The Psychology of Globalization

Identity, Ideology, and Action

Gerhard Reese, Amir Rosenmann, James E. Cameron

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780128123171
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Applied Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The Psychology of Globalization: Identity, Ideology, and Action underpins the necessity to focus on the psychological dimensions of globalization. Overviewing the theory and empirical research as it relates to globalization and psychology, the book focuses on two key domains: social identity and collective action, and political ideology and attitudes. These provide frameworks for addressing four specific topics: (a) environmental challenges, (b) consumer culture, (c) international security, and (d) transnational migration and intra-national cultural diversification. Arguing that individual social representation and behavior are altered by globalizing processes while they simultaneously contribute to these processes, the authors explore economic, political and cultural dimensions.

• Discusses how globalization affects our social identity, collective action, and intergroup relations
• Examines how the infrastructure of global consumerism shapes individuals' selfhood, group formation, and action
• Investigates how people perceive and respond to global challenges such as climate change and mass migration

Part I

Globalization and Global Concern

Outline

• Chapter 1 Globalization and Global Concern
• Chapter 2 Globalization, Culture, and Consumerism

Chapter 1

Globalization and Global Concern

Abstract

This chapter briefly introduces the book with a short description of how our everyday lives are embedded in globalization processes. It then elaborates the nature of globalization as a complex and dynamic set of processes, and presents the framework of systems thinking as an appropriate guiding concept. Given the complexity and multifaceted nature of globalization, we argue that a psychological analysis is essential to understanding this system. Finally, this chapter provides the scope and overview of the book, presenting brief summaries of what the reader can expect from each chapter.

Keywords

Globalization; psychology; systems thinking; global; interconnectedness; social networks; cooperation

A Few Words to Begin

Readers of this book are likely well acquainted with the concept of globalization. It is certainly a prominent topic of scientific discourse. It also forms the fabric of everyday experience: what we do, what we consume, what we read, what we know. If you live in Canada, you may realize that the clothing you wear is largely produced in countries such as China, India, or Bangladesh, and transported over land and sea; nonetheless making your attire more affordable. As a person living in Malaysia, you may have visited a local McDonald’s restaurant to eat a cheeseburger, realizing that the owner of McDonald’s comes from the United States while some of the products may be imported from countries far away. These examples—written in a German village on a computer from a North American company that was assembled in China using single components produced in South Korea with chemical elements extracted from mines in various African countries, and so on… (we think you get the idea)—show that globalization pervades the lives of virtually all humans, in virtually all aspects of life. More formally, globalization reflects the “widening, deepening and speeding up of worldwide interconnectedness in all aspects of contemporary social life” (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, & Perraton, 1999, p. 2).

Globalization is a complex set of phenomena, and our aim in this book is to engage with that complexity from a social psychological point of view. We will explore how worldwide interconnectedness involves not only transnational economic and political institutions, but also myriad effects on our actions, our views of the world, as well as our self- and collective identities. To approach this still-developing conceptual domain, we review and integrate various strands of psychological research that—often implicitly—deal with the issue of globalization and its ramifications. However, psychology alone will not be able to explain every aspect of globalization. We need approaches that attend to various aspects of globalization, and we will try to connect the psychological perspective with other levels of analysis. To do so, we begin here (and in Chapter 2) by establishing globalization as a multilayered and historically situated set of processes, and by introducing a systems approach as a useful framework for thinking about globalization.

The Complex Nature of Globalization

By definition, globalization involves a large, dynamic, and intertwined system. It spans the global and the local, as well as innumerable and constantly evolving interactions between its (natural and human-made) elements. Globalization therefore challenges us to adopt an analytic approach and an action program that can accommodate these complex interdependencies. We believe that one such approach is particularly appropriate in this conceptualization: systems thinking (cf. Hester & Adams, 2017; Meadows, 2008; Werhane, 2008). In parallel to globalization, a systems approach presumes that human perception, thinking, and action are interrelated and interconnected on various societal levels. On a fundamental level, a system refers to a complex set of self-organized elements that interact with each other, producing their own pattern of behavior (i.e., emergent effects) over time (Meadows, 2008). Consequently, any action within the system has an impact on the system by affecting (an)other element or elements, such that “almost no phenomenon can be studied in isolation from other relationships with at least some other phenomenon” (Wenhane, 2008, p. 467). A systems-based perspective on globalization guides us to simultaneously attend to the actions of individuals, institutions, nation states, businesses, and other entities operating in the global system—with their coinciding or conflicting worldviews, interests and goals. The latter, in turn, are connected on different levels of analyses, from micro structures such as neighborhoods or local environment groups up to macro structures such as global corporations and institutions.

When dealing with such complex systems, we must constantly remind ourselves that by focusing on one specific component, we run the risk of obscuring its position, function, and position in an intricate web of reciprocal relationships with other components, and indeed, the system as a whole. For example, let us consider the incredible global transformations associated with the increased centrality of social networking services (SNS; e.g., Facebook or Twitter) to contemporary social life. SNS were introduced to most of us a little more than a decade ago, as platforms designed to help us to communicate with one another, no matter how near or far. On a more communal level, they promised to help us organize new forms of communities, where people may more easily cooperate as they address issues close to their hearts. They also aimed to help people sharing their worldviews with those who might be receptive to hearing them by democratizing and decentralizing the exchange of ideas. Recently, however, the more sinister aspects of exactly these communal features of SNS life have drawn public attention and concern. You might have read about radical religious or neo-fascist groups using these platforms to organize their potentially harmful actions and to reach new members who might further disseminate their hateful messages. In more mainstream settings, the same features are used to create mass campaigns of disinformation and the systematic manipulation of public opinion. It is a mistake, therefore, to claim that SNS are either “good” or “bad,” as their effects depend entirely on the way they are utilized by various actors, and interact with other elements of the system. Put simply, globalization has made many aspects of social and political life more complicated.

