Weber C6: Globalization

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Weber C6 Globalization

• it is the end of history

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What is Globalization?

• A process?
• An ideology? (globalism)
• A state of being? (globality)
• A floating sign of many different problematics?
• Neoliberalism (Fukuyama)
• Historical Materialism

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Two Views of Globalization

• Liberalism
• Economic liberalization (free trade)
• Political democratization (power to the people)
• Cultural universalization (Americanization?)
• Historical Materialism
• International class conflict
• Economics and politics as conflictual

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Table 6.1
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Dialectical Thinking

• Thesis Antithesis Synthesis (a New Thesis)
• History, in a Hegelian sense, is the progress of
  ideas through time until the final idea that has
  no antithesis emerges
• Hence, if one finally comes to the end of the
  dialectical dynamic, then history ends.
• For Fukuyama, the lack of an alternative to
  liberalism equals the end of history
• For the Historical materialist, the end of
  history takes place with the advent of true
  communism.

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Table 6.2 Hegelian and Marxist Understandings
of History
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Table 6.3 Ideological Challengers to Liberalism