Lemmens The Virtual Challenge to International Cooperation in Higher Education Bernd Wächter (ed.) Aca papers on International Cooperation in Education The V irtual Challenge to International Cooperation in Higher Education

Globalisation
3. Let me start then with globalisation. It is an ugly word, but everyone uses
it. The trouble is that globalisation is used by so many different people to
describe so many different trends. The first, and most obvious, of these
trends is the growth of an integrated world economy – which is most dra-
matically emphasised by global capital flows (round-the-clock and round-
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the-globe financial markets). But it is also manifest in the development of
a worldwide division of labour. The components of manufactured goods
are produced anywhere and everywhere. While we sleep, our information
is processed in some other part of the world. We have become, in Manu-
el Castells’ phrase, a “network society”. Everything, its seems, is con-
nected to everything else. And, despite of what I said earlier, it is informa-
tion and communication technology that has made this integrated world
economy possible.
4. But that is not all there is to globalisation. There are two important qualifi-
cations.
I
The first is that an integrated world economy is hardly new. Since the
seventeenth century, or even earlier, we have had something
approaching a global economy. That is what colonies and empires
were all about (and, if we are frank, many of the traditional patterns
of academic cooperation were heavily influenced by these colonial
and imperial frameworks). What is new is the growth of world cultures
and global brands. Both are strongly influenced by the United States
– which is why “business” and “media” English has become the
world’s 
lingua franca (neither of which bears much resemblance to
the English of Shakespeare, or even the language spoken by native
English speakers!);
II
The second qualification is that, despite the intensity of the new glo-
bal economy, there are still parts of the world that have been left out.
Much of Sub-Saharan Africa is a good example. Globalisation in this
uncompromising market form is no longer balanced by the strategic
considerations that were so important in the era of the Cold War (and
again, if we are frank, we have to admit that these strategic, and
ideological, considerations played an important role in stimulating,
and shaping, academic cooperation). But all parts of the world are
subject to the influence of global cultures and brands. Even the
poorest, who have been marginalised by the global economy, are
exposed to global culture with all its tantalising images of the “good
life”, of “success” and “style”.
5. The global economy is, essentially, a knowledge economy – in the sense
that knowledge encoded as scientific and technological data and expert
skills is the primary source of wealth creation; and in the sense that
“knowledge” encoded as images, styles, brands and so on is the means
by which global cultures are realised and communicated. Of course, now
that the so-called “info-tainment” has become so important, it may be dif-
ficult to draw a distinction between “productive” and “recreational”
knowledge. Computers being used to play video games are just as
important as computers being used to process research results, produce
management data or control manufacturing processes. Modern society,
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above all, is a communicative society – in terms of its fundamental econo-
mic structure and of its more creative and playful (even frivolous) habits.