The sociological analysis of globalization

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Technical University of Dortmund

Faculty of economics and sociology

Economical and industrial sociology

Seminary assignment

What is Globalization

Seminar

�The sociological analysis of globalization� SS2011

Prof. Dr. Hartmut Hirsch-Kreinsen

Ekaterina Ershova, 146239

Dortmund, 31.12.2011

I Abbreviations

e.g.- exempli gratia (for example)

etc- et cetera (and so on)

i.e.- id est (that is)

1. Introduction

How many of us can imagine our lives without Google, iPhone, Facebook or Starbucks? People all over the world have similar preferences. We wear clothes manufactured in China, India or other developing countries while having a label of internationally recognized brand on it. International companies are searching for ways to optimize its production, manufacturing and operations. Moreover, the firms conduct meetings and set up conferences via Internet program, for instance Skype, instead of flying to a meeting from different parts of the world.

The same applies to a student's life. Just a couple of years ago we, students, used to meet each other at libraries or university canteens to discuss group projects and assignments. Now we choose to agree on conference time via emails and online social networks without even seeing each other faces. The question whether it is good or bad stays open.

Before technology entered our life, we were fantasizing and creating fairy tales, where protagonist could look at the mirror and see the events happening many kilometers away. We were dreaming of traveling to different countries by magic carpet.

Today, in the time of technological progress, individuals, nations and separate States cannot be isolated from each other the same way as in the previous epochs. Hence, globalization can be described as a rational integration of different people, nations, countries, cultures and civilization.

The second chapter of this seminar work introduces its readers to a few definitions of � Globalization�. In the third chapter there are three different globalization theories: Container theory of society, Wallerstein`s capitalistic world system and, finally, Rosenau's theory of polycentric world politics. Then there is a discussion about two transnational spaces: African and Mexican. In the end of the work the main research results along with pluses and minuses of globalization will be presented.

The main purpose of this work is to learn about some important theories of globalization and to understand, when and how this process started and what the impacts on our society are. The research is built around Urlich Beck's book- "Was ist Globalisierung�, however, other English books are used.

sociological analysis globalization

2. Various definitions of �Globalization�

Globalization is one of the most powerful forces shaping the world, yet there is no widely accepted definition for the phenomenon. When typing the word in the Internet search engine one collides with many different definitions that explain and describe the complex network of processes.

Some sources depict globalization as the increased mobility of goods, services, labor, technology and capital throughout the world. Others define it as �the process of increasing the connectivity and interdependence of the world's markets and businesses�, It also underlines the fact that the process has speeded up dramatically in the last two decades as technological advances make it easier for people to travel, communicate, and do business internationally. When reading these definitions comprehensibly, one can conclude that the whole process is mainly driven by communication, economic, political and social factors.

The German sociologist and leading theorist of risk society Ulrich Beck gives the following definition of globalization: �Globalization is a process, which leads to the cross-linked and anticipated of national states and their sovereignty through the transnational actors, their power chances, orientations, identities and networks �. (Beck. 2007. P.28)

Although the word �globalization� is a relatively new notion, the processes it describes are very old. It might be argued that during all its historical development humanity always strives for globalization. To feel, understand and perceive the world, not mentioning Universe as a whole, is innate, natural aspiration of a human being. However, what a person previously called disposition or world outlook could not be real until the new technology emerged and enabled one to perceive the world widely. A person has to be given access to information about everything in the world in order to be able to form his own world outlook..

Globalization, by definition, is international and not cosmopolitan. However, in reality, globalization is not serving internationalism but cosmopolitanism. Ideally, globalization should be a logical, natural and positive result of the development of humanity. Unfortunately, it became a tool of diffusion and infliction of postulates of certain ideology. The term globalization became almost a synonym of Americanization. As a result, globalization as a product of technological revolution became not a condition for formation of natural and true world outlook, but a condition for assertion of desired by someone ideology. What we have now is not objective reality but subjective world's view. The reason for such outcome might be the fact that the achievements of technical science are controlled by those few who have money and power.

