The Contemporary World - Global Demography and Global Cities

ASSESSMENT 5

Essay: Has McLuhan's ideal of a 'global village' become a reality? (Minimum 150 words, handwritten entries should be capitalized for clarity.)

Supplementary Reading:

  • The Globalization of K-pop: Korea's Place in the Global Music Industry by Ingyu Oh (2014)

  • KPop Explained in Netflix

LESSON 5: GLOBAL DEMOGRAPHY

UNIT 1: Global City

Introduction

The global structure is mirrored in cities, where global and local elements merge to form global cities. These cities are hubs of interconnection and exchange between nations. This unit explores the relationship between the global and the local, examining the image of progress cities project versus the reality of poverty within them.

Learning Objectives:

  1. Define the Global City.

  2. Relate contemporary global issues to local problems.

  3. Explain how local context influences global ideas and vice versa.

  4. Demonstrate critical thinking in understanding contemporary issues of modernity.

Sections:

  1. Global Cities: Strategic for new types of operations.

  2. Different Societies appropriate modernity differently.

  3. Global Issues, Local Perspectives.

  4. Globalization and Urban Problems.

Defining the Global City

Globalization has a spatial dimension, evident in foreign investments, capital flows, and the construction of skyscrapers. Infrastructure such as bridges facilitates the exchange of goods and services. This generates jobs due to increased economic activity. However, this process can also displace the poor from city centers in favor of new opportunities.

Global City Concept

Saskia Sassen popularized the term "global city" in the 1990s, focusing on economic criteria. She initially identified New York, London, and Tokyo as primary global cities due to their status as hubs of global finance and capitalism, housing the world's top stock exchanges. However, the definition of a global city has expanded beyond economics. Cities like San Francisco (home to Facebook, Twitter, and Google) and Los Angeles (with its cultural influence through Hollywood) demonstrate that global influence extends beyond wealth.

Global cities produce technological innovations, financial products, and consulting services (legal, accounting, advertising). These service industries heavily rely on telecommunications and are integrated into global business networks. They represent the post-industrial "service" economies of the developed world, producing knowledge, innovation, technical expertise, and cultural goods.

Sassen argues that the emergence of a global market for financial and specialized services gives global cities a "command and control function" over economic globalization. The headquarters of major transnational companies are located in global cities, and consultant firms are over-represented in these urban hubs. These companies direct global flows of money and knowledge, influencing economic activity worldwide.

Key characteristics of Global Cities:

  • Command posts for the global economy.

  • Key locations for service industries (financial, legal firms).

  • Sites of knowledge production and innovation.

  • Markets for new industries and services.

Global cities are supported by multifunctional infrastructures. Central business districts offer employment clusters for local, national, and multinational firms. Universities and research facilities contribute to knowledge production and innovation. Global cities are cosmopolitan sites with diverse economic and social opportunities, though they also face poverty and social inequality.

How Societies Adopt Modernity (Appadurai's Perspective)

Arjun Appadurai argues that globalization is not just cultural imperialism but involves different societies appropriating modernity in unique ways. For instance, China may rapidly adopt economic changes but slowly embrace ideological shifts, while another society might exhibit a different pattern. Globalization doesn't create uniformity; nations selectively engage with aspects of globalization based on economic conditions, political stability, and cultural identity.

Appadurai emphasizes the role of human imagination in globalization. Instead of face-to-face communities, we live in imagined global communities facilitated by five interrelated dimensions or "scapes":

  • Ethnoscapes: The flow of people (immigrants, exiles, tourists, migrants) around the globe.

  • Mediascapes: The production and distribution of information and images through media.

  • Technoscapes: The rapid spread of technology and knowledge across borders.

  • Finanscapes: The transfer of financial investment capital globally.

  • Ideoscapes: Images and ideas, often political, that promote ideologies.

Unlike fixed landscapes, these "scapes" are constantly changing, and their experience depends on the perspective of social actors such as nation-states, corporations, diasporic communities, families, or individuals. The combination of these scapes leads to diverse and sometimes conflicting worldviews.

Ethnoscapes

Appadurai defined "ethnoscape" to describe the movement of people globally, including immigrants, political exiles, tourists, and economic migrants, as well as the desires to move for a better life. Increased mobility influences the politics of nation-states.

Mediascapes

Mediascapes involve the production and distribution of information and images through various media channels, shaping how people understand global events.

Technoscapes

Technoscapes represent the rapid spread of technology and knowledge across borders. For example, Western European service industries may locate call centers in India, and US companies may recruit Indian software engineers.

