What makes globalisation happen

It wasn't until the s that England started fixing the value of its currency to specified amounts of gold. Eventually, many countries followed suit or pegged their currencies to countries that followed the gold standard. Gold, therefore, became the international standard currency and could be bought or sold at a fixed price.

After World War II, many nations looked to break down barriers of trade between nations, promote free trade, and set up global organizations. One view states that globalization cannot be backdated before the late s—the post-war era when the United States established itself as the economic powerhouse of the world.

This definition of globalization argues that it is largely the work of powerful multinational corporations that have created a far-ranging set of consequences, both positive and negative, as they spread across the world. The unprecedented ease of travel around the globe and the development of modern communications are used to support this view of globalization.

Other scholars claim that the century-long trend toward globalization actually reversed by the midth century, citing the collapse of the international economy during the Great Depression and the fragmented state of the economy that persisted through World War II. According to Anne O. Krueger, former first deputy managing director of the IMF, by , globalization and the degree of integration of the world economy was considerably less than it had been fifty years before.

Of course, this trend has reversed again in the 21st century, an era of unprecedented global integration. Changes in technology and international economic policies have reduced many barriers to the free flow of goods, services, and capital.

Transport and communications costs have significantly dropped; at the same time, there have also been reductions in tariffs and other barriers to international trade that have opened up the global economy. This opening up of the global economy has led to an overall increase in international economic activity and, consequently, the importance of international trade in the world economy has also greatly increased. In addition to more market-friendly policies and an acceleration of economic growth, a second major evolution in the forces of globalization occurred as a result of a range of countries—primarily Asian economies—becoming more significant economic forces in the international economy.

Whereas in the middle of the 20th century, the United States was the primary economic force in the international economy, by the beginning of the 21st century, the European Union EU , Japan, China, and India all have global significance and impact. It is predicted that, in the future, their importance will become even greater. Many scholars argue that parts of the world have always influenced other parts and that the current state of affairs is a natural progression from earlier stages.

The exchange of ideas and trade has, in one form or another, existed as long as humanity has existed. There are, of course, different marking points determining true globalization, from ancient trade routes to modern global integration of financial markets , all of which have been made possible by the creation and development of technology.

International Monetary Fund. Accessed Aug. World Economic Forum. National Geographic. Bruce Mazlish. Pages The Guardian. National Bureau of Economic Research. World Gold Council. The Bretton Woods Project. Your Privacy Rights. The contradictions and disjunctions identified above suggest that we are in a transitional period, in terms of the three main dimensions: transitional in terms of the hierarchies and inequalities in the world system, transitional in terms of institutional form and complementarity amongst institutions; transitional in terms of the scale and configuration of social and political conflicts.

The theory under construction must therefore take the plurality and contradictions in the processes of globalisation into account instead of trying to subsume them into reductionist abstractions.

The theory which I am about to put forward is based on the concept of a world system in transition. It is in transition because it contains within itself the old world system, undergoing a process of profound transformation, and a set of emerging realities which may or may not lead to a new world system, or to another new entity, systematic or not.

It is a question of circumstances which, when captured synchronically, reveal a complete openness to possible alternative developments. Such openness is symptomatic of a great instability which configures a bifurcation, in the Prigoginian sense. It is a situation of great instability and volatile compromises, in which small alterations can bring about huge transformations.

It is therefore a situation characterised by turbulence and by the explosion of scales. The world system in transition is formed from three sets of collective practices: the set of interstate practices, the set of global capitalist practices and the set of transnational social and cultural practices. The interstate practices correspond to the role of the states in the modern world system as protagonists of the international division of labour, at the heart of which is established the hierarchy of the core, periphery and semi-periphery.

The global capitalist practices are the practices of the economic agents whose spatial-temporal unit for real or potential action is the planet itself. The transnational social and cultural practices are the cross-border flows of people and cultures, and of information and communication.

Each of these sets of practices is made up of: a group of institutions which ensure its reproduction, their compatibility and the stability of the inequalities which they produce; a form of power which supplies the logic of the interactions and legitimises the inequalities and the hierarchies; a form of law which supplies the language of intra-institutional and inter-institutional relations and the criteria for distinguishing between permitted and prohibited practices; a structural conflict which condenses the root tensions and contradictions of the practices in question; and criteria of hierarchy which define the way in which inequalities of power and the conflicts which they translate into are crystallized.

