Page 80 - The ISA Handbook in Contemporary Sociology

9781412934633-Chap-04 1/10/09 8:41 AM Page 51

SOCIOLOGICAL PRACTICE 51

countries as well, have contributed to the of how to distribute scarce resources fairly at
dramatization of the mass media’s coverage a global level. Globalization is also having a
of globalization, influencing concerns of the direct impact on the primary ‘cells’ of human
general public. societies, small social groups of people pos-
Commonly accepted models of globaliza- sessing closely related values, similar social
tion are based on ideas about a united and experience, and corresponding perceptions
integrated world civilization which encom- of the world. With their inner beings shaped
passes the entire earth and near-earth space by the same historical events, members of
and sweeps away all kinds of borders, be each group have experienced these events in
they between cultures or states, in the domain approximately the same fashion. In the most
of social inequality, or between time-zones general terms, it can be said that the social
and geographical regions. The world is por- and biological stages of an individual’s
trayed as becoming compact, accessible, development are superimposed on a series of
transparent and visible, with its parts linked historical events and this results in the unique
by interdependency. This concerns econom- social characteristics of the ‘cells’.
ics, technology, politics, the environment, Therefore, as expressed in Pokrovsky’s
moral values, and all the other areas of inter- concept of ‘cellular globalization’(Pokrovsky,
est to contemporary humankind, including 2001), the ultimate meaning of globalization
such negative phenomena as organized goes beyond processes of integration of those
crime, the narcotics business, terrorism and parts of the world community that used to be
other destructive forms of activity. The state- isolated and alienated from each other.
ment ‘the world is so small’ is the epitome According to this conceptualization, global-
of this mindset. The world really is becoming ization permeates every cell, every small
small, in both the best and the most threaten- community, at times radically changing the
ing sense of the word. It is becoming pervaded nature of basic relations between people
by anomie, which makes governance very and organizations and creating new sets of
difficult and expands the scope of risk as an values and reference points in our everyday
unavoidable element in the everyday life of lives. In other words, globalization not only
concerned citizens (Beck, 1986). The percep- implies ‘a small world’, but also a world
tion of risk factors is further differentiated by which is essentially new in all of its modali-
the particular context in which different ties. And this pervasive change is often
agents operate (Benveniste, 1983): resisted as unacceptable, and sometimes
gives rise to direct protest by those who are
● To the expert, the risk might be that people do not ready to embrace the birth of a new system
not understand the consequences of CO 2 before with all its unpredictable and unstudied char-
it is too late.
● To the politicians, the risk might be to lose the acteristics. This is the way it has always been
support of the citizens. in the past whenever a civilization crossed a
● To different groups of citizens, the risk might be threshold in its development, passing from
that experts and politicians might be wrong. one moment of history to another.
The concept of cellular globalization helps
Globalization processes are not evolving to grasp a number of important develop-
arbitrarily or at the whim of impersonal ments, such as:
forces, but, to a large extent, through rational
● a tendency towards material consumerism,
human efforts. These processes permeate all
● a constant narrowing of social interest,
social groups and institutions, transforming
● the requirements of flexibility, expressed in the
them both from within and from without. ability to adapt to unpredictable social changes,
NGOs as the important caretakers of civil ● a tendency towards virtualization, understood as
concerns turn into INGOs (International often unconscious entry into the world of ‘simu-
Non-Governmental Organizations) and these lacres’ (artificial mythological structures) that do
INGOs strive to put on the agenda the issue not have any direct bearing on the objective reality,