CHAPTER COMMENTARY
This chapter aims to combine two elements. First, a brief account of human history which
takes in pre-modern societies and early civilizations as well as modern societies. Second, the
current debates associated with the contested concept of globalization. The scale of the
contrast between the contemporary world and, to use Laslett’s expression, ‘the world we
have lost’ is brought home in the extract from Landes’s The Unbound Prometheus,
emphasizing the very recent transformation unleashed by technology and, latterly, by
globalization. It is also strikingly illustrated by reference to Livi-Bacci’s work on the
expansion of the global human population.
The chapter then turns to consider types of society. After sketching three forms of premodern social organization, the discussion moves on to concentrate on modern societies
and the processes which have brought them into being, namely industrialization and
globalization. This overview commences with a description of hunting and gathering
societies, the dominant form of social organization throughout human history but now
restricted to a few small parts of South America and Africa, as Western culture has eroded
the rest. Such societies are minimalist and materially egalitarian. Status distinctions are
based on the sexual division of labour and dominated by adult males, among whom there is
a participatory approach to decision-making. Hunter-gatherers migrate around fixed
physical territories.
The second type of society actually consists of two subtypes, the pastoral and the agrarian,
which are united by the activity of an element of farming. Pastoral societies herd animals in
environments where agriculture is difficult. The keeping of animals supplies a reliable source
of food and transport, which in turn allows pastoral societies to be larger and more complex
than hunting and gathering groups. Agrarian societies are similar except that they raise
crops and are therefore more geographically settled and accumulate more possessions. The
third of the pre-modern societies is equated with the development of ancient civilizations,
many of which were also empires. A useful summary of pre-modern social organization is
provided in Table 4.2 on page 113. The chapter moves on to trace the forces which have
eradicated or marginalized such types of society. The first of these is industrialization.
Agricultural employment becomes an activity of the few as most of the population is freed
© Polity Press 2013
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Globalization and Social Change
up to work in factories, shops and offices. Cities lead to a greater density of population but
at the same time emphasize the anonymity of modern life. Local variation gives way to a
more integrated social and political network. The nation-state becomes the model for
human society in the modern world. Industrial technology becomes applied to military as
well as civilian life and allows the West to expand at the expense of other cultures.
The next section discusses three centuries of colonialism, a process that has taken two
forms. One has been the population on a mass scale of sparsely populated tracts of land
such as North America and Australasia. The second has been minority rule of already
populated territories in Asia, Africa and South America. The terms First World, Second
World and Third World, developed and developing countries, and majority and minority
world are introduced and clarified, and Table 4.4 on page 123 offers a summary. First World
societies are those industrialized nation-states already described in the previous section.
The Second World was based on the Soviet Union’s model of communism – a one-party
political system in contrast to the multi-party systems of the First World, and a state-owned
command economy in contrast to the market economies of the First World. Since the end of
the Cold War, Second World societies have moved closer to the political and economic
arrangements of the Western states.
The term ‘Third World’ is seen as convenient shorthand, but it is unsatisfactory because it
suggests separateness, while in truth there is a complex mutual relationship between Third
and First Worlds. The term ‘developing societies’ is adopted. These societies differ from
traditional societies in three respects: politically they are nation-states; most are undergoing
the experience of urbanization; and agriculture dominates but as an export crop rather than
for subsistence. Many of these countries continue to suffer worsening poverty exacerbated
by the cost of servicing their debts to the West, but the developing world is far from
homogeneous and also includes the economic ‘success stories’ of newly industrializing
countries (NICs) such as Brazil, Mexico and South Korea. The Asian NICs are involved in both
traditional industrial production (steel, shipbuilding) and innovations such as electronics and
financial services. After a decade of sustained growth, the East Asian economies were
destabilized by global financial crisis in 1997–8: serious as that crisis is in the short-term, in
the longer term these economies have dramatically transformed standards of living and
styles of life in these countries.
In tracing the development of these different types of society, the chapter has been
engaged in the study of social change, a topic to which it now turns. Change is difficult to
define, as everything changes all of the time. A change becomes significant when there are
alterations in underlying structures and modifications of basic institutions. Social theory has
failed to produce a convincing mono-causal explanation of social change, and three main
factors that have influenced social change are identified: cultural factors, the physical
environment and political organization. What has promoted such rapid change during the
modern era? The importance of capitalism as a constantly expanding system is identified
along with the technological changes it has generated; the struggle between nations both
economically and militarily; and the growth of critical and innovative thinking linked to ideas
of equality and progress.