Hence, on one side, there is a natural globalization that emerged as a logical product of development of humanity. It established as a foundation for countries to come out from isolation and form mutual understanding, influence and enrichment. The process of globalization created a world that is no longer separated by boarders and ocean. It enabled people from different corners of the Planet learn about traditions, lifestyles and events of other cultures. As a result, government can find it extremely difficult to contain flow of information within the boarders and influence events.

On the other side, there is an artificial globalization, or Americanization, that aims at devastation of individual cultures, its demoralization, and infliction on its place a �psuedoculture�, which is the ideological base for American idea of uni-polarization of the world. One may wonder how the Unites States manages to have such an influential role. A strong business environment with the big market and use of English language make it easier for American conglomerates grow and sustain power. American production companies realize that people want to watch programms in their own language, therefore the cheap way to dub a movie into Hindu, for example, is adopted instead of producing a country-specific television. It is even easier to diffuse the program in those countries where English is widely used, such as Scandinavian territories.

Many scientists and theorists believe that there are countries that can be considered as a moving force, or stimulus, of globalization and other countries that hold an opposite view and try to prevent globalization. However, cultural imperialists claim that it is not a very accurate classification. It will be more correct to say that there is A country (United States of America) that tries - by hiding behind the fame of globalization- to impose its ideology on the whole world. At the same time there are also countries that are forced to support such version of globalization because of its politico-economical reasons. Due to indiscriminate dumping of large quantities of commercial and media products, mainly from United States of America, authentic, traditional and local culture in many parts of the world is being bettered out of existence.

Mass media plays an essential role in the whole process. It reinforces American dominance and enables the expansion of artificial globalization, which cannot be called anything but �Americanization�. Mass media became a mechanism to �recommend� American culture to the rest of the world. Tomas Friedman describes the situation by saying: �� globalization is in so many ways Americanization: globalization wears Mickey Mouse ears, it drinks Pepsi and Coke. Eats Big Macs, does its computing on the IBM laptop with Windows 98��

Americanization can be seen all over the world. Look around, the world is dominated by Coca Cola, junk foods and the movies produced in America. No matter where you live you are surrounded by millions of men, women, and children who identify themselves with the heroes from American movies rather than with those from their own culture.

When looking at the top mass media firms, it becomes apparent that the first four in the list are American. AOL, AT&T, Disney and Viacom are global giants that are growing and globalizing speedily. Time Warner and Disney generated around 15 percent of their income outside of the United States in 1990, while in 2000 the percent rose up to 35. In Latin America, for instance, virtually all imports are from the United States. Even in the countries, such as Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, where a strong domestic television exists, more than 70 percent of films and television series are brought from the United States and occupy 50 percent of the prime time. Another example is MTV, part of giant Viacom-CBS, which by 1999 was reaching more than 314 million households in 83 countries, and claiming to be �the most widely distributed network in the world�.

3. Sociology of globalization

There are many theories of �globalization� that were published at different times: from Wallerstein, the US sociologist, who published his first important work �The Morden World-System� in 1974, to such authors as Rosenau, Giplin and Held, who wrote various articles on Post-international politics. In the course of this essay the following will be discussed in greater details: (1) the container theory of society, (2) the Wallerstein's capitalistic world system and (3) the Rosenau's international politics.

All above mentioned authors placed the causes and effects of the dynamic of globalization in one sector of institutional activities: economics, technology, international politics, ecology, culture or new social differences in the world-scale.

3.1 The container theory of Society

According to the container theory, modern society consists of a number of independent societies. They are kept in a space controlled by national state like in a container. The word �modern� means unpolitical direction of those societies. At the same time the political action of government is obvious in those cases.

