Globalization, transformation and sustainable development of modern society - advantages and disadvantages

Elena Ivanova Churukova

General Directorate „Execution of Sentences" under the Minister of Justice, Sofia, Bulgaria

e-mail: elena_churukova@abv.bg

 

The globalization around the world has various manifestations. Depending on this, it can be economic, political, social, cultural, environmental, military, scientific and technical, and cover the whole world with its pseudo-culture and way of life. At present, there is a tendency of domination of one country over another, more and more people seek help and support from public authorities and the misunderstanding of their problems creates mass riots. There is overproduction in the economies of individual countries and a shortage of financial resources to meet basic needs, reduced purchasing power and demographic decline of the world's population. To a large extent, some of the reasons for this are the aging of the population, the way of conducting domestic and foreign policy of individual states - the subjects of international law, the role and impact of transnational corporations, culture, governance, lifestyle, people's psychology and the recent pandemic of COVID-19. The range of communications is a constantly changing quantity in different countries. The domestic and international communication has an effect on the unequal degree of socio-economic development. The diversity is a fundamental feature of the humanity life and is a key factor of the transformation and achievement of sustainable development of the modern society. It requires a lot of knowledge in various fields, formulation of own theses and conclusions in order to raise the awareness of the current situation in the world.  

Sometimes the globalization is equated with the „balkanization". Here the opposition between the Balkan Peninsula and the European continent comes to the fore. Although the Balkans is a part of Europe, they are perceived as a different spiritual and cultural place from it. The desire for equalization with Europe remains a main motive to seek new challenges and to achieve a high economic standard. For some people it expands the scope of Internet and achieves control over this territory, while for others it becomes a loss of personal freedom.

The Balkan Peninsula is a crossroad that determines the wealth of anthropological and ethnic characteristics, and hence proves to be crucial for the diversity of cultural models. (Petkova 2004: 54)

The largest information network on the planet, the Internet, connecting millions of computers and their users, is the pinnacle of human genius. Its all-consuming impact brings intellectual boon to all people on the earth. (Mihaylov 1998: 147) The digital technology distinguishes the creator, the viewer and the listener, as the digital from the analog image. The digital image can be changed not only by the artists, but also by the viewers. In the future, not only will films look like they do today, but also their creators will not have complete freedom to create on their own behalf. (Mihaylov 1998: 25) The understanding of the digital age requires also appropriate training. The more we are media literate, the more successful we will be with the digital culture. (Mihaylov 1998: 94)

The use of national wealth is manifested in the entry of goods from countries with unproductive cultures in favor of countries with modern and postmodern cultures.         (Semov 2004: 28) As a natural object, the globe has a certain place in the astronomy, geology or biological sciences. In geography and ecology its characteristics are less defined. But if we talk about the field of human action and ideas, where it finds its application and the idea for globalization, then we cannot accept the globe in any literal sense. The globalization is rarely seen in any literal sense of the globe. (Albrow 2001: 142)

Despite the growing recognition of the possibilities for realization of synergies between the sustainable development and climate change programs, many countries report that the connection between them is a challenge, because each agenda has its own history, community of participants and political dynamics. The implementation at the national level of the Agenda for Sustainable Development 2030 of the United Nations Organization is implemented through institutional, political and monitoring frameworks. The decreased coordination among the institutions diminishes the capacity of policymakers to identify the connections and possibilities to joint pursue of actions of national level related to climate changes and sustainable development.  (Globalization Conference on strengthening synergies between the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 2019: 26)

The question of biomimicry is interesting. It is related to modeling, creative approaches, ways of the functioning of processes in nature and their transfer to other areas. This is relatively new paradigm, which aims to seek answers and solutions, ideas for innovation and sustainability. Some researchers use ideas inspired by nature to improve production activities, to bring more aesthetics in people's life, to create new medicines, to change the ways of growing food by people or master energies.

Diyana Petkova defines globalization as a combination of "processes that radically transform the modern living environment. If the nation-state, national identity and globalization themselves become a subject of various studies, then the problem of the interdependence identity - globalization, although often posed in the social sciences, has not yet been subject to special systematic problematization". (Petkova, The national identity and globalization 2000: 3)

At certain moments, the globalization is associated with regionalization and mondialization. There are no restrictions in the development of the capital market and the world economy. The access to energy resources together with the improvement of the information society are one of the main driving forces of globalization. The powerful multinational corporations of the United States, Japan, Canada and European Union are deploying production capacities in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The globalization implies an impact on countries with more powerful and dynamically developing economies, which have factories, maintain huge logistics bases and export their products to world markets.              

The globalization has also an ideological dimension. It is a system of widely shared ideas, generally accepted beliefs, guiding norms, values and ideals accepted as truths by a specific group of people. There is a heated public debate if it is something „good" or „bad". The globalism, in contrast of it, is an ideology that gives the concept of globalization neoliberal values and meaning. (Steger 2005: 166)

The manifestation of tolerance to the peculiarities of particular nations, the establishment of partnerships by finding solutions of issues of geopolitical and strategic nature will facilitate the intercultural dialogue, bring people together and their joint work will be more effective and efficient.          

Another aspect of globalization is the military related to the dangers of hostility,    inter-ethnic conflicts and rivalry between individual subjects of international law. It can be considered in a narrow and broad sense. For example, in a narrow sense - mediation of people who try to create intrigue, confrontation and tension in stable human relations, and in a broad sense - creation of preconditions for aggravation of interstate relations.

