Note: This chapter is not part of the CBSE Class 12 Sociology syllabus for 2026-27 (CBSE has deleted it). Students of other boards should check their board’s latest syllabus.
- How sociological imagination connects the individual and society, the micro and the macro, the local and the global
- Whether global interconnections are new: the Silk Route, Panini, Yi Jing and the kupamanduka (well-frog) parable
- The economic, political and cultural dimensions of globalisation: liberalisation, TNCs, the electronic and knowledge economy, EU/ASEAN/SAARC, IGOs and INGOs
- Homogenisation versus glocalisation of culture, with the book’s own examples (Star, MTV, McDonald’s)
- How globalisation affects labour (the Nike example, Fordism vs post-Fordism) and threatens indigenous craft and knowledge systems
1 Why Sociology Studies Globalisation
No discussion of social change in the twenty-first century is complete without globalisation. The terms globalisation and liberalisation have already come up in this book: recall globalisation, liberalisation and rural society in Chapter 4, and liberalisation’s impact on Indian industry in Chapter 5.
Sociological imagination is the tool sociology uses to connect the individual and society: the micro and the macro, the local and the global. It asks how a peasant in a remote village, a middle-class job-seeker, or a neighbourhood grocer is affected by forces that seem to operate far away.
A sociologist or social anthropologist can no longer study a society as an isolated entity. The compression of space and time has changed this. Studies of villages, families, movements, work and castes must now account for global interconnection: for instance, how World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules on agriculture affect the farmer.
1.1 The Same Change Affects People Very Differently
Globalisation’s effect is far-reaching but uneven: what means new opportunity for one group can mean loss of livelihood for another.
| Group affected | What happened, in the book’s own account |
|---|---|
| Women silk spinners and twisters of Bihar | Lost their jobs once cheaper, shinier Chinese and Korean silk yarn entered the market |
| Women fish sorters, dryers, vendors and net makers | Large fishing vessels entering Indian waters took away the fish earlier collected by Indian boats |
| Women gum collectors of Gujarat | Lost employment (gum from julifera/Baval trees) once cheaper gum began being imported from Sudan |
| Rag pickers, almost all Indian cities | Lost some employment once waste paper began being imported from developed countries |
| Traditional entertainers | Affected later in the chapter, see the Dombari community’s own testimony below |
Views on globalisation’s impact are sharply divided: some see it heralding a better world; others argue the already-excluded worsen while the privileged benefit; some argue globalisation is not even a new development.
2 Are Global Interconnections New to India?
2.1 The Early Years
India was not isolated from the world even two thousand years ago. The famous Silk Route connected India, centuries ago, to the great civilisations of China, Persia, Egypt and Rome. People came to India across its long past as traders, conquerors and migrants, and settled here.
Panini, the greatest grammarian in Sanskrit, who systematised and transformed Sanskrit grammar and phonetics around the fourth century BCE, was of Afghan origin. The seventh-century Chinese scholar Yi Jing learned his Sanskrit in Java (in the city of Shri Vijaya) on his way from China to India. The influence of these interactions is reflected in languages across Asia, from Thailand to Malaya, Indo-China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Korea and Japan.
The kupamanduka (well-frog) is a parable that recurs in old Sanskrit texts as a warning against isolationism: a frog that lives its whole life inside a well, knows nothing else, talks to no one, argues with no one, and merely harbours deep suspicion of the outside world. The book’s point: the world’s scientific, cultural and economic history would have been very limited had we lived like well-frogs.
2.2 Colonialism and the Global Connection
Modern capitalism had a global dimension from its very inception (recall Chapter 1). Colonialism was part of a system that needed new sources of capital, raw materials, energy, markets and a global network to sustain it. Today’s globalisation is often defined by large-scale migration, but the book points out that the greatest historical movement of people was the migration of Europeans who settled the Americas and Australia.
Do not describe migration under globalisation as something wholly new. The book names three earlier large movements in the same breath: European settlement of the Americas and Australia, Indian indentured labourers shipped to distant parts of Asia, Africa and the Americas, and the slave trade that carried thousands of Africans to distant shores.