The text now moves on, attempting to consolidate much of the literature on globalization
that became a topic in its own right during the course of the 1990s. After headlining
prominent features of the globalized world, the rest of the chapter is concerned to explore
its dimensions and its potential impacts. The discussion simultaneously examines certain
areas as both constituents and causes of globalization. The first of these is the growth in
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information and communications technology, most notably the advent of fibre-optic cables
and communications satellites. The impact of this is uneven, but everywhere it is on an
upward trajectory. This helps the compression of time and space and accelerates
interconnectedness. The second cluster of features is economic. Increasingly, economic
exchange across the world is weightless, knowledge-based, information-led. In this sphere,
transnational corporations (TNCs) contribute to the globalizing dynamic by operating their
business across borders, whether they be Coca-Cola or Colgate-Palmolive. Alongside TNCs,
we are introduced to the ‘global commodity chain’, the worldwide networks of labour and
production processes yielding a finished product. Previous editions used the Ford Mondeo
as an exemplar. Here the focus has shifted to ‘Global Barbie’. Together with the activities of
TNCs, the ‘electronic economy’ means that not only is physical capital more mobile between
countries but also that (virtual) financial capital can flow and ebb within seconds on a
computer screen. Wallerstein’s world-system theory is included as a Classic Study (pages
129-30) emanating from Marx’s essentially economistic perspective.
The third element of the globalization dynamic is political change. The collapse of the Soviet
‘bloc’ reintegrated a huge number of countries into the trading community. The text raises
the idea that as global communications overrode ideological control of the state media, we
could argue that globalization was both cause and consequence of the break-up of Soviet
hegemony. Another political development is the spread of institutions of government that
do not match national boundaries, such as the EU, the UN and a tranche of nongovernmental bodies. The spread of information across borders does not just undermine
regimes, as in Tiananmen Square or Berlin; it also constructs international awareness, as in
pictures from war zones. The ‘global outlook’ that follows from this leads some to look for
referents both above and below the nation-state for identities or allegiances.
Having introduced some of these dimensions of globalization, the chapter moves on to
show us that the extent and nature of all this change is, like most areas of sociology, very
much debated. The text covers the positions of three groups, the sceptics, the
hyperglobalizers and the transformationalists, and provides an exemplary tabular summary
of the debate in Table 4.6 on page 139. Essentially, the first group takes the ‘old wine in new
bottles’ view: there is plenty happening but these things have happened in other periods,
and the ‘global economy’ actually consists of a number of quite discrete trading blocs. They
also point to the persistence of national governments as major players on the world stage.
The second group is more bullish altogether: there is a step change in the nature of the
world order, an approach most captured in Albrow’s ‘global age’ book. The third school
takes not a middle position, but a distinctive one. There is a restructuring of existing
institutions in response to these processes, and the dynamic of globalization is much more
contradictory than commonly allowed for. It works in different directions at the same time
(for instance the global and the local) and it is far from clear that it is reversible. Giddens’s
own argument on the ‘juggernaut of modernity’ is included as a Classic Study to show that
although global forces appear irresistible, they are not entirely out of our control.
From here the text offers examples of ways in which aspects of everyday life have been
altered by globalization. The boxed text on page 144 examines the global influences present
in reggae music. In the main text, we are reminded of the large array of fresh produce on
offer in the supermarket, and it is not only flows of information but the constant
transportation of the goods themselves. Indeed the concepts of ‘food miles’ and ‘local
produce’ have become pervasive in eco-debates. A second argument concerns global
culture, a social fact maintained and reinforced by television, the global economy, ‘citizens
of the world’, transnational organizations and electronic communications. A short follow-up
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section examines the degree to which the Internet breaks down local difference, using
Kuwait as an example. It notes that despite widespread Internet penetration, the pattern of
usage to some extent reinforces the prevailing cultural norms of the country. Roland
Robertson’s concept of glocalization is used to capture some of these reverse flows which
undermine the argument that globalization inevitably leads to a uniform global culture.
Finally, it is pointed out that there is a certain irony in the fact that under conditions of
globalization, a form of new individualism is often the result, in an environment where the
pressure is on to be much more active in choosing identities. The conclusion raises the
question of the need for new structures of governance – at the global or at the very least
the supranational level – in order to deal with the unpredictability of the many constituent
processes within the globalizing dynamic. The detail of these institutions is deferred until
Chapter 22.
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TEACHING TOPICS
1. Types of society
This topic introduces the students to some of the language and concepts needed to describe
different types of society and to a broad-brush history of pre-industrial societies and the
transition to modern society.
