1 Introduction

As neo-liberalism has become a new world value, globalization is fusing more countries into an interlocking body than ever. This fusion indicates that the volume of international trade has enlarged significantly and, thus, contains a considerable amount of capitalist profit. Consequently, the many countries that want to gain such profit need to comply with the new rules of this global market. It is argued that such authority has flowed to international institutions that are controlled by the USA. This situation has assisted America to gain a predominant position, allowing it to export its hegemonic cultures to other countries. It is argued that such exportation will replace the cultures of importing countries and, thus, jeopardize their citizens’ national identity. This is because cultures function as the basis for developing identity. In order to diminish this political crisis, the strategy of cultural localization will be employed. In this case, schools are responsible for implementing this national assignment. However, this argument tends to adopt a static approach to defining state sovereignty and, thus, contains considerable weaknesses.

This essay sets out to delineate the dynamic change of sovereignty in historical contexts and its political intentions. It also explores the unstable meaning of territoriality, which is viewed as a core ingredient in the constitution of state sovereignty. The key assumption of this essay is that if sovereignty changes its meaning in different historical contexts and its constitutions are not stable, this dynamic characteristic disintegrates the tight and static connection between sovereignty and citizens’ national identity. The remaining value of sovereignty would be political. In other words, although it has shifted from an individualist means serving the monarchy to a collective form operating in the sense of civil society, sovereignty might retain its political essentiality, as manifest in the phenomenon that the rulers/elites firmly seize state authority. This unbalanced power relation further suggests that sovereignty will function as a powerful social discourse to diminish citizens’ critical thinking. Without an independent soul, they are voluntarily subject to the commands of the state, which are under the control of the rulers/elites.

2 Globalization, State Sovereignty and Cultural Localization Education

Globalization has significantly expanded its influence across countries since the 1980s when R. Reagan and M. Thatcher were in power and committed to exporting the ideas of neo-liberalism to the international community (Chiang 2011, 2013). This exportation has significantly contributed to constructing neo-liberalism as a new world value, and to supporting the expansion of globalization. It is argued that being a typical capitalist country (Wallerstein 2004), the USA acts as a transnational corporation in undertaking this construction (Berberoglu 2003; Chiang 2011). This political/economic intention is espoused by the phenomenon of modeling, referring to the inclination of developing countries to imitate developed countries (Veblen 1994). Anyway, globalization has benefited America to acquire a hegemonic status that assists it to export the ideology of neo-liberalism to the international community, through such organs as the OECD (Rizvi and Lingard 2006), the WTO (Robertson et al. 2006), the WB and the IMF (Stiglitz 2002). As globalization has been constructed as an irreversible world trend, neo-liberalism becomes a powerful discourse, convincing people to believe that globalization alone will bring a promising future for its participants (McCarthy and Dimitriadis 2006; Popkewitz 2000; Säfström 2005).

The link between the state as legitimized administrative apparatuses and the state as one of the crucial sites of the production of identities in the body politic leads us to the wide-open spaces of the public sphere, in which civic order is built from discourses that manage the needs, interests and desires generated by them within the socially combatant populations that make up society. (McCarthy and Dimitriadis 2006: 201)

Along with this new world value, globalization has significantly expanded its territory by fusing many countries into a globalized market. It has been argued that this fusion will erode the state sovereignty. Ohmae (2000), for example, contends that this integration triggers the development of region states functioning as economic zones to provide better services and goods. As global economy plays as a primary force to regulate this development, host nations may decrease their influence on region states. Robinson (2004) brushed a similar picture in which international institutions will be established to assist the operation of a global market. Such a transnational arrangement has gradually taken over the authority from the states and remold their role shifting from a self-decision agent to an administrative implementer delivering the policies formulated by transnational institutes. These changes indicate that the state has significantly lost its authority in the epoch of globalization.

Furthermore, the development in ICT also re-strengths the force of globalization and, thus, generates a profound influence on the state sovereignty. As argued by Thurow (2000), such development allows enterprises to undertake a new way of operation, which is cost-saving, effective and free from governmental control and interference. This trend has restrained nations to play like an initiator or commander in the market so that globalization assists international economy to be an independent force and, thus, state authority declines within a globalized market. As the advanced technology in internet fleshes capitalists up at a globalized market, transnational enterprises grow. According to Miyoshi (1996), since this development has become more evident after 1980s, international arena comes to replace domestic domain that used to be the central focus for enterprises. Consequently, they need to be loyal to their international shareholders/clients rather than home countries. This denationalization, as evident in the movement of capital, personal, technology and even the whole system of business, disconnects the linkage between capitalism and its home countries and, in turn, substantially damages governmental authority.

