contemporary world definition and examples essay

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Race and Ethnicity

contemporary world

Updated 27 April 2023

Subject Race and Ethnicity

Downloads 27

Category Social Issues , Sociology

Topic Citizenship , Globalization , Responsibility

In the modern world: Globalization and Global Citizenship

In the modern world, globalization—the blending of people, goods, services, information, worldviews, and cultures—has resulted from the interconnection of nations around the world. Each person consequently feels a sense of obligation and duty to the entire world. Many refer to this as “global citizenship.” As a result, every individual’s identity, function, and responsibility transcend national and geographic boundaries for the simple reason that any activity, no matter how tiny, has an effect on the rest of the globe. In this instance, everyone should be concerned about the global issue of climate change. Notably, the topic of deforestation has sparked discussions and disagreements among governments, businesses, and people. Recognized as one of the major contributors to climate change and global warming, deforestation is at the moment a global concern. However, various arguments have been raised concerning deforestation.

Arguments on Deforestation

On one side, there is the opinion that extensive cutting of trees has taken place since historical eras yet the climatic changes are insignificant. This worldview seems to suggest that this practice is not a leading cause of world climate change and therefore a challenge that can be easily solved by replanting of trees. According to Ferretti-Gallon and Busch (2014), deforestation also offers the opportunity for expansion particularly with the increasing population worldwide as well as the need for this natural resource for the manufacture of products and construction among other uses. On the other hand, natural resource advocates and scientists acknowledge that deforestation has devastating effects on the environment and the global climate as a whole. This is due to the ability of trees to use and store carbon, a major component of the greenhouse gases that lead to global warming. Keeping in mind the fact that deforestation and global climate change through the emission of greenhouse gases by industries and also individuals, it is crucial for all people to embrace the aspect of global citizenship and work together to deal with such issues which affect everyone on earth. A collective action in this matter is, therefore, an indicator of good global citizenship.

Current Position on the Issue

Trees play a crucial role in the absorption and storage of carbon, one of the elements which are responsible for the global warming effect and thus climate change in various parts of the world. This, therefore, means that when trees are cut, then carbon is released into the atmosphere where it combines with oxygen to form carbon dioxide which prevents heat trapped within the earth’s surface from escaping back into the air. In this way global warming takes place, and deforestation accounts for the second largest cause of this phenomenon. Ferretti-Gallon and Busch (2014) insist that while deforestation on its own may hold few significant advantages including the provision of building materials, raw materials for industries, a source of labor and space for expansion, its great global effects outweigh the somewhat localized advantages. Furthermore, deforestation also leads to the destruction of ecosystems hence disturbing the growth and sustenance of various plants and animal species all of which have their roles in the environment. For this reason, solutions to the deforestation problem lie in the utilization of alternative materials for construction, enforcement of strict policies, preventing agriculture and infrastructure development on forests, encouraging tree planting and finally, protecting forest areas as well as allocating sufficient resources for developing programs that support the conservation of ecosystems.

The main obstacles during the research revolve around the selection of relevant materials that are not only authentic but also up to date. This issue is quickly resolved by specifying the year of the search. The challenge of validity and authenticity of material is also handled via the use of government and institution databases for the information. As such, the most relevant journal article is “Deforestation: Causes, Effects and Control Strategies” by Chakravarty et al., which incorporates the impacts and solutions to deforestation on climate change using a global perspective. In this way, it is an article that covers the issue in discussion adequately. On the other hand, the most useful access tool is Google, a search engine that offers an extensive list of resources that are specifically related to the search terms. One major issue during the conduction of research is the selection of articles, particularly when both address the same subject but using different perspectives altogether. In such instances, it is not an easy task deciding which one to use and which to discard.

Information Literacy, Lifelong Learning, and Global Citizenship

Information literacy is described as the capacity to comprehend the use of information and thereby search, identify, evaluate, select and utilize the resource to address the issue in question. Lifelong learning, on the other hand, is concerned with self-motivation to seek knowledge and information purposefully for the enhancement of citizenship, professionalism, competitiveness, and most of all self-sustenance. Lastly, global citizenship deals with the rights and responsibilities that an individual possesses simply by being a citizen of a particular country. These three aspects are related in a manner that they are prerequisites of each other. This is because a person with lifelong learning motivation must be able to exercise information literacy and thus apply this knowledge for the collective good of their interest, the nation, and the world as a whole, hence applying global citizenship.

Bibliography

Campbell, Patricia J., Christy Stevens, and Aran S. MacKinnon. 2010. An Introduction to Global Studies. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost.

Chakravarty, Sumit, Ghosh S. K., C. P. Suresh, A. N. Dey, and Gopal Shukla. 2012. “Deforestation: Causes, Effects and Control Strategies.” Intechopen 4-27.

Ferretti-Gallon, Kalifi, and Jonah Busch. 2014. Stopping Deforestation: What Works and What Doesn’t. Briefs, Washington: Center for Global Development.

Rudel, Thomas K. 2013. “The national determinants of deforestation in sub-Saharan Africa.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 1-7. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2012.0405.

United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. 2014. Global Citizenship Education: Preparing learners for the challenges of the twenty-first century. Publication, Paris: UNESCO.

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What Is The Meaning Of A Contemporary World? 10 Significance

What is the meaning of a contemporary world ? Read our comprehensive guide to find out!

Whether you’ve come across the term ‘a contemporary world ‘ in your English class or heard it in general conversation, you may wonder what it means. The short answer? The phrase refers to the trends, ideas, and circumstances of the present time. There are many English words that have complex meanings.

But – of course – there’s more to it than that! Because the answer begs further questions . Like, “What’s the difference between modern times and contemporary times?” and “Is the idea of the contemporary world the same for you as it is for me?” These questions pose interesting ideas, so let’s dive in and discuss them!

What Does “Contemporary” Mean?

What’s the difference between the modern world and the contemporary world, contemporary in other languages, contemporary world: example sentences, contemporary history, the zeitgeist, social science and understanding the contemporary world, contemporary world issues, contemporary studies, contemporary: an ever-evolving concept.

Looking at the definition of contemporary is a great place to begin. Contemporary has a few meanings. It can mean occurring or living at the same time. As well as, occurring in or belonging to the present. The term can also refer to something marked by the present period’s traits; an example of this usage is ‘contemporary American literature.’ The word can be used as either a noun or an adjective.

A quick look in the thesaurus reveals synonyms of ‘contemporary’ can include current, modern, present, present time, timely, and new. However, their accuracy as synonyms for contemporary will depend on the sentence and usage. For more information, check out our round-up of essays about the contemporary world!

Difference between the modern world and the contemporary world

Although these terms are often used interchangeably, some important yet subtle differences exist between ‘modern’ and ‘contemporary.’ For example, a person or object contemporaneous with another person or object may or may not be modern. The term ‘modern’ means relating to the present, or recent times, rather than the distant past.

In some cases, modern can have a different connotation, such as in architecture or the arts. Contemporary art signifies works created from around the 1970s to the present day, while modern art began in the 1860s and ended in approximately the 1970s.

The contemporary world can best be understood as the people, events, political landscape, etc., present during our lifetimes. Right now, this is also the modern world. We could also widen the net and regard the whole 21st century as being the contemporary world. You might also be interested in learning what is tautology .

Plenty of other languages worldwide contain terms that mean ‘contemporary.’ Among these are many examples of cognates, which show where there’s a direct etymological descendant. This means that these words share a common linguistic ancestry. Some examples of these ‘contemporary’ cognates include the Italian ‘contemporaneo’ and the Portuguese ‘contemporanea.’

The word ‘contemporary’ is thought to have originated around the seventeenth century as both an adjective and a noun, although in the eighteenth century, it was commonly spelled ‘cotemporary.’ It’s only been since the 1940s that phrases such as ‘contemporary times’ and ‘contemporary style’ have become widely used.

What is the meaning of a contemporary world?

‘The internet has become an inherent part of the contemporary world’ is a neat usage example of this term. It means that in the world we live in today – the present – the internet is an intrinsic element of people’s lives.

As mentioned above, ‘contemporary’ may have a slightly different connotation in art. So, expressing a ‘love of contemporary world dance’ could mean an appreciation of current dance from all over the world or a preference for various global dance forms that developed around the mid-twentieth century. You might also be wondering, what is the point of view ?

In English, contemporary history forms a sub-category of modern world history. It refers to the period of time from roughly 1945 to the present day. The Cold War period of 1947 to 1991 dominates the socio-political landscape of what, in the West, we understand as contemporary history. The threat of nuclear war during this time cast a long shadow and only faded with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Following this, a general pattern of democratization spread across much of Europe.

