Two Competing Approaches to Globalisation

The literature relating to the conception of globalisation is substantial; hence, a comprehensive overview of this literature on this occasion is not possible. However, as Mathias Albert argues, an overview of globalisation concept must take into account different disciplinary backgrounds.⁴¹⁰ This chapter argues for a sociological conception of contemporary globalisation in which an interplay amongst cultural, political, and economic globalisation is central. From a sociological view, it is important to know how the three aforementioned sub-processes of globalisation—as a macro social organisational change—have interacted to shape globalisation.⁴¹¹ However, it seems that the concepts of globalisation have been mainly focused on an expansion of global interconnectivity, as opposed to a global organisational change. I shall distinguish between two competing accounts of globalisation in order to pave the way for a new approach contemporary globalisation as a global epistemic-institutional transformation from the Hobbesian logic of the struggle for political power to the Lockean logic of the competition over economic interests.

6.1.1 Globalisation as the Expansion of Global Interconnectivity

As George Modelski points out: “An institutional approach [to globalisation] might best be contrasted with a ‘connectivist’ one in which globalisation is seen primarily as a condition of interdependence.”⁴¹² According to connectivist approach, globalisation refers to “growing interconnectedness reflected in the extended flows of information, technology, capital, goods, services, and people throughout the world.” ⁴¹³ This global interconnectivity also implies the movement of the world as a whole in the direction of unicity—meaning oneness of the whole world as a single interconnected socio-cultural unit. As Robertson and White write, “This, in turn, indicates that the singularity of the world increasingly diminishes the significance of territorial boundaries…hence the emphasis on borderlessness in much of the literature on

410 Mathias Albert, "Globalisation Theory: Yesterday's Fad or More Lively than Ever?," International Political Sociology, 1, (2007), p.116. For a review of concepts of globalisation due to its cultural, political, and economic dimensions see Roland Robertson and Kathleen E. White, "Globalisation: An Overview," in Robertson and White (eds.), Globalisation: Critical Concepts in Sociology, vol. I, Analytical Perspective, (London, Routledge: 2003), pp.1-34. Also, for an attempt to provide a comprehensive review of globalisation concept and research see Jan Aart Scholte and Roland Robertson, Encyclopedia of Globalisation, (London, Routledge: 2006).

411 See William G. Martin and Mark Beittel, "Toward a Global Sociology? Evaluating Current Conception, Methods, and Practices," The Sociological Quarterly, 39 (1) (1998), pp.139-161.

412 George Modelski, Tessalenno Devezas, and William R. Thompson, (eds.), Globalisation as Evolutionary Process, Modeling Global Change, (London and New York, Routledge: 2008), p.11.

413 See National Intelligence Council, Mapping the global future. (Honolulu, Pacific Press: 2004),

globalisation.”⁴¹⁴ Some scholars, like Roland Robertson, add a 'global consciousness' dimension to this global interconnectivity. Robertson believes that the two most important general features of the process of globalisation are: “(1) extensive connectivity, or interrelatedness and (2) extensive global consciousness, a consciousness which continues to become more and more reflexive.”⁴¹⁵ Globalisation, as the expansion of global interconnectivity, does not imply whether the expansion of global interconnectivity involves a global institutional change or not. It views contemporary globalisation as a more or less transnational space of social relations.

These global social relations may be economic, political, cultural or technological.

They have connected people around the globe.

For instance, Anthony Giddens defines globalisation as “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa.”⁴¹⁶ Malcolm Waters views globalisation as “a social process in which the constraints of geography on social and cultural arrangement recede and in which people become increasingly aware that they are receding.”⁴¹⁷ Jan Aart Scholte defines globalisation as

“…ongoing large-scale growth of transplanetary—and often also supraterritorial—

connectivity. …[for him] this conception of globalization has a distinctive focus. It is different from ideas of internationalization, liberalization, universalization and westernization.”⁴¹⁸ The connectivist approach acknowledges that transplanetary connectivity affects institutional features of the emerging world order. But, it does not highlight globalisation as a global institutional change. Martin Shaw discusses that globalisation has changed political organisation of the Cold War order to a Western Global State, but he does not devote an especial institutional meaning to such a global organisational change.⁴¹⁹

414 Robertson and White, Globalisation: Critical Concepts in Sociology, (2003), p .4. Also see David Jacobson, Rights Across Borders: Immigration and the Decline of Citizenship, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press: 1996); Michael J. Shapiro and Hayward R. Alker (eds.), Challenging Boundaries:

Global Flows, Territorial Identities, (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press: 1996), and Jan Aart Scholte, Globalisation: A Critical Introduction, (London, Macmillan: 2005).

