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1. GLOBALIZATION OF CULTURE AND
COMMUNICATION
SOC 451
Asst. Prof. Fatma Altınbaş Sarıgül

2. GLOBALIZATION OF CULTURE AND
COMMUNICATION
• Global cultural homogenization
• Cultural uniformity of the world

3. GLOBALIZATION
‘Globalization did it’
• Cultural diffusion
• Capitalism
• Inequalities
• Uneven distribution of wealth
• Gender issue
• Identity issue
• Overpopulation
• Social problems
• So on…

4. GLOBALIZATION
• Information and Communication Technologies
(ICT) forms part of the infrastructure of
globalization in finance, capital mobility and
export-oriented business activity, transnational
communication, migration, travel and civil society
interactions.
Global advertising expenditures
39 billion $ -in 1950
256 billion $ - in 1990

5. GLOBALIZATION
• Between 1840-1960, nation states were the
leading format of political organization
worldwide,
• From 1960s, regionalization has come into the
picture as a significant dynamic; ex: EU.
• Over time, state authority has been leaking
upward- internationalization of states.

6. What is the scope for state authority in
contemporary globalization?
• The role is different for different kind of states ;
large or small, central or peripheral, advanced or
developing.
• A need for public sector reform in most of the
states with globalization.
• The accompanying growth of market forces has
led governments from local to national levels to
attract foreign investment, infrastructure
development and place marketing.

7. Does globalization foster democratization through
transnational demonstration effects, growing human
rights awareness, and civic activism across borders, or
do the economic effects of globalization, by fostering
social inequality?
• Extremely unequal income and wealth distribution over the
world, with the effect of globalization.
• Video.

8. Globalization from sociological
perspective
• Globalization is an objective, empirical process
of increasing economic and political
connectivity, a subjective process unfolding in
consciousness as the social awareness of
global interconnectedness, and a host of
specific globalization projects that seek to
shape global conditions.

9. TRANSNATIONALISM
• A term that is closely related to globalization
Processes that interconnect individuals and social
groups across specific geopolitical borders.
TRANSNATIONALITY
The rise of new communities and formation of new
social identities and relations that cannot be defined
through the traditional reference point of nation-
states.

10. • Globalization and transnationalism are often
used interchangeably, but transnationalism is
more delimited process.
• Transnationalism is most often used in
thinking about immigrants who move from
one country to another, but who continue to
be involved in various ways with their home
country.
• For ex: Soccer is a global sport, while baseball
is a transnational sport.

11. Some metaphors to understand
globalization
• Solid, Liquid, Gas
• Solidity: People, things, information and
places ‘harden’ over time and therefore have
limited mobility.
• Solidity of materials: stone tablets,
newpapers,magazines,books. (solidity of
information before high-tech and internet)
• Solidity of places: Mountains, rivers, oceans
(solid natural)
Walls, gates, borders (humanly constructed)

12. Solid to Liquid or even to Gas
• With the developments on transportation,
communication and the Internet; people, objects
and information can move across global more
easily.
• Much of the information now available instantly
around the world wafts through the air in the
form of signals beamed of satellites.
• Time in a liquid world, more important than
space.
• Best example: Global Finance

13. Liquidity of New Age
• Eventhough globalization means more
liquidity of everything, solid structures survive
in the world.
• The most important solid structure is nation-
state.

14. The idea of Flows
• Another key concept in thinking about
globalization.
• Movement of people, things, information, and
places due, in part, to the increasing porosity of
global barriers.
• For ex: Food flows, sushi from Japan becoming
globalized all over the world.
• A different kind of flow: Migrants
• Ideas, images, information, both legal and illegal,
flow everywhere through interpersonal contact
and the media, via internet, because of their
immeteriality.

15. Types of Flows
• Interconnected flows: Global flows that
interconnect at different points and times.
• Multi-directional flows: All sorts of things
flowing in every conceivable direction among
many points in the world.
• Conflicting flows: Transplanetary processes
that conflict with one another.
• Reverse flows: Processes which, while flowing
in one direction, act back on their source.

16. Does globalization hop rather than flow?
• The world is characterized by great inequality.
• Therefore, all flows do not go everywhere in
the world and, even when they do, they make
different effects.
*James Ferguson’s work on Africa.
• Globalization may hop rather than flow in
some areas.

17. Some metaphors to understand
globalization
• Heavy, Light, Weightless
• Example: Music records, then cassettes, then
CDs, then ipods, cell phones. (heavy to light)

18. Heavy Structures on the World
• Trade agreements, regulatory agencies,
borders, customs barriers, standards and so
on..
• European Union- a structure to control global
flows.
• Labor unions- a structure to control migrant
flow
• IMF, WTO, World Bank- Financial structures to
control global economy.

19. Some metaphors to understand
globalization
• Structure, Process.
• Thinking about globalization in terms of
processes gives it the kind of dynamism that
we all know it has and that offers profound
insights into it and the ways in which it works.
• Structures: Nation-states, multi-national
corporations.