Globalization (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

most contemporary social theorists endorse the view that globalization refers to fundamental changes in the spatial and temporal contours of social existence, according to which the significance of space or territory undergoes shifts in the face of a no less dramatic acceleration in the temporal structure of crucial forms of human activity

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Geographical distance is typically measured in time. As the time necessary to connect distinct geographical locations is reduced, distance or space undergoes compression or “annihilation.” The human experience of space is intimately connected to the temporal structure of those activities by means of which we experience space.

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humanity's experiences of space and time are working to undermine the importance of local and even national boundaries in many arenas of human endeavor. Since globalization contains far-reaching implications for virtually every facet of human life, it necessarily suggests the need to rethink key questions of normative political theory

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Heinrich Heine, the émigré German-Jewish poet, captured this same experience when he noted: “space is killed by the railways. I feel as if the mountains and forests of all countries were advancing on Paris. Even now, I can smell the German linden trees; the North Sea's breakers are rolling against my door

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The juggernaut of industrial capitalism constituted the most basic source of technologies resulting in the annihilation of space, helping to pave the way for “intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of nations,” in contrast to a narrow-minded provincialism that had plagued humanity for untold eons (Marx, 1979 [1848]: 476). Despite their ills as instruments of capitalist exploitation, new technologies that increased possibilities for human interaction across borders ultimately represented a progressive force in history.

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John Dewey argued in 1927 that recent economic and technological trends implied the emergence of a “new world” no less noteworthy than the opening up of America to European exploration and conquest in 1492. For Dewey, the invention of steam, electricity, and the telephone offered formidable challenges to relatively static and homogeneous forms of local community life that had long represented the main theatre for most human activity.

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the compression of space posed fundamental questions for democracy. Dewey observed that small-scale political communities (for example, the New England township), a crucial site for the exercise of effective democratic participation, seemed ever more peripheral to the great issues of an interconnected world. Increasingly dense networks of social ties across borders rendered local forms of self-government ineffective. Dewey wondered, “How can a public be organized, we may ask, when literally it does not stay in place?” (Dewey, 1954 [1927]: 140)

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The Canadian cultural critic Marshall McLuhan made the theme of a technologically based “global village,” generated by social “acceleration at all levels of human organization,” the centerpiece of an anxiety-ridden analysis of new media technologies in the 1960s (McLuhan, 1964: 103)

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According to his analysis, the high-speed imperatives of modern warfare and weapons systems strengthened the executive and debilitated representative legislatures. The compression of territory thereby paved the way for executive-centered emergency government (Virilio, 1986 [1977])

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“All distances in time and space are shrinking. Man now reaches overnight, by places, places which formerly took weeks and months of travel” (Heidegger, 1971 [1950]: 165). Heidegger also accurately prophesied that new communication and information technologies would soon spawn novel possibilities for dramatically extending the scope of virtual reality: “Distant sites of the most ancient cultures are shown on film as if they stood this very moment amidst today's street traffic…The peak of this abolition of every possibility of remoteness is reached by television, which will soon pervade and dominate the whole machinery of communication” (Heidegger, 1971 [1950]: 165)

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contemporary analysts associate globalization with deterritorialization, according to which a growing variety of social activities takes place irrespective of the geographical location of participants.

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“global events can -- via telecommunication, digital computers, audiovisual media, rocketry and the like -- occur almost simultaneously anywhere and everywhere in the world” (Scholte, 1996: 45).

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Globalization refers to increased possibilities for action between and among people in situations where latitudinal and longitudinal location seems immaterial to the social activity at hand. Even though geographical location remains crucial for many undertakings (for example, farming to satisfy the needs of a local market), deterritorialization manifests itself in many social spheres.

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recent theorists conceive of globalization as linked to the growth of social interconnectedness across existing geographical and political boundaries.

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ince the vast majority of human activities is still tied to a concrete geographical location, the more decisive facet of globalization concerns the manner in which distant events and forces impact on local and regional endeavors (Tomlinson, 1999: 9)

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Globalization refers “to processes of change which underpin a transformation in the organization of human affairs by linking together and expanding human activity across regions and continents” (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, Perraton, 1999: 15).

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According to one influential strand within international relations theory, relations between states are fundamentally lawless. Since the achievement of justice or democracy, for example, presupposes an effective political sovereign, the lacuna of sovereignty at the global level means that justice and democracy are necessarily incomplete and probably unattainable there. In this “Realist” view of international politics, core features of the modern system of sovereign states relegate the pursuit of western political thought's most noble normative goals primarily to the domestic arena (Mearsheimer, 2003; Morgenthau, 1954).

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To claim, for example, that questions of distributive justice have no standing in the making of foreign affairs represents at best empirical naivete about economic globalization. At worst, it constitutes a disingenuous refusal to grapple with the fact that the material existence of those fortunate enough to live in the rich countries is inextricably tied to the material status of the vast majority of humanity residing in poor and underdeveloped regions. Growing material inequality spawned by economic globalization is linked to growing domestic material inequality in the rich democracies (Falk, 1999)

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Similarly, in the context of the ongoing destruction of the ozone layer by privileged countries like Australia, Japan, and the United States, a dogmatic insistence on the sanctity of national sovereignty risks constituting a cynical fig leaf for irresponsible activities whose impact extends well beyond the borders of the polluting countries.

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