Sociology | Class 12 | Globalisation and Social Change
Introduction: what globalisation means
The relationship and connection between local markets and the global (international) market is known as globalisation. This chapter explains what globalisation is, its main dimensions, and the social changes it brings. These study notes follow the NCERT Class 12 Sociology treatment of globalisation and social change.
Sociologists and social anthropologists can no longer study a society as if it were a standalone unit. As space and time have contracted, everything is more connected. So when we study villages, families, movements, child rearing, work and leisure, offices or caste, we now have to take this global interconnectedness into account.
Globalisation has far reaching effects, and it touches us all in different ways. For some people it means new opportunities. For others it can mean a loss of livelihood.
Opinions about globalisation differ sharply. Some argue it announces a better, more connected world. Others worry that its benefits are shared very unequally: while wealthier groups may gain, a large section of the already marginalised population can be left worse off.
Understanding globalisation
The term globalisation describes the growing social and economic ties between individuals, communities and nations across the world.
It would be wrong to say that economic forces alone cause globalisation, even though they are an essential part of it.
Globalisation has advanced mainly because of rapid progress in information and communication technology, which has increased the speed and reach of human contact worldwide.
The economic dimension of globalisation
The economic side of globalisation is the most visible. It runs through trade policy, big companies, money markets, technology and the way work itself is organised.
Policy of liberalisation
Globalisation involves a stretching of social and economic relationships across the world, and certain economic policies encourage this stretching. In India this process is broadly called liberalisation.
Liberalisation refers to a set of policy decisions taken by the Indian government since 1991 to open the Indian economy to the global market. It marked a shift away from the earlier aim of keeping tight government control over the economy. As the economy was liberalised, trade and financial rules were gradually relaxed, and these steps are also called economic reforms. Taking loans from international bodies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was another part of this process, and such loans came with conditions, including a structural adjustment policy.
Transnational corporations (TNCs)
Transnational corporations are among the most important economic forces driving globalisation. TNCs are businesses that produce goods or sell services in more than one country. Some are quite small, with only one or two factories outside their home country. Others are giant firms operating all over the world. Companies like Coca-Cola, General Motors, Colgate-Palmolive, Kodak and Mitsubishi are known on a global scale.
The electronic or digital economy
Another support for economic globalisation is the so called electronic economy. Banks, corporations, fund managers and individual investors can shift money across the world at the touch of a button. This power to move electronic money instantly also carries real risks. In India it often comes up in discussions about the stock market, where sudden rises and sharp falls can be caused by foreign investors who buy shares, sell them for a profit and then move on.
The knowledge or weightless economy
The foundation of the global economy is no longer mainly industrial or agricultural, as it was in earlier eras. In a weightless economy, information becomes the basis of goods, as with internet based services, media and entertainment products, and computer software.
Globalisation of finance
Globally integrated financial markets carry out transactions worth billions of dollars in a matter of seconds. Capital and security markets trade around the clock, and the major hubs of financial trading are cities like New York, Tokyo and London. Within India, Mumbai is regarded as the country's financial hub.
Global communications
Advances in technology and communication have led to many changes. Homes and offices now hold multiple connections to the outside world, including telephones, mobile phones, fax machines, cable and digital television, email and the internet. With satellite technology, two people in Bengaluru and New York can talk, and send documents and images to each other, even though they are far apart.
The international division of labour
Globalisation has produced an international division of labour, in which production and employment are spread across many countries. Multinational companies set up wherever there is good infrastructure, cheap labour and resources, which leads to frequent relocation. As a result, the workforce can feel insecure.
Globalisation and employment
Before globalisation in the 1990s, employment conditions were different. Globalisation and the information technology revolution created new career paths for urban middle class youth. Today many jobs, such as call centres and business process outsourcing (BPO) work, are available after graduation, and the number of job opportunities expanded greatly.
The political dimension of globalisation
- Globalisation was speeded up by a major political change: the fall of the former socialist world, which also encouraged the economic and political ideas that support globalisation.
- The growth of global and regional bodies for political cooperation is an important development that goes hand in hand with globalisation. Examples include the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the European Union (EU) and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).
- The rise of international governmental organisations (IGOs) and international non governmental organisations (INGOs) is another political factor. An intergovernmental organisation is a body created by member governments to regulate or oversee a particular area of activity with a global reach.
The cultural dimension of globalisation
Rapid cultural change over recent decades has raised worries about whether local, native cultures might fade away.
