{"id":15400,"date":"2017-11-16T16:50:56","date_gmt":"2017-11-17T00:50:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=15400"},"modified":"2017-11-16T16:50:56","modified_gmt":"2017-11-17T00:50:56","slug":"the-forces-of-globalization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-forces-of-globalization\/","title":{"rendered":"The Forces of Globalization"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anthony Elliot\u2019s text, Contemporary Social Theory: An Introduction,<\/em> examines key scholars, concepts, and theoretical traditions in contemporary social theory. The first part of the book includes chapters that define society and social theory, and review classical theory. The author then explores various social theories in today\u2019s contemporary society, including structuralism, post-structuralism, contemporary critical theory, feminism and post-feminist theory, postmodernity, network theory, and globalization. Each of these chapters includes discussion of criticism of founding theorists. The subject of relevance from the book for this post is Elliot\u2019s analysis of globalization in contemporary social theory.<\/p>\n

Globalization, in its broadest sense, is largely about trying to understand the ways in which the world is constantly changing in our current era. What are the forces that are influencing the change we are experiencing? What is the experience and how has human experience around the world changed in the last half-century or so, and what are the present and future consequences of these changes? The terms \u201cglobalization\u201d and \u201cglobalism\u201d seem to be catch-all terms to describe these changes across the globe, though for many social critics, \u201cglobalization\u201d focuses on advanced capitalism across the globe, and its Americanization.<\/p>\n

Elliot\u2019s chapter on Globalization examines three distinct accounts of understanding and interpreting \u201cthe changing nature of organizations, economics, society, the nation-state and personal life\u201d: the global sceptics (Hirst) and anti-globalists, who argued against the \u201cglobal\u201d nature of multinational corporations and their harm of the environment and the poor; the radical globalists (Ohmae), who promote free trade and open markets and who may or may not be attuned to their consequences; and global transformationalists (Held), who argue for a more nuanced and complex, center position, which claims that structures, institutions and societies are not either being eliminated or replaced by entirely new ones, but are being transformed, altered, by \u201ca world that shakes up distinctions between domestic and international, internal and external affairs.[1]<\/a> Held\u2019s central argument is: \u201cGlobalization marks the continuation of politics by new means operating at many levels.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

From his transformationalist perspective, Held seeks to analyze four dimensions of globalization:<\/p>\n