Chapter 8: Globalization and the Culture of Peace in the Middle East: A Case Study

The notion of globalization entails two aspects of change: a quantitative dimension and a qualitative one. Quantitatively, globalization refers to an increase in trade, capital movements, investments, and people across borders. Qualitatively, globalization represents changes in the way people and groups think and identify themselves, and changes in the way states, firms, and other actors perceive and pursue their interests. Anthony Giddens and John Tomilson have described globalization as a multidimensional process. It is best “understood in terms of simultaneous, complex related processes in the realms of economy, politics, culture, technology and so forth” (Tomilson, 1999, p. 16).

A more sophisticated version of the broad school of globalization critics has opined that “deterritorialization” of culture is occurring due to the hybridization of cultures. Global mass media and communication technologies are accelerating this process. The global culture that is emerging is complex and deterritorialized rather than simplistic and monolithic. This complexity exists because culture is not linked to local nation-states but is deterritorialized, which in turn, links to a cultural process of enforced propinquity and cosmopolitanism (Tomilson, 1999, p. 16). Giddens (1999, p. 10) also perceives globalization as a “political, technical and cultural as well as economic” process.