Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
social structures that influence the way in which the economy is run. From the
evidence of the operations of the modern transnationals, it is apparent that these
huge firms are not immune to the patterns of social structure.
The end of the nation state?
A more sophisticated version of McLuhan's idea of the global village comes
from Kenichi Ohmae (1995), in his predictions of the end of the nation state as a
unit for political, social and economic organization. Drucker (1989) made the
same kind of predictions, and regarded the nation state as being replaced by
TNCS, by the global economy, and by new economic regions which transgress
national borders. To focus on Ohmae's arguments, these seem to take
technological determinism one step further, as he claims that economic structures
are determining the shape of political units. He points to the breakdown of old
barriers in the formation of new political units, including the Soviet Union and
Yugoslavia, and the tendencies towards break-up in old established West
European states such as Spain, Britain and France. Such changes are thought to
be due to the effects of the global economy. This is partly reflected in the
Californianization of taste amongst consumers, but it runs deeper, in the world
view of people and the values they set on different goods available to them.
Movement towards the uniform world view comes with the development process,
and with access to expensive material goods which themselves are standardized.
Ohmae sees the changes coming about in his own culture, that of Japan, where
the most global set of people are the young (the 15-25 age group). They have
finally broken the web of cultural continuity with the past, and begun to question
all tradition, while finding out about the outside world from such global sources
as the Internet, rather than traditional sources which may be biased by local
interests. Another levelling feature he discusses is the demand for the “civil
minimum”, for a basic level of welfare, which is found in the non-lead sectors of
Japanese society such as the farming population, and in the rural regions
generally. Farming in Japan has become, as in parts of western Europe, a welfare
activity, subsidized heavily and totally uncompetitive on world or national
markets.
These arguments can all be challenged; the breakdown of nation states is by no
means a uniform process today. Artificially welded states like the Soviet Union
and Yugoslavia were always likely to break up, and in states like Germany and
Spain, there is strong decentralization but, as yet, no break-up of the core unit.
Where there is a strong possibility of separation, as for Scotland, it is due to the
long existence of a national identity not conforming to that of the state.
Nor can the changes towards Californianization of taste be agreed to be
universal. While there are strong movements towards uniformity up to per capita
income levels of perhaps $10,000 per annum, after that the tastes seem to diverge
again, with the emergence of concern for local landscapes and settlements (each
specific to a locality or region), and desire for quality-of-life elements