This regulatory scheme is not only relevant externally, but internally as well. On the one hand, the internal frames of global society are associated with collective identities, such as classes, positions, religious and ethnical groups, etc. On the other, the term �social system� includes separate worlds of politics, economics, law, science, families etc. with their own �codes�. The internal homogeneity is the creation of the state control. All types of the social practices- production, culture, language, labor market, capital and education - are normed, characterized, restricted and rationalized by government (national economy, national language, literature, history, publicity etc.). The container has the territorial unity with statistical database on economic and social processes being regularly collected and updated.

According to I. Kant's writing about set of basic rights and rules of democratic self-regulation, ��the freedom of people, who by their own fault nonage are�. However, this claim to add happiness digests the cruel years of imperialism and colonialism in Europe and times of World War II with its �developing politics� and �the theory of developing countries�.

The book �Modernization of developing countries� addresses the notion of �modernization� several time. The imperialistic scientists, who identified themselves as political doctors and political engineers of that process, developed �social indicators� that allowed national states to track and control the process of modernization.

The container theory allows and even forces a return to the origins of sociology from nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, a time when the national state originated. The connection between the sociology and nation-state was so broad in scope that the image of the modern, organized individual society, which was associated with the setup model of national state, became an essential topic in the work of the classical social scientists.

Despite all the differences of Durkheim, Weber and Marx theories, they shared the territorial definition of the modern society that today has been impaired by globalization. As Max Weber debated against himself, the amount of the great cultural problems is rising and scientists are trying to redirect their thinking conceptually in the non-integrated multiplicity of the world without boundaries.

Sociology of globalization can be perceived as a gathering of various protestors from sociology of national states. There are many researches: from the survey of migration through the analysis of classes, international politics, theory of democracy to the theory of culture and sociology of big states. They often opposed to each other, hence alternative thinking should be sought out. In other words, a discussion on globalization in the social sciences should be transformed into more productive argument about the basic assumptions, images of society, units for analysis, which can replace the axiomatic of the national state.

The basic ideas of post- and transnational images of society should be outlined below and globalization will be discussed as a complex phenomenon.

3.2 The world capitalist system theory

Immanuel Wallerstein came up with his own conceptual framework in order to understand historical changes involved into formation of modern society.

The concept of the transnational social spaces is one of the theories of globalization. It challenges a �container� view that looks at society as a number of independent nations or separate social worlds. It replaces them with different classifications of life, such as transnationally integrated, with no borders spaces for social actions.

The metaphor of the space will be contradictory used: the outstanding characteristics of this space are that they pick up the distance. "Transnational" means: there are arts of life and action, inside logic of which is explained by ingenuity, where people distance looses of social lives and correlations of actions achieved and maintained. For the sociological research there is a question: how are the distances and borders of picked up transnational life-world possible? How can they be built up and cultivated in the actions of individuals, often in opposition to the bureaucracy of national state? Is it about State loose, maybe even institution loose early forms of transnational world society? Which orientations, resources, institutions encourage or prevent them. What political effects (disintegration or transnational mobilization) are connected with them?

It is obvious, that in these transnational social landscapes (often illegal) something has mixed and happened, what is a thorn in sight of state demanding regulatory and control. they are "dirty" life and action spaces, which are built here. In order to analyze them the sociological point of view should stop to be "Either-or" and start to be more like specific and distinguishable "Both-and".

Wallerstein was the first in 70s, who confronted the questions of socials science with globalization. He was the one who established the concept of �world system�. For Wallerstein capitalism is the main force of globalization. He radically replaced the picture of opposed individual societies through the opposite image of world system, where all the societies, all the companies, all the cultures, all the classes, all the housekeeping, all the individuals are placed and supposed to claim in the one exact division of labor. This one world system, which purports the references for inequalities in the world scale, achieves the self-assertion through the capitalism. Wallerstein thinks that the capitalism should be global.

When capitalism had emerged in Europe in 16th century, its dynamics changed many new traditional "continents", spaces, niches of social lives. "The whole planet operates inside of this frames and rules of the division of labor, which we call the capitalist world economy". 28

According to Wallerstein, the economy of capitalism has three basic elements. First, it consists of the market that aims at maximizing its profit.

