization is linked to the core components of globalization described above, each consists of a complex and relatively autonomous series of empirical developments, requiring careful examination in order to disclose the causal mechanisms specific to it. Each manifestation of globalization also generates distinct conflicts and dislocations. High-speed technologies and organizational approaches are employed by transnationally operating firms, the so-called “global players”, with great effectiveness. The emergence of “around-the-world, around-the-clock” financial markets, where major cross-border financial transactions are made in cyberspace at the blink of an eye, represents a familiar example of the economic face of globalization. Transnational movements, in which activists employ rapid-fire communication technologies to join forces across borders in combating ills that seen correspondingly transnational in scope (for example,, the depletion of the ozone layer), offer an example of political globalization. Another would be the tendency towards ambitious supranational forms of social and economic lawmaking and regulation, where individual nation-states cooperate to pursue regulation whose jurisdiction transcends national borders no less than the cross-border economic processes that may undermine traditional modes of nation state-based regulation. Political scientists typically describe the trend towards ambitious forms of supranational organization (the European Union, for example) as important recent manifestations of political globalization.

Thus, globalization is changing the split world with autonomous and atomized peoples and cultures, leading to the unity of economic relations, political and social processes and historical fate of different countries. It leads to dialogue of cultures, to the harmonious unification of mankind in the face of common threats and global challenges.

But one can not evaluate the significance of globalization processes purely positively. Globalization poses a fundamental challenge to each of these traditional assumptions. It is no longer self-evident that nation-states can be described as “self-sufficient schemes of cooperation for all the essential purposes of human life” in the context of intense deterritorialization and the spread of social relations across borders. It should be noted and negative trends arising from globalization. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the "bipolar" world did not turn into the "multipolar", but to "monopolar" one with the United States in the center. It marks the expansion of American standards into most regions of the world, announced by the U.S.A. to be the zone of national interests.

Another negative consequence of globalization is demolishing of the ethnic and national values of different nations and countries under pressure of standardization, homogenization of material and spiritual culture. "Westernization" of spiritual culture threatens with the destruction of national art, cinema, theater, language and literature. Americanized English dominates not only in science, economic and political spheres but also in everyday life. It comes into opposition with the development of national languages, unreasonably polluting them with Americanism elements.

Imposition of U.S. standards and values for all the nations met opposition from some regions. In this regard, new oppose vectors of civilization could be observed: on the one side, Western - Eastern axis, and on the other - North – South axis. It raises a question about possibility of common civilization development. Under these circumstances the best strategy for future is viewed to be the one enabling to achieve the unity of the world in its diversity.

The phenomenon of globalization is drawn attention of all the countries. The researches devoted to global processions are the matter not only of scientists and philosophers, but the subject of interest for culture, state and public figures. Such interest is reasonable, as the researches seek for the new models of international stable order in interconnected world. Solving this problem may not be easy and simple, because humanity has accumulated a lot of global and regional problems, which solution seems to be impossible without the formation of a just world order. It is a task of mankind’s distant future.

Basic concepts and categories:

Modernity is a type, mode, or stage of society, characterized by a larger-scale integration of formerly isolated local communities and departure from tradition and religion toward individualism, rational or scientific organization of society, and egalitarianism.

Modern is the historical period in the development of Western civilization dated from the beginning of the XVI century to the mid-twentieth century.

Postmodern is the historical period in Western Europe dated from the second half of the XX century till the present time.

Global problems are a set of economic, social, political, environmental and other controversies emerged at the end of 60 years of the XX century, solving of which will influence the future of mankind.

Globalization is the objective processes of civilization development, which determine the interdependence, integrity of the world in all spheres of public life and emphasize common historical destiny of humanity.

Sustainable development is the scientific concept, which puts forward the idea of creating such a model of world development, which would ensure the peaceful coexistence of all peoples, taking into account economic, political and ethno-cultural interests of each.