Acta Universitatis Danubius. Relationes Internationales, Vol 6, No 1 (2013)

Abstract

This text represents a sequel to our demarche concerning the globalization phenomenon understood in the analytical theoretical perspective. The economic coordinate of globalization represents a highly important element for the theoretical outlining of the concept of globalization. The world’s markets, especially the financial ones, represent the best proof that globalization encompasses a powerful economic component. In this context, the issue of the nation-state represents a new challenge for the theorists of globalization. Welfare, the certainty of the workplace, related to the phenomenon of global unemployment, represent only a few problematic concepts which require reflection, resemantization and an authentic intellectual debate. The sovereignty of the nation-state is seriously shaken especially from an economic perspective. All the other conceptual components of globalization are directly influenced in that “multicausal logic” brought forth by Giddens, by this economic coordinate. The economic, as a semantic horizon which melts into the concept of globalization, may be related to another semantic horizon just as important, namely the cultural one. At a first superficial review, the two coordinates seem rather stuck in their strict specific identity, but, after a more profound analysis, the connections between them may be brought forth. Because we have mentioned the financial markets, which, at their turn, are instrumented by money, well, this economic instrument holds, in the first instance, a strong cultural charge. The most important forms of human behavior, namely the cultural ones, are directly influenced by the way the individual understands and interprets the concept called money. At the same time, we will not be able to overlook the fact that the most important states, from an economic point of view, the states initially making up G8, and then GX, are the states which “set the style” for the various cultural trends and courses at a global level. These two coordinates analyzed in this text are interconnected, making up a first semantic horizon of globalization.