CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
The term globalization covers a wide range of distinct political, economic and cultural
trends. It has become one of the most popular topics of debate around circles. The term
could be said to be synonymous with economic liberalization, westernization and internet
revolution. Social theorists are of 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 temporal structure of crucial forms
of human activity.
The term globalization has been used by economists since the 1980s although it was used
in social sciences in the 1960s. However, its concepts did not become popular until the
later half of the 1980s. Since the mid 1980s, social theorists have moved beyond the
relatively underdeveloped character of previous reflections on the compression and
annihilation of space to offer a rigorous conception of globalization.
Human societies across the globe have established progressively closer contacts over
many centuries, but recently the pace has dramatically increased. Jet airplanes, cheap
telephone service, email, computers, huge ocean-going vessels, instant capital flows, all
these have made the world more interdependent than ever. Multinational corporations
manufacture products in many countries and sell to consumers around the world. Money,
technology and raw materials move ever more swiftly across national borders. Along with
products and finances, ideas and cultures circulate more freely. Many politicians,
academics and journalists treat these trends as both inevitable and welcome. But for
billions of the world’s people, business-driven globalization means uprooting old ways of
life and threatening livelihoods and cultures. Intense political disputes will continue over
globalization’s meaning and its future direction.
Globalization has become a major topic of discussion and concern in economic circles of the mid-1990s, it is like an unstoppable reality and most citizens of the world will have to plan their future within this reality. As a terminology, it covers a wide area of human activity mainly driven by recent quantum leap in the technology of computerization and telecommunications, what is often referred to as information technology.
What is Globalization? There seems to be various ideas and definition on globalization, in
fact no universal definition of globalization has emerged. In most cases it is used
interchangeably with internationalization and liberalisation. Globalization, the growing integration of economies and societies around the world, has sparked one of the most highly charged debates of the past decade. Critics of globalization have argued that the process has exploited people in developing countries, caused massive disruptions and produced few benefits. Supporters point to the significant reductions in poverty achieved by countries that have embraced integration with the world economy such as China, Vietnam, India and Uganda.
Contemporary analysts associate globalization with deterritorialization, according to which
a growing variety of social activities takes place irrespective of the geographical location of
participants. As Jan Aart Scholte observes, “global events can via telecommunication,
audio-visual media and the like occur almost simultaneously anywhere and everywhere in the world” (Scholte, 1996: 45). Globalization refers to increased possibilities for action between and among people in situation where latitudinal and longitudinal location seems immaterial to the social activity at hand. Business people in different continents now engage in electronic commerce; academics make use of the latest video conferencing equipment to organize seminars in which participants are located at different geographical locations. In this sense of the growth the term, globalization refers to the spread of new forms of non-territorial social activity.
Recent theorists also conceive of globalization as linked to the growth of social interconnectedness across existing geographical and political boundaries. Since the vast majority of human activities are still tied to a concrete geographical location, the more decisive facet of globalization concerns the manner in which distant events and forces impact on local and regional endeavours. (Tomlinson 1999: 9). Globalization refers to those processes whereby geographically distant events and decisions impact to a growing degree on local university life.
Globalization must also include reference to the speed and velocity directly of social activity. Deterritorialization and interconnectedness initially seem 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. The linking together and expanding of social activities across borders is predicated on the possibility of relatively fast flows and movement of people, information, capital and goods.
There have been various ideas and definitions by different intellectuals, scholars, economies, social and political scientists.
Globalization as defined by Allansare –Ouatera (1997) is the integration of economies through out the world through trade, financial flows, the exchange of technology and information and the movement of people. The extent of trend towards integration is clearly reflected in the rising importance of world trade and capital flows in the world economy.
An increasingly large scale of world GDP is generated in activities linked directly or indirectly to international trade. And there has been a phenomenal growth in cross-border financial flows, particularly in the form of private equity and portfolio investment, compared with the past. In addition, the revolution in communication and transportation technology and the much improved availability of information have allowed individuals and firms to base their economic choices more on the quality of the economic environment in different countries.
Globalization as defined by OECD (1993) is a process ‘by which markets and production in different countries are becoming increasingly interdependent due to the dynamics of trade in goods and services and the flow of capital and technology.
| Project details | Contents |
|---|---|
| Number of Pages | 87 pages |
| Chapter one | Introduction |
| Chapter two | Literature review |
| Chapter three | methodology |
| Chapter four | Data analysis |
| Chapter five | Summary,discussion & recommendations |
| Reference | Reference |
| Questionnaire | Questionnaire |
| Appendix | Appendix |
| Chapter summary | 1 to 5 chapters |
| Available document | PDF and MS-word format |
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