415 Robertson and White, op. cit., (2003), p.6., Also see Ulrich Beck, What Is Globalisation?,

(Cambridge, Polity Press: 2000); John Tomlinson, Globalisation and Culture, (Chicago, University of Chicago Press: 1999)., and Mauro F. Guillen , "Is Globalisation Civilizing, Destructive or Feeble?"

Annual Review Social, 27 (2001), pp.235-260.

416 Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, (USA, Stanford University Press: 1990), p.64.

417 Malcolm Waters, Globalisation, (London, Routledge: 1995), p.3.

418 Scholte, Globalization: A Critical Introduction (2005), p.84.

419 See Martin Shaw, The Theory of Global State, (2000), pp.1-21.

6.1.2 Globalisation as the Emergence of Institutions of Planetary Scope

The institutional approach to globalisation situates global interconnectivity into a global institutional context, within which the movement of the world as a whole in direction of unicity finds a macro-societal institutional meaning. In addition, it leads us to explore a link between a global social learning process and such a global social organisation change. Modelski rightly argues that the institutional approach has been developed by David Held and his collaborators, and goes beyond the ‘connectivist’

approach.⁴²⁰ As noted in chapter 4, Held describes globalisation as a transition in the global scale of human organisation that links distant communities and expands the research of power relations across the world’s regions.⁴²¹ Held points out:

…the historical wave [of globalisation studies] drawing upon the historical sociology of global development, was principally concerned with exploring in what way, if any, contemporary globalisation could be considered novel or unique—whether if defined a new epoch, or transformation, in the socio-economic and political organization of human affairs—and if so, what the implications were for the realization of progressive values and projects of human emancipation (emphasis added).⁴²²

Like Held, Habermas views globalisation as a social organisational (institutional) change on a global scale. Max Pensky reminds us, “for Habermas…it [globalisation]

heralds the end of the global dominance of the nation-state as a model for political organization.’Postnational' here means that the globalisation of markets and of economic processes generally, of models of communication and commerce, of culture, and of risk, all increasingly deprive the classical nation states of its formally assured bases of sovereign power.”⁴²³ For the institutional approach to globalisation, global interconnectivity is analysed in the context of a global institutional transition from the Westphalian order towards a post-national political economy in which national sovereignty no longer plays the main institutional role in global social organisation.

As Modelski rightly argues, the institutional approach to globalisation analyses the expansion of global interconnectivity in the context of a set of global organisational changes. These global organisational changes refer to the infrastructure of global interdependence or “a new architecture of world order.”⁴²⁴ He leads us to see that such

420 Modelski, Globalisation as Evolutional Process, (2008), p.12.

421 David Held, Global Covenant, (2004), p.1.

422 David Held and Anthony McGrew, (eds.), Globalisation Theory, (London, Polity Press: 2007), p.5.

423 Jürgen Habermas, The Postnational Constellation, (2001), p .xiii.

424 Modelski, Globalisation as Evolutional Process, (2008), p.12.

a global interconnectivity is “the product of a set of organizational and institutional arrangements. They derive from the organisations that originate and manage these flows; the regimes that facilitate and govern them… and the systems of knowledge that guide them.”⁴²⁵ Modelski defines globalisation as the construction (and/or emergence) of the institutions of a planetary scope. He links this institutional approach to globalisation with a global social learning process. This process of social learning provides an explanatory framework for addressing the emergence of a post-national political economy. He recognises this global social learning as a global problem solving process that regards the formation of institutions of a planetary scope as an organisational solution to deal with the global problems.⁴²⁶