2. Describing globalization
Incorporating the sections on ‘Globalization’, and especially ‘Elements of globalization’, this
aims to deal with some of the main features of contemporary life often viewed as either
symptom or cause of globalization.
3. Debating globalization
This comprises the short section ‘Sceptical voices’, and is a good chance to compare
different conceptual machinery as well as weigh the evidence.
4. Globalization and the everyday
This topic deals specifically with symptoms of everyday living where globalization has had
some impact. It allows students to work from macro to micro and back again; similarly
students taking different courses will be able to concentrate either on identity, economy,
risk policy or pop culture, according to taste preference.
ACTIVITIES
Activity 1: Types of society
A. Read pages 112-20 on ‘Types of Society’. Now concentrate on Table 4.2 on page 113,
‘Types of pre-modern human society’.
1. What do these societies have in common?
2. Which of these societies still exist in the world today?
B. Now concentrate on the section on ‘Modernity and the industrialized societies’ (from
page 117).
1. What do these societies have in common?
2. What factors have made these societies the dominant form of social organization?
C. Read the section on ‘Reshaping the human world’ (pages 120-1) .
1. What does it mean to say that pre-modern societies exist in a modern world?
2. How has contact with the First World transformed traditional societies into developing
societies?
Activity 2: Describing globalization
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Globalization and Social Change
A. Read pages 127-8 of the text. Write down as many different features of globalization as
you can glean from here and indeed any others that occur to you. Then look at Using Your
Sociological Imagination Box 4.2 ‘Global Barbie’ on pages 137-8.
B. Now take each feature in turn and decide whether it is a political, cultural or economic
phenomenon. Mark them off with a pencil, using the letters ‘P’, ‘C’ and ‘E’. Then go through
a second time and see if each one might also fit into a second category. Find justifications
for labelling each as you do.
C. Return to ‘Global Barbie’. She is clearly an example of economic globalization. Think
about ways in which she is also a symbol of cultural globalization; in what ways is Barbie’s
popularity constructed and maintained?
Activity 3: Debating globalization
A. Read the text on pages 138-41, but not Table 4.6. Make brief notes on each of the
positions outlined. In particular try to establish which differences are ones of degree and
which are ones of kind.
B. Now study Table 4.6 on page 139 ‘Conceptualizing globalization: three tendencies’. Check
the summary against your notes to see how well you identified the core of each position.
Choose one of the three perspectives and try to think of three different examples that might
offer support for such a view.
Activity 4: Globalization and the everyday
A. Read pages 141-7 of Sociology and then study the following extracts.
Up to 95 per cent of the world’s languages will be either extinct or on the road to
extinction by the end of the next century, linguistic experts said yesterday at the
annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in
Atlanta, Georgia.
Michael Krauss, a language researcher at the University of Alaska, warned that the
rate at which native tongues were going would cause irreparable damage to human
civilisation. ‘Languages are being lost at an unbelievable and unprecedented rate
which is almost the inverse of the population curve, which we know is going
straight up. The loss-of-languages curve is going straight down.’ At present between
20 and 50 per cent of the world’s languages are no longer being learnt by children,
he said. ‘For the next century something up to 95 per cent of mankind’s languages
will either become extinct or become moribund and headed towards extinction.’
The pressures leading to language extinction stem from encroachment on the
territories of indigenous peoples, mass migration and the desire to learn the
dominant languages of the world, notably English. Even surviving languages are
becoming more homogeneous as more prestigious dialects replace their less
prestigious relatives.
(Steve Connor, ‘Most of World’s languages “are dying out”’, Independent on
Sunday, 19 Feb. 1995)
© The Independent. Reproduced with permission
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Encompassing the best and worst of East and West, Turkey is a country of bizarre
contradictions and juxtapositions as it grapples with an eclectic choice of identities
…
East or West? Secular or Islamist? Which way should Turkey turn and how long
before it becomes yet another country to implode amid the tensions between the
varying factions of Islam vying for power?
At times, Turkey represents the liberal face of Islam, a face of the religion barely
seen or acknowledged by the West. Drive through any resort along its idyllic
southern coast, and young Turks can be seen loitering outside bars with the local
mosque barely a stone’s throw away. Their appetite for foreign girls and rakhi, the
local liquor, has become legendary.
Stroll through my friend’s neighbourhood, and young women wearing miniskirts
with tops that expose their midriffs can be seen walking alongside women wearing
veils and long dresses.