Things were changing rapidly in the Arabic world, too, in this period. In the Middle East, contemporary history was dominated by the escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an increasing Islamification in the region, the general decline of Arab nationalism, and the rise of petrol politics.

Arising from German philosophy from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the zeitgeist refers to the overarching ‘spirit of the age’ – it can be thought of as a force that shapes and represents the characteristics of a period of time.

The ideas of the present age are inherently connected with the idea of the zeitgeist, as are its beliefs and general feelings. In our contemporary world, the zeitgeist would likely revolve around social media concepts, how technology undermines or enhances our personal experience of the world around us, and the effects of the pandemic. These are just a few examples of a general ‘mood’ setting our contemporary world’s tone.

The discipline of social science is all about studying people in terms of individuals, communities, and broader societies. When it comes to an understanding of the contemporary world, this is a vital study; social sciences can help us solve some of the modern problems unique to recent generations. These include developing ways to live more sustainably by altering how we interact with the built environment or finding new means to alleviate poverty in the developing world.

Tangible ways that social science is already helping with modern world issues, including recent research into equality, diversity, and inclusion and how essential services are delivered to displaced people during disasters such as the pandemic.

These are issues that are contemporary with the times we live in: in other words, things occurring now. According to the United Nations , major contemporary global issues today include climate change, poverty, decolonization, access to fresh water, and displaced persons.

Contemporary world issues also include the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the steep rise in the global population, the threat to marine life due to ocean pollution, and ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.

Contemporary studies is a relatively new discipline deployed to analyze contemporary world trends. As a multi-disciplinary concept, it’s connected to politics, economics, culture, art, media, sociology, information technology, business, humanities, and social sciences.

The very nature of the term ‘contemporary’ indicates its constantly shifting nature . Ideas of the contemporary world are necessarily in a continual state of flux, reflecting the changing global landscape and how, as individuals and societies, we engage with and respond to it. This is well summed up by the fact that the Latin word for temporary, temporarius, comes from the root term relating to time, period, or age.

Home — Essay Samples — History — World History — How Our Contemporary World is a Product of the Past

How Our Contemporary World is a Product of The Past

Categories: Agriculture Feudalism World History

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Published: Jun 12, 2023

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Changes in Agriculture and Feudalism in Modern World

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Modern World System Definition Essay

Modern world system definition, world-empires and world-economies, introduction of socialism, nature of world-systems, modern world-system essay conclusion.

The world is made up of several social systems which are integrated to incorporate economic and political systems. There are three categories of world-systems: World-empires and world-economies and socialistic systems. According to Wallerstein (1976) a modern world-system may be defined as a social system that is composed of limitations, organizations, groups of individuals, rules and regulations and has unity among different groups.

The world-system has various forces which conflict with each other because each unit tends to seek its own benefits from the system. World-systems have organic characteristics in that they change in some aspects and maintain stability in others. Social systems are independent because they develop by themselves. However, you cannot delineate social systems from external forces even though these forces have little impact on the social systems (Wallerstein, p. 391).

Social systems are small and independent from other systems which demand external support. This definition disqualifies most systems which are said to be social systems such as tribes, communities and nations. These are large systems and have a large influence emanating from the external environment. Such systems have many cultures within themselves and division of labor is a common thing in these systems. There are two types of such world-systems which are classified as world-empires and world-economies.

World-empires have only one political system which maintains the control of all social systems in a specific area. In world-economies there exists more than one political system which controls all the activities of a given area. In the past, world-economies were not stable and they were used as empires or were left to disintegrate by themselves. However, world-economies have been in existence for many years and they have never been converted into world-empires (Wallerstein, p. 391).

The fact that world-economies have been in existence for many years and they have never been converted into world-empires has brought about the issue of capitalism. The existence of capitalism is based on the fact that world-economies are established on the basis of many political systems.

Capitalism is not immune from state interference and instances of influence into the economic affairs by the state have been experienced in many capitalistic economies. However, in capitalistic system political control have minimal control and cannot entirely control the entire system. In a capitalism system economic loss is absorbed by the political systems while private individuals benefit from the economic gains. This means that political factors have minimal control in a capitalistic economic system (Wallerstein, p. 392).

Therefore, capitalists have the freedom to maneuver the economic systems for their own benefits. This system distributes rewards to all people in the society unequally because a few individuals manage to tap the economic benefits. The process of making decisions is the best mechanism that can be used to alter the pattern in which rewards are distributed in an economic system.

This calls for the establishment of a socialistic world system. This system of world governance requires that economic resources be equally distributed to avoid disparities in the society (Wallerstein, p. 392).

The level of technology determines the size of world-economies. Specifically, the level at which transport and communication has been developed in a country determines the size of world-economies. Thus, the extent of world-economies keeps on changing because technology is never constant.

Division of labour is a major characteristic of world-economies and this may be functional and/or occupational. Thus, economic tasks are not equally distributed in such a system. The cause of unequal distribution of labor is caused by ecological factors or social arrangements at the workplace. As such some groups of individuals exploit the work of other groups in the society by obtaining greater amount of benefits from labour (Wallerstein, p. 392).

World-empires tend to introduce culture into the occupational activities while world-economies tend to link political systems with culture. This situation is experienced because world-economies have political pressure from the state. The cultural homogeneity found in the two systems is used to satisfy the needs of major pressure groups which aim at establishing cultural and national identities. Integration of state machinery and culture helps reduce disparities that exist in a world-system (Wallerstein, p. 392).

A world-economy is explained in terms of core-states as well as peripheral areas. The core-states are the advantaged regions in a world-economy while the peripheral areas are the disadvantaged regions. In a peripheral state have a colonial characteristic and small degree of autonomy. This is called a neo-colonial situation and is a major characteristic of peripheral states (Wallerstein, p. 392). Semi-peripheral areas also exist and these share the characteristics of core-states and the peripheral states.

These areas are known to have been core-states previously but they change and state acquiring the characteristics of peripheral states. On the other hand, some peripheral areas may have been promoted to become core-states and have not yet fully attained such status and therefore can be classified as semi-peripheral (Wallerstein, p. 393).

In a world-economy there is division of labour which is established to achieve greater levels of capitalization. The capital invested in a world-economy must be rewarded to ensure fair distribution of resources. The labour market is characterized by unequal distribution of human capital (labour) and this causes unstable supply and demand of labour.

The forces of labour demand and supply require world-economies to search technologies which bridge the gap between the labour supply and labour demand. Some regions within a world-economy change their labour structures to accommodate the requirements being initiated by the labour market. However, different sections of a world-economy have different labor demands. As such, the peripheral and semi-peripheral areas of a world-economy will have different labour needs and demands (Wallerstein, p. 393).

The ability of a particular area to maintain the status of a core-state is challenging because many modern world-systems are dynamic and regions are changing very fast. Over a long period of time some states tend to be replaced by others, therefore a particular core-state cannot remain dominant for a long period of time. It is also argued that world-economies can only assume a capitalistic system and feudalism is not acceptable in this system.

Socialist movement exists in a world-economy and they act as control measures to regulate the activities of the state. Without the regulatory measures in a world-economy the human resource would not be fairly distributed and human capital would be exploited for the gain of the capitalists (Wallerstein, p. 393).

In a world-system there are social classes as well as status groups. The social classes are defined by geographical coverage of the people practicing certain cultures. In any world-system social classes exist by default but the conditions for the existence of these classes depend on the political and economic systems within the system.

The existence of social classes creates conflicts among the various strata and social boundaries do exist to separate each social class. The class boundaries require privileges to be maintained within the world-system. The existence of social classes requires people to form alliances and this reduces the number of social classes in a world system. The social groups are defined by ethnicity, language or religion.

To establish many social groups in a world system creates conflicts and several groups emerge to solve these conflicts. However, despite the fact that various social groups emerge these groups are later absorbed and the number reduces automatically. However, in some systems there may exist no social groups while in others there may exist more than two (Wallerstein, p. 394).

Conflicts in a world system exist when there is more than one social class because conflicts involve two or more groups. Conflicts exist when one class of individuals identify itself as universal and when it tends to dominate other groups in the system.

The capitalistic class defines itself as a universal class and it tends to carry out its political pursuit to rule the other social classes. There is correlation between political activities and economic systems in a social group. Therefore, social classes tend to use the political and economic systems to rule others in a world system (Wallerstein, p. 394).

The European world-economy is an example of a system that applied the one-class system. This existed in the sixteenth century and this led to economic expansion of the system.

Dynamic forces existed in the economy and this created more profits to the state. The core-states of this world-economy were very sensitive to class differences. Political groups were defined according to their political roles in the state. There were different occupations for different groups of people for example; there were farmers, merchants, entrepreneurs as well as industrialists.

