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Book part
Publication date: 14 March 2022

Marian Gorynia, Jan Nowak, Piotr Trąpczyński and Radosław Wolniak

This chapter attempts to assess the impact that the current Covid-19 pandemic can exert on the globalization process. The pandemic crisis, which fully unfolded worldwide in March

Abstract

This chapter attempts to assess the impact that the current Covid-19 pandemic can exert on the globalization process. The pandemic crisis, which fully unfolded worldwide in March 2020, had dramatic consequences for the world population, some of which are of economic character. As some of the global value chains and international trade and investment relationships were destabilized or suspended, a legitimate question arises as to the possible progress of the globalization process. The authors commence with a multidimensional concept of globalization and its critical evaluation. Subsequently, three possible scenarios of pandemic-induced development are identified and explored: disrupted globalization, de-globalization, and finally rebalanced globalization. The discussion of these scenarios also includes implications for economic policy.

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International Business in Times of Crisis: Tribute Volume to Geoffrey Jones
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80262-164-8

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 17 November 2005

Sara Schoonmaker

This chapter explores Lula's internationalist strategy toward the politics of globalization, which involves building alliances within the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) and…

Abstract

This chapter explores Lula's internationalist strategy toward the politics of globalization, which involves building alliances within the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) and between Mercosur and the European Union. It compares Lula's internationalism with the earlier nationalist Brazilian informatics policy as shifting strategies of sovereignty, highlighting their differences as interventions in the politics of globalization. In the process, it explores the changing conditions of globalization and assesses the potential of Lula's strategy as an alternative to the dominant neoliberal globalization form.

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New Directions in the Sociology of Global Development
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-373-0

Book part
Publication date: 24 July 2023

Luc Pauwels

Globalization, the ever-increasing worldwide flow of ideas, practices, and material objects resulting in increasing interdependency between people and nations across the globe…

Abstract

Globalization, the ever-increasing worldwide flow of ideas, practices, and material objects resulting in increasing interdependency between people and nations across the globe, has numerous interrelated economic, political, cultural, ideological, environmental, and technological facets.

In an effort to make the elusive and multifaceted concept of globalization more tangible and measurable, different instruments have been developed, usually in the form of “indexes” based on quantitative data. These indexes mainly result in rankings of individual cities as well as whole countries with respect to their supposed level of globalization. Some items of the existing indexes to measure the level of globalization of nation states or cities refer to phenomena that are to some extent visually observable, but many aspects and manifestations of globalization escape these rather crude operationalizations.

Visual approaches to globalization help to enrich and complement the more abstract and mainly quantitatively supported discourses around this multifaceted phenomenon. They may provide valid and unobtrusive ways to assess and understand the impact of culture and cultural exchange in the daily lives of inhabitants of cities around the world and add a unique “localized,” cross-cultural empirical perspective to the many divergent views and discussions about the presumed beneficial or detrimental nature of these processes. An ‘in situ’ visual approach to globalization may help to uncover the “real life” impact and the specific contexts of these processes at different locations. This chapter discusses different options for researching globalization and cultural change in cities.

Book part
Publication date: 19 September 2006

Mike Wickens

This chapter expresses views prompted by my experience as Specialist Adviser to the UK's House of Lords in their enquiry on globalisation. The un-stated issue was: are the critics…

Abstract

This chapter expresses views prompted by my experience as Specialist Adviser to the UK's House of Lords in their enquiry on globalisation. The un-stated issue was: are the critics of globalisation correct? This paper argues that the critics should be seeking ways of bringing the benefits of globalisation to the poorest countries, not attacking globalisation, which is a necessary, and largely desirable, consequence of the wish for economic development and growth. The key to growth is education (i.e. human not physical capital) and good governance. Inward finance promotes development but tends to go to developing countries that can make best use of it through having an educated labour force and good governance. The critics emphasise trade barriers imposed by developed countries, but the main barriers come from developing countries themselves. Extreme poverty is the greatest immediate concern As this and would be relatively inexpensive to eliminate by aid alone, economic development is necessity. Significantly, countries with the most poverty are also those with the highest inequalities of income.

