Navigating the Global:
The Theory behind Globalisation
OVERVIEW
AIM?
To learn about the basic philosophical and social theories
relevant to globalisation.
WHY?
You are expected to be independent researchers and to use
your research in your HSC exam, that is:
You need to apply the following theories and ideas to the texts
you are analysing.
You do not need to provide footnotes or a bibliography in your
essay for the HSC exam (simply use surnames) but may be
required to do so in an assessment task during the year.
CONNECT & EXTEND
For EACH of the 8 theories, fill out 2
Post-Its:
• CONNECT: What did I already know or
have a vague idea about?
• EXTEND: What is new information to me?
THOERY 1: Claude LEVISTRAUSS
1908-2009
French anthropologist & ethnologist (study of
race/ethnicity)
- Changed the way the modern, Western world
viewed and understood the primitive or tribal world
by observing similarities between the two.
- Emphasised that the "savage" mind has the same
structures as the "civilised" mind & that human
characteristics are the same everywhere regardless
of race.
- As a survival strategy, human beings fundamentally
think in binary oppositions (good/bad, us vs. them)
but also believe in their unification.
- A family or tribe acquires its identity only through its
relations with other families or tribes (this is why we
marry & cross-breed).
"There is today a frightful disappearance of living
species, be they plants or animals. And it's clear that
the density of human beings has become so great, if
I can say so, that they have begun to poison
themselves. And the world in which I am finishing
my existence is no longer a world that I like."
"The world began without the human race and will
certainly end without it." 1955
How can this theory be applied to Heaney's poetry
and/or The Mosquito Coast in terms of
understanding the relationship between an individual
and the globalised world?
Examples:
THEORY 2: Gayatri Chakravorty
SPIVAK
1942
Indian philosopher & literary theorist
- Studied post-colonialism, especially the postcolonial perspective in literature.
- Interested in the often denied perspective and
experience of the minor or "other" character (often
repressed by the main/dominant character
representing the coloniser) in a text, usually the
non-white, the working class or women.
Key Term:
SUBALTERN
someone who is socially, politically or
geographically outside of the hegemonic power
structure of the colony & mother country.
How can this theory be applied to Heaney's poetry
and/or The Mosquito Coast in terms of
understanding the relationship between an individual
and the globalised world?
Examples:
THEORY 3: Francis FUKUYAMA
1952
American/Japanese economist & political scientist
- Believes the worldwide spread of liberal
democracy & free market capitalism of the West
& its lifetstyle may signal the end point of
humanity's sociocultural evolution & become the
final form of human government.
- Emphasises the global triumph &
universalisation of Western liberal democracy &
political & economic liberalism.
- This is the endpoint of man's ideological
evolution.
Expressed anti-Bush sentiment and disparaged
the idea of America as a "super power" because
it:
- overstates the threat of other ideologies to the
US
- fails to foresee negative social reaction to the US
& increases anti-Americanism
- misjudges what is needed to bring peace to
warring countries & is over optimistic about the
success with which the social engineering of
Western values can be applied to other countries
How can this theory be applied to Heaney's poetry
and/or The Mosquito Coast in terms of
understanding the relationship between an individual
and the globalised world?
Examples:
THEORY 4: Pierre BOURDIEU
1930-2002
French sociologist, anthropologist & philosopher
- Studied dynamics of economic power relations in
social life.
- Emphasised the role of economic capital in social
positioning.
- Rejected the idea of one form of "high intelligence"
or an "intellectual prophet" as he believed judgments
of intellectual taste are related to one's social
position or are themselves acts of social positioning.
When reading an individual (in real life or in a
narrative) we must consider not only:
- the subjective experience of the individual
but also
- the external social structure present at the time.
Key Term:
CULTURAL CAPITAL
- non-financial social assets that promote social
mobility beyond economic means, e.g.
education, intellect, style of speech, dress,
physical appearance, gender, health, family
dynamic, demography, geography, race,
ethnicity, environment, attitude
- accumulated cultural knowledge that confers:
power + status = success
3 types of cultural capital:
Embodied: both consciously acquired and passively
inherited, e.g. one's attitude toward education, work
and travel
Objectified: physical objects/possessions, e.g.
money, house, food, car (owning a Mercedes or BMW
is (or used to be) a status symbol)
Institutionalised: academic or other
credentials/qualifications
How can this theory be applied to Heaney's poetry
and/or The Mosquito Coast in terms of
understanding the relationship between an individual
and the globalised world?
Examples:
POSTMODERNISM
- Fredric Jameson
- Marshall McLuhan
- Jean-François Lyotard
- Jean Baudrillard
Key Terms
Postmodernism: a cultural movement following that
of modernism. It is thought to have emerged after
WWII although some argue it didn't emerge until the
1980s.
Postmodernity: the state or condition of being
postmodern – after or in reaction to that which is
modern, as in postmodern art, for example.
Modernity is defined as a period or condition loosely
identified with the Progressive Era, the Industrial
Revolution, or the Enlightenment.