Some social processes help to complicate the situation, such as radicalization, extremism and terrorism. The globalization helps or hinders their development depending on the status quo. The radicalization is a destructive activity of an individual, group or mass nature. Very often it is a product of aggressive acts and actions of organized criminal groups in society with asocial and anti-social orientation. The extremism is associated with the adoption of a specific ideology, in most cases with elements of violence, as a means to achieve a specific goal - „abolition of the state or management of the structure and its elites". The Convention of the League of Nations defines terrorism as „any criminal activities directed against a particular country". Chidiebere Obi describes terrorism as „use of violence to create fear for political, religious or ideological reasons" (ideologies are systems of beliefs derived from the worldview related to social, human and political living conditions)".              (Obi 2016: 21-25)

Anthony Marcella defines the psychology of the global community as a „metadiscipline" or a „superordinate discipline" that reflects and explains a set of premises, methods and practices based on a multicultural, multidisciplinary, multisectoral and multinational approach. (Marsella 2012: 454) He proposes the concept „global community psychology", which is a product of the ongoing significant transformations in the modern world, providing to the psychology an opportunity to expand its scope, methods and practices in response to growing complex political, economic and social changes to which our whole life is connected through new models of interdependence. (Marsella 2012: 455)

The globalization has both positive and negative consequences for society. They are mentioned in the table below.

 

Positive consequences of globalization	Negative consequences of globalization
Improvement of the quality of life	Future upheaval, clash of cultures, loss of identity
International integration	Disintegration, dislocation and collapse
Access to education, information and greater opportunities for travelling	Demographic decline of the population in certain countries and increased birth-rate in other countries
Expansion of international trade and capital transfer	Unpredictability and overcontrol in the management of people, goods, services and capital
Public mobility	Divisions between rich and poor
Internal migration	External migration
Assumption of a new sense of the life, facilitated achievement of goals and problem solving	Gender inequality in global work force and permanent lack of people satisfaction in the life
Fast growth of the technologies in the world, in particular, the communications	Depreciation of the human factor as a result of an increase and exploitation of the technologies
Innovations	Resolution of many issues by governments without broad public participation in decision-making
	Constraint of offshore companies to place their productions to countries with low social protection of workers and low salaries
Increased gross domestic product and gross national product	Exploitation of human labor, earth, environment and culture
	Increased dependency of foreign sources
Increase of intercultural dialogue	Cultural homogenization
Conduction of environmental way of life	Unemployment (switching from agricultural to a productive economy)

 

The globalization is a decisive factor, determining the massive political, economic and cultural changes, which take place in our world today. These changes may be related to specific global challenges (e.g. poverty, migration, population demographics, wars / violence) that have serious consequences for individual and collective survival, adjustment and       well-being. Due to the presence of social problems, the psychology must study globalization as a process and a product, and help to assess the potential of globalization as a source of benefit and harm.

The efforts to measure and evaluate the globalization, sustainability, ecology, poverty, both at an individual / behavioral level, as well as at the socio-cultural / socio-political level, offer the opportunity of the psychology to expand its role and function in the study of globalization. Many efforts have been made in other disciplines, which is a good starting point for the psychology. (Marsella 2012: 468)

Many appearing progressive conceptual views and theoretical guidelines call for changes (e.g. ecological theory, stress management theory, hierarchical systems theory, cultural theory, critical theory, postmodernism, feminist theory, psychology of liberation, social constructivism).

These theories and concepts are approached with increased attention and support due to their applicability and significance for the multistage levels of human existence (e.g. psycho-social, micro level, macro level). (Marsella 2012: 469)

The innovations in the field of digitalization, information and communication technologies, robotics, artificial intelligence, mechanical engineering and engineering assume a different look to the world. Their use is becoming one of the greatest challenges for humanity and offers various forms and methods of interaction between people. On the one hand, it leads to convergence of different cultures and ethnicities, and on the other hand, it creates a barrier due to the lack of financial resources, experience and desire to change stereotypes and their way of life. Sustainable development is development that satisfies human needs and helps to create the necessary balance and synchronicity between man and nature. Sustainability can be achieved in the presence of personal transparence regarding their goals, desires and motivation, taking into consideration the world around the people, esteem, respect of human rights and freedoms of the person, striving for personal development and optimal formation of existential value system.

 

REFERENCES

1. Albrow, Martin. 2001. The global epoch - the state and community out of modernity, Sofia:  Edition „Obsidian".

2.           Marsella, Anthony. 2012. Psychology and Globalization: Understanding a Complex Relationship, Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 68, No. 3, pp. 454-472.

3.           Mihaylov, Vladimir. 1998. Media perception (papers), Sofia: New Bulgarian University.

4.           Miteva, Kameliya. 2014. Biomimicry: inspiration from nature. How to take advantage of 3,85 millions years of experience and mistakes?, Updated 30 March 2021. Available at: <https://www.spisanie8.bg/рубрики/наука/2043-биомимикрия-вдъхновение-от-природата.html>.   

5.           Obi, C. & Ukaulor, C. 2016. The moral questions on the religious basis for terrorism, International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Invention, pp. 21-25.

6.           Petkova, Diyana. 2004. Balkanization - the other face of globalization, Sofia: Edition house „КАМА".

7.           Petkova, Diyana. 2000. The national identity and globalization, Plovdiv: Edition „Compass II".  

8.           Semov, Marko. 2004. Globalization and national destiny. The collision interests - rationality, Sofia: Edition „Macedonia press".

9.           Steger, Manfred. 2005. Globalization (very brief introduction): Edition „Zahariy Stoyanov".

10.         Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2019. Globalization conference on strengthening synergies between the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Updated 30 March 2021. Available at:  <https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/25236un_bookletsynergies_v2.pdf>.