TNCS (transnational corporations) are not beholden to any nation-states but seek their own interests and profits globally. They represent neither their home countries not their host nations but simply their own corporate selves… at any rate, manufactured products are advertised and distributed globally, being identified only with the brand names, not the countries of origin. In fact, the country of origin is itself becoming more and more meaningless. (Miyoshi 1996: 88–89)

This denationalization also makes the transnational corporation require its employees to be loyalty to the corporate identity rather than to their own national identities. Consequently, the expansion of the transnational corporation spotlights the predominant influence of imperialism that comes to replace its precedent mode—colonialism and push the nation-state into a hollow entity.

All the above arguments delineate a phenomenon that globalization becomes more predominant than ever. As the notion of liberty, one of core elements of neo-liberalism (Friedman 2002; Hayek 2007), subscribes individualism, globalization helps individuals acquire more power to influence both markets and states. This new context fleshes up a new form of elites whose power and wealth are obtained at the international market. Eventually, they internalize free market logic and, thus, firmly support the issue of a globalized market. Such an inclination will facilitate the expansion of globalization and decay state sovereignty. This political crisis is even further intensified by governmental intention to gain the considerable amount of capitalist profit available in a globalized market (Mittelman 1996). This economic need has driven many countries to conform to the rules of globalization voluntarily, as witnessed by the fact that they have reduced their control over tax policy for imported goods (Dale 2003). This deterioration of sovereignty has been reinforced by the establishment of international institutions, created to espouse the expansion of world trade or to deal with transnational problems (Stiglitz 2006).

All these changes indicate that while globalization decreases many states’ sovereignty, it actually delivers more power to America. This transmission facilitates the USA in gaining a hegemonic position that enables it to export its culture as evident with the phenomenon of McDonaldization (Ritzer 2000). Some researchers argue that as cultures are the foundation upon which people construct their identities, such devaluation will jeopardize the cultivation of citizens’ national identity. In order to solve such political crises, these importing countries will adopt the strategy of localization to protect their local cultures from such cultural invasion (Lingard 2000; Rizvi 2000). Green (2006) argues that cultural localization will be heavily reliant upon schooling because schools are the main site for cultural cultivation and transmission. Furthermore, global norms and rules tend to affect school curriculum contents because of the conjugation between schooling and globalization (Baker and LeTendre 2005; Cha and Ham 2014).

3 Critiques on the Argument of Cultural Localization

Essentially, the above arguments assume that hegemonic culture is able to replace the culture of importing countries. This replacement approach may neglect the interaction between cultures. Chiang (2014) adopts the perspectives of cultural construction to profile cultural localization as a result of interactive development, the process of which—involves cultural assimilation that is mainly determined by consumers rather than political intentions. Therefore, as proactive endeavor is able to transform structural constraints into advantageous texts, this two-way exchange significantly reduces the boundary between self and others. When consumers become the master, commanding the interplay between cultures and identity, Americanization becomes a predetermined ideology. Berghahn (2010) rejects the notion of Americanization by pointing out that blending or creolizations always occur within the cultural flows across the Atlantic in both directions. West Europe used to export high culture to the USA and its influence reached a peak in the 1930s when European refugees from fascism inhabited in America. This situation was reversed after 1945 because American popular culture gained a hegemonic status in Western Europe. As a result, the boundary between high and popular cultures was disappearing. This phenomenon shows that the two-way exchange between cultures assists cultural innovation so that it is difficult to identify where the originality of certain elements of modern culture was first born.

As localization is in parallel with globalization, glocalization is invented to narrate the combination between universalism and particularization (Robertson 1992). Hong and Song (2010) argue that whereas globalization affects the internal structure of state agents, states are the agents implementing global requirements so that such interactions consistently move globalization into new forms. Accordingly, we need to think globally and act locally in order to reconstruct the world into a global society that can help reduce the gap between globality and locality. Glocalization, thus, embraces the characters of cultural interaction and indigenization. As argued by Khondker (2004), Hollywood films and McDonalds are mistaken as the icon of Americanization. In fact, American culture has been reinterpreted and indigenized to satisfy local needs. This indigenization assists importing countries to engage in dynamic social transformation through cultural fusion and incorporation so that glocalization incarnates the interpenetration of contextualized cultures, which subscribes the meanings of macro-localization and micro-globalization.