2.3 Independent India and the World
Independent India retained a global outlook, inherited from the nationalist movement’s commitment to worldwide liberation struggles and solidarity. Many Indians travelled overseas for education and work; export-import of raw material, goods and technology, and the operation of foreign firms in India, were ongoing since Independence. The book’s question: is today’s change radically different from anything seen before?
3 Understanding Globalisation
Globalisation refers to the growing interdependence between different people, regions and countries in the world, as social and economic relationships come to stretch world-wide. Economic forces are an integral part of it, but not its sole cause. It has been driven forward above all by the development of information and communication technologies, within a political context too.
Globalisation and liberalisation are related but not the same. Liberalisation is India’s own name for the specific economic policy decisions the state took from 1991; globalisation is the wider, worldwide process.
4 The Economic Dimension of Globalisation
4.1 The Economic Policy of Liberalisation
Liberalisation refers to the range of policy decisions the Indian state took since 1991 to open up the Indian economy to the world market: a break from the earlier, post-Independence policy of protecting Indian business and markets from wider competition (on the assumption that a former colonial country would be at a disadvantage in a free market).
Since July 1991, India has seen a series of reforms across agriculture, industry, trade, foreign investment and technology, the public sector, and financial institutions, on the assumption that greater integration into the global market would benefit the Indian economy. Liberalisation also involved taking loans from institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), given on the condition of structural adjustment, usually cuts in state spending on health, education and social security, and a greater say for institutions like the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
4.2 The Different Economic Dimensions
| Dimension | What it means, in the book’s own account |
|---|---|
| Transnational corporations (TNCs/MNCs) | Companies producing goods or marketing services in more than one country, from small firms with a factory or two abroad to giants whose operations cross the globe. Named examples: Coca Cola, General Motors, Colgate-Palmolive, Kodak, Mitsubishi. Some Indian corporations are also becoming transnational |
| Electronic economy | Banks, corporations, fund managers and individual investors can shift funds internationally “with the click of a mouse”, which carries great risk; linked to sudden stock-market rises and dips from foreign investors buying and selling |
| Weightless economy | The economy is no longer primarily agricultural or industrial. A weightless economy is one where products are based in information: computer software, media, entertainment, internet-based services |
| Knowledge economy | Much of the workforce is not in physical production or distribution but in a good’s design, development, technology, marketing, sale and servicing, from a neighbourhood catering service to large event-management organisations (a wholly new occupation) |
| Globalisation of finance | For the first time, mainly due to the IT revolution, financial markets are globally integrated: billions of dollars move in electronic circuits within seconds, with 24-hour trading. New York, Tokyo and London are the key global financial centres; Mumbai is India’s own financial capital |
List products you use, or have seen advertised, made by transnational corporations: shoes, cameras, computers, televisions, cars, music systems, cosmetics (soaps, shampoos), clothes, processed food, tea, coffee, milk powder.
5 Global Communications
Advances in technology and telecommunications infrastructure have revolutionised global communication: telephones (landline and mobile), fax, digital and cable television, e-mail and the internet. Not everyone has equal access: this unevenness is the digital divide. Despite the divide, these technologies “compress” time and space: two people in Bengaluru and New York can talk and exchange documents and images instantly via satellite technology. The Government of India’s Digital India programme aims to build a “digitally empowered society” and a “knowledge economy”.
| Year | Figure |
|---|---|
| 1998 | 70 million internet users worldwide: USA and Canada 62%, Asia 12% |
| 2000 | 325 million users worldwide; India: 3 million subscribers, 15 million users |
| Now | India’s internet users risen to 700 million |
| 2017-18 study | 1 in 10 households has a computer; about a quarter of homes have internet via mobile phone or other devices |
The digital divide persists: cyber connectivity is largely urban (widely accessible via cyber cafés), while rural areas remain largely unconnected because of erratic power supply, widespread illiteracy and lack of infrastructure like telephone connections.
PCOs and telephones met a strong Indian socio-cultural need to stay in touch with family, much like train travel for weddings, relatives and funerals. Most telephony advertisements show mothers talking to children, or grandparents to grandchildren.
Late 1980s: cell phones viewed with distrust (misused by criminals). By 1998: still seen as a luxury item (only the rich could own one, so owners should be taxed). By 2006: India became the country with the 4th-largest cell phone usage in the world; students even went on strike over a college cell-phone ban. In 2020-21, the COVID-19 pandemic drove lakhs of children to use cell phones for online classes.