Second, there are state structures that have certain internal and external influence. They serve "easy" operation of capitalistic market and better profit outlooks of one or more groups.

The third element means that appropriation of exploit relationship consists not of two, but of three stages: central areas, semi periphery and periphery countries and regions. The question about the criteria of accessory of exact countries and regions can be answered on the basic of historical and practical controversial.

While the European capitalism builds the global market after the breaking of the Eastern block decays the humanity and identity of national state with their views about the souvernitat and origin. At the same time conflicts in the world system are getting bigger and sharper because those systems produce not only prosperity, but also poverty. The sample of global inequality follow the separation of social areas in central area, semi periphery and preriphery countries and regions, which integrates conflicts into the world system.

According to Wallerstein's view, current crisis leads to restructure, which in its turn makes the splitting of power and inequality even sharper. Simultaneously the consistent level rises in the world system. Wallerstein's argument is that universalize and deepening of capitalistic logic provokes in the world scale the resistance. to it counts the anti-western, anti-modern, fundamental reactions like ecological associations or nationalistic streams. The intern logic of world system generates both: world integration and world decomposition. Wallerstein gives no answer to the question on positive effects of what is happening. He believes that it will end with collapse.

The superficially presented idea of Wallerstein can be defined via two characteristics: mono-cause and economical.

There are three critical points: it is complicated to interpret and check the theory historical and empirical. Secondly, the globalization starts with Columbus's discovery of American continent and submission of new world, so it is all the historical specification at the end of 20th century. It all means that Wallerstein had foreseen the base of globalization in the16th century. The third is, despite all dialectics, the linear argument of Wallerstein, who does not develop the theory of cosmopolitan conflict, which Marx and Engels described in "Communistic manifest�.

3.3 Polycentric world politics of Rosenau

The political theory of Rosenau presents an idea about �the two worlds of world politics�. In other words, there is not one common global society, but minimum two competing ones: the society of (national) state and many different transnational organizations, actors, groups and individuals, who built the social actions between them. The actors of national state must divide the power with international organizations, transnational <?> and with transnational social and political streams. As a matter of fact, the number of transnational NGO organizations (like Greenpeace) rises. Timothy Wirth answers the question if the impression foolish is, that USA goes other way, belongs to other conceptions: �The maxim 'Think globally, act locally!' is certain becoming a reality. One can observe how international institutions and resolutions are becoming more and more important. There is growing feeling, that nations can also be governed by international institutions, and not just at national level. The foreign policy establishment is starting to think in different dimensions from those of military and economic power, rifle bullets and dollars. Nowadays the problems such as worldwide human rights and refugees programs, corruptions and environmental disasters, multiply. This globalicy changes our thinking about the role of citizens and their initiative in their globalization conception: �Alongside internationalization, the growing influence of grassroots initiatives is the second challenge to the previous conception of politics. There is huge pressure from the new possibilities of communication. Fax and the Internet are more and more part of everyday life. Anyone can talk to anyone at lightning speed all over the world, without having to rely on government channels or diplomats�. The changing from national into multinational ages is explained by Rosenau by relationship of international political systems and with monocentric power structure will be replaced with the polycentric structures in big variety of transnational actors and actors of national state, who compete and cooperate.

So, there are both arenas of global society: one is the society of state, where rules of diplomacy and national power are main components; and second- world transnational subpolitics, where romp different actors, like multinational concerns, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, World Bank, NATO, European Union etc.

The contrast between dual world society and theory of world system is obvious: Rosenau postulates the economically governed world market system, where is not only the capital of national government that is significant, such as UN, World Bank, Greenpeace, but they all fight with different power opportunities for their aims.