Finally, although all the practices of the world system in transition are involved in all the modes of production of globalisation , they are not all involved in all of them with the same intensity. Figure no 1 illustrates the internal composition of each of the components of the different sets of practices. I will only comment on those which require an explanation.

Prior to this, however, it is necessary to identify what distinguishes the world system in transition WSIT from the modern world system MWS. In the first place, whilst the MWS is based on two pillars, the world economy and the interstate system, the WSIT is based on three pillars, none of which have the consistency of a system. It is more a question of sets of practices whose internal coherence is intrinsically problematic.

The greatest complexity and also incoherence of the world system in transition lies in the fact that in it the processes of globalisation extend far beyond states and the economy, and involve social and cultural practices, which in the MWS are confined only to states and national societies or their sub-units.

Moreover, many of the new transnational cultural practices are originally transnational or, in other words, constitute themselves free of reference to any concrete nation or state or, when they do have recourse to them, do so only to acquire raw material or local infrastructures for the production of transnationality. In addition, whilst in the MWS the two pillars have clear and distinct outlines, in the WSIT there is a constant and intense interpenetration between the different sets of practices, to such an extent that there are grey areas or hybrids amongst them, in which the sets assume a particularly composite character.

For example, the World Trade Organisation is a hybrid institution made up of interstate practices and global capitalist practices, in the same way that flows of migration are a hybrid institution in which, to varying extents according to different situations, the three sets of practices are present. Thirdly, even though many of the core institutions of the MWS remain in the WSIT, they nowadays carry out different functions, without their centrality necessarily being affected. Thus the state, which in the MWS ensured the integration of the national economy, society and culture, nowadays actively contributes towards the disintegration of the economy, society and culture on a national level in the name of their integration within the global economy, society and culture.

The processes of globalisation result from the interactions between the three sets of practices. The tensions and contradictions inside each of the sets and in the relationships between them arise from forms of power and inequalities in the distribution of power. The form of power is the unequal exchange in all cases, but it assumes specific forms in each of the sets which are derived from the resources, the artifacts and the imaginary which are the object of this unequal exchange.

The depth and intensity of interstate, global and transnational interactions means that forms of power are exercised as unequal exchanges. Since it is a matter of exchanges and inequalities may, to a certain extent, be hidden or manipulated, the registering of interactions in the WSIT often and credibly assumes a register, the horizontal register through central ideas such as interdependence, complementarity, coordination, cooperation, networking, etc.

In the face of this, conflicts tend to be experienced as diffuse, and it is sometimes difficult to define what or whom is in conflict. Even so, it is possible in each set of practices to identify a structural conflict, or, in other words, a conflict which organises struggles around the resources which are the objects of unequal exchange.

In the case of interstate practices, the conflict is engaged around relative positions in the hierarchy of the world system, since it is this which dictates the type of exchanges and levels of inequality. Struggles for promotion or against relegation and movements within the hierarchy of the world system which these translate into are long-term processes which at each given moment can be crystallized into levels of autonomy and dependence.

On the level of global capitalist practices, the struggle lies between the global capitalist class and the other classes defined on a national level, whether they are the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie or the working class. Obviously the levels of inequality of exchange and the mechanisms which produce them are different, according to the classes which are in confrontation, but in all cases there is a struggle for the appropriation or valuation of commercial resources, whether these are labour or knowledge, information or raw materials, credit or technology.

What remains of the national bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie is, in this transitional phase, a cushion which softens and a smokescreen which hides the increasingly stark and crude contradiction between global capital and labour transformed into a global resource. In the domain of transnational social and cultural practices, unequal exchanges relate to non-commercial resources whose transnationality is based on local differences, such as ethnicity, identity, cultures, traditions, a sense of belonging, the imaginary, rituals and written or oral literature.

There are countless social groups involved in these unequal exchanges and their struggles are engaged around recognition of the non-mercantile appropriation or valuation of these resources, or rather, around equality in difference and difference in equality. The reciprocal interaction and interpenetration of these three sets of practices means that the three types of conflict and the unequal exchanges which fuel them, in practice, translate into composite hybrid or dual conflicts, in which, in different ways, elements of each of the structural conflicts are present.

