The Psychology of Globalization: Identity, Ideology, and Action

By Gerhard Reese, Amir Rosenmann and James E. Cameron

The Psychology of Globalization: Identity, Ideology, and Action underpins the necessity to focus on the psychological dimensions of globalization. Overviewing the theory and empirical research as it relates to globalization and psychology, the book focuses on two key domains: social identity and collective action, and political ideology and attitudes. These provide frameworks for addressing four specific topics: (a) environmental challenges, (b) consumer culture, (c) international security, and (d) transnational migration and intra-national cultural diversification. Arguing that individual social representation and behavior are altered by globalizing processes while they simultaneously contribute to these processes, the authors explore economic, political and cultural dimensions.

• Discusses how globalization affects our social identity, collective action, and intergroup relations
• Examines how the infrastructure of global consumerism shapes individuals' selfhood, group formation, and action
• Investigates how people perceive and respond to global challenges such as climate change and mass migration

• Language: English
• Publisher: Academic Press
• Release date: Jan 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9780128123171

Gerhard Reese

Gerhard Reese is Professor of Environmental Psychology at the University of Koblenz-Landau, investigating processes of social identity, collective action, social inequality, and environmental behavior in the frame of globalization.

Book preview

The Psychology of Globalization

Identity, Ideology, and Action

Gerhard Reese

University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany

Amir Rosenmann

University of Haifa, Israel

James E. Cameron

Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada

Table of Contents

Cover image

Title page

Copyright

About the Authors

Preface

Part I: Globalization and Global Concern

Chapter 1. Globalization and Global Concern

Abstract

A Few Words to Begin

The Complex Nature of Globalization

An Overview of the Social Psychology Perspective of Globalization: Why Do We Need to Care?

Chapter 2. Globalization, Culture, and Consumerism

Abstract

The Story of Globalization: Where Does It Begin?

The Economic, Political, and Sociocultural Processes of Globalization

Globalized Western Culture

Globalizing Sociocultural Conditions and Transformations of Selfhood

A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Selfhood

The Conjoined Trajectories of Culture and Selfhood

Contradictions of Different Value Systems

The Consumerist Architecture of Sociocultural Globalization

Consumer Culture: A Primer

Market Logic

From Market to Consumer (Culture)

Tensions of Globalized Values

Summary

Part II: Psychology of Globalization: Basic Processes

Chapter 3. Consumer Identities, Consumer Selfhood, and the Stability of Consumer Societies

Abstract

The Role of Marketing in Restructuring Societies for Consumption

The Psychological Architecture of Consumer Selfhood and Its Consequences

Consumer Selfhood and Normative Narcissism

Materialism as the Most Conspicuous Form of Consumer Selfhood

Consumer Selfhood and the Stability of Globalized Consumer Culture

Summary

Chapter 4. The Interplay Between Social Identities and Globalization

Abstract

Foundations of the Social Identity Approach

The Structure and Content of Social Identities

The Contextual Relevance of Social Categories

Social Identity, Mobility, and Social Change

The Normative Basis of Group Behavior

Collective Emotions

Beyond the Social Identity Approach

Does an Ingroup Require an Outgroup?

Multiple Functions of Social Identification

The Dynamics of Multiple Social Identities

The Impact of Globalization on Social Identities

Globalization and Acculturation

Globalization and Emotional Experience

Effects of Globalization on Local and National Identification

From Local to Globalized Social Identity

The Promise of Global Identification

Limitations of Global Identification

Summary

Chapter 5. A Political Psychology of Responses to Globalization

Abstract

What Is the Appeal? The Stability and Legitimacy of the Global Social Order

Who Is Disenchanted? Vectors of Opposition to Globalized Western Culture

Individuals’ Ideological Inclinations and the Political Reactions to Globalization

