please enjoy Ch3

1. CH2: Culture, Power,
Globalization and
Inequity
Instructed by Chheng Dolla
Contact: dolla.chheng@gmail.com
P/H: 0883020847

2. Course Outline

3. 3.0 Introduction

4. 3.1 Understanding globalization
• Globalization is a term that tries to capture the
rapid social change that is occurring simultaneously
across a number of dimensions, including the
economy, politics, communications and culture
(Tomlinson, 1999, 2006).
• Theorists of globalization emphasize that we
inhabit a world where there are global economies,
a global media, a world characterized by virtual
communication, institutional deregulation, and the
movement of capital, information and people at
great speed across large distances (Savage et al.,
2005)

5. Con’t…
• Globalization is the buzzword that has been coined to
describe the spread of economies, cultures and power
across national borders.
• Proponents of globalization…
maintain that because of free trade, local and national
cultures are allowed to extend beyond geographic and
political boundaries therefore increases the variety of
products and cultures available in all nations.
• Critics point to the rapid loss of local languages, art,
and music as direct consequence of globalization; local
and national cultures have been ‘crowded out’ by
western popular culture as depicted in music and
movies.

6. Con’t…
• Globalization: cultural and economic change
• Theorizing about globalization emerged from the
late 1980s onwards as commentators tried to make
sense of the rapid social change they were
observing
• Globalization and inequality: leads to an unequal
distribution of income and wealth.

7. 3.2 Theorizing about culture, power and inequality
• Globalization and the expansion of the global
capitalist system leads to an unequal distribution of
power, income and wealth within and between
societies.
• Marx and Marxism: analyses and models of the
social and economic processes of class formation in
capitalist society.

9. Con’t…
• Weber, status and inequality: Against Marx, Weber
maintains that the operation of power in societies is
yet more fundamental than their economic basis.
Power is defined as the capacity of individuals or
groups to realize their will, even in the face of the
opposition of others.
• This yields three categories fundamental to the analysis
of inequality: class, status and party. Inequality may be
located in economically defined classes (here Weber
emphasizes market capacity in contrast to Marx’s stress
on property) but could also be founded in status
groups (organized around notions of prestige and
honor) and political parties and groupings.

10. Con’t…
• Caste societies: India
• Ideology as common sense: hegemony, Capitalism,
Socialism, Communism

11. 3.4 Culture and the production and reproduction of
inequality
• Class

12. Con’t…
• ‘Race’ and ethnicity
• Gender
• Age
• Structural and local conceptions of power