Society, health and well-being

September 23’

UNIT 2. GLOBALIZATION

Globalization is not a single concept that can be defined and encompassed within a set time
frame, nor is it a process that can be defined clearly with a beginning and an end. We are
globalized sometimes more than in other times, this means it is something flexible.
Furthermore, it cannot be expounded upon with certainty and be applicable to all people and in
all situations.
Class in English, why? Only one person has English as their mother tongue. Why did we
transition from French to English? …
DEFINITION
Globalization involves economic integration; the transfer of policies across borders; the
transmission of knowledge; cultural stability; the reproduction, relations, and discourses of
power; it is a global process, a concept, a revolution, and “an establishment” of the global

market free from sociopolitical control. Is the process of world shrinkage, of distances getting

shorter, things moving closer. It pertains to the increasing ease with which somebody on one
side of the world can interact, to mutual benefit, with somebody on the other side of the world.
Example: Added taxes that didn’t apply to UK. There are some countries that agree in
economic policies, like divorce or gay marriage: some rights inspire other parts of the world,
and they copy them. This happens really fast and can happen positively or negatively. With
Public health, Spanish flu and covid, how many years it took to take measures of control? For
covid, it was automatic. For Spanish flu there was no authority, each country did what they
thought they had to do, really slowly. Denialism is also a factor. Presidents of countries, they all
dress the same when they meet in international meetings, the tie, the suit, that’s symbolic. The
way meetings are held, organized, that also reflexes globalization. The global market: sell or
buy something from whatever place in the world.
World shrinkage: the world is becoming significantly smaller.
Is globalization new?
The invention of the wheel, ships, printing press, wagons, steam revolution, cars, telephony, the
mass media, internet.... All this revolution has done world shrinkage: moving faster…
something has led to others.
CHARACTERISTICS
• Speed, phenomena gets further…
• Expansion of ideas, values, ways of doing things…
• Voluntary adoption versus imposition
• Hierarchy, power structures
• Changes in interaction, social representations, social organization
Society, health and well-being
September 23’

• Changes in individual and social identity, and in their construction

GLOBALIZATION OR GLOBALIZATIONS?
This is important also for our development (economic globalization), we are closer to someone
from New Zeeland than our parents were, and their grandparents were. The sharing of music,
the food… (information globalization) we have parliaments in all countries. Economic
globalization means planes, cars… migration… (population globalization) all this has an impact
in our environment, there is an environmental change because of globalization (global change).
COMMON EFFECTS
Increased homogenization of society, we are closer to other societies:
Same products, standards of behavior and lifestyles are standardized, standardization or
aesthetic values, the use of the same code is required to access communication or the use of
technological artifacts.
Clothes… standards of behavior and lifestyles. Being fat or thin… for instance, 30 years ago the
eating disorders were nonexistent in Africa. But today it is starting to get global, the image. In
countries were fat was beauty now it is not anymore.
Also, the use of the same code: The globalization of English, it is probable that mandarin also,
but with artificial intelligence our languages will no disappear, because we will be able to
translate everything. The question is if we are going to keep learning languages. Esperanto:
Lingua franca with no implications.
CONSEQUENCES (NEGATIVE)
Industrialization, traveling a lot, environmental impacts… there is an increased propensity to
overexploitation and misuse of local ecosystem resources. This has environmental impacts:
ecological and social degradation. We have access to mostly everything, but some say this is
poorer than richer. Today more people play instruments, because we have access, and they are
popular. Places with no water but they must live there, ecological impacts have also social
impacts. Cultural impoverishment and loss of local control.
Image:
Represents population. Globalization is also about putting a lot of people in small places.
Almost nobody will die when they are children, second world war people died and after there
was a baby boom. The world population will keep in size, on average each couple has 2
children, this will maintain, and then people will start dying very slowly at 70,80… inverse
pyramid: less newborns and people living longer and also the factor of migration.
NEED FOR SOCIAL MEMBERSHIP / AFFILIATION
- Need for positive stimulation.
- Need for social support (feeling accepted).
- Need for social comparison.
Society, health and well-being
September 23’

