Globalisation has been discussed in great detail in a variety of disciplines,
including business, political science, law, education, health, and of course, sociology.
As a result, there’s enormous overlap and repetition, and it can sometimes seem like everyone is talking past each other,
rather than with each other, in discussions about globalisation.
Often, the problem occurs because people only focus on only one aspect of globalisation, rather than addressing it as a whole.
This ignores the fact that globalisation is a multidimensional phenomenon.
It doesn’t just refer to a single process, but rather to a set of simultaneously occurring economic, ecological, political and cultural processes that
are global in scope, but also have local and national implications.
In his book, Globalisation: A very Short Introduction, the Austrian political scientist, Manfred Steger, refers to these processes
as the four dimensions of globalisation
It’s possible to break it down even further,
Steger argues that the bulk of current globalisation literature can only provide limited understandings of globalisation.
He compares the current state of globalisation studies to the Indian fable of an encounter between blind men and an elephant.
The fable appears in various versions, but refers generally to a group of blind men who all felt a different part of an elephant with their hands.
Their descriptions of the elephant varied wildly, depending on the body part that they had touched.
The blind man who touched the tail described the elephant as a flexible brush; the man who touched its leg compared it to a pillar;
the man who felt tusk insisted it felt like a spear, and so on.
Because of their focus on only one part of the elephant, they disagreed about the very nature of the elephant itself.
Steger argues that like the blind men in this parable, some globalisation scholars are so focused on one dimension
that they neglect to consider globalisation holistically.
This can mean that discussions about the nature of globalisation are often based on inaccurate or narrow premises.
Generally speaking, it is the economic aspect that has received the most attention,
with the cultural and environmental processes and ramifications of globalisation often being kept in the background.
Not only does this approach misrepresent the nature and scope of globalisation,
it can also cause confusion when trying to navigate and understand the complex relationships, systems, tensions, institutions and
contradictions that together form the phenomenon we know as globalisation.
It can lead to sociologists focusing too much on specific causes, issues or outcomes,
and to neglect other significant areas of concern that don’t receive adequate attention.
Additionally, ignoring the multidimensionality of globalisation limits our ability to identify the relationships between separate dimensions,
and to assess the impacts of one upon another.
Or we might be tempted to view the connections between different dimensions as unidirectional,
or think that one dimension is dominant over other dimensions.
For example, it’s clear that economic processes of globalisation can and do have flow on effects into other dimensions.
In some nations, trade liberalisation has led to a change in the products that those nations export and which they import,
which then affects the culture of employment and labour.
In countries like Malawi, where women have traditionally been involved in farming and crops,
it’s now cheaper to import rice from Asian nations than to grow rice in Malawi itself.
This has led to a radical change in the types of work that women do.
These changes, in addition to high rates of unemployment among men, resulting from policies associated with economic globalisation,
means that relationships and power dynamics within households have also shifted.
Those changes often take place along gendered lines, leading to changes in the culture of family life more generally.
However, it would be inaccurate to see it as a one-way relationship.
Cultural, political and ecological processes of globalisation also occur independently of economic processes,
and can in turn affect national, regional, and even global economies and markets.
Just think about bodies like the United Nations and the European Union or the World Trade Organisation.
These transnational governing institutions promote a multilateral approach to resolving disputes between states.
The globalisation of politics and law now means that if a national government contravenes international law, customs or norms,
organisations like the United Nations or European Union can intervene, enforcing economic sanctions that have a direct impact on
the country’s economy and its ability to participate in international markets.
As the cultural, ecological and political impacts of globalisation become more visible,
the emphasis on the economic aspect of globalisation is slowly decreasing.
Take, for example the anti-globalisation movement and protests that have stemmed from it, such as the 1999 protests
against the World Trade Organisation in Seattle.
Although the protests were framed as being anti- globalisation, what activists were really protesting was economic globalisation,
the global capitalist system, and the ideology of neoliberalism that underpins them both.
The demands of the protestors were thus primarily concerned with the economic impacts of globalisation.
Issues such as unfair trade, exploitative labour practices, and Third World debt featured prominently in the anti-globalisation protests.
Where issues did have an environmental or social component, such as deforestation or sovereignty, these were often linked to neoliberal ideology and
the economic practices of the Global North. In contrast, the demands of the Occupy Wall Street movement
which began in 2011 are not as unified, clearly defined or limited to the economic sphere,
despite the fact that its very name references the well-known financial district of New York City.
'Occupy', as it's now abbreviated to, is larger and more decentralised than the anti-globalisation movements of the 1990s and 2000s.
Protests have taken place in 951 cities in over 82 countries, and still continuing in some places.
Occupy’s strategy is also far broader in scope than the previous anti-globalisation movements.
As well as radical economic change, Occupy agitates for social change, including reforms in healthcare, education and immigration.
Generally speaking, though, globalisation is still primarily characterised as an economic phenomenon,
with the cultural, political and ecological implications of globalisation marginalised as the ‘side effects’
rather than separate processes of their own.
As sociologists, we need to be wary of overemphasising any one dimension,
even though it might be easier to try and reduce globalisation to a single sphere.
Indeed, it is the very multidimensionality of globalisation that makes it so complicated and difficult to analyse,
and why the processes that contribute to globalisation may at times seem contradictory.
But if we are to understand the opportunities and risks of globalisation and critically analyse its impact on social life,
it’s crucial that sociologists understand all the different dimensions and aspects of processes of globalisation.