Tanase Marinela, Burtoiu Natalia
Universitatea din Pitesti, Pitesti, Romania Abstract
The social context represents the matrix from the individual and human groups’
development. It is totally irrelevant the analysis of a process or social phenomenon, that of the family, without showing the supra system within its existence. The post-modernism and, first of all the globalization, lead the transformation of the borders into diffuse and permeable lines in which what characterizes the various cultures, transformed into universal acquisitions.
Because of the economic changes, which started during the First and then the Second World War, the globalization had visible beginnings during the 70s. the multinational organizations having the appendages of the technological development, telecommunications and transport, had facilitate the changes at great scale, the economic globalization is considered the main form of manifestations of the new changes at the macroscopically level, characterized by goods and services change, persons’ flux-migration, of capital and of technology. “the concept of globalization refers to the decrease of the world and of the increase of the awareness degree of the world as an entity"- Roland Robertson (Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture-London). The traditionalist culture of the society disappears of transforms into entertainment and goods (McDonalization) the humanist culture is eliminated by the invading techno-science and transformed into pseudo-science. The world or globalized human, or the economic centered human being become the atomized human that lives through production and consume, depleted by politics, sense, awareness and any transcendence. We shall recall the globalization’s theories and that of the post-modernism that follow it presented by Immanuel Wallerstein, Osvaldo Sunkel, Jan Aart Scholte, Leslie Sklair, Zygmunt Bauman, Claude Karnooch, Richard Rorty, Francois Lyotard, Jurgen Habermans, Fredric Jameson, Steven Connor.
Keywords: globalization, social change, culture, post-modernism
In a world where the interstates borders become almost insignificant, the cultural identities are redefining its dimensions, incorporating or denying the values of globalization, in other words, increasing thus the multiculturalism or, contrary, going back to their local matrices. As it shall be further emphasised in the following lines, we shall acknowledge that there are totally other aspects of differentiation between communities and that the geographical borders do not serve anymore to define the borders of a state.
Existence of cultural and economical criteria are dividing the world’s map in developed and
Tanase Marinela, Burtoiu Natalia/ Procedia – Edu World 2010
less developed countries, the appearance of “third world” concept, the culture of consumption, of industrialization, etc.
Post modern family finds itself, as above mentioned, in the sweep of communitarian and global, trying to define its identity throughout its belonging to the culture in which it exists. Such as, it events situations in which one may talk about the co-existence of the well-statute family roles and also about the opening to multiple values. It seems to deal with a continuously effort of conservation of the traditional structures and of assimilation of the multiculturalism.
For a more plausible support we shall consider the systematic theory in the following analysis to enable introducing the macro familial dimension. If the traditional societies held very clear the role and place of the family in community life, if religious, social and cultural taboos were fore-determining the path to be followed by a family even before its constitution, industrialization and then the post-modernism have permitted the appearance of some very different familial conjunctures, mostly unacceptable in the respective culture a few decades ago. The actual family, like every other organizational entity, has to integrate, willingly or not, the contemporary values, practically the non-cultural ones or as one may please to call it, the meta-non-cultural values of globalization.
Starting from the marriage rituals tending to standardization in very different cultures, the number of children – similar in the majority of the industrialized society’s families, the attitude towards separation and divorce – strictly forbidden before not many years ago, everything tends to become as more as “global”, borrowing from different cultures the elements which fit best and gain the own individuality still unitary in the diversity of families.
Definitions of globalization - Leslie Sklair distinguished four sociological approach of globalization:
1. the world systems approach;
2. the global culture approach;
3. the global society approach;
4. the global capitalism approach.
1. The world systems approach was originated by Immanuel Wallerstein (see The World Modern Systems, Meridiane, Bucharest, 1992), who tries the extrapolation of the
“class struggle” at the whole system level, divided in centre, semi-periphery and periphery.
Explainable through the Marxist orientation of its followers, the explanation is of economical type – international division of the work. The cultural domain is a few represented, merely associated to the civilization concept.
2. The pattern of global culture. The appearance of this approach coincides with the publishing of Featherstone (1990) of an articles collection in the magazine Theory, Culture and Society (TCS) edited under the title Global Culture. Among the most influent theorists is Ronald Robertson, whom should be due the introduction of the term in sociology. Specialists in this relatively homogeneous group are characterized by followings:
o tend to privilege the cultural domain to the economic ones.
o care about how national/ cultural identity resists to the occurrence of "global culture” understood as a correspondent for the "global village" of McLuhan.