Finanscapes

Finanscapes reflect the rapid transfer of financial capital in currency markets, stock exchanges, and commodity speculation.

Ideoscapes

Ideoscapes consist of images that are political, either state-produced or created by counter-ideological movements. Examples include ideas about national heritage versus movements promoting minority rights and freedom of speech.

Appadurai's concept of the five scapes challenges the view of globalization as a uniform process, emphasizing its fluid, multilayered, and irregular nature.

Global Issues, Local Perspectives

Globalization leads to new cultural forms through the blending of global products, values, and tastes with local equivalents. Roland Robertson argues that this intermixing of global and local elements is a key feature of society, creating new cultural possibilities.

Robertson examines the relationships between "individual selves," "nation-state," a "world system of societies," and "a notion of a common humanity" to understand cultural dynamics in globalization. This framework explores how a person's self-identity interacts with national and global cultural influences.

Globalization spreads various ideas, cultural forms, and products, including:

  • Musical styles and genres.

  • Fashion trends.

  • Consumer products.

  • Ideas and values.

These global forms are adapted by local communities and individuals, becoming "glocalized."

Robertson emphasizes the term "global unicity," where globalization and cultural exchange create a global culture. However, this doesn't imply a single, unified global culture.

Robertson also popularized the term "glocalization," which refers to the twofold process of universalizing and particularizing tendencies, as well as the localization of global cultural products or forms.

Globalization and the Street Homeless in Metro Manila

The rise of new types of homeless people has occurred in cities worldwide. Industrialized countries have seen an increase in the "new homeless" since the 1980s, while developing countries have experienced a surge in the "street homeless" since the late 1990s. In São Paulo, Brazil, the street homeless population exceeded 100,000 in the early 2000s. Metro Manila has also seen a rapid increase in street homeless individuals.

The street homeless are defined as those without permanent housing, living on sidewalks, under bridges, and in public spaces. Distinguishing them from people who work on the streets or squatters poses definitional challenges, it is evident that the street homeless are becoming a significant social group in Metro Manila.

Estimates suggest that there are over 100,000 street homeless in Metro Manila, including street children. These individuals often move and lack a fixed sleeping place, making accurate counts difficult.

The street homeless include people evicted from squatter areas, recent migrants from provinces, ethnic minority groups, seasonal laborers, and street children with their families.

A tentative definition of the street homeless is people without permanent and fixed houses, who do not have relatives with whom they can live, and who live alone or in a family unit on the street. These individuals may be wanderers, beggars, or victims of squatter eviction, and they support themselves through vending, scavenging, car watching, begging, or illegal activities.

Reasons for Increase in Street Homelessness:

The increase in street homelessness in Metro Manila can be partially explained by globalization theory. The concept of globalization has been used to analyze homelessness in industrialized and developing countries.

The increase of the street homeless in Metro Manila can be explained by globalization theory, at least partly. Before we apply it toMetro Manila, we need to consider: Is Metro Manila a global city? What is a global city? What was the process by which Metro Manila was globalized? What Economic and political conditions prescribed by the economic history of the Philippines were there behind this process?

Globalization's impact on street homelessness involves four sub-processes:

  1. Expansion of the service economy: The rise in business facilities and convenience stores increases life resources (such as scrap) and begging opportunities for the street homeless.

  2. Increased job chances on the street: The expansion of the service economy creates jobs like vendors, scavengers, and car watchers, augmenting the life chances of the street homeless.

  3. Informalization of work: Globalization leads to unstable employment and reduced real wages, pushing vulnerable people into homelessness.

  4. Land redevelopment: The expansion of the real estate market and government policies result in the eviction of squatter settlements, increasing the number of street homeless.

Financial crises have forced the government to cut expenditures, hindering efforts to address unemployment and housing for the poor. Lack of fully articulated policies for the street homeless further exacerbates the problem.

The street homeless are a product of both push and pull factors related to globalization, representing changing labor and housing conditions at the bottom of the urban hierarchy.

TERM PAPER 3

Write a 1,000 word paper analyzing the contemporary condition of the Philippines using Appadurai's concept of "scapes." Arial 11, single-spaced.

Guide Question:

What is the connection between the proliferation of homelessness in urban cities and urban cities itself despite being the nexus of global exchange in the country?

UNIT 2: Demography and Migration

Introduction

Demography studies the size, composition, and distribution of human populations, as well as changes over time through fertility, mortality, marriage, migration, and social mobility. This unit also explores the relationship between economic welfare and population, the impact of globalization on human populations, migration as a part of globalization, and the effects of global migration on the economic well-being of states.