- One "project" of modernity is said by to have been
the fostering of progress by incorporating principles
of rationality and hierarchy into public and artistic
life. Postmodernism seeks to question, challenge or
reject that.
- Lyotard understood modernity as a cultural
condition characterised by constant change in the
pursuit of progress. Postmodernity then represents
the culmination of this process where constant
change has become the status quo (the norm) and
the notion of progress has become obsolete.
- Those who generally view modernity as obsolete
or an outright failure, a flaw in humanity's evolution
leading to disasters like the Holocaust and atomic
bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki, see
postmodernity as a positive development.
Postmodernity is a condition or a state of being
associated with changes to institutions and
conditions and with social and political results and
innovations, globally but especially in the West since
the 1950s.
Postmodernism is an aesthetic, literary, political or
social philosophy, the "cultural and intellectual
phenomenon", especially since the 1920s' new
movements in the arts.
- Both of these terms are used by philosophers,
social scientists and social critics to refer to aspects
of contemporary culture, economics and society
that are the result of features of late 20th century
and early 21st century life, including the
fragmentation of authority and the
commoditisation of knowledge (where knowledge
becomes a commodity).
- The postmodern period has had diverse political
ramifications: its "anti-ideological ideas" appear
to have been positively associated with the
feminist movement, racial equality movements,
gay rights movements, most forms of late 20th
century anarchism and even the peace movement
as well as various hybrids of these in the current
anti-globalisation movement.
- The first phase of postmodernity overlaps the
end of modernity. Television became the primary
news source, manufacturing decreased in
importance in the economies of Western Europe
and the United States but trade volumes increased
within the developed core.
- In 1967-1969 a crucial cultural explosion took
place within the developed world as the baby
boom generation, which had grown up with
postmodernity as their fundamental experience of
society, demanded entrance into the political,
cultural and educational power structure.
- A series of demonstrations and acts of rebellion ranging from non-violent and cultural, through to
violent acts of terrorism - represented the
opposition of the young to the policies and
perspectives of the previous age.
- Opposition to the Algerian War and the
Vietnam War, to laws allowing or encouraging
racial segregation and to laws which overtly
discriminated against women and restricted
access to divorce, increased use of recreational
drugs, the emergence of pop cultural styles of
music and drama, and the ubiquity of stereo,
television and radio, helped make these
changes visible in the broader cultural context.
- The second phase of postmodernity is defined by
"digitality" - the increasing power of personal and
digital means of communication including fax
machines, modems, cable and high speed internet
via computers and mobile phones, which has altered
the condition of postmodernity dramatically: digital
production of information allows individuals to
manipulate virtually every aspect of the media
environment.
- This has brought producers into conflict with
consumers over intellectual capital and intellectual
property and led to the creation of a new economy
whose supporters argue that the dramatic fall in
information costs will alter society fundamentally as
we become a more participatory culture (e.g.
Wikipedia, WikiLeaks).
THEORY 5: Fredric JAMESON
1934
Literary critic & Marxist political theorist
- Described the postmodern movement as the reshaping
of culture under the pressure of organised capitalism &
as “the cultural logic of late capitalism”.
- Saw postmodern architecture, film, storytelling and art
as pastiche (a hodge-podge collage) & as evidence of
a crisis in finding meaning & historicity (accuracy in the
retelling of history).
- Rejected a moralistic opposition to postmodernism as
the movement is historically grounded.
How can this theory be applied to Heaney's poetry
and/or The Mosquito Coast in terms of
understanding the relationship between an individual
and the globalised world?
Examples:
THEORY 6: Marshall McLUHAN
1911-1980
Canadian philosopher of communication & media
theory
- In the early 1960s, McLuhan wrote that the visual,
individualistic print culture would soon be brought
to an end by what he called “electronic
interdependence”: when electronic media replace
visual culture with aural/oral culture.
- In this new age, humankind will move from
individualism and fragmentation to a collective
identity, with a “tribal base”. McLuhan's coinage
for this new social organization is the “global
village”.
- Key to McLuhan's argument is the idea that
technology has no moral bent - it is a tool that
profoundly shapes an individual's and, by
extension, a society's self-conception and
realisation.
- For instance, McLuhan contrasts the considerable
alarm and revulsion that the growing quantity of
books aroused in the latter 17th century with the
modern nostalgic concern for the “end of the book”.
- If there can be no universal moral sentence
passed on technology, McLuhan believes that
“there can only be disaster arising from
unawareness of the causalities and effects
inherent in our technologies.”
- Though the Internet was invented 10 years after
his death, McLuhan eerily prophesied the web
technology seen today as early as 1962:
“The next medium, whatever it is - it may be the
extension of consciousness - will include
television as its content, not as its environment,
and will transform television into an art form.
A computer as a research and communication
instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce
mass library organisation, retrieve the individual's
encyclopedic function and flip into a private line
to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind.”
- McLuhan emphasised the results of living in a
media culture and argued that participation in a
mass media culture both overshadows actual
content disseminated and is liberating because it
loosens the authority of local social normative
standards.
