Blog 1: What Is Globalization? - Kim Jong Woon

 

1. What I Understood from the Reading and Class

Before reading this article, I mostly thought of globalization as a process in which countries become more connected through trade, technology, media, and communication. I imagined the world as separate countries interacting with one another more frequently.

However, the reading made me realize that globalization is broader than simply increasing connections between countries. Robertson and White explain globalization through two important tendencies: global connectivity and global consciousness. Connectivity refers to the growing relationships between people, countries, and societies, while global consciousness means that people increasingly recognize the world as a whole.

What was especially important to me was that global consciousness does not mean everyone thinks in the same way. People can still have different cultures, interests, and opinions while becoming more aware that they are part of the same world.

The reading also explains that globalization is not only an economic process. It includes economic, political, cultural, and social dimensions, which influence one another. This helped me understand globalization less as one specific phenomenon and more as a broad process that affects many different parts of our lives.

Another point was that globalization does not have one definition that everyone agrees on. Different societies and scholars can understand it differently. Because of this, I came to think that globalization is something that is continuously developing rather than something that can be explained with one fixed definition.

2. What I Found Most Interesting

The concept I found most interesting was glocalization.

Before this reading, I tended to think that “global” and “local” were opposite ideas. I assumed that if something became more global, local characteristics would gradually become weaker. However, glocalization showed me that the two can actually exist together.

The example of McDonald’s made this idea easy to understand. McDonald’s is a global company, but it has to change its products depending on local cultures and customs. For example, its products in India need to reflect cultural attitudes toward beef. The global product spreads across countries, but it does not remain exactly the same everywhere. what is globalization - roberts…

I also thought that glocalization made the earlier ideas of globalization more concrete. The spread of a global company shows increasing connectivity, while the way it changes according to local culture shows that globalization involves cultural and social factors as well as economic ones.

What felt new to me was that globalization does not necessarily remove local differences. Global and local influences can happen at the same time. In some cases, globalization may even make local characteristics more visible because global ideas have to adapt when they enter different places.

3. A Question and Discussion

The reading also made me wonder what globalization might eventually lead to.

If global connectivity and global consciousness continue to increase, perhaps we will gradually stop thinking of the world only as separate countries interacting with one another. Instead, people may begin to see the world more as one larger community.

This made me wonder whether a much more globalized future could eventually create something close to “one world.” Could people identify themselves more as members of a global community rather than mainly as members of individual nations?

At the same time, I do not think greater connection automatically means greater agreement. The reading emphasizes that global consciousness does not mean consensus. what is globalization - roberts… Even if people become more connected, countries and cultures will still have different political, cultural, and economic interests. In fact, closer connections could sometimes make those differences and conflicts more visible.

So the question I was left with is: If globalization continues to develop, will humanity eventually move toward one global community, or will conflicts between different interests prevent us from reaching that point?

Comments

  1. Sihyeon ParkSeptember 27, 2026 at 7:12 AM

    While reading the final question, I thought that from the perspective of glocalization, it seems difficult to become a fully unified global community. However, I wondered whether glocalization might merely be a step toward grobalization; from this perspective, perhaps a fully globalized community could emerge. Between glocalization and grobalization, which do you think we are actually experiencing now?

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