A nearby nightclub, one of the best in Istanbul, is packed every night in the summer
with young Turkish couples smooching on the dance floor, wearing the latest
European fashions. The music, however, is unmistakably Turkish, the smooching
perhaps a little at odds with the edicts of the new government.
(Vivek Chaudhary, ‘Country torn between the mosque and the miniskirt’, Guardian
International, 7 June 1996)
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 1996
Based on your reading of the text and the extracts, identify some of the probable effects of
the tendency to globalization in contemporary societies. Say whether you consider these to
be positive or negative.
B. Think about whether globalization involves life becoming more similar everywhere, or
whether it introduces greater variety in everyday life.
These newspaper extracts are typical of the contradictory forces set in play by
‘globalization’. A key point here is the recognition that increasing homogeneity seldom
involves some neutral global culture, but is usually largely in terms of the spread of one
particular culture; thus there is always a certain colonialism involved. At the same time mass
migrations and tourism have the effect of pluralization in many countries, in terms of their
ethnic mix and cultural values. As students, you may be able to draw on your own
experiences here, especially where you are studying in multicultural social settings or if you
have travelled extensively.
REFLECTION & DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Types of society
Can pre-modern forms of society survive in today’s world?
Who would benefit from the development of the Third World?
What sorts of assumption inform the division of the globe into ‘Three Worlds’?
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Globalization and Social Change
Describing globalization
Is globalization really just jargon for the reintegration of the world economy since
1989?
How exactly does the advance of satellite and cable technology affect social life?
What do you think was the exact relationship between the spread of globalization and
the transition from communism to capitalism in the East?
Debating globalization
Are you a sceptic, a hyperglobalizer or a transformationalist?
Is there a single global economy or just a series of self-contained regional trading blocs?
If we wanted to stop globalization, could we do it? If so, how?
Globalization and the everyday
How can the increasing worldwide dominance of a certain set of ideas and practices
actually promote greater individualism?
What is the difference between an external risk and a manufactured risk?
Does globalization make social life more simple or more complex?
ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. Trace the main features of pre-modern societies and account for their virtual eradication
since the eighteenth century.
2. Identify the main sources of disagreement between those sceptical and those
enthusiastic about ‘globalization’ as a concept. Which group has the most compelling
case?
3. ‘Globalization raises the spectre of a homogenized global culture, where historic and
local differences are subsumed by a lowest common denominator uniformity’. Discuss.
4. Construct a research design that would allow you to operationalize and test claims about
the onset of globalization.
MAKING CONNECTIONS
Types of society: This section does the historical groundwork which leads students on to the
consideration of globalization later in the chapter, and the material on risk in Chapter 5. It
can also be tied to Chapter 23 on nation-states and nationalism and Chapter 16 on
responses to migration and multiculturalism.
Describing globalization: Much of this topic will link with students’ own daily observations
and experiences and will seem relatively ‘immediate’. In looking at an overview of the topic,
there might be some scope for looking at the contemporary theorists in Chapter 3, who all
comment on aspects of the globalization process.
Debating globalization: Many sociologists now regard globalization as a worthy debate in its
own right. There are, however, clear linkages to chapters on economic change and
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Globalization and Social Change
democracy. The more advanced students might use this ongoing debate as a case study in
isolating cause and effect and drawing inferences from evidence (Chapter 2).
Globalization and the everyday: A number of contemporary developments overlap here,
the most notable being the effects of globalization on working life (Chapter 21) and the
nature of global media in Chapter 18.
SAMPLE SESSION
Debating globalization
Aims: To raise student awareness of different positions adopted towards this topic. To
consolidate the basic vocabulary needed to discuss this topic sociologically.
Outcome: By the end of the session students will be able to:
1. Define the main headings under which the debate about globalization takes place.
2. Describe the arguments of the ‘sceptics’, the ‘hyperglobalizers’ and the
‘transformationalists’ under each of the above headings.
3. Make preliminary evaluations of each position in relation to available evidence.
Preparatory tasks
1. Read the activity for this topic and make notes of your answers to the questions in
Tasks A and B.
2. In a small group drawn from your class, adopt one of the three positions and prepare a
10-minute summary presentation.
Classroom tasks
1. Tutor-led group discussion to clarify the conceptual headings used, e.g. ‘power of
national governments’, ‘dominant motif’, etc. (10 minutes)
2. Prepared short presentations from the groups on their adopted ‘tendency’. (20–30
minutes)
3. Tutor-led question-and-answer session to tie the positions back within the overall
debate.
Assessment task
Write up your presentation as a short (no more than 1,000 words) piece of journalism in
which you introduce and explain the position you have been adopting.
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