One common argument is that all cultures will slowly converge and become the same. Others say culture is instead becoming more glocalised. Glocalisation describes the blending of the local and the global. It is a strategy often used by foreign businesses to work with regional traditions and widen their market. For example, McDonald's in India sells only chicken and vegetarian options rather than its well known beef products, and during the Navaratri festival it serves a fully vegetarian menu.
Culture of consumption
Before 1990, cities grew mainly where industries grew. As infrastructure changed, people moved to cities, and this reshaped food, clothing, art, music and tourism. The spread of shopping centres, multiplexes and amusement parks added to a city's appeal. Shopping is no longer done only out of necessity, and attitudes to money and spending have shifted.
Gender and culture
Globalisation can sometimes be used as a shield for unfair practices against women. At the same time, the democratic tradition India has preserved and developed gives us a chance to define culture in a more inclusive and democratic way.
Corporate culture
Every company or multinational tries to build a distinct culture so that it stands out. Each has its own way of looking after employees, for example outings, holiday parties or a Diwali mela, in order to keep workers content and productive in a competitive environment. Globalisation has also created many new professions, so people can now find work in fields like fashion design, banking, art, dance, nutrition and theatre. Such professionals often earn more, but they also face a greater degree of stress: good money, but a lot of work.
Crafts and local producers
Many goods are now easily available and cheaper, whether made inside or outside India. Because of this competition, the threat to indigenous crafts and local producers has grown since globalisation began.
Indigenous knowledge systems
India is the home of many products, including turmeric and sandalwood, and health items like tulsi and haldi. There is a need to protect this indigenous knowledge, especially given attempts by some multinational companies to patent the use of Tulsi, Haldi, Rudraksha and Basmati rice. Yoga is another Indian knowledge system now used widely around the world.
Globalisation and India
The early years
Even two thousand years ago, India was not cut off from the world. History textbooks describe the famous Silk Route, which linked ancient India with the great civilisations of China, Persia, Egypt and Rome. Through India's long history, people came here as traders, as conquerors and as migrants looking for new lands, and settled down.
Global connections and colonialism
The system that supported colonialism needed fresh sources of money, raw materials, energy, markets and a worldwide network. Large scale migration is often described as a feature of modern globalisation. The movement of Europeans who settled in the Americas and Australia may have been one of the largest movements of people.
Independent India and globalisation
After independence India kept a global outlook, an outlook inherited in many ways from the Indian nationalist movement, with its strong commitment to global liberation struggles and solidarity with people everywhere. Since independence, trade in goods, technology and raw materials has played a significant role in India's development.
Why it still matters today
The globalisation in your textbook is not a finished story from the 1990s. It is still reshaping India right now, and the ride has become bumpier. In its December 2024 update, the World Trade Organization expected the volume of world merchandise trade to grow by about 2.7 per cent in 2024, but warned that the outlook was clouded by rising global trade tensions. In plain terms, goods and money still cross borders in enormous amounts, yet countries are arguing more about the rules, so the flow is less smooth than it once was.
India shows the other half of the picture: the weightless or knowledge economy explained above. In 2024-25 India's services exports, which include software, IT support, design, finance and the call centre and BPO work these notes mention, reached a record 383.5 billion US dollars, up from about 341 billion the year before, and India now ranks seventh in the world for services exports. Counting goods as well, India's total exports touched a record 820.93 billion US dollars, a rise of 5.5 per cent over the previous year. The middle class jobs created by liberalisation are no longer just a prediction. They are a large, measurable part of how the country now earns.
This is exactly the double edged change the chapter warns about. The same global links that create well paid city jobs can also expose families to shocks decided far away, from a foreign investor pulling money out of the stock market to a distant tariff dispute that changes which factory keeps its orders. Seeing both sides is the whole point of studying globalisation as social change, not just as economics. You can explore how these forces touch different subjects and careers on the Learnacy Hub, and revise the rest of this unit through our Class 12 Sociology notes.
Key terms to remember
- Globalisation: the growing economic, social and cultural links between people and nations across the world.
- Liberalisation: the policy decisions taken by India since 1991 to open its economy to the global market.
- Transnational corporation (TNC): a company that produces goods or sells services in more than one country.
- Weightless or knowledge economy: an economy where value comes from information and services, such as software, media and design, rather than only farming or factories.
- Glocalisation: the blending of the global and the local, such as a global brand adapting its products to Indian tastes.