The importance of this fact lies in what is termed transconflictuality, which consists of assimilating one type of conflict within another and in experiencing one particular type of conflict as if it were another. Thus, for example, a conflict within global capitalist practices can be assimilated into an interstate conflict and experienced as such by the parties involved in the conflict.

In the same way, an interstate conflict may be assimilated into a conflict of transnational cultural practices and experienced as such.

A transconflituality reveals the openness and the bifurcation which characterises the WSIT since, at the outset, it is impossible to know in which direction the transconflituality is orientated. However, the direction which is finally imposed is decisive, not only in defining the practical outlines of the conflict, but also its nature and its results. In the MWS, the hierarchy of the core, periphery and semi-periphery was articulated as a series of dichotomies derived from a variety of forms of unequal differentiation.

Each of these forms has its own semantic register, intellectual tradition, political intentionality and projected horizons. The global and the local are socially produced within the processes of globalisation. I have distinguished four processes of globalisation produced by other modes of globalisation. This, now, is my definition of the mode of production of globalisation: it is a set of unequal exchanges in which a certain artefact, condition, entity or local identity extends its influence beyond its national frontiers and, in so doing, develops an ability to designate as local another rival artifact, condition, entity or identity.

The most important implications of this concept are as follows. Firstly, in terms of the conditions of the world system in transition, genuine globalisation does not exist; what we call globalisation is always the successful globalisation of a particular localism. In other words, there are no global conditions within which we cannot find local roots, either real or imagined, as a specific cultural insertion.

The second implication is that globalisation presupposes localisation. The process which creates the global as the dominant position in unequal exchanges, is the same one which produces the local as the dominated, and therefore hierarchically inferior, position.

In fact we live as much in a local as in a global world. Therefore, in analytical terms, it would be equally correct if the present situation and our topics of investigation were defined in terms of localization instead of globalisation. The reason why the latter term is preferred is basically because hegemonic scientific discourse tends to favour the history of the world as told by the conquerors.

There are many examples of how globalisation presupposes localisation. The English language as a is one. Its propagation as a global language implies the localization of other, potentially global, languages, particularly French. That is to say that, once a certain process of globalisation has been identified, its integral meaning and explanation cannot be obtained without taking into account the adjacent processes of relocalisation occurring simultaneously or in sequence to it.

The globalisation of the Hollywood star system contributed to the localisation ethnicisation of the Hindu cinema star system. Analogously, the French or Italian actors of the 60s — from Brigitte Bardot to Alain Delon, or from Marcello Mastroianni to Sophia Loren — who at the time symbolised the universal style of acting, seem, when we watch their films again nowadays, provincially European, if not curiously ethnic.

The difference in view lies in the way in which, since then, the Hollywood style of acting has managed to globalise itself. To give another example from a totally different area, the more the hamburger or pizza becomes globalised, the more localised the Portuguese bolo de bacalhau or the Brazilian feijoada become, in the sense that they are increasingly seen as typical particularities of Portuguese or Brazilian society.

One of the transformations most frequently associated with the processes of globalisation is the compression of time and space, or, rather, the social process by which phenomena accelerate and are spread throughout the world Harvey, Although apparently monolithic, this process combines highly differentiated situations and conditions and, because of this, cannot be analysed independently of the power relations which respond to the different forms of temporal and spatial mobility.

On the one hand, there is the global capitalist class, which in reality controls the space-time compression and is capable of transforming it in its favour. On the other hand, there are the classes and subordinate groups, such as migrant workers and refugees, who in recent decades have represented much cross-border traffic, but who do not, in any way, control the space-time compression.

Between the executives of the multinational companies and the emigrants and refugees, tourists represent a third mode of production of the compression of space and time. There are also those who contribute greatly to globalisation but remain, nevertheless, prisoners in their own local time-space. So do the Rio slum-dwellers, who are prisoners of their marginal urban lifestyle, whilst their songs and dances, particularly the samba, are nowadays part of a globalised music culture.

From yet another perspective, a global competency at times requires a specific local emphasis. Many tourist locations today have to emphasise their exotic, vernacular and traditional character in order to make themselves sufficiently attractive to the global tourism market.

