GLOBALLIZATION AND COLLEGE STUDENTS

ABSTRACT: Many critics have noted that "globalization" is a fuzzy buzzword that has recently burst into our vocabulary. It has many possible meanings any one of which one might have in mind when using this word. To determine empirically what some scholars are thinking about when they speak of globalization, I sent a questionnaire to all members of the International Sociological Association, inviting those who have written about globalization to send me a text that would indicate as clearly as possible what they were thinking about. On the basis of numerous responses, I created a small glossary of relevant concepts. To facilitate a ready understanding of the rather complex analysis offered here, readers may prefer to start by opening a set of slides with accompanying notes that were prepared for use at a session of the University of Hawaii Social Science seminar on Globalization.

Like "poverty," "justice," "democracy," or "mother," globalization is a word that shelters many overlapping and closely linked concepts, each of which may be quite useful and can fairly readily be defined by a simple text. In context, words like "globalization" can be used unambiguously and precisely, but without context indicators, they are necessarily ambiguous and possibly misleading. To simplify the task of specifying which of its possible meanings an author has in mind, it is useful to have available a list of more specific terms, often in the form of phrases or even neologisms and acronyms, that can be used to help one specify which concept is intended whenever such a shelter term is used.

If, for example, we distinguish between "historical" and "contemporary" globalization, we can indicate whether we are thinking of globalization as a long-term process (what Jerry Bentley thinks about) or as a recent development (per Deane Neubauer's presentation). Each discipline focuses on one aspect of a complex reality and may well link other aspects to it. For example, Economists focus on production/consumption, money, distribution, capital as key variables; Political Scientists focus on governance, peace and conflict, justice and order; Anthropologists and Sociologists look primarily at class and caste, social structures and pathologies, communities and groups. Disciplinary specialists may or may not point out how the aspects of a complex reality like globalization they focus on interact with and affect other aspects.

By using phrases like "economic globalization," "political g.", "social g.", "cultural g." etc. we can specify which facet of the subject is a focus of our attention. Other dimensions involve one's ideological assumptions or ontological paradigms, whether one sees globalization as a consequence or cause of events, what places in the world one concentrates on, and whether one is thinking mainly of individuals, groups, regions, or the whole planet. Surely all these postures overlap and affect each other. The ultimate goal of conceptual analysis is to enable us think more clearly about whatever we want to study, and to express ourselves in ways that will more easily be understood both by specialists and the general public. The paper on Globalization seeks to clarify and suggest appropriate terms to make the distinctions found in the texts collected from ISA members that employ this word -- as well as by the contributors to the UH/SS seminar on globalization. It is supported by a summary that includes information about the onomantic framework employed in this analysis.