Tanase Marinela, Burtoiu Natalia/ Procedia – Edu World 2010
3. The global society approach. The American sociologist Anthony Giddens develops his own theory of globalization, emphasizing the subjective side. Thus, globalization is conceived as "Reflexive Modernity”.
4. The global capitalism approach. Trachte Ross, one of the exponents of this approach, starting from Marx and Adam Smith, envisions this phenomenon in the context of capitalism development: expansion to the third world, the crisis of '70s. "We are just at the beginning of a global era," he says.
“Globalization is the term used to describe a multi-causes process that has as results the fact that events occurring in one part of the world have increasingly impacts on societies and on problems from other parts of the globe. There is no worldwide accepted definition of globalization, and probably a final one also not. The reason is that globalization sub-includes many complex processes with a variable dynamic reaching different area of a society. It may be a phenomenon, an ideology, strategy, or all together.
Globalization is the modern term used to describe changes in society and the world economy resulting from the extremely increased international trade and cultural exchanges.
It describes the increasing of trade and investments as the result of barriers fall and interdependence between states. In economic context, it is often made almost exclusive reference to the effects of trade and particularly to the trade liberalization or free trade.”
Due to the economic exchanges started in the Ist and IInd World War, globalization visibly starts in the 70s. Multi-national organizations, with privilege of technological development, especially transport and telecommunications have facilitated global trade.
Economic globalization is considered the main form of manifestation of the new changes at macro-social level, characterized by exchanges of goods and services, flow of people - immigration, capital and technology. IMF defines globalization as "increasing the economic interdependence of countries worldwide through increasing volume and variety of goods and services transactions across borders, international capital flows more freely and more quickly, but also a wider diffusion of technology. IMF – has as principle scope to promote international monetary cooperation, to ensure financial stability, facilitate international trade, contributing to a high level for labour employment, economic stability and combating the poverty. "(IMF, World Economic Outlook, May). The World Bank defines globalization as "Freedom and ability of individuals and firms to initiate voluntary economic transactions with residents of other countries."
"The concept of Globalization refers to the shrinking of the world and increase awareness of the world as a whole" - Roland Robertson
As per history, "the period of liberalization and when the gold was defining the economic standard is often called "first era of globalization". Establishment of the gold standard was gradually achieved in intensely industrialized countries. "First Era of Globalization" is believed would be divided into stages once with World War I and then fell under the gold standard crisis in the late '20s and early '30s. Countries that had begun to embrace globalization, including the European core, some states at the edge of Europe and several European offshoots in the Americas and Oceania prospered. Inequality between those states was disappearing while goods, capital and workforce were exceptionally free flowing between countries.
Globalization in the period after the Second World War was led by rounds of negotiations under the auspices of GATT in the first phase, leading to more understanding in the removal of restrictions on free trade. Uruguay Round led to the signing of a treaty which creates the role of mediating commercial disputes. Other sections of bilateral trade
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agreements including the Treaty of Maastricht and NAFTA were also signed with the aim of reducing tariffs and trade barriers.
Globalization is a system or a complex phenomenon, sometimes ambivalent, even contradictory, which was viewed and analyzed differently by those who have taken this risk or this responsibility. Beyond this analysis, globalization remains a real fact, alive, with which we must face regardless of our will or option. It is considered that the highest risk (reported by some theorists of globalization) that globalization may involve is the dehumanizing of those who are simply overwhelmed.
Conquered by the market, doped by the globalized world, a comprehensive cultural and educational disaster is living amid a general crisis of the meanings of life, as an alarming symptom of uncivilized society’s future.
Traditional culture of societies disappears or is transformed into spectacle and freight (McDonaldization), humanist culture is increasingly eliminated by the invasive techno-science and transformed into a pseudo-science. Man or globalized world, the economic only centred man risks becoming an atomized man who lives only for production and consumption, emptied of political meaning, consciousness and any transcendence.
Perhaps this is the last stage in the evolution of humanity or "last man".