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European Responses to Globalization
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-364-8

Book part
Publication date: 19 September 2006

Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell

EU competition policy may be explained as a system: an organized set of objectives, rules, functions, procedures and authorities, acting in unity. A system is a complex reality…

Abstract

EU competition policy may be explained as a system: an organized set of objectives, rules, functions, procedures and authorities, acting in unity. A system is a complex reality, immersed in a complex context and permanently changing to overcome its dysfunctionalities and to adapt itself to environmental challenges. Globalization is its major challenge today. This paper proposes to understand globalization from four viewpoints. EU competition policy should respond to an evolutionary, contradictory, relative and systemic globalization. The aim of this paper is to identify the responses adopted in order to react to all these different dimensions of globalization.

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European Responses to Globalization
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-364-8

Book part
Publication date: 17 July 2007

Petia Kostadinova

This essay explores the relationship between neo-liberal transformation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and globalization in the region. It starts with an overview of the…

Abstract

This essay explores the relationship between neo-liberal transformation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and globalization in the region. It starts with an overview of the increasing level of globalization activities in the CEE countries. The first section of this essay also shows remarkable cross-country diversity among the CEE countries regarding the extent to which their citizens participate in four aspects of globalization, outbound tourism, citizens working abroad, students studying abroad, and internet use. The second section of the essay identifies three ways in which neo-liberalism could affect citizens’ participation in globalization activities. A direct impact of neo-liberalism on globalization could be expected through the spread of similar neo-liberal economic policies and practices in CEE, which would then create the conditions for making citizens in the region more likely to get involved in globalization. Indirectly, neo-liberalism is expected to (1) increase self-reliance among citizens and (2) reduce the level of government spending on social programs, such as education and health care, thus creating less attractive social conditions in each country. The analysis in section three of this essay shows conflicting evidence about the linkages between neo-liberalism and globalization in Central and Eastern Europe. Increased labor-flexibility, one of the most pronounced aspects of neo-liberalism, is associated with reduced participation in globalization activities. The indirect impact of neo-liberalism, however, is quite pronounced. Neo-liberalism is positively associated with the extent of self-reliance among the CEE citizens, yet it also leads to reduced government spending on healthcare and education. Both reduced reliance on the state and reduced spending for these programs, on the other hand are associated with an increase in globalization activities of CEE citizens.

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Globalization: Perspectives from Central and Eastern Europe
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-7623-1457-7

Book part
Publication date: 21 January 2022

Ramazan Nacar and Kadir Ozdemir

Nowadays, the Internet usage rate is rising continuously with the impact of globalization which has led to a significant increase in the use of e-commerce and social commerce…

Abstract

Nowadays, the Internet usage rate is rising continuously with the impact of globalization which has led to a significant increase in the use of e-commerce and social commerce. Since the fast spread of Internet usage, globalization has affected all areas of life. Especially with the Covid-19 pandemic, lots of social, commercial, and economic transformations have occurred, and many activities transferred to online environment worldwide. However, in this period, people try to avoid physical contact, staying at home, and started to use e-commerce and social commerce more than before. Therefore, with Covid-19 pandemic, the structure and the relations of globalization, e-commerce, and social commerce has changed. In this regard, within the pandemic period, globalization is going through a great transformation, and, therefore, commercial activities have to be not only global-oriented but also local-oriented. Since many countries closed their borders to protect themselves, the pandemic period has turned into the global crisis which forced nations and companies to focus on the local environment. In this study, it is argued that advancements in Internet technologies affect globalization; globalization affects e-commerce and social commerce usage positively. But, with the discovery of social media platforms, e-commerce has shifted to customer-oriented social commerce, and this has turned people's tendency toward localization, not globalization, especially with the effect of Covid-19 pandemic period. Also, this study discusses how pandemic period changed globalization, e-commerce, and social commerce from global-oriented to local-oriented.