Each group aimed at obtaining profits from the economic activities they were involved in. However, each group had distinct characteristics from each other. For example, some groups were profit oriented while others are not. Some groups which advocated for the traditional aristocracy fought to gain status privileges while small farmers groups accepted their status without fighting (Wallerstein, p. 394).

The existence of different cultural practices caused many groups to collaborate and form alliances. The alliances were developed from political centers. France is an example of a country that had political system that was based on cultural set up of the people.

As such the Catholicism cultural practices influenced the shape and direction of the politics of the country. The issues about class differences in the society started to gain momentum during the sixteenth century. As such, capitalist class were started and gained a lot of influence to the political arena.

The existence of state made a lot of influence on the extent to which the political, capitalistic and social groups were formed. It is the state which controlled all the activities in a world-economy. However, no state machinery is strong enough to control all the systems and the capitalistic class had no systems to protect it from the gains and losses that would emanate from the entire system. State machineries are strong in some areas and weak in others (Wallerstein, p. 395).

Strong state machinery refers to the existence of strong political, social and economic structures in a state. The existence of political, social and economic groups in a state exerts enough pressure to the state and they influence the decisions made by state leaders. However, state managers as well as the bureaucracies put in place within a state control the interests of different groups that exist within it (Wallerstein, p. 395).

For example, the tax system in a state helps collect revenues which are used to implement the bureaucracies which have been placed in an economy. However, State bureaucracies have many limitations which hinder many processes but they cannot be removed because they are required for the safety of the state machinery (Wallerstein, p. 396).

In a situation where the state machinery is weak, the state leaders and managers play an insignificant role of coordinating all the mechanisms in the economy. As such they have limited legitimate authority to control the activities of the economy.

The existence of these types of leaders has been phased out in modern days because state leaders and managers must be vibrant and they should ensure that every aspect of the economy is operating well. In the modern world, states are governed by profit making ideologies where state managers control all resources to achieve maximum profits possible (Wallerstein, p. 397).

Modern world-systems are made up of world-empires and world-economies and socialistic systems. The existence of modern political, economic and social systems is founded from the traditional world-systems. There exist classes in a world system which defines various economic, political and social classes. the state leaders and managers have the obligation of uniting the various groups in the state to avoid conflicts among the groups.

Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice. Capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century. Michigan, Academic Press, 2010. ISBN 0127859209, 9780127859200.

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Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Thinking about Ideology

contemporary world definition and examples essay

This series, Philosophy in the Contemporary World, is aimed at exploring the various ways philosophy can be used to discuss issues of relevance to our society. There are no methodological, topical, or doctrinal limitations to this series; philosophers of all persuasions are invited to submit posts regarding issues of concern to them. Please contact us here if you would like to submit a post to this series.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about ideology. My thoughts were prompted by remarks by some of my philosopher friends, as well as comments in the mass media, to the effect that Donald Trump does not have an ideology. This claim didn’t sit well with me. I felt that there was something wrong with it, but I didn’t know what, so I decided to dig a little deeper and reconsider what’s meant by “ideology.” I’ve come to some conclusions that might be of interest to readers of this blog.

“Ideology” is an ambiguous term. The meanings of the word are all over the map. That’s obvious from even a cursory look at the scholarly literature. As the political scientist John Gerring remarked,

Condemned time and again for its semantic excesses, for its bulbous unclarity, the concept of ideology remains, against all odds, a central term of social science discourse.

So the answer to the question of whether or not Trump has an ideology is going to depend on what you mean by “ideology.” If you think of ideology as something like a coherent, well-articulated political Weltanschauung , then it’s probably true that Trump doesn’t have an ideology. But I don’t think that’s the most useful way to think about ideology.

If ideology is nothing but a political world-view, then why complicate matters by using the already overburdened term “ideology”? To me, it makes more sense to reserve “ideology” for something that’s not covered by any of the other terms that are currently on the table. That’s why I’m attracted to what’s known as the functional conception of ideology.

Stripped down to its barest bones, the functional approach states that beliefs (and related practices, institutions, representations, etc.) are ideological if they have the function of promoting oppression. [1]

There’s a problem lurking behind this seemingly clear definition. The problem is that “function” can mean a couple of different things. The function of a thing might be its causal role in a system—it’s what a thing does (for instance, the liver functions to maintain normal blood glucose levels). Call this a causal function . Alternatively, the function of a thing might be what a thing is for (the liver is for, among other things, maintaining normal blood glucose levels). Call this a teleological function (or teleofunction , for short).

Consider the parts of a washing machine. The agitator is the part of the machine that moves dirty laundry around in the tub. The agitator has the causal function of agitating laundry, because having that effect how the agitator contributes to the capacity of the machine to wash laundry. The teleofunction of the agitator is to agitate laundry, because that’s what the agitator is for.

Don’t these two boil down to the same thing? No, not really. If the agitator is broken, or there’s a power outage, or there’s some other reason why it can’t agitate the washing, then it no longer produces the right effect and thus loses (temporarily or permanently) its causal function. But it doesn’t lose its teleofunction. A defective agitator still has the purpose of churning the laundry around, because things retain their teleofunctions even if they can’t discharge them. Furthermore, if the causal function of a thing is just the effect that it has, then things can have causal functions accidentally—they produce the effect serendipitously. But this isn’t true of teleofunctions. A thing can’t just happen to have a certain purpose, because purpose is always a product of design.

Now it’s clear that there are two different ways that we can understand what’s meant by the functional conception of ideology. If ideological beliefs have the causal function of promoting oppression, then it follows that there’s no such thing as a “broken” or dysfunctional ideology. Once a belief no longer promotes oppression, it stops being an ideological belief. The causal approach also allows that beliefs can be accidentally ideological—beliefs count as ideological even if they only coincidentally happen to underwrite oppression. But if ideology has the teleofunction of promoting oppression, this leads to quite a different picture. From the teleofunctional perspective, ideological beliefs have the purpose of producing oppression. That’s their raison d’etre. And they have this purpose whether they succeed or fail at bringing oppression about. The teleofunctional approach allows that there are “broken” or causally inefficacious ideologies and it’s incompatible with the idea that beliefs can be accidentally ideological.

I suspect that most philosophers who are attracted to the functional approach think that ideologies have the purpose of promoting oppression, and are comfortable with the idea that there are “broken” or failed ideologies. Anyone who looks at ideology in this way implicitly prefers the teleological approach to the causal one, and I think that they’re right to do so. To my mind, the teleological interpretation of the functional makes a lot more sense than the causal one.

But the analysis can’t stop here. To develop a clear account of ideology, we need to be able to explain how ideologies get their teleofunctions and to explore what this implies about the nature of ideology. To do this, let’s return to the example of the washing machine for a moment, and consider how the agitator gets its teleofunction. The answer is straightforward. It gets its teleofunction from the intentions of its designers. The folks who designed the washing machine did so with the intention of making a part for agitating laundry and that explains why the agitator is for agitating laundry.

This sort of explanation isn’t useful for explaining how ideological beliefs get their teleofunctions, because people who embrace ideological beliefs don’t embrace them in order to promote oppression. They don’t say to themselves, or to others, “I will believe such-and-such because it contributes to the oppression of such-and-such a group.” Rather, they say to themselves, or to others, “I believe such-and-such because it’s true.” People adopt ideological beliefs because they think that these beliefs are true, so it can’t be the case that ideological beliefs get their teleofunctions from the oppressive intentions of those who adopt them.

I grew up in the Deep South at the tail end of the Jim Crow era. Many of the people that I knew and interacted with were marinated in the ideology of white supremacism. These people held beliefs that promoted the oppression of African Americans, but if you were to ask any one of them why they believed that white people are superior to black people, they would sincerely answer that it is just obviously true that whites are the superior race. Something similar could be said of Nazi anti-Semites. People like Hitler and Goebbels didn’t just pretend to believe that Jews are evil. They really believed that it was true. If you don’t get this point, you are missing something very important about ideology.

If we can’t explain how ideologies get their teleofunctions by citing people’s oppressive intentions, then how can we explain it? Fortunately, philosophers of biology have already figured this out. We often talk about the purposes of parts of organisms. Eyes are for seeing, wings are for flying, hearts are for pumping blood, and livers are for regulating blood glucose. Unless you’re a certain kind of theist, you’ve got to rule out the idea that these sorts of purposes are derived from anyone’s intentions. But philosophers of biology—most notably, Ruth Millikan—have an alternative explanation at hand. Millikan argues that to have a non-intentional purpose (or, in her jargon, a “proper function”) a thing must be a member of a reproductive lineage that proliferated because of some effect that was produced by ancestral members of that lineage. It’s this effect fixes the biological purpose of the item. Take eyes. On her analysis, the reason that eyes are for seeing is because (a) eyes are part of a lineage of eyes, and (b) that eyes enabled ancestral organisms to see explains why eyes were reproduced down the generations (this is, of course, a deliberately oversimplified version of a much more complex biological story). Millikan’s analysis can be applied very general: anything that’s part of a lineage (anything that’s a copy, or a copy of a copy) and which was copied because of some effect that it had thereby has a teleofunction. This works for cultural items such as beliefs and practices every bit as much as it works for biological items such as eyes and wings.

