Blog 1: What Is Globalization?– Leo AUBRY

 Part 1: What Is Globalization?

A note on my position: I am a French student on exchange in South Korea, so I look at this topic from the outside, and my examples come from these two countries. This is a limit, but also a useful vantage point.

Before this semester, I understood globalization mostly as international trade. I now think that definition is too narrow. Following the sociologist Roland Robertson (1992), I understand globalization as both the compression of the world and the growing awareness of the world as a whole. In other words, it is not only that goods and people circulate more, but also that we increasingly think and act with a global frame of reference.

Three dimensions can be distinguished, although in practice they overlap. Economically, globalization refers to the integration of markets through trade, investment, and global supply chains. A car may be designed in one country, assembled in another, and sold on every continent. This can lower prices and create jobs, but it also exposes workers and small firms to relocation and competition. Politically, it involves institutions such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, or the European Union, which set shared rules. Yet these bodies also reveal how difficult cooperation is when national interests diverge. Culturally, it concerns the circulation of images, music, food, and values, now accelerated by digital platforms.

I use these three categories as an analytical tool, not as a claim that they are separate in reality. The same object, such as a K-pop group, is at once an economic product, a diplomatic asset, and a cultural symbol.

Part 2: What I Found Most Interesting

What interests me most is that globalization does not produce simple uniformity. The "homogenization" thesis, often summed up by the fear of a "McDonaldization" of the world, assumes that one dominant culture replaces the others. Robertson's notion of glocalization offers a more convincing view: global forms are adapted to local contexts, and the local is partly produced through the global. Arjun Appadurai (1996) goes further by arguing that global cultural flows follow several, non-aligned directions, so there is no single center.

Korean fried chicken is a good case, and one I can observe every week. As far as I understand, the dish developed in South Korea after the 1950s under the influence of American food culture, then was transformed through double-frying and sweet-spicy sauces, and is now exported to cities like Paris. An idea traveled, was reinvented, and returned to the world with a new identity. The result belongs fully to neither the United States nor Korea.

My second observation is more critical. Globalization can strengthen attachment to identity instead of weakening it. In Europe, and in France in particular, concerns about economic insecurity and cultural change have fed political movements that promote borders and national preference. The more connected the world is, the more some groups seek to protect what they define as local. I should be careful here: I am describing a tendency, not explaining every case, since these movements also have domestic economic and social causes. Still, this suggests that globalization is not a linear process. It generates contact and curiosity, but also fear and distance.

Part 3: Question and Discussion

My question for my classmates is: Who really benefits from cultural globalization, the countries that export culture or the ones that adapt it?

There are strong arguments on both sides. Powerful countries and large companies appear to have structural advantages: their films, brands, and platforms reach everyone, which is close to what Joseph Nye calls soft power. But South Korea challenges a purely center-versus-periphery reading. Through the Korean Wave (Hallyu), a mid-sized country has become a major cultural exporter with a distinct identity. At the same time, I would not present this as a fully autonomous success, because Korean cultural products also succeed through global platforms and algorithms that they do not control. So influence is neither simply a matter of size nor fully independent of global structures.

Living abroad has also changed how I see my own culture. I notice what I miss from France, and I discover that some habits I considered "normal" are in fact specific. I do not claim my experience is representative, since a few months as an exchange student is not the same as migration or long-term residence. That is why I would like to hear from classmates from many different countries. Do you feel that globalization has given you more choices, or that it has pushed you to defend your identity more? And can a culture remain authentic while being consumed by the whole world?