Unlike Wallerstein, Rosenau sees the transfer from the dominance of national state to polycentric world politics in technological dimension and dynamic of globalization. He learns and learns again from his scientific studies, that the dense and significance of international dependence have achieved new quality. Rosenau argues that the reasons of that is not-finished-yet recovery of information and communication technologies: "It is technology that has so greatly diminished geographical and social distances through the jet-powered airliner, the computer, the orbiting satellite, and the many other inventions that now move people, ideas, and goods more rapidly and surely across space and time than ever before. [...] It is technology, in short, that has fostered an interdependence of local, national, and international communities that is far greater than any previously experienced". (J. Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics, Brighton 1990, p. 17.)

Rosenau combines two arguments: (1) the advent of information and science society and its overcoming distance; (2) frontiers as a result of the multiplication of transnational players and organizations. (on the following points, see McGrew, "A global society?")

According to Rosenau, there are five significant actors of polycentric world politics:

1. transnational organizations as World Bank, Catholic Church, McDonald's, VW, drug cartels, Italian mafia, as well as NGOs, which act side by side, together, against each other.

1. transnational problems as global environmental changes, drugs, AIDS, ethnic conflicts etc transnational events, as elections in USA, Football World Cup, Golf War etc. lead through the satellite to the turbulence in the different countries on the different continents.

1. transnational "communities", which arise on different bases, as religion (Islam), knowledge (experts), life styles (pop, ecology), relatives (families), political orientations (environmental movements) etc.

1. transnational structures as forms of labor, production and cooperation, banks, finance streams, technical knowledge etc.

4. Transnational social space

The globalization is connected with centralization of managing actors. In politics, globalization can be seen in decay of national state. It causes the changing and reduction of their sovereignty. On the one hand it happens

The national state is the territorial state, which invest its power in binding in to exact measures (into control over memberships, setting of valid laws, defending of borders etc.). The world society, which emerged not only in economical, but in many other dimensions, undermines, qualify the national state, because the multiple, non-permanent multiplicity of national crises, communicative networks, market relationships, arts of lives of territory state are cross linked.

This capture presents the readers with two examples of Africans and Mexicans. The culture of nations will be changed in globalized world. It illustrates the circumstances that colonial countries have and how people, who moved from their countries, are dealing with new conditions and cultures

4.1 Africa as a concept, but not a continent

Patricia Alley-Dettmers writes in her work �Trivial arts� that Africa is not a geographical part, not a place with borders, but the transnational idea and its realization, which you can find in different places in the world: Carib, ghettos of Manhattan, southern states of USA, Brazil, big states in Europe etc. The variety of masks, music, costumes and dances will be matching in all of the cities. But the exact African carnival in different parts of the world appropriate not with every part of African continent. There are a lot of questions to answer: Where is place of Africa in the world society? In the ruins, which left the colonial countries? In African four-stars hotels? In the organized safaris? In the back-to-the-roots hopes and illusions of Afro-Americans? In the books about Africa in the western universities? Or in Carib and its culture of bright colors? Or in the fight for national identity in European subcultures?

From the point of view of African carnival in Nottingham, Africa lost its geographical place. For them �Africa� is an idea from black esthetic it is made not in order to ground the black identity in Great Britain, but for breaking up the Afro-Carib groups in England. So there is Africa in Nottingham. There is paradox in the relationship of transnational communal: what can be seen in Europe is often not the same, what the �transnational� African understands about Africa. Their culture is destroyed. Often Africa and to be African is versus identity for �Africans�. They curse it. May be they became adult in the mix of cultures, where all the definiteness is lost, where the black color of skin is a negative connotation. The result is paradoxical as well: black people in Caribbean and cities of Great Britain are associated with non-identity and non-progress, with drums, dancing, nakedness, permanent hopelessness and no education- the negative image of Africa. However, it makes a question of the position of Africa in transnational social space ever sharper.

4.2 American Mexicans and Mexican Americans

As mentioned above, the transnational social space is not connected with common borders as the national concept of society for example. The immigration research of Ludwig Pries showed that it is impossible to live and to act in any of two countries together.