So, teleofunctions are fixed historically. The teleofunction of a thing is what its ancestors did to get copied. If we look at ideology through this explanatory lens, we get the following picture. To count as ideological, beliefs must be copies of earlier beliefs, or copies of copies of earlier beliefs. These earlier beliefs were reproduced because they promoted oppression.

Let me illustrate this using the example of white supremacism. The doctrine of white supremacism emerged in the context of the transatlantic slave trade. The belief that Africans are inferior to Europeans, and that Africans benefitted from being enslaved (a racialized version of Aristotle’s doctrine of natural slavery), was reproduced because it legitimated the oppression of black people and thereby enabled the beneficiaries of the ideology to accumulate wealth. White supremacism is an ideology because of these historical facts—historical facts that are widely accepted by scholars of racism. What the teleofunctional approach does is to explain how these historical facts make it the case that white supremacism is an ideology.

This analysis of ideology has a wealth of implications, some of which fly in the face of conventional assumptions about ideology. I’ll restrict myself here to considering only four of them. First, the ideological character of a belief can’t be understood psychologically. You can’t discover that you embrace an ideology by introspection or any other psychological means. That’s because the ideologicity of a belief is not a psychological property of it. To recognize that you embrace an ideology you have to track the social-historical pedigree of your beliefs. Second, beliefs don’t have to be false in order to be ideological. The popular idea that ideology necessarily involves “false consciousness” turns out to be misleading. Ideological beliefs don’t have to misrepresent social reality because it’s possible for true beliefs to spread not because of their truth but rather because they promote oppression. Third, beliefs don’t have to be coherent in order to count as ideological. It’s sufficient that a person’s beliefs, however incoherent, are products of a certain sort of historical trajectory. Finally, a person can hold oppressive beliefs without these beliefs being ideological, and can also hold ideological beliefs without these beliefs having oppressive consequences. Because a belief’s present-day causal powers can come apart from its history, a belief can have oppressive effects even if it did not proliferate because of those effects, and a belief can have proliferated because of its oppressive effects without currently giving rise to any of these effects.

It should now be evident why I reject the claim that Trump does not have an ideology. Even if Trump doesn’t operate with anything like a coherent framework of political beliefs, the fact that many of his beliefs have an oppressive historical pedigree (for example, those expressed in the slogan “Make America Great Again”) is sufficient to make it the case that they are ideological. But perhaps it is incorrect to say that Donald Trump—or anybody else, for that matter—has an ideology. In light of the considerations that I’ve presented here, it might be more accurate to say that ideologies have us , for we are all, to some degree, vessels into which the oppressive forces of history have been poured.

[1] Although I talk about ideological beliefs in this essay, this is shorthand. I don’t think that beliefs can be segregated from the practices that they underpin and that they are underpinned by.

Update: David Livingstone Smith was interviewed about ideology and the politics of fear on “Truth, Politics, and Power” with Neal Conan. You can listen to the show here .

David Livingstone Smith

David Livingstone Smith is professor of philosophy at the University Of New England, in Maine. He is author of three books on dehumanization, the most recent of which, Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization , was published last year by Harvard University Press.

Donald Trump
Editor: Nathan Eckstrand
philosophy of race
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Two questions:

What’s the difference that makes a difference between Millikan on teleofunctions and Dennett on the design stance? Is it just that Millikan is more forthrightly committed to realism about functions? I was struck by this: “Ideological beliefs don’t have to misrepresent social reality because it’s possible for true beliefs to spread not because of their truth but rather because they promote oppression.” If that’s right then there’s a systematic error that runs through Ideologiekritik from Marx through the Frankfurt School and beyond.

But that raises the question, how does one empirically distinguish between “true beliefs spreading because of their truth” and “true beliefs spreading because they promote oppression”? In short, what happens to the Marxian contrast between science and ideology, given this theory of ideology?

For 1, have a look at the Dennett-Millikan exchange in Dennett’s Philosophy: A Comprehensive Assessment. For 2, yes, I think that the whole “false consciousness” thing is a red herring. It is true that ideologies are likely to be false, but they don’t HAVE to be.

Thanks, David, for sharing your insightful weblog. I particularly like this observation you make on the “character” of an ideological belief: “[T]he ideological character of a belief can’t be understood psychologically. You can’t discover that you embrace an ideology by introspection or any other psychological means. That’s because the ideologicity of a belief is not a psychological property of it. To recognize that you embrace an ideology, you have to track the social-historical pedigree of your beliefs.” When students in my Introduction to Ethics class try to deflect a challenging question by replying, “Well, that’s just what I believe,” I remind them that tyrants of all ages have said the same thing. If we don’t take the time to understand where our beliefs come from, why we hold them, or what social consequences they might entail, then our beliefs have the character of being dogmatic or ideological rather than ethically justified.

For me, the practical meaning of “ideology” or “ideological” should be understood in relation to ethics or axiology more broadly as well as in connection with the “social-historical pedigree” of one’s beliefs. The thread that connects the study of ideology to ethics and social history is the use of institutional/governmental power or authority.

Any political office is therefore “ideological” in a functional sense, even if the person in office is ignorant of the genealogical pedigree of his own political beliefs or views. This kind of ignorance may be a benign fault from an individual standpoint, but it is a vice and a danger for anyone who occupies a political office that can exercise power over others.

Thanks for your kind and thoughtful comments, David.

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Globalization

Covering a wide range of distinct political, economic, and cultural trends, the term “globalization” remains crucial to contemporary political and academic debate. In contemporary popular discourse, globalization often functions as little more than a synonym for one or more of the following phenomena: the pursuit of classical liberal (or “free market”) policies in the world economy (“economic liberalization”), the growing dominance of western (or even American) forms of political, economic, and cultural life (“westernization” or “Americanization”), a global political order built on liberal notions of international law (the “global liberal order”), an ominous network of top-down rule by global elites (“globalism” or “global technocracy”), the proliferation of new information technologies (the “Internet Revolution”), as well as the notion that humanity stands at the threshold of realizing one single unified community in which major sources of social conflict have vanished (“global integration”). Globalization is a politically-contested phenomenon about which there are significant disagreements and struggles, with many nationalist and populist movements and leaders worldwide (including Turkey’s Recep Erdoğan, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and former US President Donald Trump) pushing back against what they view as its unappealing features.

Fortunately, recent social theory has formulated a more precise concept of globalization than those typically offered by politicians and pundits. Although sharp differences continue to separate participants in the ongoing debate about the term, most contemporary social theorists endorse the view that globalization refers to fundamental changes in the spatial and temporal contours of social existence, according to which the significance of space or territory undergoes shifts in the face of a no less dramatic acceleration in the temporal structure of crucial forms of human activity. Geographical distance is typically measured in time. As the time necessary to connect distinct geographical locations is reduced, distance or space undergoes compression or “annihilation.” The human experience of space is intimately connected to the temporal structure of those activities by means of which we experience space. Changes in the temporality of human activity inevitably generate altered experiences of space or territory. Theorists of globalization disagree about the precise sources of recent shifts in the spatial and temporal contours of human life. Nonetheless, they generally agree that alterations in humanity’s experiences of space and time are working to undermine the importance of local and even national boundaries in many arenas of human endeavor. Since globalization contains far-reaching implications for virtually every facet of human life, it necessarily suggests the need to rethink key questions of normative political theory.

1. Globalization in the History of Ideas

2. globalization in contemporary social theory, 3. the normative challenges of globalization, other internet resources, related entries.

The term globalization has only become commonplace in the last three decades, and academic commentators who employed the term as late as the 1970s accurately recognized the novelty of doing so (Modelski 1972). At least since the advent of industrial capitalism, however, intellectual discourse has been replete with allusions to phenomena strikingly akin to those that have garnered the attention of recent theorists of globalization. Nineteenth and twentieth-century philosophy, literature, and social commentary include numerous references to an inchoate yet widely shared awareness that experiences of distance and space are inevitably transformed by the emergence of high-speed forms of transportation (for example, rail and air travel) and communication (the telegraph or telephone) that dramatically heighten possibilities for human interaction across existing geographical and political divides (Harvey 1989; Kern 1983). Long before the introduction of the term globalization into recent popular and scholarly debate, the appearance of novel high-speed forms of social activity generated extensive commentary about the compression of space.

Writing in 1839, an English journalist commented on the implications of rail travel by anxiously postulating that as distance was “annihilated, the surface of our country would, as it were, shrivel in size until it became not much bigger than one immense city” (Harvey 1996, 242). A few years later, Heinrich Heine, the émigré German-Jewish poet, captured this same experience when he noted: “space is killed by the railways. I feel as if the mountains and forests of all countries were advancing on Paris. Even now, I can smell the German linden trees; the North Sea’s breakers are rolling against my door” (Schivelbusch 1978, 34). Another young German émigré, the socialist theorist Karl Marx, in 1848 formulated the first theoretical explanation of the sense of territorial compression that so fascinated his contemporaries. In Marx’s account, the imperatives of capitalist production inevitably drove the bourgeoisie to “nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, and establish connections everywhere.” The juggernaut of industrial capitalism constituted the most basic source of technologies resulting in the annihilation of space, helping to pave the way for “intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of nations,” in contrast to a narrow-minded provincialism that had plagued humanity for untold eons (Marx 1848, 476). Despite their ills as instruments of capitalist exploitation, Marx argued, new technologies that increased possibilities for human interaction across borders ultimately represented a progressive force in history. They provided the necessary infrastructure for a cosmopolitan future socialist civilization, while simultaneously functioning in the present as indispensable organizational tools for a working class destined to undertake a revolution no less oblivious to traditional territorial divisions than the system of capitalist exploitation it hoped to dismantle.

European intellectuals have hardly been alone in their fascination with the experience of territorial compression, as evinced by the key role played by the same theme in early twentieth-century American thought. In 1904, the literary figure Henry Adams diagnosed the existence of a “law of acceleration,” fundamental to the workings of social development, in order to make sense of the rapidly changing spatial and temporal contours of human activity. Modern society could only be properly understood if the seemingly irrepressible acceleration of basic technological and social processes was given a central place in social and historical analysis (Adams 1931 [1904]). John Dewey argued in 1927 that recent economic and technological trends implied the emergence of a “new world” no less noteworthy than the opening up of America to European exploration and conquest in 1492. For Dewey, the invention of steam, electricity, and the telephone offered formidable challenges to relatively static and homogeneous forms of local community life that had long represented the main theatre for most human activity. Economic activity increasingly exploded the confines of local communities to a degree that would have stunned our historical predecessors, for example, while the steamship, railroad, automobile, and air travel considerably intensified rates of geographical mobility. Dewey went beyond previous discussions of the changing temporal and spatial contours of human activity, however, by suggesting that the compression of space posed fundamental questions for democracy. Dewey observed that small-scale political communities (for example, the New England township), a crucial site for the exercise of effective democratic participation, seemed ever more peripheral to the great issues of an interconnected world. Increasingly dense networks of social ties across borders rendered local forms of self-government ineffective. Dewey wondered, “How can a public be organized, we may ask, when literally it does not stay in place?” (Dewey 1927, 140). To the extent that democratic citizenship minimally presupposes the possibility of action in concert with others, how might citizenship be sustained in a social world subject to ever more astonishing possibilities for movement and mobility? New high-speed technologies attributed a shifting and unstable character to social life, as demonstrated by increased rates of change and turnover in many arenas of activity (most important perhaps, the economy) directly affected by them, and the relative fluidity and inconstancy of social relations there. If citizenship requires some modicum of constancy and stability in social life, however, did not recent changes in the temporal and spatial conditions of human activity bode poorly for political participation? How might citizens come together and act in concert when contemporary society’s “mania for motion and speed” made it difficult for them even to get acquainted with one another, let alone identify objects of common concern? (Dewey 1927, 140).

The unabated proliferation of high-speed technologies is probably the main source of the numerous references in intellectual life since 1950 to the annihilation of distance. The Canadian cultural critic Marshall McLuhan made the theme of a technologically based “global village,” generated by social “acceleration at all levels of human organization,” the centerpiece of an anxiety-ridden analysis of new media technologies in the 1960s (McLuhan 1964, 103). Arguing in the 1970s and 1980s that recent shifts in the spatial and temporal contours of social life exacerbated authoritarian political trends, the French social critic Paul Virilio seemed to confirm many of Dewey’s darkest worries about the decay of democracy. According to his analysis, the high-speed imperatives of modern warfare and weapons systems strengthened the executive and debilitated representative legislatures. The compression of territory thereby paved the way for executive-centered emergency government (Virilio 1977). But it was probably the German philosopher Martin Heidegger who most clearly anticipated contemporary debates about globalization. Heidegger not only described the “abolition of distance” as a constitutive feature of our contemporary condition, but he linked recent shifts in spatial experience to no less fundamental alterations in the temporality of human activity: “All distances in time and space are shrinking. Man now reaches overnight, by places, places which formerly took weeks and months of travel” (Heidegger 1950, 165). Heidegger also accurately prophesied that new communication and information technologies would soon spawn novel possibilities for dramatically extending the scope of virtual reality : “Distant sites of the most ancient cultures are shown on film as if they stood this very moment amidst today’s street traffic…The peak of this abolition of every possibility of remoteness is reached by television, which will soon pervade and dominate the whole machinery of communication” (Heidegger 1950, 165). Heidegger’s description of growing possibilities for simultaneity and instantaneousness in human experience ultimately proved no less apprehensive than the views of many of his predecessors. In his analysis, the compression of space increasingly meant that from the perspective of human experience “everything is equally far and equally near.” Instead of opening up new possibilities for rich and multi-faceted interaction with events once distant from the purview of most individuals, the abolition of distance tended to generate a “uniform distanceless” in which fundamentally distinct objects became part of a bland homogeneous experiential mass (Heidegger 1950, 166). The loss of any meaningful distinction between “nearness” and “distance” contributed to a leveling down of human experience, which in turn spawned an indifference that rendered human experience monotonous and one-dimensional.

Since the mid-1980s, social theorists have moved beyond the relatively underdeveloped character of previous reflections on the compression or annihilation of space to offer a rigorous conception of globalization. To be sure, major disagreements remain about the precise nature of the causal forces behind globalization, with David Harvey (1989 1996) building directly on Marx’s pioneering explanation of globalization, while others (Giddens 19990; Held, McGrew, Goldblatt & Perraton 1999) question the exclusive focus on economic factors characteristic of the Marxist approach. Nonetheless, a consensus about the basic rudiments of the concept of globalization appears to be emerging.

First, recent analysts associate globalization with deterritorialization , according to which a growing variety of social activities takes place irrespective of the geographical location of participants. As Jan Aart Scholte observes, “global events can – via telecommunication, digital computers, audiovisual media, rocketry and the like – occur almost simultaneously anywhere and everywhere in the world” (Scholte 1996, 45). Globalization refers to increased possibilities for action between and among people in situations where latitudinal and longitudinal location seems immaterial to the social activity at hand. Even though geographical location remains crucial for many undertakings (for example, farming to satisfy the needs of a local market), deterritorialization manifests itself in many social spheres. Business people on different continents now engage in electronic commerce; academics make use of the latest Internet conferencing equipment to organize seminars in which participants are located at disparate geographical locations; the Internet allows people to communicate instantaneously with each other notwithstanding vast geographical distances separating them. Territory in the sense of a traditional sense of a geographically identifiable location no longer constitutes the whole of “social space” in which human activity takes places. In this initial sense of the term, globalization refers to the spread of new forms of non-territorial social activity (Ruggie 1993; Scholte 2000).

Second, theorists conceive of globalization as linked to the growth of social interconnectedness across existing geographical and political boundaries. In this view, deterritorialization is a crucial facet of globalization. Yet an exclusive focus on it would be misleading. Since the vast majority of human activities is still tied to a concrete geographical location, the more decisive facet of globalization concerns the manner in which distant events and forces impact on local and regional endeavors (Tomlinson 1999, 9). For example, this encyclopedia might be seen as an example of a deterritorialized social space since it allows for the exchange of ideas in cyberspace. The only prerequisite for its use is access to the Internet. Although substantial inequalities in Internet access still exist, use of the encyclopedia is in principle unrelated to any specific geographical location. However, the reader may very well be making use of the encyclopedia as a supplement to course work undertaken at a school or university. That institution is not only located at a specific geographical juncture, but its location is probably essential for understanding many of its key attributes: the level of funding may vary according to the state or region where the university is located, or the same academic major might require different courses and readings at a university in China, for example, than in Argentina or Norway. Globalization refers to those processes whereby geographically distant events and decisions impact to a growing degree on “local” university life. For example, the insistence by powerful political leaders in wealthy countries that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or World Bank recommend to Latin and South American countries that they commit themselves to a particular set of economic policies might result in poorly paid teachers and researchers as well as large, understaffed lecture classes in São Paolo or Lima; the latest innovations in information technology from a computer research laboratory in India could quickly change the classroom experience of students in British Columbia or Tokyo. Globalization refers “to processes of change which underpin a transformation in the organization of human affairs by linking together and expanding human activity across regions and continents” (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt & Perraton 1999, 15). Globalization in this sense is a matter of degree since any given social activity might influence events more or less faraway: even though a growing number of activities seems intermeshed with events in distant continents, certain human activities remain primarily local or regional in scope. Also, the magnitude and impact of the activity might vary: geographically removed events could have a relatively minimal or a far more extensive influence on events at a particular locality. Finally, we might consider the degree to which interconnectedness across frontiers is no longer merely haphazard but instead predictable and regularized (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt & Perraton 1999).

Third, globalization must also include reference to the speed or velocity of social activity. Deterritorialization and interconnectedness initially seem chiefly spatial in nature. Yet it is easy to see how these spatial shifts are directly tied to the acceleration of crucial forms of social activity. As we observed above in our discussion of the conceptual forerunners to the present-day debate on globalization, the proliferation of high-speed transportation, communication, and information technologies constitutes the most immediate source for the blurring of geographical and territorial boundaries that prescient observers have diagnosed at least since the mid-nineteenth century. The compression of space presupposes rapid-fire forms of technology; shifts in our experiences of territory depend on concomitant changes in the temporality of human action. High-speed technology only represents the tip of the iceberg, however. The linking together and expanding of social activities across borders is predicated on the possibility of relatively fast flows and movements of people, information, capital, and goods. Without these fast flows, it is difficult to see how distant events could possibly posses the influence they now enjoy. High-speed technology plays a pivotal role in the velocity of human affairs. But many other factors contribute to the overall pace and speed of social activity. The organizational structure of the modern capitalist factory offers one example; certain contemporary habits and inclinations, including the “mania for motion and speed” described by Dewey, represent another. Deterritorialization and the expansion of interconnectedness are intimately tied to the acceleration of social life, while social acceleration itself takes many different forms (Eriksen 2001; Rosa 2013). Here as well, we can easily see why globalization is always a matter of degree. The velocity or speed of flows, movements, and interchanges across borders can vary no less than their magnitude, impact, or regularity.

Fourth, even though analysts disagree about the causal forces that generate globalization, most agree that globalization should be conceived as a relatively long-term process . The triad of deterritorialization, interconnectedness, and social acceleration hardly represents a sudden or recent event in contemporary social life. Globalization is a constitutive feature of the modern world, and modern history includes many examples of globalization (Giddens 1990). As we saw above, nineteenth-century thinkers captured at least some of its core features; the compression of territoriality composed an important element of their lived experience. Nonetheless, some contemporary theorists believe that globalization has taken a particularly intense form in recent decades, as innovations in communication, transportation, and information technologies (for example, computerization) have generated stunning new possibilities for simultaneity and instantaneousness (Harvey 1989). In this view, present-day intellectual interest in the problem of globalization can be linked directly to the emergence of new high-speed technologies that tend to minimize the significance of distance and heighten possibilities for deterritorialization and social interconnectedness. Although the intense sense of territorial compression experienced by so many of our contemporaries is surely reminiscent of the experiences of earlier generations, some contemporary writers nonetheless argue that it would be mistaken to obscure the countless ways in which ongoing transformations of the spatial and temporal contours of human experience are especially far-reaching. While our nineteenth-century predecessors understandably marveled at the railroad or the telegraph, a comparatively vast array of social activities is now being transformed by innovations that accelerate social activity and considerably deepen longstanding trends towards deterritorialization and social interconnectedness. To be sure, the impact of deterritorialization, social interconnectedness, and social acceleration are by no means universal or uniform: migrant workers engaging in traditional forms of low-wage agricultural labor in the fields of southern California, for example, probably operate in a different spatial and temporal context than the Internet entrepreneurs of San Francisco or Seattle. Distinct assumptions about space and time often coexist uneasily during a specific historical juncture (Gurvitch 1964). Nonetheless, the impact of recent technological innovations is profound, and even those who do not have a job directly affected by the new technology are shaped by it in innumerable ways as citizens and consumers (Eriksen 2001, 16).

Fifth, globalization should be understood as a multi-pronged process, since deterritorialization, social interconnectedness, and acceleration manifest themselves in many different (economic, political, and cultural) arenas of social activity. Although each facet of globalization is linked to the core components of globalization described above, each consists of a complex and relatively autonomous series of empirical developments, requiring careful examination in order to disclose the causal mechanisms specific to it (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt & Perraton 1999). Each manifestation of globalization also generates distinct conflicts and dislocations. For example, there is substantial empirical evidence that cross-border flows and exchanges (of goods, people, information, etc.), as well as the emergence of directly transnational forms of production by means of which a single commodity is manufactured simultaneously in distant corners of the globe, are gaining in prominence (Castells 1996). High-speed technologies and organizational approaches are employed by transnationally operating firms, the so-called “global players,” with great effectiveness. The emergence of “around-the-world, around-the-clock” financial markets, where major cross-border financial transactions are made in cyberspace at the blink of an eye, represents a familiar example of the economic face of globalization. Global financial markets also challenge traditional attempts by liberal democratic nation-states to rein in the activities of bankers, spawning understandable anxieties about the growing power and influence of financial markets over democratically elected representative institutions. In political life, globalization takes a distinct form, though the general trends towards deterritorialization, interconnectedness across borders, and the acceleration of social activity are fundamental here as well. Transnational movements, in which activists employ rapid-fire communication technologies to join forces across borders in combating ills that seem correspondingly transnational in scope (for example, the depletion of the ozone layer), offer an example of political globalization (Tarrow 2005). Another would be the tendency towards ambitious supranational forms of social and economic lawmaking and regulation, where individual nation-states cooperate to pursue regulation whose jurisdiction transcends national borders no less than the cross-border economic processes that undermine traditional modes of nation state-based regulation. Political scientists typically describe such supranational organizations (the European Union, for example, or United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA) as important manifestations of political and legal globalization. The proliferation of supranational organizations has been no less conflict-laden than economic globalization, however. Critics insist that local, regional, and national forms of self-government are being supplanted by insufficiently democratic forms of global governance remote from the needs of ordinary citizens (Maus 2006; Streeck 2016). In contrast, defenders describe new forms of supranational legal and political decision as indispensable forerunners to more inclusive and advanced forms of self-government, even as they worry about existing democratic deficits and technocratic traits (Habermas 2015).

The wide-ranging impact of globalization on human existence means that it necessarily touches on many basic philosophical and political-theoretical questions. At a minimum, globalization suggests that academic philosophers in the rich countries of the West should pay closer attention to the neglected voices and intellectual traditions of peoples with whom our fate is intertwined in ever more intimate ways (Dallmayr 1998). In this section, however, we focus exclusively on the immediate challenges posed by globalization to normative political theory.

Western political theory has traditionally presupposed the existence of territorially bound communities, whose borders can be more or less neatly delineated from those of other communities. In this vein, the influential liberal political philosopher John Rawls described bounded communities whose fundamental structure consisted of “self-sufficient schemes of cooperation for all the essential purposes of human life” (Rawls 1993, 301). Although political and legal thinkers historically have exerted substantial energy in formulating defensible normative models of relations between states (Nardin and Mapel 1992), like Rawls they typically have relied on a clear delineation of “domestic” from “foreign” affairs. In addition, they have often argued that the domestic arena represents a normatively privileged site, since fundamental normative ideals and principles (for example, liberty or justice) are more likely to be successfully realized in the domestic arena than in relations among states. According to one influential strand within international relations theory, relations between states are more-or-less lawless. Since the achievement of justice or democracy, for example, presupposes an effective political sovereign, the lacuna of sovereignty at the global level means that justice and democracy are necessarily incomplete and probably unattainable there. In this conventional realist view of international politics, core features of the modern system of sovereign states relegate the pursuit of western political thought’s most noble normative goals primarily to the domestic arena (Mearsheimer 2003.) Significantly, some prominent mid-century proponents of international realism rejected this position’s deep hostility to international law and supranational political organization, in part because they presciently confronted challenges that we now typically associate with intensified globalization (Scheuerman 2011).

