Public Opinion and the Global Culture - Essay Example

Another definition, by Angell (1991, in Beerkens, 2006), stresses the social dynamic: “The world economy has become so highly interdependent as to make national independence an anachronism, especially in financial markets. The interdependence is driven by science, technology and economics – the forces of modernity; and these forces, not governments, determined international relations. Thanks to this interdependence, war between nations is an impossibility.” Beck (2000, p. 86), on the other hand, emphasizes the political implications: “Globalization – however the word is understood – implied the weakening of state sovereignty and state structures.

” Millberg (1998) focuses on the economic: “Globalization is dominated by transnational firms and financial institutions, operating independently of national boundaries or domestic economic situations.” And most perceptively, by Cerny (1999), on the state promoting globalization: “However, this does not mean that, once the genie is out of the bottle, globalization is reversible.” Taking the layman’s common understanding of the term, the globalization process has been celebrated worldwide as the inevitable key to international economic progress.

Less publicized are its negative repercussions, both economically and culturally, upon populations adversely affected by the movement of goods and capital from wealthy countries to those less wealthy, and movement of groups of people from the poorer, crowded nations to those rich importers of manpower and expertise. Landis (2008) notes that the large influx of people of divergent cultures and backgrounds cause crowding into urban centers, creating social tensions and sometimes open inter-ethnic conflict between host populations and the new entrants.

Globalization disrupts local communities and livelihoods. Bathelt and Kappes (2008) examined the merged chemicals firm Aventis, from the German Hoechst and the French