The migration process is splited into stages of breaking up, rambling, arrival and integration in imaginative and political world of individual societies organized as national states (which can be failed too). Some new processes of life and action are emerging in new transnational social spaces: here-as-there and both-and are valid. After Martin Albrow*fs theory there are *gsocial landscapes*h working in divided and ordered worlds in order to decide, which arrival and immigration places to connect and to change.

Ludger Pries was researching about the transnational reforms of communal, life and politics between Mexicans in North America and their native places. For some communities of the Mixteca Poblana, support committees were organized in New York that collected money among migrant workers for the laying of drinking water pipes and village squares. Major decisions and issues were sorted out in tele-conferences with officials in the community of origin. It was not uncommon for the sums of money collected in New York to be greater than the public spending on infrastructure in the Mexican community. One important aspect- and a serious argument for the stability and stabilization of transnational social spaces- is the fact, that Mexican state has now recognized not only the huge economic significance of the migrant workers, but also their political significance. Since the presidential elections of 1988, the critical voting power of the Mexican workers abroad (who voted in an above-average proportion for the ruling PRI party) gas became especially apparent, and the Mexican government pursues an active policy of integrating them economically, politically and culturally. Thus Mexican mayors sometimes travel to New York to put investment proposals for village development before migration associations. And the Embassy actively supports migrants sports associations, as well as the development of Guadalupe groups (which are supposed to organize the cult worship of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the main national holy figure in Mexico). At every level of Mexican politics, labor migration is no longer seen as a (passive) safety valve for employment problems, but as an important capital and human resource for the country own economic and social development. As a result of this policy orientation, the Mexico-USA migration system increasingly involves institutional pillars that give a flanking stability to the emergent transnational social spaces.[�] The social and economic dovetailing between region of origin and religion of arrival is not, however. Just a matter of nostalgia or tradition (sticking to village festivals) or of care for an older generation that has stayed behind. Rather, what develop in the Mixteca are economic activities that point far beyond purely transitory relations of a migratory character. In Greater New York, for example, there are a Puebla Food Incorporation and a clan of tortilla-producing families that has already made millions from the traditional Mexican food. Transnational production and marketing structures thus stretch between the Mixteca and New York- structures that imply a dimension of *ecumulative causation*f. Insofar as the dynamic of migration networks keeps the migratory flow moving, the demand increases for specifically Mexican foods and services, which in turn open up new opportunities for migration related dain in the regions of origin arrival. [*c]

In New York itself, for example, newly arriving migrant workers can turn not only to relatives and acquaintances, but also to a well-published network of informal support groups, specialist services and solidarity organizations (legal advice bureau, committees to help people from special ethic groups or religions, etc.). Whole streets (e.g. the northern part of Amsterdam Street, or certain neighborhoods in Queen's) bear witness to this by now very stable infrastructure, on which is at the same time reproduced by them. There are gainful activities and social groups (of Mexicans and US-Americans) which live entirely constant migration and transmigrates, and those vital interests lie in further building up transnational social spaces. This also applies to the sports associations, where some of migrant workers living in New York (perhaps, indocumentados, without a work or residence permit) come together every Sunday. In the 1996 football season sixty-five teams were registered for the Mexican�fs own league.[�c]

In the USA (so far more strongly in California than in New York, for example), various political groups and organizations (e.g. the Frente indigena oaxaquena binacional or the newspaper La Mixteca Ano 2000) support the economic interest and human rights of migrant workers. The political pressure these groups can exert within USA, but above all the Mexican side of border, is quite often greater than the potential influence of local politicians. The director of the Mexican football league in New York put it like this: �As simple Mexicans and migrant workers, we don't count for anything at all. But now we are suddenly being courted by high up Mexican politicians.�

There is similar tendency between the Turkish Germans and the German Turks, but no one has investigated this transnational social space yet.

5. Epilog

In conclusion, the main research results and advantages and disadvantage of globalization will be presented. The results of group discussion had to be included at this part, however, the book �Was ist Globalisierung�, was not covered during seminar.