How can this theory be applied to Heaney's poetry
and/or The Mosquito Coast in terms of
understanding the relationship between an individual
and the globalised world?
Examples:
THEORY 7: Jean-Francois
LYOTARD
1924-1998
French sociologist, philosopher & literary theorist
- Interested in postmodernism and the narrative
(story telling).
- Rejected the universal, all encompassing "grand
theories" of e.g. Marx & Freud.
Key Term:
GRAND NARRATIVE
Rejected "grand narratives" in their attempt to
explain life, history & existence, e.g. 'the progress
of history', the knowability of everything by science,
the striving for 'world peace' and 'absolute freedom',
the 'story of mankind'.
- These grand narratives are not adequate or
realistic enough to represent and contain us.
- No one agrees on what is real & why we
are here, rather that everyone has their own
perspective & unique story.
- In the 20th & 21st centuries we are alert to
this difference & diversity & more progressive
societies value this diversity.
- But...
- This can result in chaos in the form of a collapse
of ethics (this is why we have laws & the concept
of justice).
- Lyotard acknowledged that universality is a
condition for something to be a properly ethical
statement, e.g. "Thou shall not steal" is only
ethical if it rests on universal acceptance.
- Also a fan of Romantic and Modernist art, especially
that which shows the human being encountering the
sublime world.
Key Term:
SUBLIME
the experience of awe and pleasurable anxiety that
we experience when confronting wild and threatening
sights in nature, e.g. bungee jumping off a cliff,
experiencing a thunder storm, walking near a
volcano.
- Immanuel Kant (German philosopher, 1724-1804)
established this idea of the sublime. He described it
as a clash between our reason and imagination.
- When experiencing the sublime there is an
element where we know we're probably not in
actual, life-threatening danger.
- Lyotard viewed it as a crisis when we lose this
ability to appreciate the sublime.
How can this theory be applied to Heaney's poetry
and/or The Mosquito Coast in terms of
understanding the relationship between an individual
and the globalised world?
Examples:
THEORY 8: Jean
BAUDRILLARD
1929-2007
French sociologist & philosopher
- Studied the way technological progress affects
social change including consumerism, gender
relations & understanding of history & science.
Key Term:
HYPERREALITY
The (human) subject may try to understand the (nonhuman) object, but because the object can only be
understood according to what it signifies (and
because the process of signification immediately
involves a web of other signs from which it is
distinguished) this never produces the desired
results.
- Believed societies are always searching for a
sense of meaning or a "total" understanding of the
world that remains elusive. The excessive,
fruitless search for total knowledge leads almost
inevitably to a kind of delusion or hyperreality.
- This is not to say that the world becomes unreal,
but rather that the faster and more
comprehensively societies begin to bring reality
together into one supposedly coherent picture,
the more insecure and unstable it looks and the
more fearful societies become. Reality, in this
sense, "dies out".
- Meaning or value meaning is created through
difference - through what something is not (so
"dog" means "dog" because it is not "cat" & one
thing's prestige relates to another's mundanity).
- Meaning is therefore self-referential and one thing
or object's meaning is only understandable through
its relation to the meaning of other things.
- The excess of signs and of meaning in late
20th century "global" society had caused
(paradoxically) an effacement of reality.
- In this world neither liberal nor Marxist utopias
are any longer believed in. We live, not in a
"global village", but rather in a world that is ever
more easily petrified by even the smallest event.
- Because the "global" world operates at the
level of the exchange of signs and
commodities, it becomes ever more blind to
symbolic acts such as terrorism.
- The symbolic realm is seen as quite distinct from
that of signs and signification. Signs can be
exchanged like commodities; symbols, on the
other hand, operate quite differently: they are
exchanged like gifts, sometimes violently.
- The "global" society is without this "symbolic"
element and is therefore symbolically (if not militarily)
defenseless against acts such as the September 11
2001 terrorist attacks against the US and its military
establishment.
Sign (how does it affect me?): e.g. Sep. 11
was interpreted by the Western media as:
“this means war” in the form of “East vs.
West”
Symbol (why was this action committed &
what does it mean?): ???.........................
- Baudrillard criticised Marx's economic concept of
value as mere "use". Instead, proposed 4 ways of an
object obtaining value:
1. The functional value of an object: its instrumental
purpose, e.g. a pen writes, a refrigerator cools.
2. The exchange value of an object: its economic
value, e.g. 1 pen may be worth 3 pencil, 1 refrigerator
may be worth the salary earned by 3 months of work.
3. The symbolic value of an object: a value that a
subject assigns to an object in relation to another
subject, e.g. a pen might symbolise a student's
school graduation gift or a commencement
speaker's gift; a diamond may be a symbol of
publicly declared marital love.
4. The sign value of an object: its value within a
system of objects, e.g. a particular pen may, while
having no added functional benefit, signify prestige
relative to another pen; a diamond ring may have no
function at all, but may suggest particular social
values, such as taste, class or status.
How can this theory be applied to Heaney's poetry
and/or The Mosquito Coast in terms of
understanding the relationship between an individual
and the globalised world?
Examples: