Globalization. George Ritzer

or to increase, their global influence and, undoubtedly, to find other ways of engaging in a range of terrorist activities. For its part, the US is involved in a wide variety of global processes designed to counter that threat, stymie al-Qaeda’s ambitions, and ultimately and ideally to contain, if not destroy, it. This encompassed first the US invasions of Iraq⁶ and Afghanistan, and now the ongoing involvement in global flows of military personnel and equipment to other locales (e.g. Pakistan, Syria, and, increasingly, African countries); and counter-terrorism activities (e.g. drone strikes) designed to find and kill its leaders, and ongoing contact with intelligence agencies of other nations in order to share information on Islamist militants, and so on.

There are also reverse flows. In some cases, processes flowing in one direction act back on their source (and much else). This is what Ulrich Beck (1992) has called the boomerang effect. In Beck’s work the boomerang effect takes the form of, for example, pollution that is “exported” to other parts of the world but then returns to affect the point of origin. So, for example, countries may insist that their factories be built with extremely high smokestacks so that the pollution reaches greater heights in the atmosphere and is thereby blown by prevailing winds into other countries and perhaps even around the globe (Ritzer and Stepnisky 2017). While this seems to reduce pollution in the home country, the boomerang effect is manifest when prevailing winds change direction and the pollution is blown back to its source. In addition, nations that are the recipients of another nation’s air pollution may find ways of returning the favor by building their own smokestacks even higher than their neighbors.

HEAVY, LIGHT, WEIGHTLESS

      There is another set of conceptual distinctions, or metaphors, that are useful in thinking about globalization. In addition to the change from solids to liquids (and then gases), we can also think in terms of change that involves movement from that which is heavy to that which is light (this is another distinction traceable to the work of Zygmunt Bauman) and most recently to that which is lighter than light, that which approaches being weightless (the gases mentioned above).

      The original Gutenberg Bible (mid-fifteenth-century Germany) was usually published in two volumes, ran to close to 1,400 pages, and was printed on very heavy paper or vellum. It was in every sense of the term a heavy tome (almost like the one you are now reading – if you are reading it in print), difficult, because of its sheer weight and bulk, to transport. Fast forward to 2021 and a much lighter bound copy of the Bible could easily be purchased from Amazon and transported in hours or days virtually anywhere in the world. That Bible had also become weightless since it could be downloaded using a tablet or smart phone.

      More generally, it could be argued that both pre-industrial and industrial societies were quite “heavy,” that is, characterized by that which is difficult to move. This applies both to those who labored in them (e.g. peasants, farmers, factory workers), where they labored (on plots of land, farms, in factories), and what they produced (crops, machines, books, automobiles). Because of their heaviness, workers tended to stay put and what they produced (and what was not consumed locally) could be moved, especially great distances, only with great effort and at great expense. Later advances, especially in technology, made goods, people, and places “lighter,” easier to move. These included advances in both transportation and technology that made all sorts of industrial products smaller, lighter, and easier to transport (compare the pocket-sized smart phone of today to the room-size computer of the mid-twentieth century).

      Karin Knorr Cetina (2005: 215) has written about what she calls “complex global microstructures,” or “structures of connectivity and integration that are global in scope but microsociological in character.” She has described financial markets (Knorr Cetina 2012; Knorr Cetina and Bruegger 2002) in these terms and, more recently, global terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda or ISIS. We will have more to say about these global microstructures (see Chapter 12), but the key point here is that while Knorr Cetina sees these global microstructures as having several characteristics, of primary importance is their “lightness” in comparison to “heavy” bureaucratic systems. Thus, unlike the armed forces of the United States, Islamist militants (e.g. al-Qaeda) are not heavy bureaucratic structures, but rather light “global microstructures.” It is their lightness that gives them many advantages over the extremely cumbersome US military, and the huge bureaucracy of which it is a part.

It could be argued that we moved from the heavy to the light era in the past century or two. However, by about 1980, we can be said to have moved beyond both of those epochs. We are now in an era that is increasingly defined not just by lightness, but by something approaching weightlessness. That which is weightless, or nearly so, clearly moves far more easily (even globally) than that which is either heavy or light. The big changes here involved the arrival and expansion of cable and satellite television, satellite radio, cell phones, personal computers, tablets, and, most importantly, smart phones and the advent of the Internet (and social media such as Instagram or Twitter). It is with the Internet (and the devices by which we access it) that globalization reaches new heights in terms of the flow of things and of social relationships in large part because it, and much else, have approached weightlessness.

      An excellent example of this can be found in the world of music. Vinyl records were quite heavy and the shift to cassettes and later CDs did not make music much lighter. However, the creation of advanced technologies such as smart phones allows us to carry around thousands of once very heavy albums in our pockets, or we can play it from the cloud. We can carry that music with us anywhere in the world and we can exchange music over the Internet with people around the globe.

      To take another example, in the past, if we needed to consult with a medical specialist in Switzerland, we would have had to fly there and take our x-rays and MRI images with us, or else had them snail-mailed. Now, both can be digitized and sent via the Internet; x-ray and MRI results have become weightless. Our Swiss physician can view them on their computer screen. We do not even need to go to Switzerland at all (in a sense we have become weightless, as well). We (or our local physician) can confer with our Swiss physician by phone, e-mail, or a video hook-up (e.g. Zoom) via the Internet. It is information, rather than things, that is increasingly important in the contemporary world and the post-industrial economy. Information, especially when it is translated into digital, computerized codes (that’s what happens to our x-rays and MRI images), is weightless and can be sent around the globe instantly.

      Of course, there are still many heavy things in our increasingly weightless world. Factories, offices, buildings, large and cumbersome machines (including MRI machines), newspapers, hardback books, and even some people (made “heavy” by, for example, minority status, poverty, a lack of education) continue to exist. All, of course, are nevertheless being globalized to some degree in one way or another, but their weightiness makes that process more cumbersome and difficult for them. For example, the global parcel delivery systems (e.g. FedEx, DHL) have become very efficient, but they still need to transport a physical product over great distances. Clearly, that process is still quite weighty, in comparison to, say, the downloading of weightless movies from Netflix (a website that began by allowing members to receive heavier DVDs via snail-mail) or viewing them on-demand. In fact, of course, it is increasingly the case that that which is weightless (e.g. downloadable music, streamable movies, social media) is destroying that which is comparatively heavy (e.g. the CD, the DVD, newspapers).

The ideas of increasing liquidity and weightlessness being employed here do not require that the world be “flat” or be considered as such (see Chapter 4) (Friedman 2007, 2012). Fluids can seep through all sorts of tall and wide structures and, in the case of a flood, those structures can even be washed away (as was the Berlin Wall, for example, and more metaphorically, the Iron Curtain), at least temporarily. Further, that which is weightless can waft over and between the tallest and widest structures. Thus, the world today is increasingly characterized by liquidity and weightlessness, but it is not necessarily any flatter than it ever was. Those tall, wide structures continue to be important, especially in impeding (or attempting to), the movement of that which is solid