4 The Dynamic Meanings of Sovereignty

According to the constructive perspectives, cultural localization should be interpreted as a result of cultural development rather than that of cultural replacement because the consumers are the master determining the value of texts. Accordingly, globalization opens up a gateway assisting importing countries to engage in cultural elaboration. The notion of glocalization further highlights interpenetration between globalization and localization. This two-way exchange argument clarifies the relation between globalization and localization. Even though the perspectives of construction and mutual relation provide insights into the interplay between globalization and localization, the relation between culture, national identity and sovereignty is largely neglected, which is the core element of the mode of cultural replacement. In order to clarify the relation between globalization and cultural localization, it is important to explore the nature of sovereignty.

Sovereignty is generally viewed as a collective consciousness in civil society for protecting a common good. However, according to Foucault (2003), the original meaning of sovereignty was individual and served the interests of the king. The Franks conquered Gaul and, then, became French rulers in this new territory. In order to legitimize their political interests, they claimed that, like the Romans, they were the descendants of Trojans, so that they obtained the legitimacy to import the Roman’s law system that supported the Monarchy system. However, the French king seized this legitimate authority entirely. In order to share this power, some royalties later attacked the latter king’s primacy by criticizing his incompetence in ruling France. This political crisis led him to create the system of magistracy, functioning to legitimize state absolutism by creating eulogies to praise the king’s merits. One historical description of this is as follows:

Louis XIV ordered his administration and his intendants or stewards to produce for his heir and grandson, the duc de Bourgogne… it was intended to constitute the knowledge of the king, or the knowledge that would allow him to rule. (Foucault 2003: 127)

As its intendants served as a political buffer between the king and royalties, this administrative mechanism gained power and increased its size. Finally, this administrative apparatus became a system of civil servants, serving the citizens. Therefore, governmental authority was gradually transmitted from the king to civil society. Consequently, this transition changed the presentation of sovereignty, recontextualizing its tyrannical form into the idea of civil society, in which governmental authority is created for a common good. Such change also occurred in Britain. State sovereignty was created to protect the system of monarchy, as witnessed by the case of William, who was not conqueror of England but was assigned as a legitimate heir to its throne in the ‘Laws of St Edward,’ or the laws of the Saxon regime. The laws became an instrument of power serving the interests of the Norman monarchy and aristocracy. They did not guarantee the reign of justice but depressed people’s voices.

The social body is not made up of a pyramid of orders or of a hierarchy, and it does not constitute a coherent and unitary organism. It is composed of two groups, and they are not only quite distinct, but also in conflict. (Foucault 2003: 88)

This governmental injustice triggered rebellions from people. In other words, civil society waged rebellions against the government in order to fight for their rights, and install justice into sovereignty. This historical movement documents a fact that sovereignty is an artificial notion equipped with political intentions, serving the interests of social elites.

... any law, whatever it may be, every form of sovereignty, what it may be, and any type of power, whatever it may be, has to be analyzed not in terms of natural right and the establishment of sovereignty, but in terms of the unending movement --- which has no historical end --- of the shifting relations that make some dominant over others. (Foucault 2003: 109)

This relation indicates that along with different historical contexts, sovereignty has different meanings. Sovereignty now no longer retains individualism for personal gain of either the king or royalties, but is shared and commanded by all social members in a collective will. In other words, the nature of sovereignty transforms from an original individualism to a modern collectivism. Similarly, Mosca (1962, 1971) argues that the concept of sovereignty was originally designed to serve the interests of the ruling group. Significant contributions, such as protecting their country from the attacks of enemies, entitled knights to membership of a political class which had a legitimate authority to rule the state and enjoy privileges. In order to preserve these privileges for their offspring, they created social norms or values, as manifest in their invention of the concept of inheritance, which further led to the establishment of the system of feudalism. This institutional setting assisted the ruling group to maintain their privileged position from generation to generation. Therefore, although sovereignty was now coated in a collective form for citizens, the process of historical construction shows that it embodies political intentions serving the interests of the ruling class. All these relations show that sovereignty changes its meanings in different historical contexts.