SDO—Social Dominance Orientation

SDO and Support for Globalization

Globalization’s Potential Impact on Levels of SDO

SDO and Contact With Other Cultures

RWA and Perceptions of Globalization

RWA and Societal Change

RWA and SDO in Concert

Summary

Chapter 6. Collective Action in a Global Context

Abstract

A Psychological Perspective on Collective Action

New Identities, New Collectives, New Solidarity

Collective Action and Consumerism

The Allure of Inaction

Summary

Part III: Issues in Depth

Chapter 7. Social Identity and Responses to Global Environmental Crises

Abstract

What’s the Matter? Global Environmental Issues

Global Climate Change—From Humans for Humans

Dimensions of Proenvironmental Action

Impact of Proenvironmental Behavior on the Environment

Social Identity and Responses to Climate Change

The World Wide Web and Environmental Issues

Summary

Chapter 8. Social Identity and the Challenges of Migration and Multiculturalism

Abstract

Globalization and Migration

Multiculturalism, Acculturation, and Social Identity

Populism and Prejudice: Being Closed in a Connected World

Conclusion: Migration, Multiculturalism, and Security

Part IV: Conclusion

Chapter 9. Psychology in the Nexus of Global Governance, Economies, and Sustainability

Abstract

Globalization, Connection, and Cooperation

Systems Thinking

Future Research Questions

Economic (De)Growth & Economic Inequality

Future Research Questions

Globalization, Digitization, and the Rise of Conspiracy Theories

A Few Last Words

References

Index

Copyright

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About the Authors

Gerhard Reese

Gerhard Reese is Professor of Environmental Psychology at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany, investigating processes of social identity, collective action, social inequality, and environmental behavior, in the frame of globalization.

Amir Rosenmann

Amir Rosenmann is a research fellow at the Cultural Psychology Lab, the University of Haifa, Israel, now residing in Detroit, Michigan. His research focuses on issues of gender, social power, and social identity, as those intersect with the processes of globalization and consumerism. He serves as an Associate Editor at the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

James E. Cameron

Jim Cameron is Professor of Psychology at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He is interested in social identity processes with respect to collective action, multiculturalism, well-being, and globalization.

Preface

This is a book we need to write! said the German to the Israeli and the Canadian, standing there, in a chilly Baltic night. This is not a beginning of a joke, but of the book before you—a book about a globalized world, which was largely unimaginable only a few decades ago. Much has been written about this new world we live in, but a detailed analysis of how its changing landscapes interact with human psychology has not been presented until now. This integrative treatment of globalization’s net of bidirectional influences on and by our identities, ideologies, and actions is thus completely novel.

This integration is also urgently needed, if we are to rise to the truly global challenges we all face. In an age of instability—climate change, technological disruptions, transcontinental migration, and socio-economic-political fault lines—human reactions (and the science of psychology) must be brought to the fore. This is because globalization is not something that is happening to us. It is something we are shaping, as it shapes us; it is the constantly changing backdrop of our lives as well as the nonlinear sum of the ways we change our lives. Taking a systems thinking perspective, which defines globalization as a complex net of interacting processes of accelerating interdependencies across social arenas and geopolitical realities, this book sheds new light on a buzzword that had already become an obsolete cliché. This book is thus a must for those who have had enough, as well as those who have not had any. Because psychology has been so disconnected from the shifting macrocontexts of globalization, we start by introducing some key concepts to the uninitiated reader, who may wonder why globalization should interest psychologists, and why psychological science should interest students of globalization.

We offer a narrative of what globalization is, and how it relates to virtually every facet of contemporary human societies and psyches. This narrative includes a primer on consumer culture, placing it within a cross-cultural psychological perspective on the co-constituting mechanisms of culture and psychology, where each level populates and manifests the other. This novel conceptualization of consumer selfhood, as the psychological correlate of consumer culture, is informed by contemporary psychological science while informing our discussion of the macrodynamics of globalization and globalized societies. Following this presentation of our meta-theory of globalization, we introduce the social identity approach as our chosen psychological meta-theory. Through its lens, we detail group-based reactions to globalization’s multifarious presence in social life, as those reciprocally develop as fields of political contention and human agency. This discussion of the political psychology of globalization then sets the ground for our exploration of collective in-/action in this age of shifting allegiances and unrealpolitik.