The definition that was accepted as the basic is the one from Urlich Beck: �Globalization is a process, which leads to the cross-linked and anticipated of national states and their sovereignty through the transnational actors, their power chances, orientations, identities and networks �. (Beck. 2007. P.28) Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that process of globalization - that created a world no longer separated by boarders and oceans and enabled people from different corners of the Planet learn about traditions, lifestyles and events of other cultures- should be viewed in complex, because that process has very high complexity.

During research, three globalization theories were discussed: the container theory of society, Wallerstein`s capitalistic world system and Rosenau's theory of polycentric world politics.

The regulatory scheme of container theory is not only extern relevant, but intern as well. The intern frames of global society, on the one hand, are associated with collective identities (classes, positions, religious and ethnical groups etc), on the other- under the term �social system� exist the separated worlds of politics, economics, law, science, families etc. with their own �codes�. The container has the territorial unity, where exists the statistical data base about the economic and social processes and situations.

Wallerstein has seen the base of globalization in 16th century and he didn't develop the theory of cosmopolitan conflict, which Marx and Engels described in "Communistic manifest�. He established the concept of �world system�. For him the capitalism is the main force of globalization. He radically replaced the picture of opposed individual societies through the opposite image of world system, where all the societies, all the companies, all the cultures, all the classes, all the housekeeping, all the individuals are placed and suppose to claim in the one exact division of labor.

The main idea of Rosenau is in arenas of global society: one is the society of the state, where rules of diplomacy and national power are main components; and second- world transnational subpolitics, where romp different actors. In opposite to Wallerstein, Rosenau sees the transfer from the dominance of national state to polycentric world politics in technological dimension and dynamic of globalization and sees as main actors of globalization transnational organizations, transnational problems, transnational events, transnational "communities", transnational structures.

As a example of transnational spaces were African people in Caribbean and Great Britain and Mexicans in USA. There is a paradox in the relationship of transnational African communal: what we see in Europe is often not the same, what the �transnational� African understands about Africa. We observe a very sad fact: their culture is destroyed. Often Africa and to be African is versus identity for �Africans�. They curse it. The cause of it can be, that be they became adult in the mix of cultures, where all the definiteness is lost, where the black color of skin is negative rated. The result is paradoxical as well: the black people in Caribbean, in the cities of Great Britain are associated with non-identity and non-progress, with drums, dancing, nakedness, permanent hopelessness and no education- the negative image of Africa. In USA we obecerve very strong groups of Mexican immigrants, who are supported by specialist services and solidarity organizations and migration networks keeps the migratory flow moving, but there are still some serious problems in regulation of labor terms of migrants etc.

It is widely known fact that market economy is helping to improve the quality of the product, however, in the case of mass media this formula gives a negative effect. Mass media do not take the function to educate society but see in it consumers. It strives to please and attract as many costumers as possible and increase its revenues. As a result, it moves away form high standards and ideals and becomes a producer and distributor of tasteless and obscene shows, programs, popular movies and music videos filled with sexual themes. It constructs the audience of a particular type who is addicted to a certain lifestyle with artificial wants. Entertainment companies have swallowed news operations. On television in the United States at least, there has been a 50 percent drop-off of news of the world.

As Noam Chomsky, a world-renowned linguist, intellectual and political activist, accurately noted in his book *gManufacturing Consent*h is that mass media becomes a factory producing news as any other commodities: as many items as possible in a standardized way. The fast way of making news is by answering five famous questions: what, when, where, how and sometimes why.

To conclude, some questions are stayed open: whether common effect of globalization is negative or positive, or whether the world will be further globalized or not. However, when walking on Bavarian streets and seeing people proudly wearing their national clothes, I have a hope that nations will stay solid and take only best qualities of globalization.

Literature

Beck, U., Was ist Globalisation, Frankfurt am Main, 2007.

Rosenau, J., Turbulence in World Politics, Brighton, 1990.

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