We compare ourselves with the whole world, because we have access. Sometimes is positive,
sometimes negative. Human beings are social by definition.
We need some kind of common familiarity, when we are in Erasmus, first days we want to find
things that make us feel like home, like a bakery… same thing with people, we need a group of
friends with whom we have things in common.
There’s a need for rooting (social and territorial)!
- Cognitive familiarity (gives freedom of movement).
- Affective familiarity (feeling good about the environment).
- Landscape reference (restorative capacity of the environment).
CULTURAL IDENTITY:
Customary practice and of the beliefs, values, sanctions, rules, motives and satisfactions
associated with it. It’s not a legal thing, its subjective.
We can’t put in a list to know if we are Catalan. It’s not solid, it’s like liquid identity. Is clear
that you belong to that culture, but you cannot say any criteria. It’s a flexible concept. People
that were born here and also their parents, however they don’t speak Catalan, but there are
people that were not born here, and they feel like they are Catalan.
CONSEQUENCES OF GLOBALIZATION
- Geographical mobility, job opportunities: New groups, new referents, new
communities… loss of intermediate levels between social structure and person, social
interaction detached from the territory (social networks), more abstract knowledge of
distant places, ignorance of nearby surroundings, less rooting, less care for the
environment → more ecological impact.
After dictatorship in Spain, there is less intermediates between the person and the structures:
social structures used to be very solid (a building) or to buy something it was the same, but now
you can ask amazon. Harvard said they could replace universities with online courses, it was not
successful, they put a lot of money. You can have social interaction between a tablet. They know
a lot about Japan, but they don’t know big Catalonian things…
- Social cohesion or harmony? Globalization entails a breakdown of social cohesion (in
its traditional sense) and new forms of cohesion (still to mature). Lately, use of a
substitute term: social harmony. Harmony implies coexistence or coexistence between
social inequalities, not a proactive work of building social fabric.
Things like arranged marriages now this is changing, but in India is still doing it, like the sik.
Social harmony: we can coexist in inequality. Twitter, Facebook… social democracy:
continental Europe. In the past poor people had health, housing… but there couldn’t be so
much wealth without any equilibration with poor people. But now, are we going to come against
of Twitter…? Compared to the wealth it produces, how many people work for google?
Society, health and well-being
September 23’

- Change in cultural model: crisis that defies solid relationships and bonds, solid
identity experience. Intimacy, work, ideology… who am I?
100 years ago, a doctor would be interested in YouTube? They had a specific personality due to
their job, have more power, more money, and a hierarchy. Identities are not solid. People are not
so absorbed by their profession that they were in the past. A baker was that, not nothing else.
But now, they can be so many things. Also, probably because today you don’t owe the bakery.
People start to ask themselves, what am I?
- Ambivalent psychological experience: society based on achievement and autonomy.
Freedom means constant choices. Anxiety (risk, uncertainty) … being yourself is
exhausting?
Organized trips, when you are 20, you want risk. Choosing is distressful, like marriage. In India,
they have an “easy life”? Insurance in US, they don’t have public hospitals, they have to pay
loads of money. Freedom isn’t always in a positive way. In Spain we have a national health
system.
CHANGE IN THE FORMS OF IDENTIFICATION
The current cultural model crisis is expressed as a change in the forms of identification that
constitute the identity of people.
Community model:
• Pre-eminence of an essential ‘we’ which is the absolute source of personal identity; immutable
and pre-assigned belongings.
Corporate model:
• Pre-eminence of a contingent ‘I’ that chooses and self-invents itself permanently; multiple
variable and fleeting belongings.
New identities?
‘Corporate’ bonds (‘liquid’) generate tension, anxiety, distress, uncertainty, a sense of
inadequacy, of ‘not being able to do anything’. How to resolve this crisis caused by having to
"work on yourself" (reinvented 'I') without guarantees of certainty?
- Identity retreat: Regression to primary, essential, community links that provide a sense
of ontological security.
- Identity reconversion: Search for identity security without falling into essential
belongings.