Following this transdisciplinary depiction of the psychology of globalization and the globalized psyche, we apply our perspective to two more narrowly defined issues. First, we bring it to bear on the colossal challenges of climate change, as our environmental in-/actions in the present moment promise (and threaten) to reverberate across our future horizons. Second, we take a closer look at the issue of mass migration, as cultural chasms appear within our societies as well as our inner dialogs. In both instances, we go beyond simply describing the psychology that informs these two ongoing crises, to highlight how psychology could offer a constructive way forward from the current moment. We conclude the book with attempts to reimagine globalization and psychology, as we envision a future outside our collective tunnel vision.

We are grateful for the opportunity to write this book, and we owe our thanks to the team at Elsevier, in particular Emily Ekle, Jackie Truesdell, Barbara Makinster, and Mohana Priyan Rajendran who made this project possible and supported us professionally throughout the process. We thank Dr. Claudia Menzel from the University of Koblenz-Landau, who made a tremendous and short notice effort in editing and proofreading the manuscript, and Christoph Dolderer, Moritz Hoffmann, Irmela Kauertz, and Lara Kerschl for their commitment and assistance. Finally, writing a book is always a matter of time and space, taking those away from the people with whom we are fortunate to share our lives. Thus, we are grateful to our beloved partners, children, and families, who persevered with us, and helped us find equanimity along the way. Amir wishes to thank his mother, Hannah Rosenmann, for the breadth of breath that gulps down a world in wonder.

Part I

Globalization and Global Concern

Outline

Chapter 1 Globalization and Global Concern

Chapter 2 Globalization, Culture, and Consumerism

Chapter 1

Globalization and Global Concern

Abstract

This chapter briefly introduces the book with a short description of how our everyday lives are embedded in globalization processes. It then elaborates the nature of globalization as a complex and dynamic set of processes, and presents the framework of systems thinking as an appropriate guiding concept. Given the complexity and multifaceted nature of globalization, we argue that a psychological analysis is essential to understanding this system. Finally, this chapter provides the scope and overview of the book, presenting brief summaries of what the reader can expect from each chapter.

Keywords

Globalization; psychology; systems thinking; global; interconnectedness; social networks; cooperation

A Few Words to Begin

Readers of this book are likely well acquainted with the concept of globalization. It is certainly a prominent topic of scientific discourse. It also forms the fabric of everyday experience: what we do, what we consume, what we read, what we know. If you live in Canada, you may realize that the clothing you wear is largely produced in countries such as China, India, or Bangladesh, and transported over land and sea; nonetheless making your attire more affordable. As a person living in Malaysia, you may have visited a local McDonald’s restaurant to eat a cheeseburger, realizing that the owner of McDonald’s comes from the United States while some of the products may be imported from countries far away. These examples—written in a German village on a computer from a North American company that was assembled in China using single components produced in South Korea with chemical elements extracted from mines in various African countries, and so on… (we think you get the idea)—show that globalization pervades the lives of virtually all humans, in virtually all aspects of life. More formally, globalization reflects the widening, deepening and speeding up of worldwide interconnectedness in all aspects of contemporary social life (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, & Perraton, 1999, p. 2).

Globalization is a complex set of phenomena, and our aim in this book is to engage with that complexity from a social psychological point of view. We will explore how worldwide interconnectedness involves not only transnational economic and political institutions, but also myriad effects on our actions, our views of the world, as well as our self- and collective identities. To approach this still-developing conceptual domain, we review and integrate various strands of psychological research that—often implicitly—deal with the issue of globalization and its ramifications. However, psychology alone will not be able to explain every aspect of globalization. We need approaches that attend to various aspects of globalization, and we will try to connect the psychological perspective with other levels of analysis. To do so, we begin here (and in Chapter 2) by establishing globalization as a multilayered and historically situated set of processes, and by introducing a systems approach as a useful framework for thinking about globalization.

