经典英语美文 (72)全球化
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What exactly does globalization mean? Concepts related to globalization include internationalization,“multidomestic marketing”, and “multinational or transnational marketing”,suggesting that the basic criterion is transactions across national boundaries. In the marketing and strategic management literature,globalization is conceptualized as a means to gain competitive advantage by locating different stages of production in different geographic regions according to the particular region’s comparative advantages.This conceptualization focuses only on the economic aspects of globalization; social, cultural and political factors are only considered in the context of achieving economic advantage.
Thus, being “culturally sensitive” in global markets is being able to sell one’s product with enough ingenuity to avoid possible pitfalls arising from the seller’s ignorance of local customs.International marketing textbooks discuss such cultural pitfalls in great detail:however, the cultural contest of globalization is always framed by the economic.
Broader conceptualizations of globalization can be found in other disciplines such as sociology and anthropology.Waters defined globalization as “a social process in which the constraints of geography on social and cultural arrangements recede and in which people become increasingly aware that they are receding.”This conceptualization with its much broader scope,allows for the examination of a number of consequences ofglobalization, not just economic but social, cultural and political ones.
While there are a few different conceptualizations of globalization,researchers seem to be in agreement that there are at least three dimensions of globalization: economic,political and cultural.The economic aspects of globalization stem from the spread of the capitalist world economy and the resulting expansion of geographical boundaries for the production and consumption of goods and services.The need for cheap raw materials,cheap labor and new markets saw the expansion of the capitalist world economy from one that was primarily Eurocentric to one that encompassed the entire world.This process was achieved by various means andoften involved overcoming political resistances (frequently through military means) in the new “markets”.The political aspects of globalization involved establishing control over markets and raw materials through either the use of direct military power or the establishment of international institutions (through diplomacy) that control such markets.The rise of the nation state is an example of the political aspect of globalization, although it is argued that advances in telecommunications and information systems and the resulting constructions of institutions that transcend territorial boundaries are making the nation state obsolete.
If the economic and political aspects of globalization involve material and power exchanges, the cultural of globalization involves the expression of symbols that represent facts, meanings, beliefs, preferences, tastes and values. In fact,these symbolic exchanges are increasingly displacing economic and political exchanges in the spread of global mass culture.Traditional barriers of language pose no problems to modern means of cultural production such as satellite television and film. However, the new “global culture”,despite its manifestations through consumption of global products and symbols in different parts of the globe,is essentially the culture of domimant groups centered in the West.
Thus,despite its worldwide connotation,globolisation is essentially a western notion inextricably linked with economic development.It’s a western world view which in economic terms define the world as a market that can be explioted to generate wealth.
全球化究竞意味着什么?与全球化相关的概念包括”国际化”,“多国国内营销”,多国或跨国营销”,这意味着全球化的基本标准是跨越国界的交易。在营销和战略管理文献中, 全球化的概念是,根据特定地区的比较优势,确立不同地区生产的不同阶段,从而获得竞争优势的一种手段。这一概念只强调了全球化的经济方面,而社会、文化及政治因素只在取得经济优 势的背景下才加以考虑。因此,在全球市场中的“文化敏感”,就是指销售者要尽量避免由于不了解当地风俗习惯而可能遇到的陷阱,要别出心裁地把自己的产品销售出去。尽管国际营销 教科书对这类文化陷阱阐述得十分详尽,然而全球化的文化进程总是受经济的制约。
关于全球化更广义的概念可见之于其他诸如社会学和人类学等学科中。沃特斯把全球化定义为”一种社会进程,在此进程中,反映在社会和文化方面在地域上的限制减少了,而且在这一进程中人越来越认识到这种限制正在减少。”具有更为广阔含义的这一概念在考察全球化的后果时,不仅仅包括经济方面的,而且包括社会、文化及政治方面的后果。
尽管全球化有不同的概念,但研究者们似乎一致认为全球化至少有三个层面:经济的,政治和文化的。经济全球化方面起源于资本主义世界经济的扩张以及由此产生了为扩大产品和服务的生产及消费而了出现的地理边界的扩张。对廉价原材料、劳动力和新市场的需要,使得资本主义世界经济从主要以欧洲为中心进而囊括了整个世界。这一全球化进程是通过各种手段 来实现的,其中包括克服来自新“市场”的政治对抗(通常通过军亊手段)。政治全球化方面包括通过直接动用军事力量或者 (通过外交)建立能控制这些市场的国际机构,来达到对市场和原材料的控制。民族国家的兴起就是政治全球化方面的一个例证,尽管也有人认为,电讯及信息系统的进步以及由此建立的超越领土边界的机构正在使得民族国家过时了。
如果说全球化的经济和政治方面涉及物质和权力的交换,全球化的文化方面则指那些代表着亊实、意义、信仰、喜好、趣味及价值取向的一系列象征意义的表达。亊实上,在全球大众文化的传播中,这些象征意义的交流正日益取代经济和政治方面的交流。传统的语言嫌碍对诸如卫星电视、电影等现代手段的文化产品并不构成任何问题。然而,新的“全球文化”,尽管它以消费全球产品和在不同地区的象征意义表现出来,其本质仍然是以西方为中心的大国集团的文化。
因此,重要的是要认识到尽管有者“世界范围”的含义,但全球化本质上仍然是一个和经济发展必然联系在一起的西方观念,是一种西方世界观,这种世界观用经济学术语,把世界定义为一个可以开发以便产生财富的市场。