Sociology. Anthony Giddens
globalization per se. During the 1990s, movements developed across the world that were highly critical of the capitalist free-market version of globalization but did not reject closer global connectedness. Rather, these movements promoted an alternative vision of what globalization could look like if ecological sustainability, human rights and community governance were at its heart. As a result, the varied groups and organizations – including the World Economic Forum – are known collectively as alter-globalization movements rather than being simply against globalization.
Populism and anti-/alter-globalization movements are discussed in chapter 20, ‘Politics, Government and Social Movements’.
Historically, globalization is the product of conflict, wars and invasions just as much as cooperation and mutual help, which means that reversals of global trends such as national economic protectionism are always possible. Conflicts have made a major contribution to globalization, but they also have the potential to send it into reverse. In the globalization debate, all three positions focus primarily on the contemporary process of rapid globalization and its consequences for the future. However, as we have noted, it is possible to set globalization processes into a much longer historical time frame. On this view, the extended development of human societies is leading towards more global patterns of interdependent relations, but this was not and still is not inevitable (Hopper 2007).
Chapter 21, ‘Nations, War and Terrorism’, contains an extended discussion of war and conflict.
The main focus of sociology has conventionally been on the industrialized societies, with all other types of society being the province of anthropology. However, this academic division of labour has become less tenable as globalization proceeds. The Global South and Global North have long been interconnected, as the history of colonial expansion and empirebuilding demonstrates. People in the developed world depend on raw materials and manufactured products from developing countries, while the economic advancement of developing countries is enhanced by trading with the developed world. Globalization means the minority and majority ‘worlds’ are increasingly acknowledged as parts of one global human world.
As a result, the cultural map of the world also changes: networks of people span national borders and even continents, providing cultural connections between their birthplaces and adoptive countries (Appadurai 1986). Although there are between 5,000 and 6,000 languages spoken on the planet, around 98 per cent of these are used by just 10 per cent of the global population. A mere dozen languages have come to dominate the global language system, with more than 100 million speakers each: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Malay, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swahili. And just one language – English – has become ‘hypercentral’, as first choice for most second-language speakers. It is these ‘bilinguals’ who bind together the whole global language system that exists today (de Swaan 2001).
It is increasingly impossible for any society to exist in isolation from the rest of the human world, and there are few, if any, places left on Earth that are so remote as to escape radio, television, mobile phones, computers, air travel and the masses of tourists they bring. Today, people on every continent use tools made in China and other manufacturing centres, wear T-shirts and shorts manufactured in garment factories in the Dominican Republic or Guatemala, and take medicines manufactured in Germany or Switzerland to combat diseases contracted through contact with ‘outsiders’. Yet we are also able to broadcast our individual stories around the globe via social media and to view cultural products from around the world through satellite television. But does globalization favour the major producers, especially the USA, and thus lead inexorably to a uniform global culture?
Glocalization not globalization
The rapid growth of digital technology and internet access is an important aspect of globalization theories, potentially spreading ideas of equality, free speech, democratic participation and consumer culture. Moreover, digital communications seem to foster such an outcome: global communication, apparently unlimited and uncensored information, and instant gratification are all characteristics of the worldwide web. But could this lead to the erosion of differences and the global dominance of Western ideals and culture? Such a conclusion may be premature.
A sea of rooftop satellite dishes surround the Ben Salah mosque in Marrakech, Morocco. Digital technology enables companies, advertisers and cultural producers to reach every part of the world. Yet this does not inevitably mean the weakening of local cultures, beliefs and practices.
Global society 4.3 Reggae – a global musical style?
When those knowledgeable about popular music listen to a song, they can often pick out the stylistic influences that helped shape it. Each musical style, after all, represents a unique way of combining rhythm, melody, harmony and lyrics. And, while it does not take a genius to notice the differences between rock, rap or folk, for example, musicians often combine a number of styles in composing songs. Different musical styles tend to emerge from different social groups, and studying how these combine and fuse is a good way to chart the cultural contact between social groups.
Some sociologists turned their attention to reggae music because it exemplifies the process whereby contacts between social groups result in the creation of new musical forms. Reggae’s roots can be traced to West Africa. In the seventeenth century, large numbers of West Africans were enslaved by British colonists and brought by ship to work in the sugar-cane fields of the West Indies. Although the British attempted to prevent slaves from playing traditional African music for fear it would serve as a rallying cry to revolt, the slaves managed to keep alive the tradition of African drumming, sometimes by integrating it with European musical styles imposed by slave-owners. In Jamaica, the drumming of one group of slaves, the Burru, was openly tolerated by slave-owners because it helped meter the pace of their work. Slavery was finally abolished in Jamaica in 1834, but the tradition of Burru drumming continued, even as many Burru men migrated from rural areas to the slums of Kingston.
It was in these slums that a new religious cult began to emerge – one that would prove crucial to the development of reggae. In 1930, Haile Selassie was crowned emperor of Ethiopia. While opponents of European colonialism throughout the world cheered Selassie’s ascension to the throne, some in the West Indies came to believe that he was a god, sent to Earth to lead the oppressed of Africa to freedom. One of Selassie’s names was ‘Prince Ras Tafari’, and the West Indians who worshipped him called themselves ‘Rastafarians’. The Rastafarian cult soon merged with the Burru, and Rastafarian music combined Burru styles of drumming with biblical themes of oppression and liberation. In the 1950s, West Indian musicians began mixing Rastafarian rhythms and lyrics with elements of American jazz and black rhythm and blues. These combinations eventually developed first into ‘ska’ music and then, in the late 1960s, into reggae, with its relatively slow beat, its emphasis on bass and its stories of urban deprivation and of the power of collective social consciousness. Many reggae artists, such as Bob Marley, became commercial successes, and by the 1970s people the world over were listening to reggae music. In the 1980s and 1990s, reggae was fused with hip-hop (or rap) to produce new sounds (Hebdige 1997), heard in the work of the groups such