The Complex Nature of Globalization

By definition, globalization involves a large, dynamic, and intertwined system. It spans the global and the local, as well as innumerable and constantly evolving interactions between its (natural and human-made) elements. Globalization therefore challenges us to adopt an analytic approach and an action program that can accommodate these complex interdependencies. We believe that one such approach is particularly appropriate in this conceptualization: systems thinking (cf. Hester & Adams, 2017; Meadows, 2008; Werhane, 2008). In parallel to globalization, a systems approach presumes that human perception, thinking, and action are interrelated and interconnected on various societal levels. On a fundamental level, a system refers to a complex set of self-organized elements that interact with each other, producing their own pattern of behavior (i.e., emergent effects) over time (Meadows, 2008). Consequently, any action within the system has an impact on the system by affecting (an)other element or elements, such that almost no phenomenon can be studied in isolation from other relationships with at least some other phenomenon (Wenhane, 2008, p. 467). A systems-based perspective on globalization guides us to simultaneously attend to the actions of individuals, institutions, nation states, businesses, and other entities operating in the global system—with their coinciding or conflicting worldviews, interests and goals. The latter, in turn, are connected on different levels of analyses, from micro structures such as neighborhoods or local environment groups up to macro structures such as global corporations and institutions.

When dealing with such complex systems, we must constantly remind ourselves that by focusing on one specific component, we run the risk of obscuring its position, function, and position in an intricate web of reciprocal relationships with other components, and indeed, the system as a whole. For example, let us consider the incredible global transformations associated with the increased centrality of social networking services (SNS; e.g., Facebook or Twitter) to contemporary social life. SNS were introduced to most of us a little more than a decade ago, as platforms designed to help us to communicate with one another, no matter how near or far. On a more communal level, they promised to help us organize new forms of communities, where people may more easily cooperate as they address issues close to their hearts. They also aimed to help people sharing their worldviews with those who might be receptive to hearing them by democratizing and decentralizing the exchange of ideas. Recently, however, the more sinister aspects of exactly these communal features of SNS life have drawn public attention and concern. You might have read about radical religious or neo-fascist groups using these platforms to organize their potentially harmful actions and to reach new members who might further disseminate their hateful messages. In more mainstream settings, the same features are used to create mass campaigns of disinformation and the systematic manipulation of public opinion. It is a mistake, therefore, to claim that SNS are either good or bad, as their effects depend entirely on the way they are utilized by various actors, and interact with other elements of the system. Put simply, globalization has made many aspects of social and political life more complicated.

As we discuss these issues later in the book, we will show how these features are embedded in a particular socioeconomic system. This macrosystem creates both the opportunities and the incentives for the type of innovative thinking and remarkable technological achievements provided by SNS. At the same time, new business models were also needed to help SNS flourish within this profit-driven economic environment. As a result, SNS are constantly learning who we are, and what kind of lifestyle we follow, so that they can market to us exactly the products we are most likely to be interested in and to buy. And citizens’ data, in turn, define the directions these corporations and the internet as a whole continue to develop.

Understandably, SNS’s social architecture must accommodate these marketing goals as a means for the technology corporations to thrive. These features of the social settings of SNS both reflect and further entrench the macroeconomic system. They now serve as a perfect venue for marketers where not only products are offered to those who are most likely to buy them, but also specifically tailored ideas, ideologies, truths, and forms of political action. These latter aspects, of course, directly impact the social, economic, and regulatory environment in which SNS operate, as well as the world we live in. Nowadays, social media oftentimes have cascading geopolitical effects that are constructive or disruptive on a truly global scale (e.g., World Economic Forum, The Global Risks Report, 2018). At the same time, social media have a profound impact on our thinking and acting when it comes to discussing and responding to the global issues that we face. As you will see throughout this book, there is a growing body of research addressing this.

While we aim to enrich the thinking about globalization by offering a psychological perspective, we again stress that globalization, with its plethora of interconnected phenomena, requires that we adopt various perspectives. Inspecting an issue from only one disciplinary angle will often result in an incomplete picture and a biased or even plain wrong analysis of the problem and its solution. An ancient story found in various different cultures illustrates the necessity of a systems-based, interdisciplinary view of globalization and its consequences.

This ancient parable, apparently originating from a Buddhist text (but also found in various other religious traditions), describes a group of blind men who had never encountered an elephant before. Given the opportunity to touch the elephant, each of the men feels a different part of its body. Based on this limited experience, they come to very different conclusions about what an elephant actually is. A 19th century poem by John Godfrey Saxe popularized this fable in the West:

It was six men of Indostan

To learning much inclined,

Who went to see the Elephant

(Though all of them were blind),

That each by observation

Might satisfy his mind

The First approached the Elephant,

And happening to fall

Against his broad and sturdy side,

At once began to bawl:

God bless me! but the Elephant

Is very like a wall!