Globalization poses a fundamental challenge to each of these traditional assumptions. It is no longer self-evident that nation-states can be described as “self-sufficient schemes of cooperation for all the essential purposes of human life” in the context of intense deterritorialization and the spread and intensification of social relations across borders. The idea of a bounded community seems suspect given recent shifts in the spatio-temporal contours of human life. Even the most powerful and privileged political units are now subject to increasingly deterritorialized activities (for example, global financial markets or digitalized mass communication) over which they have limited control, and they find themselves nested in webs of social relations whose scope explodes the confines of national borders. Of course, in much of human history social relations have transcended existing political divides. However, globalization implies a profound quantitative increase in and intensification of social relations of this type. While attempts to offer a clear delineation of the “domestic” from the “foreign” probably made sense at an earlier juncture in history, this distinction no longer accords with core developmental trends in many arenas of social activity. As the possibility of a clear division between domestic and foreign affairs dissipates, the traditional tendency to picture the domestic arena as a privileged site for the realization of normative ideals and principles becomes problematic as well. As an empirical matter, the decay of the domestic-foreign frontier seems highly ambivalent, since it might easily pave the way for the decay of the more attractive attributes of domestic political life: as “foreign” affairs collapse inward onto “domestic” political life, the insufficiently lawful contours of the former make disturbing inroads onto the latter (Scheuerman 2004). As a normative matter, however, the disintegration of the domestic-foreign divide probably calls for us to consider, to a greater extent than ever before, how our fundamental normative commitments about political life can be effectively achieved on a global scale. If we take the principles of justice or democracy seriously, for example, it is no longer self-evident that the domestic arena is the exclusive or perhaps even main site for their pursuit, since domestic and foreign affairs are now deeply and irrevocably intermeshed. In a globalizing world, the lack of democracy or justice in the global setting necessarily impacts deeply on the pursuit of justice or democracy at home. Indeed, it may no longer be possible to achieve our normative ideals at home without undertaking to do so transnationally as well.

To claim, for example, that questions of distributive justice have no standing in the making of foreign affairs represents at best empirical naivete about economic globalization. At worst, it constitutes a disingenuous refusal to grapple with the fact that the material existence of those fortunate enough to live in the rich countries is inextricably tied to the material status of the vast majority of humanity residing in poor and underdeveloped regions. Growing material inequality spawned by economic globalization is linked to growing domestic material inequality in the rich democracies (Falk 1999; Pogge 2002). Similarly, in the context of global warming and the destruction of the ozone layer, a dogmatic insistence on the sanctity of national sovereignty risks constituting a cynical fig leaf for irresponsible activities whose impact extends well beyond the borders of those countries most directly responsible. Global warming and ozone-depletion cry out for ambitious forms of transnational cooperation and regulation, and the refusal by the rich democracies to accept this necessity implies a failure to take the process of globalization seriously when doing so conflicts with their immediate material interests. Although it might initially seem to be illustrative of clever Realpolitik on the part of the culpable nations to ward off strict cross-border environmental regulation, their stubbornness is probably short-sighted: global warming and ozone depletion will affect the children of Americans who drive gas-guzzling SUVs or use environmentally unsound air-conditioning as well as the future generations of South Africa or Afghanistan (Cerutti 2007). If we keep in mind that environmental degradation probably impacts negatively on democratic politics (for example, by undermining its legitimacy and stability), the failure to pursue effective transnational environmental regulation potentially undermines democracy at home as well as abroad.

Philosophers and political theorists have eagerly addressed the normative and political implications of our globalizing world. A lively debate about the possibility of achieving justice at the global level pits representatives of cosmopolitanism against myriad communitarians, nationalists, realists, and others who privilege the nation-state and moral, political, and social ties resting on it (Lieven 2020; Tamir 2019). In contrast, cosmopolitans tend to underscore our universal obligations to those who reside faraway and with whom we may share little in the way of language, custom, or culture, oftentimes arguing that claims to “justice at home” can and should be applied elsewhere as well (Beardsworth 2011; Beitz 1999; Caney 2006; Wallace-Brown & Held 2010). In this way, cosmopolitanism builds directly on the universalistic impulses of modern moral and political thought. Cosmopolitanism’s critics dispute the view that our obligations to foreigners possess the same status as those to members of particular local and national communities of which we remain very much a part. They by no means deny the need to redress global inequality, for example, but they often express skepticism in the face of cosmopolitanism’s tendency to defend significant legal and political reforms as necessary to address the inequities of a planet where millions of people a year die of starvation or curable diseases (Miller 2007; 2013; Nagel 2005). Nor do cosmopolitanism’s critics necessarily deny that the process of globalization is real, though some of them suggest that its impact has been grossly exaggerated (Kymlicka 1999; Nussbaum et al . 1996; Streeck 2016). Nonetheless, they doubt that humanity has achieved a rich or sufficiently articulated sense of a common fate such that far-reaching attempts to achieve greater global justice (for example, substantial redistribution from the rich to poor) could prove successful. Cosmopolitans not only counter with a flurry of universalist and egalitarian moral arguments, but they also accuse their opponents of obscuring the threat posed by globalization to the particular forms of national community whose ethical primacy communitarians, nationalists, and others endorse. From the cosmopolitan perspective, the tendency to favor moral and political obligations to fellow members of the nation-state represents a misguided and increasingly reactionary nostalgia for a rapidly decaying constellation of political practices and institutions.

A similar divide characterizes the ongoing debate about the prospects of democratic institutions at the global level. In a cosmopolitan mode, Daniele Archibugi (2008) and the late David Held (1995) have argued that globalization requires the extension of liberal democratic institutions (including the rule of law and elected representative institutions) to the transnational level. Nation state-based liberal democracy is poorly equipped to deal with deleterious side effects of present-day globalization such as ozone depletion or burgeoning material inequality. In addition, a growing array of genuinely transnational forms of activity calls out for correspondingly transnational modes of liberal democratic decision-making. According to this model, “local” or “national” matters should remain under the auspices of existing liberal democratic institutions. But in those areas where deterritorialization and social interconnectedness across national borders are especially striking, new transnational institutions (for example, cross-border referenda), along with a dramatic strengthening and further democratization of existing forms of supranational authority (in particular, the United Nations), are necessary if we are to assure that popular sovereignty remains an effective principle. In the same spirit, cosmopolitans debate whether a loose system of global “governance” suffices, or instead cosmopolitan ideals require something along the lines of a global “government” or state (Cabrera 2011; Scheuerman 2014). Jürgen Habermas, a prominent cosmopolitan-minded theorist, has tried to formulate a defense of the European Union that conceives of it as a key stepping stone towards supranational democracy. If the EU is to help succeed in salvaging the principle of popular sovereignty in a world where the decay of nation state-based democracy makes democracy vulnerable, the EU will need to strengthen its elected representative organs and better guarantee the civil, political, and social and economic rights of all Europeans (Habermas 2001, 58–113; 2009). Representing a novel form of postnational constitutionalism, it potentially offers some broader lessons for those hoping to save democratic constitutionalism under novel global conditions. Despite dire threats to the EU posed by nationalist and populist movements, Habermas and other cosmopolitan-minded intellectuals believe that it can be effectively reformed and preserved (Habermas 2012).

In opposition to Archibugi, Held, Habermas, and other cosmopolitans, skeptics underscore the purportedly utopian character of such proposals, arguing that democratic politics presupposes deep feelings of trust, commitment, and belonging that remain uncommon at the postnational and global levels. Largely non-voluntary commonalities of belief, history, and custom compose necessary preconditions of any viable democracy, and since these commonalities are missing beyond the sphere of the nation-state, global or cosmopolitan democracy is doomed to fail (Archibugi, Held, and Koehler 1998; Lieven 2020). Critics inspired by realist international theory argue that cosmopolitanism obscures the fundamentally pluralistic, dynamic, and conflictual nature of political life on our divided planet. Notwithstanding its pacific self-understanding, cosmopolitan democracy inadvertently opens the door to new and even more horrible forms of political violence. Cosmpolitanism’s universalistic normative discourse not only ignores the harsh and unavoidably agonistic character of political life, but it also tends to serve as a convenient ideological cloak for terrible wars waged by political blocs no less self-interested than the traditional nation state (Zolo 1997, 24).

Ongoing political developments suggest that such debates are of more than narrow scholarly interest. Until recently, some of globalization’s key prongs seemed destined to transform human affairs in seemingly permanent ways: economic globalization, as well as the growth of a panoply of international and global political and legal institutions, continued to transpire at a rapid rate. Such institutional developments, it should be noted, were interpreted by some cosmopolitan theorists as broadly corroborating their overall normative aspirations. With the resurgence of nationalist and populist political movements, many of which diffusely (and sometimes misleadingly) target elements of globalization, globalization’s future prospects seem increasingly uncertain. For example, with powerful political leaders regularly making disdainful remarks about the UN and EU, it seems unclear whether one of globalization’s most striking features, i.e., enhanced political and legal decision-making “beyond the nation state,” will continue unabated. Tragically perhaps, the failure to manage economic globalization so as to minimize avoidable inequalities and injustices has opened the door to a nationalist and populist backlash, with many people now ready to embrace politicians and movements promising to push back against “free trade,” relatively porous borders (for migrants and refugees), and other manifestations of globalization (Stiglitz 2018). Even if it seems unlikely that nationalists or populists can succeed in fully halting, let alone reversing, structural trends towards deterritorialization, intensified interconnectedness, and social acceleration, they may manage to reshape them in ways that cosmopolitans are likely to find alarming. Whether or not nationalists and populists can successfully respond to many fundamental global challenges (e.g., climate change or nuclear proliferation), however, remains far less likely.

