2. Globalization and Related Processes
• Imperialism
• Colonialism
• Development
• Westernization
• Easternization
• Americanization
3. IMPERIALISM
• It is a broad concept that describes various
methods employed by one country to gain
control of another country or geographic area
and then to exercise control, especially
political, economic and territorial over that
country. (Ritzer, 64)
• It was dominant reality of 18th century.
• It is rooted from the idea of nation-state.
4. IMPERIALISM
• The term became widespread in the late 19th
century while Germany, Italy, Belgium, Great
Britain, France and United States were
competing for control over undeveloped
geographic areas, especially in Africa.
• Mutual Culture flow- Cultural Imperialism
• Imperial nations exercised political, economic
and cultural control over huge portions of the
world.
5. IMPERIALISM
• Political power: Great Britain was the most
effective.
United States became independent in 1783
India became independent in 1947
• United States also became the most important
imperialistic nation but its political control was
less direct than Great Britain.
• Soviet Union was a great political empire on
Soviet bloc nations.
• Political imperialism declined after WWII.
6. IMPERIALISM
• Vladimir Lenin the first leader of the Soviet
Union- an important early theorist of
imperialism.
Lenin’s book: ‘Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism’
Lenin sees economic factors – capitalism -
as the essence of imperialism.
Although it was not capitalist, Lenin’s Soviet
Union became an important imperial power.
7. IMPERIALISM
• While political imperialism disappeared,
economic imperialism remains quiet powerful.
• More than being an economic phenomenon, it
was also important for European nations to
expand culturally, in terms of their language,
cuisine etc..
• The United States has engaged in cultural
imperialism through its movie, tv and book
publishing- Media Imperialism.
8. COLONIALISM
• Creation by the colonial power of an
administration in the area that has been
colonized to run its internal affairs. (Ritzer,69)
• While imperialism involves a control without the
creation of the colonies, colonialism involves
settlers and formal mechanisms of control.
• Thus, colonialism entails the creation by the
colonial power in the country that has been
colonized of and administrative apparatus to run
its internal affairs.
9. COLONIALISM
• Two great and more recent ages of
colonialism.
1. 14th-17th century: European powers- mostly Spain
and Portugal. Involved creating colonies in Africa,
Asia and the Americas.
2. 1820-1925: European powers- mostly Great Britain,
France and Germany, then US and Japan
• Cultural colonialism: the extension of colonial
power through cultural activities and
institutions.
10. COLONIALISM
• Decolonization: Dismantling colonial powers
in all its forms. After WWI.
• Neocolonialism : Efforts at control over the
former colonies and other nation-states
became indirect, through cultural and
educational institutions and focused on
economic control.
• Postcolonialism: The era in once colonized
areas after the colonizing power has departed.
11. DEVELOPMENT
• A project primarily concerned with the
economic development of specific nation-
states regarded as underdeveloped.
• When colonies became independent nation-
states, they joined the international relations
of the development project.
• The national economic strategies of the new
nation-states, depended on the new
international economic arrangements.
12. DEVELOPMENT
• Newly independent states:
– Had colonial division of labor’s legacy of “resource bondage” embedded in
their social structures
– Purchased First World technology with loans or primary export earnings
– Integrated into universal political-economic relations within the
international financial, normative and legal framework of United Nations
and Bretton Woods institutions
• Marshall Plan ; After World War II, U.S. transferred billions to
Europe and Japan to facilitate international trade and encourage
U.S. direct investment in Europe
• Bilateral financial aid
– To stabilize discontented populations
– To rekindle economic growth and production
– To restore trade and price stability
– To contain socialist movements and communism
– To allow purchase of U.S. goods
– To rearm
13. DEVELOPMENT
• Post-WWII meeting in Bretton Woods, NH, July 1944
• Financial ministers created international banking
system to restore trade via credit to devastated
regions
• The World Bank
– Borrowed money in international capital markets to raise
money for development
– Loaned funds to states for national infrastructure projects
(dams, highways, power plants)
– Invested in cash crop agriculture, which deepened legacy
of colonial division of labor
• International Monetary Fund (IMF)
– Disbursed credit to stabilize national currency exchanges
and revitalize international trade
14. DEVELOPMENT
• Dependency Theory: It emphasizes the fact
that development projects did not create
necessary development of the nation-states of
the South, but more to a decline in their
independence and to an increase in their
dependence on the countries of the North.
• World System Theory: Sees the world divided
mainly between the core and the periphery
with the latter dependent on, and expolited
by, the core nation-states.
15. WESTERNIZATION
• Economic, political and cultural influence
of the West on the rest of the World.
• It goes beyond politics and economics to
include a wide variety of other exports to
the rest of the world including its
technologies, languages, law, lifestyle,
food and etc.
16. EASTERNIZATION
• Economic and cultural influences of the East
on the West.
• Various ethnic restaurants, yoga, various
beliefs, vegetarianism, eastern music,
technological innovations, etc.
• Given the rise of China as a global power,
Easternization, like globalization, is likely to
show dramatic growth in the coming years.
17. AMERICANIZATION
• The global triumph of the United States and
its way of life. (Hobsbawm, 1998)
• It is in decline in the early 21st century.
• It has changed its shape from big industries
such as US steel and GM, into the realm
consumption such as Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola,
McDonalds, Visa, etc.
• In discussing Americanization, one should
specify the aspects.
18. AMERICANIZATION
• Capacious Americanization: Heyday of American
influence in Europe between 1945-1971.
• Resonant Americanization: Period after 1971
when Americanization lost its hegemony in
Europe.
• Americanization without America
• Beyond Americanization
• Expressing America
• Indigenous Americanization
19. ANTI-AMERICANISM
• What to dislike?
Its militarism
Its obsession with guns
Its continuing use of the death penalty
Its seemingly extraordinary religiosity
Its role in global warming
Its culture
The imperialism associated with it
Its role in globalization
The power of the organizations largely controlled
by it- IMF and World Bank
20. ANTI-AMERICANISM
• It is a predisposition to hostility toward the
United States and American society, a relentless
critical impulse toward American social, political
and economic institutions, traditions, and values;
it entails an aversion to American culture in
particular and its influence abroad, often also
contempt for the American national character
and dislike of American people, manners,
behavior, dress and so on; rejection of American
foreign policy and a firm belief in the malignity of
American influence and presence anywhere in
the world. (Hollander 1992: 339).
21. POST-AMERICANIZATION
• A idea that we are in post-American age.
• The key issue is not the decline of the US, but
rather ‘the rise of everyone else’.
• Is American hegemony coming to an end in
the 21st century?..
