Anthony Giddens : Globalisation

•in London in 1999 this lecture was organised by the BBC (British Broadcasting Company), •Giddens defines globalisation as the intensification of worldwide social relations•To him this links distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many thousands of miles away and vice versa•Giddens defines four dimensions of globalisation

•The most obvious one is the world capitalist economy. “The main centres of power in the worldeconomy are capitalist states – states in which capitalist economic enterprise is the chief form of production”

•The biggest transnational companies today havebudgets larger than those of all but a few nations•But there are some key respects in which theirpower cannot rival that of states• If nation-states are the principle “actors” within the global political order, corporations are the dominant agents within the world economy •The influence of any particular state within the global political order is strongly conditionedby its level of wealth•So is the corporation in its circle

•The nation-state system, the second dimension of globalisationThe very existence of sovereignty should be Understood as something that is reflexively (mechanically) monitored. • Sovereignty is linked to the replacement of“frontiers” by “borders” The third dimension is the world military order•All states today possess military strength far in excess with massive destructive power of modern weaponry,

The fourth dimension of globalisation concerns industrial development•The most obvious aspect of this is the differentiation between more and less industrialized areas in the world•One of the main features of the globalizing implication ofindustrialism is the worldwide diffusion of technologies

•There is also another face of Globalisation known as as cultural globalisation •This is the fifth dimension of globalisation

POST COLONIALISM-EDWARD SAID•Is a specifically post-modern intellectual discourse that consists of reactions to, and analysis of, the cultural legacy of colonialism•The ultimate goal of post-colonialism is accounting for and combating the residual effects of colonialism on cultures towards a place of mutual respect•A key goal of post-colonial theorists is clearing space for multiple voices•Edward Said, in his book Orientalism, provides a clear picture of theways social scientists, specifically Orientlists, can disregard the voice ofThose who feel superiorDestabilising western ways of thinking

•Thus creating space for the subaltern, or marginalized groups, to speak and produce alternatives to dominant discourse•Said took the term Orientalism, which was used in the West neutrally to describe the study and artistic depiction of the Orient, and subverted it to mean a constructed binary division of the world into the Orient and the Occident•Also referred to as the East/West binary

•Said argued that the Occident could not exist without the Orient, and vice versa• In other words, they are mutually constitutive• Notably, the concept of the ‘East’ i.e. the Orient, was created by the ‘West’,•Suppressing the ability of the ‘Orient’ to express themselves• Western depictions of the ‘Orient’ construct an inferior world, a place of backwardness, irrationality, and wildness• This allowed the ‘West’ to identify themselves as the opposite of these characteristics; as a superior world that was progressive, rational, and civil.

•Some postcolonial writers have critiqued Said's homogeneous binary of Occident and Orient, insisting that multiple variations of Orientalism have been created within the western world and are at work END OF HISTORY- Francis FUKUYAMA•The End of History and the Last Man is a 1992 book•Fukuyama argues that the advent of Western liberal democracy may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and the final form of human government•The end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracyas the final form of human government

• Fukuyama takes the line of Kojeve’s argument that the progress of history must lead toward the establishment of a "universal and homogenous" state, most likely incorporating elements of liberal or social democracy•One argument used to support the theory is the dramatic rise in democratic nations over the course of the 20th century

Democracy today

•Another argument in favor of Fukuyama's thesis is the democratic peace theory, which argues that mature democracies rarely or never go to war with one another•This theory has faced criticism, with arguments largely resting on conflicting definitions of "war" and "mature democracy

•Other major empirical evidence includes the elimination of inter-state warfare in South America, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe among countries that moved from military dictatorships to liberal democracies•This end of History is essentially a Christian theology believing that one day the world will be a christian world

The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands. In the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history.I can feel in myself, and see in others around me, a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed.Such nostalgia, in fact, will continue to fuel competition and conflict even in the post-historical world for some time to come. Even though I recognize its inevitability, I have the most ambivalent feelings for the civilization that has been created in Europe since 1945, with its north Atlantic and Asian offshoots. Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again