Some thought on globalization: How to define it?

[…] Two periods, the 1840s and the 1990s, experienced the strongest faiths ever in the market as he only way to ensure harmony and development. In the 1840s this phenomenon was called “free trade”, today the same phenomenon is called “globalization".
Erik S. Reinert (Reinert, 2007, p. 56)

Many definitions try to find out the essence of the globalization. This concept is still, however, far to be clear.

One way to avoid that the concept can be used to explain everything is to give a quite narrow definition. We can define it, as Drezner do, as

the cluster of technological, economic, and political process that drastically reduces the barriers to economic exchange across borders. (Drezner D. W., 2007, p. 10).

This definition show the crucial element of the current globalization phase that many actors called neo-liberal.

What is missing in this definition is that it does not underline that globalization it comes from and is developed by political and economic decisions of some actors that are in constant struggle to define the future world. It is important to view “globalization as a dialectical process” as Birchfield did (Bichfield, 1999, p. 30). In fact, as Payne underlined (Payne, 2005, p. 30), even if globalization can be seen as a massive shake-out of societies, economies, institutions of governance and world order, “the direction of shake-out remains uncertain, since globalization is understood as a long-term historical process characterized by contradictions, shaped by conjunctures and contested by increasingly aware and hostile political forces”.

Moreover, many globalization definitions are based on technological changes that enable people to be more closely connected. The problem with such kind of definitions is that they understand technology as an external variable with a unidirectional impact on societies. Nevertheless, as Cox underlined, “it is more realistic to see technology as being shaped by social forces at least as much as it shapes these forces. Technology is the means of solving the practical problems of societies, but what problems are to be solved and which kind of solutions are acceptable are determined by those who hold social power” (Cox, 1987, p. 21).

References

Bichfield, V. (1999). Contesting the hegemony of market ideology: Gramsci's "good sense" and Polanyi's "double movement". Review of International Political Economy , 6 (1), 27-54.

Cox, R. W. (1987). Production, Power and World Order. New York: Columbia University Press.
Drezner, D. W. (2007). All Politics is Global. Explaining International Regulatory Regimes. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Payne, A. (2005). The Global Politics of Unequal Development. Houndmills et New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Reinert, E. S. (2007). How Rich Countries Gor Rich ... and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers.

globalization definition