Globalization

Sceptics. The world carries on much the same as it has done for many years. Most countries only gain a small amount of their income from external trade. Moreover, a good deal of economic exchange is between regions, rather than being truly world-wide. The notion of globalisation, according to the sceptics, is an ideology put about by free-marketeers who wish to dismantle welfare systems and cut back on state expenditures.

Radicals. Not only is globalisation very real, but that its consequences can be felt everywhere The era of the nation state is over.

Guiddens. Sceptics or the radicals see the phenomenon almost solely in economic terms. This is a mistake. Globalisation is political, technological and cultural, as well as economic. It has been influenced above all by developments in systems of communication, dating back only to the late 1960's.

Instantaneous electronic communication isn't just a way in which news or information is conveyed more quickly. Its existence alters the very texture of our lives, rich and poor alike. When the image of Nelson Mandela maybe is more familiar to us than the face of our next door neighbour, something has changed in the nature of our everyday experience.

Nelson Mandela is a global celebrity, and celebrity itself is largely a product of new communications technology. The reach of media technologies is growing with each wave of innovation. It took 40 years for radio in the United States to gain an audience of 50 million. The same number were using personal computers only 15 years after the PC was introduced. It needed a mere four years, after it was made available for 50 million Americans to be regularly using the Internet.

It is wrong to think of globalisation as just concerning the big systems, like the world financial order. Globalisation isn't only about what is 'out there', remote and far away from the individual. It is an 'in here' phenomenon too, influencing intimate and personal aspects of our lives (family values, etc).

Local nationalisms spring up as a response to globalising tendencies, as the hold of older nation-states weakens.

Globalisation creates new economic and cultural zones within and across nations (Hong Kong, northern Italy, or Silicon Valley in California, BarcelonaI.

The ideological and cultural control upon which communist political authority was based similarly could not survive in an era of global media.

The Soviet and the East European regimes were unable to prevent the reception of western radio and TV broadcasts. Television played a direct role in the 1989 revolutions, which have rightly been called the first "television revolutions". Street protests taking place in one country were watched by the audiences in others, large numbers of whom then took to the streets themselves.

To many living outside Europe and North America most visible cultural expressions of globalisation are American - Coca-Cola, McDonald's.

Most of giant multinational companies are based in the US too.

'reverse colonisation' are becoming more and more common. Reverse colonisation means that non-western countries influence developments in the west. Examples abound - such as the Latinising of Los Angeles, the emergence of a globally-oriented high-tech sector in India, or the selling of Brazilian TV programmes to Portugal.

Nation-states are indeed still powerful and political leaders have a large role to play in the world. Nations have to rethink their identities now the older forms of geopolitics are becoming obsolete.

we see institutions that appear the same as they used to be from the outside, and carry the same names, but inside have become quite different. We continue to talk of the nation, the family, work, tradition, nature, as if they were all the same as in the past. They are not. The outer shell remains, but inside all is different. They are institutions that have become inadequate to the tasks they are called upon to perform.

The powerlessness we experience is not a sign of personal failings, but reflects the incapacities of our institutions. We need to reconstruct those we have, or create new ones, in ways appropriate to the global age.

 

Tradition

The English word has its origins in the Latin term tradere, which meant to transmit, or give something to another for safekeeping. Tradere was originally used in the context of Roman Law, where it referred to the laws of inheritance. Property that passed from one generation to another was supposed to be given in trust - the inheritor had obligations to protect and nurture it.

However, The term 'tradition' as it is used it today is actually a product of the last 200 years in Europe. In mediaeval times there was no generic notion of tradition. There was no call for such a word, precisely because tradition and custom were everywhere.

All traditions are invented traditions. Tradition always incorporates power, whether they are constructed in a deliberate way or not. Kings, emperors, priests and others have long invented traditions to suit themselves and to legitimate their rule.

The distinguishing characteristics of tradition are ritual and repetition. Traditions are always properties of groups, communities or collectivities. Individuals may follow traditions and customs, but traditions are not a quality of individual behaviour in the way habits are.

For someone following a traditional practice, questions don't have to be asked about alternatives. Traditions usually have guardians - wise men, priests, sages. Guardians are not the same as experts

Traditions are needed in society. They give continuity and form to life. Tradition that is drained of its content, and commercialised, becomes kitsch - the trinkets bought in the airport store.

Autonomy and freedom can replace the hidden power of tradition The dark side of decision-making is the rise of addictions and compulsions. The notion of addiction was originally applied exclusively to alcoholism and drug-taking. But now any area of activity can become invaded by it. One can be addicted to work, exercise, food, sex - or even love. The reason is that these activities, and other parts of life too, are much less structured by tradition and custom than once they were.

Like tradition, addiction is about the influence of the past upon the present; and as in the case of tradition, repetition has a key role. The past in question is individual rather than collective, and the repetition is driven by anxiety. I would see addiction as frozen autonomy. Addiction comes into play when choice, which should be driven by autonomy, is subverted by anxiety.

In more traditional situations, a sense of self is sustained largely through the stability of the social positions of individuals in the community. Freud thought he was establishing a scientific treatment for neurosis. What he was in effect doing was constructing a method for the renewal of self-identity, in the early stages of a detraditionalising culture

The struggle between addiction and autonomy is at one pole of globalisation. At the other is the clash between a cosmopolitan outlook and fundamentalism.In the late 1950's there was no entry for the word 'fundamentalism' in the large Oxford English dictionary.

Fundamentalists call for a return to basic scriptures or texts, supposed to be read in a literal manner, and they propose that the doctrines derived from such a reading be applied to social, economic or political life. Fundamentalism gives new vitality and importance to the guardians of tradition.

Fundamentalism is beleaguered tradition. It is tradition defended in the traditional way - by reference to ritual truth - in a globalising world that asks for reasons. Fundamentalism it is the enemy of cosmopolitan dialogue. It isn't confined to religion (i.e. The Chinese red guards, with their devotion to Mao's little red book).

All of us need moral commitments that stand above the petty concerns and squabbles of everyday life. None of us would have anything to live for, if we didn't have something worth dying for. (philosophy/religion)