The production of globalisation therefore implies the production of localisation. Far from dealing with symmetrical productions though, it is through these that the dominant hierarchy is established in the WSIT. In its terms, the local is integrated into the global in two possible ways: by exclusion or by subordinate inclusion.

Although in common parlance and in political discourse the term globalisation conveys an idea of inclusion, the true nature of inclusion for globalisation, above all in its economic sense, can be extremely limited. Yet the decisive factor in the hierarchy produced is not only the context of the inclusion but also its nature. The local, when included, is done so in a subordinate fashion, according to a global logic.

The local which precedes the processes of globalisation, or which manages to remain on its margins, has very little to do with the local which results from the global production of localisation. Moreover, the first type of local is at the origins of the processes of globalisation whereas the second type is the result of its operations. The general mode of production of globalisation can be divided into four modes of production, which, in my view, give rise to four forms of globalisation.

The first form of globalisation is the globalised localism. It is the process by which a particular phenomenom is successfully globalised, whether it be the worldwide activities of the multinational, the transformation of the English language into a lingua franca, the globalisation of American fast food or popular music or the worldwide adoption of the same laws of intellectual ownership, patents or telecommunications aggressively promoted by the USA.

In this mode of production of globalisation, what is globalised is the winner of a struggle for the appropriation or valuation of resources or the recognition of difference.

This victory translates into the capacity to dictate the terms of integration, competition and inclusion. In the case of the recognition of difference, the globalised localism implies the conversion of triumphant victory into a universal difference and the consequent exclusion or subordinate inclusion of alternative differences. I have called the second form of globalisation the localized globalism. It consists of the specific impact on local conditions produced by transnational practices and imperatives which arise from globalised localisms.

To respond to these transnational imperatives, local conditions are disintegrated, destructured, and, eventually, restructured as subordinate inclusion. These two modes of production operate in conjunction but should be dealt with separately since the factors, agents and conflicts which intervene in one or the other are distinct. The sustained production of globalised localisms and localized globalisms is increasingly determining the specific hierarchy of interstate practices. The international division of the production of globalisation tends to assume the following pattern: core countries specialise in globalised localisms, whilst peripheral countries only have the choice of localized globalisms.

Semi-peripheral countries are characterized by the co-existence of both globalised localisms and localised globalisms and by the tensions between them. The world system in transition is a mesh of localised globalisms and globalised localisms.

There are two other modes of production of globalisation in addition to these, which perhaps best define the differences and newness of the WSIT in relation to the MWS, since they occur within the set of practices which have erupted with particular force in recent decades — transnational social and cultural practices — although they also have repercussions on the other sets of practices.

They relate to the globalisation of resistance to globalised localisms and localized globalisms. I have termed the first of these cosmopolitanism. It consists of the transnational organised resistance of nation states, regions, classes and social groups victimised by the unequal exchanges which fuel globalised localisms and localized globalisms. They take advantage of the possibilities of transnational interaction created by the world system in transition, including those resulting from the revolution in information technology and communications.

Resistance consists of transforming unequal exchanges into exchanges of shared authority, and translates into struggles against exclusion, subordinate inclusion, dependency, disintegration and relegation. The heterogeneity of the movements and organisations involved is also significant and the conflict surrounding the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle on 30th.

November was an eloquent demonstration of what I have termed cosmopolitanism. This was followed by other demonstrations against the financial institutions of hegemonic globalisation which took place in Washington, Montreal, Geneva and Prague.

I use it, however, to signify that, contrary to modernist belief particularly that of the , cosmopolitanism is only possible in an interstitial way on the margins of the world system in transition as an anti-hegemonic practice and discourse generated by progressive coalitions of classes or subordinate social groups and their allies. Cosmopolitanism is, in fact, a tradition of Western modernity but it is one of the many traditions which has been suppressed or marginalised by the hegemonic tradition, which in the past generated European expansionism, colonialism and imperialism, and which today generates globalised localisms and localized globalisms.

In this context, it is necessary to state one more fine point. Cosmopolitanism may invoke the belief of Marx in the universality of those who, under capitalism, have nothing to lose but their chains.

