Afin d’expliquer comment la mondialisation reconstruit les politiques publiques et les comportements sociaux nous étudions les échanges et interactions entre les acteurs politiques, économiques et sociaux -publics et privés, individuels et collectifs- et la façon dont ils redessinent les relations internationales. Ce cours prend sa source dans les approches sociologique et historique françaises des relations internationales. This course is also available in english version: www.coursera.org/learn/global-studies
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From the course by Sciences Po
Espace mondial, une vision française des global studies
ratings
From the lesson
La mondialisation
La mondialisation est un processus complexe qui remet en question les principaux aspects de l’ordre mondial.
Meet the Instructors
Bertrand BadieProfessor
Marie-Françoise DurandProfessor
Let’s move now to globalization.
Globalization is probably one of the main
transformations of our world order.
It’s a quite new order
that we are meeting with this process,
which is quite new and
which is questioning really all the concepts,
which have been coined for
explaining the international relations.
I would say first that globalization results
in a series of paradoxes
which are challenging our conceptual vision
of the international arena.
First, first paradox:
contradiction between power and integration.
Power is the cornerstone
of the traditional international order,
when integration is the main consequence
of a global order which is more and more
interplaying and interdependent.
How to combine power and interdependence?
How to combine power and integration?
Second paradox:
between power and powerlessness.
Globalization is providing
new resources to power
and the power holders have the feeling,
the intuition that globalization
is able to bring them new means,
new instruments
for dominating the world.
But in the meantime interdependence
is contradicting power
and we can observe
that in our present world order
power is less and less powerful
and power is failing in many kinds
of tensions and conflicts
that we are meeting now,
and especially in Middle East and Africa.
Third contradiction: a contradiction
between coexistence and interdependence.
Interdependence is the main
principle of global order
when coexistence is coming from
the traditional vision of sovereignty.
How to combine them?
Fourth contradiction, fourth paradox:
between market and inclusion.
Globalization is often presented
as the accomplishment,
as the achievement of the market,
of a kind of world market,
but it’s not totally true.
Market and free trade and free-exchanges
are only one dimension of globalization
while we have to take into account
the other dimension which is connected to
this process of integration and inclusion.
Fifth paradox:
between global order and a fragmented order.
It will be a great mistake to consider
that globalization results
in a kind of unification of the world.
Globalization is also boosting
a kind of fragmentation,
new particularisms,
that we have to take into account.
And the result is that we are in a global
but also local world order,
that’s to say a kind of “glocalization”
as it has been said.
Now the real question, which is at stake, is:
how to define globalization?
And the problem of definition
is probably not really solved,
it is very difficult now to give
a consensual definition of globalization.
I would say that
this dispute is shading the light
on some ambiguities of globalization.
Globalization doesn't mean internationalization,
internationalization implies
relations among nation-states,
globalization is not limited
to relations among nation-states
but is including many other actors
as we have mentioned.
Globalization does not mean liberalization.
That’s to say globalization can imply
the development of free market
but globalization is also
shading a light on the necessity
of a social integration
which is different from the liberal vision
and the free-market vision of the global order.
Globalization does not mean universalization
as globalization is
triggering new particularisms
which are more and more visible,
and especially when some problems,
some tensions, some conflicts take place.
And globalization does not mean westernization.
Many people in the western world consider
that globalization was the end of history,
that’s to say was resulting
in the success and the victory
of a western vision of the world order.
We see now that globalization
is on the contrary resulting
in the development and in the strengthening
of new cultures,
and of competing cultures:
African cultures,
Arab cultures,
Chinese cultures.
We are in a world
which cannot be considered
as the result of a cultural unification.
So, how to define?
I would say first that globalization
implies three symptoms
and I would like to approach globalization
through these three symptoms.
The first one is inclusion.
For the first time in the world history
we are all in the same boat,
that’s to say humanity
is entirely included in the same arena,
is playing on a unique arena
and this is really new;
this is really a new aspect of the world order
that we didn’t meet in the precedent steps
of the human history.
And that’s mean
if we are in an including world,
there is no center,
that’s to say no possibility to conceive a center
and even a hegemon on this new global world.
The second symptom of globalization
is to be found in mobility.
we are in a world of communication,
we are in a world of transportation,
we are in a world in which people
are more and more able to move
and also to transgress the borderlines.
Mobility is a new parameter,
which is challenging the traditional order,
which is made of statism, of stability
and of territorial stability.
We are no more in a territorial world
but in a world of mobility.
And the third symptom is interdependence.
We are depending on each other,
that means that the weak
is still depending on the strong.
But that means something
much more important
that with globalization,
now the strong is also depending on the weak.
That is quite new.
And that’s why I said that the concept of power
is now challenged
and power is getting powerless.
Can you see in the world order
how a small state,
how a very weak collectivity
is able to control,
to make pressure, to contain
the strengths of the strongest.
That are the symptoms of globalization.
Where are the roots?
What is the origin of globalization?
This is a very tough question of course,
but I will say maybe three points,
I will make three points.
First, probably and even certainly,
globalization is coming from
the transformation of technology.
Globalization was not politically invented,
politically created,
globalization is the result
of a new technological context.
What is this technological context?
I would say it’s the revolution of communication.
We are in a world in which it’s very easy
for each individual to communicate
with all the others around the world.
When I was young it was so difficult
to give a call to telephone to US
when we were settled in Europe
now we can do that with our cells,
with our mobile phones, it’s so easy,
and so difficult also to control,
and so difficult to limit.
We are in a world
of generalized communication.
What is a world
of generalized communication?
It’s a world in which
distance is getting meaningless,
we are in a world in which
distance is no more organizing the world,
in which distance is no more
a political resource for the rulers,
for the princes, for the governments,
and it’s a world in which distance
is no more a handicap for the individuals,
that’s to say for all of us,
for the seven billion of people.
So globalization is first of all
a world of deterritorialization.
What does it mean? It means that
the traditional definition of politics
which has been coined for instance
by Max Weber is no more relevant,
that’s to say there is a gap,
a conceptual gap
between the idea of politics
and the idea of territory.
That’s to say the real political challenge
is no more coming from territory,
and the competition between
territorial nation-states,
but is a world of transnational relations.
But that means something else:
in this world which is no more territorial,
there is a real risk, which is a sociological risk,
which was pointed in his time
by Emile Durkheim,
that’s to say a world of anomie.
This world of interdependence is a world,
which needs to be integrated
and with a lack of integration
there is a strong risk of anomie.
Anomie that’s to say a risk of destruction
of the social background
of this new world.
This risk of anomie is probably explaining
what it is now taking place
in matter of wars and conflicts.
And I would say that globalization is,
as I mentioned, “glocalization”,
that’s to say a world in which
the whole is important,
but in which, in the meantime,
the individual is important,
that’s to say a permanent tension
between the micro-unit,
which is constituted by the individual
and the totality which is incarnating
this new global world.
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