The Second, feeling of the tusk,

Cried, Ho! what have we here

So very round and smooth and sharp?

To me ‘tis mighty clear

This wonder of an Elephant

Is very like a spear!

The Third approached the animal,

And happening to take

The squirming trunk within his hands,

Thus boldly up and spake:

I see, quoth he, the Elephant

Is very like a snake!

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,

And felt about the knee.

What most this wondrous beast is like

Is mighty plain, quoth he;

‘Tis clear enough the Elephant

Is very like a tree!

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,

Said: Even the blindest man

Can tell what this resembles most;

Deny the fact who can

This marvel of an Elephant

Is very like a fan!?

The Sixth no sooner had begun

About the beast to grope,

Then, seizing on the swinging tail

That fell within his scope,

I see, quoth he, the Elephant

Is very like a rope!

And so these men of Indostan

Disputed loud and long,

Each in his own opinion

Exceeding stiff and strong,

Though each was partly in the right,

And all were in the wrong!

The lesson we can take from this fable and apply to the analysis of globalization (and many other systems-based phenomena) is simple: The way a system behaves cannot be inferred by knowing only about the behaviors of its constituent elements (Meadows, 2008).

Positioning globalization in a systems-based perspective reminds us that a focus on specific elements alone may not be sufficient to understand the system, and that without such systems-based understanding, it is impossible to make complete sense of any specific element. For the same reason, no single disciplinary perspective, including that of psychology, can alone account for the dynamics and effects of globalization. Nonetheless, in this book we will show why psychological processes are crucial considerations when we think about the effects of globalization. Even as we draw from a broad, multidisciplinary literature, we note that psychology itself is well positioned to define and incorporate multiple levels of analysis (e.g., Doise & Mapstone, 1986; Turner & Oakes, 1986): that of the individual, the social group, and the dynamics of society at large.

This book will try to do justice to these varying perspectives, and we hope to make clear that our psychological perspective can uniquely add to the understanding of globalization. The book will delineate how globalization affects individual dispositions and decisions. It will focus on social group processes and how globalization may contribute to developing attachments and sympathies that go beyond parochial group boundaries. Furthermore, it will examine how changes in society at large are changing humans’ lives, and how individuals contribute to societal and global change. Simply put, this book aims to bring the psychology of individual and collective behavior into the systemic equation of globalization.

An Overview of the Social Psychology Perspective of Globalization: Why Do We Need to Care?

Processes related to globalization have so profoundly changed the world that they have implications for virtually every aspect of psychology. They have not only changed the contexts in which identity, attitudes, and behavior are shaped and operate, but they have also created new forms of identities, new threats, new attitude objects (including globalization itself), new domains of behavior, and new targets of action. Indeed, one way to characterize the effects of globalization in psychological terms is in terms of a crisis of identities (Kennedy & Danks, 2001). This crisis can be interpreted in terms of a turning point where individuals reposition and reevaluate their national and local self-definitions within a global context (Arnett, 2002; Giddens, 1999) but also as a point of difficulty, where global interdependence can tip from enhancing to threatening human security (Commission on Human Security of the United Nations, 2003). Thus, globalization processes bring unprecedented opportunities for international engagement and intercultural openness, for the promotion of human rights, and collective actions that serve global causes. In contrast, contemporary globalization provides resurgent examples of the tightening or closing of national borders to the movement of people as well as the exchange of goods and ideas and the nativist defense of identity and culture. Such reactions have led to speculations about a new era of social and political deglobalization, with the ideological right bringing cynicism and outright antipathy to bear on notions of international and intercultural openness, as leftist movements come to distrust globlalization’s economic and ideological infrastructure. At the time of writing this book, these processes are particularly visible in the United States where the political divide between Democrats and Republicans has widened immensely (Pew Research Center, 2017e).