6 Globalisation and Labour
6.1 A New International Division of Labour
Routine manufacturing production and employment is increasingly done in Third World cities, building on outsourcing (Chapter 4) and contract farming (Chapter 5). The book illustrates this with Nike.
Only two US factories ever made shoes for Nike, whose headquarters are in Beverton, near Portland, Oregon. This constant movement makes the labouring population vulnerable and insecure: a flexibility that usually favours producers.
Fordism
- Mass production of goods
- At one centralised location
Post-Fordism
- Flexible production
- At dispersed locations
An “ostensibly American car”: of its US$20,000 showroom price, only US$7,600 goes to Americans (Detroit workers and management, New York lawyers and bankers, Washington lobbyists, and GM shareholders across the country). Of the rest:
6.2 Globalisation and Employment
Impact is uneven here too. Urban middle-class youth get new career openings (computer institutes, call centres, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies, shopping malls, restaurants) instead of a routine B.Sc./B.A./B.Com degree. But broader employment trends are disappointing.
“The largest number of poor people lives in South Asia. The poverty rate is particularly high in India, Nepal and Bangladesh.” The report finds a growing “employment gap”: between 2003 and 2004, employment in Asia and the Pacific grew by a “disappointing” 1.6% (25 million jobs) to a total of 1.588 billion jobs, against economic growth of over 7%.
7 Globalisation and Political Changes
The collapse of the erstwhile (former) socialist world was a major political change that hastened globalisation, giving it a specific neo-liberal economic and political approach: a vision of free enterprise that trusts market forces to be efficient and fair, and is critical of both state regulation and state subsidies. Against this, the book notes the possibility of an inclusive globalisation: one that includes all sections of society.
| Political dimension | Named examples in the book |
|---|---|
| International/regional political mechanisms | European Union (EU), Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) |
| IGO, International Governmental Organisation: a body established by participating governments to regulate or oversee a transnational domain | World Trade Organisation (WTO): increasingly a major say over trade-practice rules |
| INGO, International Non-Governmental Organisation: independent of government, makes its own policy decisions on international issues | Greenpeace (see Chapter 8), The Red Cross, Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) |
8 Globalisation and Culture
India has historically had an open approach to cultural influence (recall the kupamanduka warning). The last decade saw major cultural change and fears that local culture would be overtaken; 19th-century reformers and early nationalists (Chapters 1-2) also debated culture and tradition. What is different today is the scale and intensity of change.
8.1 Homogenisation versus Glocalisation
Homogenisation
- Claim: all cultures become similar
- A single, worldwide culture
Glocalisation
- Growing tendency: the global mixes with the local
- Not entirely spontaneous, tied to commercial interests, a strategy foreign firms use to boost marketability
Foreign television channels Star, MTV, Channel V and Cartoon Network use Indian languages. McDonald’s sells only vegetarian and chicken products in India, not the beef products popular abroad, and goes fully vegetarian during Navaratri. In music: the growing popularity of Bhangra pop, Indi pop, fusion music and remixes.
Culture is not a fixed, unchanging entity that either collapses or stays the same under social change. Globalisation is likely to create not just new local traditions but new global ones too.
8.2 Gender and Culture
Defenders of a fixed, traditional cultural identity often defend undemocratic and discriminatory practices against women, from sati to excluding women from education and public life, in the name of “cultural identity”. Globalisation can then be wrongly used as a bogey (a false alarm) to defend such unjust practices. India has been able to retain and develop a democratic tradition that lets it define culture more inclusively.
8.3 The Culture of Consumption
Culture is not just dress, music, dance and food: it is a whole way of life, and the book highlights two forms every globalisation chapter should mention, the culture of consumption and corporate culture. Until the 1970s, manufacturing industry drove city growth; now cultural consumption (art, food, fashion, tourism) shapes it, visible in shopping malls, multiplex cinemas, amusement parks and “water world” parks in every major Indian city. Advertisements and media now promote a culture where spending, not thrift, is the virtue; shopping is actively encouraged as a pastime.
Successive wins in Miss Universe and Miss World pageants drove huge growth in fashion, cosmetics and health industries, with young girls dreaming of being Aishwarya Rai or Sushmita Sen. The game show Kaun Banega Crorepati made it seem your fortune could turn over a few games.
