Published on Nov 30, 2023
This word is shorthand for how our lives are becoming increasingly interwined with those of distant people and places around the world – economically, politically, culturally. The history of new mineral based global economy falls into 3 phases, defined with reference to the degree of global centralization of power.
The first phase, lasting from 1800 to 1913, concentrated power—and, with it, capital, technology, science and manufactures—in a small number of Core areas, notably Britain, France, United States, and Germany.
Conversely, the greater part of the Periphery—nearly all of Asia and Africa—lost its sovereignty to a few Core countries, was forced to open their economies to Core capital, specialized in primary goods, and scarcely experienced any improvements in the living standards of the indigenous population. The global economy slowly entered into a second phase in the late 1940s, although this process was initiated earlier with the Russian Revolution of 1917, when power was decentralized from the Core to the Periphery.
On the level of the economy, this decentralization reversed the earlier concentration of manufactures in the Core countries, and produced dramatic acceleration of growth in the dependent Periphery. Starting in the 1980s, however, power was again re-centralized in the Core countries. Already, by the mid-1990s, this re-centralization had exceeded the previous peak in the global centralization of power attained during the late nineteenth century.
E-business is any form of business exchange in which the parties interact using electronic linkages. (Net based) Tele shopping or home shopping is day by day becoming very popular with the upper and a significant section of middle strata of the society. Big manufacturers and traders are vigorously promoting it. Buyers can place orders for desired goods from their cozy homes on telephone or e-mail.
They do not have to stir out of their homes and waste time and energy on traveling and going round shops. Desired goods are promptly delivered. An important feature of present-day globalization is the advent of consumer credit society. Till the arrival credit cards, the purchasing power at a person’s disposal and his ability to raise loans limited the extent of his consumption.
Credit cards have played a vital role in tremendously extending this limit. A person can now buy goods and services even if he does not have sufficient purchasing power at his disposal and the prospect of raising a loan without difficulty. Credit cards have given enormous boost to consumerism and pushed many a household into indebtedness.
Global culture entails the promotion of a specific kind of life-style, consumption pattern, products, and identities. High-voltage advertisement campaign is deployed by TNCs to penetrate local markets in non-Western world in order to create an ever-expanding market for their products by crushing local resistance. Growing reach of private cable and satellite television network has strengthened the grip of commercial culture.
The “global culture” is actually “western culture” or “American culture”. The direction of any transnational media effects is always from richer to poorer, larger to smaller, which entirely corresponds to the unbalanced structure of global economic relations. The concept of “cultural imperialism” implies these unequal international processes, and suggests certain degree of coercion, invasion, or repression. The unequal information flow increases the global power of large and wealthy countries and hinders the growth of an appropriate national identities and self-images in the receiving nations. The imbalance in the global cultural production undermines cultural autonomy and holds back the development of the disadvantaged cultures. The "cultural hegemony" leads to an absolutely aggressive form of dominant culture that has no specific connection with real experience for most people in poorer countries. The disadvantaged cultures are deprived of their ability to describe themselves.”