Naturally, the scope of this book allows neither an exhaustive review of the literature, nor a treatment of every psychological theory that may be related to globalization. Rather, we derive our key analytic themes from an influential meta-theoretical perspective in social psychology known as the social identity approach (e.g., Reicher, 2004; Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987). This framework is particularly helpful in crafting a psychology of globalization because it is sensitive to the interactive, interconnected, and interdependent nature of human life, and is able to facilitate a theoretically sophisticated understanding of collective actions and inactions in a globalized world. As we describe in more detail in Chapter 4, the social identity approach takes as a starting point people’s self-conception as group members (e.g., seeing oneself as Chinese or French, as liberal or as conservative), and the conditions under which group members act for the good of a particular ingroup, or for reasons that transcend that group’s interests.

One intensifying feature of globalization is that people around the world face similar and overlapping threats to their security, such as climate change, terrorism, cyberattacks, and the global economy (e.g., Pew Research Center, 2017b). These threats are collective not just because they are globally shared—albeit to different extents in different regions—but also because no nation alone can deal with them effectively (e.g., Held & McGrew, 2002). Thus, a perspective on human relations that attends to cooperation, conflict, solidarity, varying worldviews and common goals is necessary in order to engage with the big issue(s) of globalization, and to develop a sound basis for developing strategies for addressing global challenges.

To foreshadow one of the themes in this book, take, for example, the issue of how and why we respond to global climate change (see Chapter 7). There is overwhelming evidence that globalization processes have a massive impact on the natural environment, in large part because of the strain they put on planetary resources (Rockström et al., 2009). Although there is a near consensus among scientists worldwide that climatic change is primarily driven by anthropogenic (human-made) causes, there are various groups of people that nonetheless refute or ignore this information. Regardless of the nature of the scientific information, there are underlying reasons for opposition to it that are rooted in social processes. Social groups may form through shared opinions (Climate change is a hoax!) that can develop a group-specific worldview. As a consequence, members of a group whose core is a definition of climatic-change-as-hoax will very likely refrain from any action or policy support that would counteract that view.

While these processes are neither surprising nor new, globalization amplifies them through unprecedented avenues of opinion dissemination. The development of communication technologies that span the globe allows any group of people to spread their word to an enormous number of potential receivers. It is thus not only a matter of ingroup behavior, directed at those who are part of the group or share its belief system, but also a matter of communication, as it affords a mouthpiece directed towards anybody using these channels. As a consequence, these contemporary forms of communication have the potential to transcend group boundaries, while at the same time widening gaps between different groups. They also allow us, as social scientists, to explore the different worldviews, opinions, and orientations that are out there.

These accelerated processes of globalization may feed conflict-laden relations between countries. For example, it is estimated that climate change—substantially fueled by globalization—will result in conflicts about scarce resources such as access to freshwater (Gleick, 1993, 2014). As a consequence, we can expect large movements of people migrating out of blighted zones to other regions or countries, seeking refuge from resource scarcity or violent conflicts. Then, we need to ask how potential host countries deal with environmental migrants—would they receive them as victims in need of urgent attention, solidarity and care? Or would environmental migrants be seen as security threats, further undermining national sovereignty and challenging established social orders? Could those migrants also be seen as adaptive agents, willing and able to relocate physically and psychologically to a new home? These are just some potential framings (for a review, see Ransan-Cooper, Farbotko, McNamara, Thornton, & Chevalier, 2015) people, institutions, or governments may use to interpret and respond to environmental migration. As we will explicate, the social identity approach is useful in understanding the conditions under which each of those frames would become more or less likely to be adopted, resulting in potentially cooperative or conflictual behavioral outcomes.

While these paragraphs propose escalating conflicts as the bleak consequence of globalization, it is worthwhile considering globalization’s potential for cooperation, the promotion of solidarity, or quality of life improvements. One prominent and highly discussed example refers to the question of whether globalization is responsible for a decrease in absolute poverty. Recent research suggests that globalization may indeed be responsible for an overall reduction of poverty (Bergh & Nilsson, 2014). While this conclusion clearly depends on how these outcome constructs are measured, this leaves some room for optimism. The main argument here is that economic globalization fosters economic growth through mechanisms of specialization, innovation, and international competition (e.g., Agénor, 2002), which in turn can decrease poverty. A stronger integration into the global economic system may also result in higher educational achievement in poorer countries (Stark, 2004), which may result in long-term reduction of poverty. Of course, economic growth is limited by the abundance of planetary resources, and it is debatable for