Corporate culture is a branch of management theory that seeks to raise productivity and competitiveness by creating a unique organisational culture involving all of a firm’s members: company events, rituals and traditions meant to build employee loyalty and group solidarity. It also covers how products are promoted and packaged.
The spread of MNCs and the IT revolution created a class of upwardly mobile professionals in India’s metros (software, multinational banking, chartered accountancy, stock markets, travel, fashion design, entertainment and media) with highly stressful schedules, high salaries, and the main clientele of the booming consumer industry.
8.4 Threat to Indigenous Craft, Literary Traditions and Knowledge Systems
Modern development made inroads into traditional culture even before globalisation, but the scale and intensity of change today is far greater.
| Named example | What happened |
|---|---|
| Theatre groups of Parel and Girgaum, Mumbai | About 30 theatre groups active around these textile-mill areas became defunct as most mill workers lost their jobs |
| Weavers of Sircilla village (Karimnagar district) and Dubakka village (Medak district), Andhra Pradesh | Reports of large numbers of suicides: weavers had no means to invest in technology to compete with power looms and changing consumer tastes |
| Traditional knowledge systems in medicine and agriculture | Preserved and passed down generations, now threatened by MNC attempts to patent the use of Tulsi, Haldi (turmeric), Rudraksha and Basmati rice |
“The condition of our dombari community is very bad. Television and radio have snatched away our means of livelihood… People watch our shows but just for entertainment, they never pay us anything… Our profession is dying.”
Box 6.6, a member of the Dombari community (More, 1970)
9 Conclusion
The book deliberately leaves summing up globalisation’s diverse impact to the student. It did not cover globalisation’s effect on industry and agriculture in detail here, since that was already built up through Chapters 4 and 5. The task, throughout, is to keep using the sociological imagination to connect the personal and the global.
- Sociological imagination links the micro/macro, local/global; the compression of space and time means society can no longer be studied in isolation
- Livelihood-loss examples: Bihar silk spinners, fisherwomen, Gujarat gum collectors, rag pickers, traditional entertainers
- Global links are not new: Silk Route, Panini (Afghan origin, 4th century BCE), Yi Jing (7th century), kupamanduka parable (Sen)
- Colonialism’s own global dimension: capital, markets, indentured labourers, the slave trade
- Globalisation = growing interdependence, driven above all by ICT, within a political context; distinct from liberalisation (India’s 1991 policy)
- Economic dimensions: liberalisation reforms + IMF/WTO, TNCs (Coca Cola, GM, Colgate-Palmolive, Kodak, Mitsubishi), electronic economy, weightless/knowledge economy, finance globalisation (New York/Tokyo/London; Mumbai)
- Internet: 70 million (1998) → 325 million (2000) → India now 700 million; telecom: 84,000 lines (1947) → 9th-largest network (1999)
- Nike: Japan (1960s) → South Korea (mid-1970s) → Thailand/Indonesia (1980s) → India (1990s); Fordism vs post-Fordism
- GM’s Pontiac Le Mans: only US$7,600 of its US$20,000 price goes to Americans; ILO 2005: Asia-Pacific employment +1.6% vs 7%+ growth
- Political dimension: neo-liberalism, inclusive globalisation, EU/ASEAN/SAARC, IGO (WTO) vs INGO (Greenpeace, Red Cross, Amnesty, MSF)
- Homogenisation vs glocalisation: Star/MTV/Channel V/Cartoon Network in Indian languages, McDonald’s vegetarian+chicken only
- Gender and culture: globalisation can be wrongly used as a bogey to defend unjust practices like sati
- Culture of consumption: malls, multiplexes, Miss World/Universe, Aishwarya Rai, Sushmita Sen, KBC; corporate culture as management theory
- Threat to tradition: Parel-Girgaum theatre groups, Sircilla/Dubakka weaver suicides, Tulsi/Haldi/Rudraksha/Basmati patent attempts, Dombari testimony
- Can I state, in one line, why globalisation and liberalisation are not the same thing?
- Can I name all five named TNCs and all four named INGOs without looking?
- Can I trace Nike’s production shift through all four countries, in order?
- Can I explain glocalisation with the book’s own McDonald’s example, not a made-up one?