Globalisation
From Geography
The ideal type of late-modern life forms and globalized societies (temporal and spatial disembeddness) is mentioned by Benno Werlen in opposite to the ideal type of traditional life forms and regional societies. The main characteristics of late-modern life forms and globalized societies are:
1. Everyday routines sustain ontological security
2. Globally observable cultures, life forms, and lifestyles
3. Production and valued work determine social positions
4. Abstract systems (money, writing, and expert systems) enable mediated social relations over enormous distances
5. Worlwide communication systems
6. Global village as anonymous context of experience
Late-modern life forms vs. Traditional regionalised life forms
The spatial clustering and embeddedness of traditional life forms is replaced by global interconnections and disembedding mechanisms. The actual and potential reach of actors is stretched to a global dimension. The late-modern life forms are the basis of the globalization process, which most important disembedding mechanisms are money, writing and technical artifacts. The late-modern life forms ask for (or enable) a high level of mobility and together with an individual freedom of movement this produces a mixing of formerly locally fixed cultures. This mixing of cultures, combined with world-wide communication systems, enables a diffusion of information and information storing that is not dependent on the presence of the real actors. Conclusion: a spatial characterization of cultures and life forms is becoming more and more problematic.
Example
It is not possible to provide an example of 'a globalisation'. Globalisation is a proces that influences the whole world and is always going on. For this reason, there will be an example of a result of globalisation be given. Distributing McDonalds all over the world can be seen as a result of globalisation. Comparative chains like McDonalds also operate worldwide. This can be seen as an example: "The proces of becoming worldwide".
References:
Werlen, B. (1995) Sozialgeographie Alltäglicher Regionalisierungen. Band 1: Zur Ontologie von Gesellschaft und Raum. Stuttgart.
Werlen, B. (2009) Structurationist Geography. The International Encyclopaedia of Human Geography. Elsevier.
Contributers
Edited by Anke Janssen, on Octobre 23
Page enhanced by Niek van Enckevort, 24-10-2012