In addition to the working class described by Marx, the oppressed classes in the world today can be grouped into two more categories, neither of which can be reduced to the class-which-has-only-its-chains-to-lose category. In all their various forms, the cosmopolitan coalitions see their struggle as one for emancipation from the dominant classes, whether they are dominated by mechanisms of oppression or by exploitation.

Maybe because of this, contrary to the Marxist concept, cosmopolitanism does not imply uniformity and the collapse of differences, autonomies and local identities. Probably the most important difference between my concept of cosmopolitanism and the Marxist universality of the oppressed is that the progressive cosmopolitan coalitions do not necessarily have a class base.

They unite social groups on a non-class basis, the victims, for example, of sexual, ethnic, racist, religious, ageist discrimination etc. Partly for this reason, the progressive or anti-hegemonic character of the cosmopolitan coalitions can never be determined abstractly. On the contrary, it is intrinsically unstable and problematic. It demands constant self-reflection of those who take part. Cosmopolitan initiatives conceived of and created with an anti-hegemonic character can later come to assume hegemonic characteristics, even running the risk of becoming converted into globalised localisms.

Self-reflexive vigilance is essential in order to distinguish between the technocratic concept of participatory democracy sanctioned by the World Bank and the democratic and progressive concept of participatory democracy, the embryo of anti-hegemonic globalisation. The instability of the progressive or anti-hegemonic character is also derived from another factor: the different concepts of emancipatory resistance held by cosmopolitan initiatives in different regions of the world system. However, it can be seen by similar organizations in peripheral countries as one more hegemonic strategy from the North, whose actual effect is to create one more form of protectionism which favours the rich countries.

The second mode of production of globalisation in which resistance is organised against globalised localisms and localised globalisms is what I have, with recourse to international law, termed the common inheritance of humanity. It concerns transnational struggles to protect and decommodify resources, entities, artifacts, and environments considered essential for the dignified survival of humanity, whose sustainability can only be guaranteed on a planetary scale.

In general, the following belong to the common inheritance of humanity: the environmental struggles, struggles to preserve the Amazon, the Antarctic, the biodiversity of the ocean depths and the campaigns for the preservation of outer space, the moon and the other planets also considered the common inheritance of humanity.

All these struggles relate to resources which, by their very nature, have to be managed by a logic other than that of unequal exchange, namely international community trusts in the name of present and future generations. Both cosmopolitanism and the common inheritance of humanity have developed greatly in recent decades. Through them a political globalisation has been constructed which is an alternative to the hegemony developed out of the need to create a corresponding transnational political obligation which, up to now, has mutually bound citizens and nation states.

A broader political obligation is, for now, merely conjecture, since a transnational political body corresponding to the nation state has still to be realised or even imagined. However, non-governmental organisations of a progressive transnational persuasion, alliances between them and local organisations and movements in different parts of the world and the organisation of campaigns against hegemonic globalisation from the Greenpeace campaigns to the Jubilee Campaign are all seen as signs of a newly emerging global civil and political society.

Yet both cosmoplitanism and the common inheritance of humanity have encountered strong resistance from those who lead hegemonic globalisation the globalised localisms and localized globalisms or those who benefit from it. The common inheritance of humanity, especially, has been under constant attack from the hegemonic countries, above all the USA.

The conflicts, resistance, struggles and coalitions surrounding cosmopolitanism and the common inheritance of humanity demonstrate that what we call globalisation is, in reality, a set of transnational arenas of struggle.

Therefore it is important to distinguish between globalisation from-the-top-downwards and globalisation from-the-bottom-upwards, or between hegemonic and anti-hegemonic globalisation. The globalised localisms and the localized globalisms are globalisation from-the-top-downwards, or hegemonic globalisation, and cosmopolitanism and the common inheritance of humanity are globalisations from-the-bottom-upwards or anti-hegemonic.

It is important to bear in mind that these two types of globalisation do not exist parallel to each other, as if they were two watertight entities. On the contrary, they are the expression and the result of struggles engaged within the social space conventionally known as globalisation which, in reality, is constructed through four modes of production.