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Contemporary Globalization and Its Impact

Are you looking for contemporary globalization essay examples? This paper explores contemporary globalization, its features, issues, and impacts. What is contemporary globalization? Find out the answer with the help of our essay sample!

What is contemporary globalization: Introduction

Arguments regarding contemporary globalization, globalization impact on the american worker, works cited.

As Shakespeare predicted a long time ago, the world is shrinking into a small global scene where everyone has a role to play. The massive technological improvements in information and mass communication have made space boundaries increasingly permeable. The best word to describe these occurrences is globalization. Writers have defined globalization as the uniformity, synchronization, and standardization of the technological and commercial world (Diminitrova 9).

Globalization is a subject that is multidimensional and of various domains. This makes it complicated to define the term provoking debates among scholars in the different fields. This paper intends to look into the main arguments to explain contemporary globalization. Furthermore, it will explain how globalization has impacted the American workers.

Globalization has been equated with westernization. However, other individuals view globalization as a process of hybridization that results in global mélange. The interpretation of globalization has been heavily debated. They are defining globalization as tricky as different fields differ in their performance. For instance, in economics, globalization is the process of economic interaction and internationalization accompanied by the spread of capitalist market relations.

In the political world, globalization is the increased density of interstate businesses and the expansion of global politics, whilst in sociology, globalization is the global social change and the emergence of “world society” and the emphasis on global communications and how they influence culture and identity. Evidently, globalization is a subject that is multidimensional and of various domains. This makes it a challenge to define the term provoking debates among scholars in the different fields (Vallas and Wharton 19).

Globalization contemporary debates occur because the term has been used in so many different contexts and by various individuals for other purposes, making it difficult to ascertain what is actually at stake in its problem and the functionality of the term and to what extent it impacts the contemporary theory and politics. Globalization has become a controversial phenomenon. It is not a static state but rather a historical process or set of functions with its own logic and dynamics consisting of divergent waves.

Globalization also has its periodization, driving forces, and actors. Contemporary globalization is the product of the interaction of social, political, economic, and cultural transformations. It results from paradoxical simultaneous multiple changes. Furthermore, the significant globalization impetuses are the close interaction between market capitalism and industrialization. It is the process where a myriad of actors participate, with each of them having a particular function guided by proper interests and strategy to attain them (Vallas and Wharton 9).

According to economic theory, globalization provides large-scale economic benefits. It does so through the provision of specialization in production in the various nations, enhancing trade and the economic output both in the region and abroad and, in so doing, boosts the living standards of the individuals of the country. Additionally, competition from economic integration is seen to make nations, including the US economy, more efficient and more productive.

Also, global markets present a variety of products to the consumers and help in the reduction of prices of goods or services, thereby keeping inflation in check. A study conducted by Waldinger and Michael estimated that since the integration of the global economy, it had generated an economic gain of between $500 billion and $1 trillion to the US economy annually. Similar gains of globalization have also been reported in other developing countries, lifting hundreds of millions of impoverished people.

Globalization has significantly impacted the American economy and the future of its companies, workers, and families. The increased integration with the world has made the nation and those of other nation’s economies to be more productive. To be precise, globalization has translated into an absolute increase in living standards (Waldinger and Michael 6).

However, despite the beneficial results obtained by the US government, it is not always a win-win situation for all Americans. For instance, the rising trade with low wages in the third world increases concerns of job losses and fears to the American employees that their employers will lower their paychecks to achieve a global competitive advantage. Globalization and the massive improvement in information technology and its revolution have expanded international trade in a wide range of services.

Additionally, it has resulted in an increased number of US white-collar jobs outsourcing to fit in the global completion. Furthermore, globalization has been accompanied by stress and anxieties as new competitors arise and compete for market share. Such shifts in the market structure impose costs on workers and businessmen, which could result in increased trades with low wages (Waldinger and Michael 14).

The wave of globalization is supported by three broad trends. These include:

Technology which has sharply reduced the cost of communication and transportation, which had divided markets
The dramatic increase in the world supply of labor which is engaged in international trade and
Government policies that have continuously loosened the barriers to trade and investment.

Recent research is looking into whether the trends are creating new vulnerabilities for US works. Exposures for workers can be due to the underlined dynamic employment patterns originating from the increased need to be internationally competitive in the foreign markets. Other sources of vulnerabilities maybe those arising from a declining wage share of national income and in rising income inequalities, among other things. Such trends in the US can be the reservoirs of economic insecurity for many Americans and, consequently, result in weakening of public support for US engagement in the world economy (Waldinger and Michael 8).

To strengthen public support for globalization, it requires conventional wisdom, particularly legitimate concerns to those who are losing in the contemporary economic environment and how they will be addressed. More focus should be placed on what extent the losers will be compensated. This is because the relationship between globalization and worker insecurity is very complicated and uncertain. Therefore, a number of considerations and approaches should be put into place, such as a review of US trade policies and how they will be integrated into the open world market and globalization. The systems of the most significant importance are those involving education, tax, and trade (Diminitrova 9).

Globalization has a range of merits and demerits in the US economy. Therefore, policies should be designed and implemented in a way to ensure that the American worker is protected without undermining the benefits of globalization. According to many economists, such policies should inhibit the dynamism of labor and capital marketers or create any barrier to international markets, of importance, understanding that technology and trade are the primary sources to overall growth and elevation of US living standards.

Dimitrova, Anna. Challenging globalization- the contemporary sociological debate about globalization . London, UK: Centre International de Formation Europeenne, 2002. Print.

Vallas, Steven, and Wharton, Alex. The sociology of Work: Structures and inequalities . New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.

Waldinger, Roger, and Michael, Lichter. How the other half works: Immigration and the social organization of labor . Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Print.

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Environmental Issues. One of the biggest contemporary issues is environmental problems. These include climate change, pollution, and loss of biodiversity. Climate change is causing extreme weather events, like hurricanes and droughts. Pollution is harming our air, water, and land. Loss of biodiversity means many animal and plant species are ...
Contemporary World. Lesson 1
ENJOY contemporary world objectives: at the end of this video lecture you will be able to: understand the meaning of globalization identify the different ... DEFINITION OF GLOBALIZATION. Globalization (Borderless) as defined by the World Health Organization It is the increased interconnectedness and interdependence of people and countries ...
Modern World System Definition Essay
According to Wallerstein (1976) a modern world-system may be defined as a social system that is composed of limitations, organizations, groups of individuals, rules and regulations and has unity among different groups. Get a custom essay on Modern World System Definition. 191 writers online.
Contemporary World
Contemporary World. The contemporary world is an ever-changing mix of social and political changes. While religious, political, and ethnic conflicts continue, we are currently living in one of the most peaceful eras in the history of the planet. Challenges of the 21st century include emerging technologies, health care, overpopulation, climate ...
Contemporary World History
Contemporary history is generally defined as beginning in 1946 and continuing to the present. In that time, the world has been almost continuously at war. The and the existed alongside the waged ...
Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Thinking about Ideology
David Livingstone Smith. This series, Philosophy in the Contemporary World, is aimed at exploring the various ways philosophy can be used to discuss issues of relevance to our society. There are no methodological, topical, or doctrinal limitations to this series; philosophers of all persuasions are invited to submit posts regarding issues of ...
THE Contemporary World ( Essay)
The Contemporary World subject as the course description says, it introduces students to the contemporary world by examining the multifaceted phenomenon of globalization. The aim is to help students become more interested in contemporary world problems and issues that all societies are currently facing, develop competencies and construct knowledge.
Contemporary world
the circumstances and ideas of the present age
Of the contemporary global order, crisis, and change
In this short essay, we focus on the contemporary global order's foundations as well as on current international challenges to it. We argue that the present global order, which has its origins in the post-war world, rests on three foundational ordering principles: national sovereignty, economic liberalism and inclusive, rule-based ...
Globalization
In this initial sense of the term, globalization refers to the spread of new forms of non-territorial social activity (Ruggie 1993; Scholte 2000). Second, theorists conceive of globalization as linked to the growth of social interconnectedness across existing geographical and political boundaries. In this view, deterritorialization is a crucial ...
Contemporary Globalization and Its Impact
Globalization also has its periodization, driving forces, and actors. Contemporary globalization is the product of the interaction of social, political, economic, and cultural transformations. It results from paradoxical simultaneous multiple changes. Furthermore, the significant globalization impetuses are the close interaction between market ...

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