As we discuss these issues later in the book, we will show how these features are embedded in a particular socioeconomic system. This macrosystem creates both the opportunities and the incentives for the type of innovative thinking and remarkable technological achievements provided by SNS. At the same time, new business models were also needed to help SNS flourish within this profit-driven economic environment. As a result, SNS are constantly learning who we are, and what kind of lifestyle we follow, so that they can market to us exactly the products we are most likely to be interested in and to buy. And citizens’ data, in turn, define the directions these corporations and the internet as a whole continue to develop.

Understandably, SNS’s social architecture must accommodate these marketing goals as a means for the technology corporations to thrive. These features of the social settings of SNS both reflect and further entrench the macroeconomic system. They now serve as a perfect venue for marketers where not only products are offered to those who are most likely to buy them, but also specifically tailored ideas, ideologies, truths, and forms of political action. These latter aspects, of course, directly impact the social, economic, and regulatory environment in which SNS operate, as well as the world we live in. Nowadays, social media oftentimes have cascading geopolitical effects that are constructive or disruptive on a truly global scale (e.g., World Economic Forum, “The Global Risks Report,” 2018). At the same time, social media have a profound impact on our thinking and acting when it comes to discussing and responding to the global issues that we face. As you will see throughout this book, there is a growing body of research addressing this.

While we aim to enrich the thinking about globalization by offering a psychological perspective, we again stress that globalization, with its plethora of interconnected phenomena, requires that we adopt various perspectives. Inspecting an issue from only one disciplinary angle will often result in an incomplete picture and a biased or even plain wrong analysis of the problem and its solution. An ancient story found in various different cultures illustrates the necessity of a systems-based, interdisciplinary view of globalization and its consequences.

This ancient parable, apparently originating from a Buddhist text (but also found in various other religious traditions), describes a group of blind men who had never encountered an elephant before. Given the opportunity to touch the elephant, each of the men feels a different part of its body. Based on this limited experience, they come to very different conclusions about what an elephant actually is. A 19th century poem by John Godfrey Saxe popularized this fable in the West:

It was six men of Indostan

To learning much inclined,

Who went to see the Elephant

(Though all of them were blind),

That each by observation

Might satisfy his mind

The First approached the Elephant,

And happening to fall

Against his broad and sturdy side,

At once began to bawl:

God bless me! but the Elephant

Is very like a wall!

The Second, feeling of the tusk,

Cried, Ho! what have we here

So very round and smooth and sharp?

To me ‘tis mighty clear

This wonder of an Elephant

Is very like a spear!

The Third approached the animal,

And happening to take

The squirming trunk within his hands,

Thus boldly up and spake:

I see, quoth he, the Elephant

Is very like a snake!

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,

And felt about the knee.

What most this wondrous beast is like

Is mighty plain, quoth he;

‘Tis clear enough the Elephant

Is very like a tree!

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,

Said: Even the blindest man

Can tell what this resembles most;

Deny the fact who can

This marvel of an Elephant

Is very like a fan!?

The Sixth no sooner had begun

About the beast to grope,

Then, seizing on the swinging tail

That fell within his scope,

I see, quoth he, the Elephant

Is very like a rope!

And so these men of Indostan

Disputed loud and long,

Each in his own opinion

Exceeding stiff and strong,

Though each was partly in the right,

And all were in the wrong!

The lesson we can take from this fable and apply to the analysis of globalization (and many other systems-based phenomena) is simple: The way a system behaves cannot be inferred by knowing only about the behaviors of its constituent elements (Meadows, 2008).

Positioning globalization in a systems-based perspective reminds us that a focus on specific elements alone may not be sufficient to understand the system, and that without such systems-based understanding, it is impossible to make complete sense of any specific element. For the same reason, no single disciplinary perspective, including that of psychology, can alone account for the dynamics and effects of globalization. Nonetheless, in this book we will show why psychological processes are crucial considerations when we think about the effects of globalization. Even as we draw from a broad, multidisciplinary literature, we note that psychology itself is well positioned to define and incorporate multiple levels of analysis (e.g., Doise & Mapstone, 1986; Turner & Oakes, 1986): that of the individual, the social group, and the dynamics of society at large.

This book will try to do justice to these varying perspectives, and we hope to make clear that our psychological perspective can uniquely add to the understanding of globalization. The book will delineate how globalization affects individual dispositions and decisions. It will focus on social group processes and how globalization may contribute to developing attachments and sympathies that go beyond parochial group boundaries. Furthermore, it will examine how changes in society at large are changing humans’ lives, and how individuals contribute to societal and global change. Simply put, this book aims to bring the psychology of individual and collective behavior into the systemic equation of globalization.

An Overview of the Social Psychology Perspective of Globalization: Why Do We Need to Care?

Processes related to globalizati...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• About the Authors
• Preface
• Part I: Globalization and Global Concern
• Part II: Psychology of Globalization: Basic Processes
• Part III: Issues in Depth
• Part IV: Conclusion
• References
• Index