Like any other, the concept of globalisation proposed here is not peaceful. One of the current debates revolves around the question of determining whether there are one or several globalisations. For the great majority of authors there is only one globalisation, neo-liberal capitalist globalisation, and it does not, therefore, make sense to distinguish between hegemonic and anti-hegemonic globalisation.

As there is only one globalisation, resistance to it cannot be anything but a self-assumed localism. According to Jerry Mander, economic globalisation has a cast iron logic which is doubly destructive. In the face of this, the most effective resistance to globalisation lies in the promotion of local and community economies, the small-scale economies which are diverse, self-sustaining and linked to exterior forces but not dependent on them.

According to this concept, in an economy and a culture which is becoming increasingly dispossessed, the response to its evils can only be reterritorialisation, the rediscovery of a sense of place and community, which implies the rediscovery or invention of local productive activities. This position has been translated into the identification, creation and promotion of innumerable local initiatives throughout the world. Consequently the group of proposals which, in general, can be termed localization is nowadays very fertile.

What I understand by localization is the set of initiatives which aim to create or maintain small-scale social areas, which are community-based and operate through face-to-face relationships, orientated towards self-sustainability and maintained by a cooperative and participatory logic.

Localisation projects include small family farming initiatives Berry, ; Inhoff, , small-scale local commerce Norberg-Hodge, , local systems of exchange using local currencies Meeker-Lowry, and participatory forms of local self-government Kumar, ; Morris, Many of these initiatives or proposals are based on the idea that culture, community and the economy are incorporated and rooted in concrete geographical locations that require constant vigilance and protection.

This is what is known as bio-regionalism Sale, The initiatives and proposals of localization do not necessarily imply isolationism. They do imply, of course, protection measures against the predatory investors of neo-liberal globalisation. The paradigm of localization does not necessarily imply a rejection of global or translocal resistance. It does, however, stress the promotion of local social initiatives.

This is the position of Norberg-Hodge , for whom it is necessary to distinguish between strategies to put a brake on the uncontrolled expansion of globalisation and strategies which promote real solutions for real populations. The former must be led by translocal initiatives, namely through multilateral treaties which allow national states to protect their population and environment from the excesses of free trade.

The latter, in contrast, undoubtedly the most important, can only be led by multiple local small-scale initiatives as diverse as the cultures, contexts and environments in which they take place. It is not a matter of thinking in terms of isolated efforts and then of institutions which offer large-scale promotion of small-scale initiatives. This is the position which comes closest to the one resulting from the concept of a polarisation between hegemonic and anti-hegemonic globalisation proposed here.

The difference lies in the relative emphasis placed on the various resistance strategies that present themselves. In my opinion, it is erroneous to give priority either to local or global strategies.

One of the big traps of neo-liberal globalisation lies in symbolically accentuating the distinction between the local and the global and, at the same time, destroying it through the real mechanisms of the economy. This symbolic emphasis is destined to delegitimise all obstacles to the incessant expansion of neo-liberal gobalisation, by lumping them all together under the title of local and mobilizing negative connotations against them through the powerful mechanisms of ideological indoctrination which it has at its disposal.

In terms of the transnational processes, from the economic to the cultural, the local and the global are increasingly becoming the two sides of the same coin, as I have previously stressed. In this context, anti-hegemonic globalisation is as important as anti-hegemonic localisation. The initiatives, organizations and movements which I have listed above as pertaining to cosmopolitanism and the common inheritance of humanity, have a transnational vocation but, even so, they remain anchored in concrete locations and concrete local struggles.

The transnational advocacy of human rights aims to defend them in concrete locations in the world where they are violated, just as the transnational advocacy of ecology aims to put an end to concrete local or translocal acts of destruction of the environment.

There are forms of struggle which are orientated more towards the creation of networks amongst locales, but obviously they are not sustainable if they are not based on local struggles or are not sustained by them. The global occurs locally. It is necessary to ensure that the anti-hegemonic locale also occurs globally. In order to do this it is not enough to promote the small-scale on a large-scale.

On this step, we'll explore some of the factors that have led to an increase in globalisation. Globalisation is not a new phenomenon. However the process by which globalisation happens has accelerated in recent years due to some important drivers. Want to keep learning? This content is taken from Coventry University online course,. Before you leave this step, take another look over each factor — does one stand out to you as being the most important?

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