Immanuel Wallerstein describes the world system as a set of mechanisms for the distribution of resources from the periphery to the centre. In his description, the centre "The Core" is developed, industrialized, democratic (are the states with the highest economic diversity, high not only economically but also that military forces with a high degree of industrialization, with continuing concern in IT, finance and services , mainly producing finished goods for export less raw material, most often the initiators of new technologies and industries with a comprehensive structure that supports the state and external affairs, with background obtained from charges strong enough so that the State support the economic infrastructure, with strong influences on states which are not part of global core system and relatively independent of external relationships with other geographical areas), while the suburbs are underdeveloped, as the poorest part of the system but also a source of material and human resources necessary to maintain core’s prosperity, in other words, the core through the market, is exploiting the outskirts (as the case of countries that have not a diversified economy, tend to depend on one type of economy, often are target of multinational corporate investment, in order to exploit cheap labour and unskilled, in order to export products in the central areas of the system, have a high percentage of poor and uneducated people, the ruling class of that state has an extremely high percentage income and most of the population fall far below the desired economic level, is organized in a poor state, its structures are unable to support infrastructure development, and, last but not least are extremely influenced by the decisions of the core countries and multinational corporations, being required to follow economic policies in favour of developed countries in the detriment, over long term, of their own economies).
Capitalist world system is based on both the independent political units, states, so there is not about a political centre, but a global market dominated by those who conduct capitalism from the centre, respectively from the most prosperous and developed countries in terms of economic power. Between centre and marginal areas are the so called semi-periphery areas, caught between the two worlds, areas receiving unequal relations (of benefit) compared to underdeveloped countries and serving in the mean time, the disadvantageous for them, the central areas, but which tend to industrialization and the economic diversity, not so strongly influenced by the decisions of the centre, as peripherals societies.
Tanase Marinela, Burtoiu Natalia/ Procedia – Edu World 2010
Wallerstein speaks about the world system as an organism that has boundaries, structure, consistent rules of conduct, and, as a body, in some ways remains stable, while in other segments is in constant motion, changes. Practically, the most visible segment, at least in our perspective which turns evergreen is the lifestyle of people, style involving changes in the attitude towards education and searching for professional involvement, to clothing, and especially in how cohabitation, as one may please, the couple, the family, in the small community of the origin family. Mixture of modern / western / European and archetypes which are embraced in family relationships often give rise to conflicting images, lifestyles exhausting and frustrating. But we will resume this idea in another chapter, on education in the family.
Osvaldo Sunkel, representative of global system dependency theory says that "the international capitalist system contains activity cores, regions and social groups of varying importance in each country. These sectors share a common culture and a "lifestyle" which manifests itself through the same books. Texts, films, television programs, like clothing styles, similar types of organization of family and social life, much the same genre in homes decorating, similar trends in house building, in furniture, the cities themselves.
Despite language barriers, these areas have an extreme capacity to communicate among them more than would be possible between well integrated people and those from the suburbs of the same country, speaking a common language (…)
Modernization implies the gradual replacement of traditional manufacturing structure to another, much higher and more persuasive. On one hand, the modernization process incorporates in the new structure individuals and groups who are able to adapt to a certain rationality that dominates and on the other side excludes individuals and groups that fit no longer to the new structures of production lacking the ability to adapt to new forms. It is important to understand that this process not only prevents or limits the formation of a national entrepreneurial class, but also of a national middle class. The advantage of modernization introduces, so to say, over a limited area which delimits those integrated by segregated segments. (...) The effects of disintegration of each social class have important consequences for the social mobility.
Entrepreneurs in marginalized areas are likely to thicken among small manufacturers artisans or will abandon independent activity and become employed middle class. Marginalized sectors of the middle class will form a group of frustrated middle class trying to keep middle class appearance without too many opportunities to develop economically, terrorized by the danger of becoming proletarian workers. Peripheral workers will surely add rows where absolute marginalized, and the poorer of middle class will build resentment and frustration. Finally, it is very likely that an international mobility in fact corresponds to internal mobility, particularly among the sectors of the same area.
The described process of social disintegration will likely affect the social institutions that provide the basis of various social groups through which they express themselves. The described similar trends for the global society will be strengthened also for the state, church, armed forces, political parties, universities, etc."
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4th International Conference "Education Facing Contemporary World Issues"
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