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Industry 4.0 and Global Businesses
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80117-326-1

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 30 September 2010

Jean-Sébastien Guy

Still recently, one could read that social constructivism as a paradigm in sociology has yet generated no substantive theory of globalization (Risse, 2007). The argument was that…

Abstract

Still recently, one could read that social constructivism as a paradigm in sociology has yet generated no substantive theory of globalization (Risse, 2007). The argument was that even though social constructivism could certainly contribute to our understanding of globalization, notably by stressing the role of language and cultural norms in the organization of collective activities on a world scale, it could not satisfactorily account in its own terms for the entire phenomena under examination, due to the fact that globalization is not solely or even primarily about language and cultural norms. The exposition of such a position in the academic literature is worth mentioning, indeed even significant, if only for the reason that it occurred in a collection of essays edited by David Held and Anthony McGrew, who have done so much over the past decade to establish globalization studies as a solid research field, all at once theoretically sophisticated and empirically informed, with the publication of a long series of books on Global transformations (Held, McGrew, Golblatt, & Perraton, 1999; Held, 2004a, 2004b; Held & McGrew, 2002, 2003, 2007a, 2007b; Held & Kaya, 2007; Held & Koenig-Archibugi, 2003; see also McGrew & Lewis, 1992; Held, 1995). In spite of such credentials, the present article aims directly at challenging and overcoming this position by developing what would be the basis or the framework for a full-fledged social constructivist theory of globalization. Admittedly, this requires us to redefine globalization in a fundamental manner. Such a transformation is possible when one turns toward a new kind of social constructivism: Niklas Luhmann's radical constructivism as grounded in his systems theory (Luhmann, 2002; see also Luhmann, 1982a, 1989, 1990, 1995, 2000a, 2000b). I contend that globalization is neither a process of social change nor a historical set of forces of transformation having to do with the way human beings shape space through their collective activities; rather, globalization is one of contemporary society's self-descriptions.

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Theorizing the Dynamics of Social Processes
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-85724-223-5

Book part
Publication date: 29 July 2010

Christopher Kollmeyer

This chapter seeks to reconcile divergent views about how globalization affects democratic governance at the national level. Despite numerous studies on this subject, the…

Abstract

This chapter seeks to reconcile divergent views about how globalization affects democratic governance at the national level. Despite numerous studies on this subject, the resulting literature has not reached an overarching consensus. Some scholars conclude that globalization usually promotes democracy by fragmenting the political power of entrenched elites, by creating powerful demands for the rule of law, and by making democracy the global norm for governance. Other scholars, however, draw very different conclusions. They argue that globalization generally weakens democracy by reducing the autonomy of national governments, by generating “democratic deficits” between international policy makers and ordinary citizens, and by significantly enhancing the class power of transnational capital. To bridge these two literatures, the present chapter highlights that democracy has at least two normative charges: (1) it should promote civil and political liberties (its liberal dimension) and (2) it should promote social and economic equality (its social democratic dimension). When viewed from this perspective, it appears that globalization does indeed promote democracy, albeit a particular form of democracy in which the maintenance of civil and political liberties takes precedence over the realization of socioeconomic equalities. Furthermore, this perspective suggests that globalization can simultaneously promote democracy in some parts of the world (i.e., by encouraging authoritarian countries to adopt civil and political liberties), while undermining it elsewhere (i.e., by impeding political actors seeking to promote socioeconomic equality).

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Democratic Paths and Trends
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-85724-092-7

Book part
Publication date: 19 September 2006

Philip H. Gordon

Given the often-heated rhetoric of politicians and the street protest sometimes organized against symbols of American capitalism and culture, a casual observer could be forgiven…

Abstract

Given the often-heated rhetoric of politicians and the street protest sometimes organized against symbols of American capitalism and culture, a casual observer could be forgiven for concluding that Europeans are deeply opposed to globalization. That impression, however, would be wrong. Many Europeans do worry about the effects of globalization on jobs, economic equality, and culture, but the European anti-globalization movement is actually a small if vocal minority. Most Europeans, in fact, recognize that increasing global economic, political, and cultural exchange is good for them. What they want is not to stop globalization but to manage it, and for this they turn mostly to the European Union (EU). Most Europeans believe that the EU can help to protect them from the downsides of globalization, and this paper argues that they are correct.

Details

European Responses to Globalization
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-364-8

21 – 30 of over 47000