This dynamic development indicates that sovereignty may change its composition, such as by changing one of its core elements, territory. Traditionally, sovereignty is determined by boundaries between states that are officially recognized by other countries (Giddens 1990). However, according to Angew (2009), this territorial definition set out to serve the interests of monarchy. This socially constructed fact may change its constitution in the era of globalization again. While the combination between authority and domestic affairs makes sovereignty a state-based or territory-based idea, this territorial approach was associated with the realm in which the king was its head, with supremacy authority to command his people. The operation of monarchy within a defined territory created a tight linkage between state sovereignty and territory. Preventing sovereignty from being deterritorialized became a crucial way to sustain the authority of the monarchy, so that the states needed to be treated equally. This equal notion symbolically projected on the juridical or legal sovereignty that provided the necessary geographical conditions for the operation of domestic sovereignty. Therefore, state sovereignty is traditionally understood as the absolute territorial organization of political authority. However, strong countries may deny this equal recognition, as manifest in the phenomenon of imperialism or colonialism. Invasions, initiated by western countries, created a non-territorial fusion among states, so that sovereignty was transferred from the personhood of monarchs to discrete national populations. Accordingly, sovereignty can be shared or pooled in the arena of globalization, in which a new global arrangement, favoring the networked system of political authority, transfers sovereignty from domestic to international institutions that are largely influenced by advanced countries. This relation suggests that political control and authority are no longer restrained to the regime of territoriality. Sovereignty needs to be viewed as a social fact produced by the practices of states, and globalization will wipe out the traditional definition of sovereignty—territoriality.

In fact, immigration also blurs the geographic boundaries between states, and in turn may degenerate the political definition of territory for sovereignty.

Thus without territorial restrictions on eligibility, cross-border movements of people would undermine the essentially contractual obligations that underpin both state infrastructural power and the autonomous role of the state that depends on it… however, the tight correlation between territory and state power (both despotic and infrastructural) need not be so close. (Angew 2009: 207)

The development of megacities shows that immigration increases its speed and scale constantly. Globalization further consolidates this phenomenon because it commands many countries to conduct a policy of deregulation of both politics and economy (Florida 2008). As people and geographic space are viewed as the core components in the constitution of a state, massive levels of immigration will decompose the territorial boundaries of a given country. If all or the majority of citizens moved from a country to another territorial space, the country’s sovereignty would inevitably shrink, and even be corrupted. The original geographical boundary was opaque, or even meaningless, for the constitution of the state of sovereignty at the stage of barbarous society, in which tribes were predominant. Some tribes didn’t inhabit a certain territory because they constantly moved for food. This movement, then, disintegrated the linkages among sovereignty, territory and geographic boundaries. This phenomenon is still vivid in some geographic spaces in the modern age, such as in the case of Eskimos. Obviously, no countries would officially recognize Eskimos’ sovereignty, although their inhabitation of the Arctic for thousands of years has created some core components of sovereignty, such as people and territory. This declination implies that sovereignty is an artificial notion equipped with certain political intentions, as noted previously. Perhaps, some skeptics may claim that this is because Eskimos haven’t developed their own government. However, such a predetermined viewpoint lacks adequate justification. Although a savage society may lack a centralized form of bureaucratic system, this society still contains authority and applies it in a different way. The findings of Malinowski’s (1926) study showed that power and authority were not seized by the chief, but were shared by his compatriots. Their cooperation was essential, in terms of undertaking the fishing that was the crucial source of food supply for the tribe on an island. Obviously, the authority circulating within such a primitive community was different from the modern definition of sovereignty. However, its usage brought more advantages to its members than that of a modern state.

This difference suggests that sovereignty embodies political intentions serving social elites. Hytrek and Zentgraf (2008) argue that because domestic policies are generally manipulated by state rulers for their political interests, the state becomes a main site of struggle over political policies that affect the interest of capitalists and big enterprises. According to Harvey (2005), a globalized system is different from the state because ‘the capitalist operates in continuous space and time, whereas the politician operates in a territorialized space’ (Harvey 2005: 27). This difference permits states to adopt an active tactic to empower themselves for maximizing their interests in the new context created by globalization (Olssen 2006). Instead of the traditional role, stewardship is viewed as a workable path in this milieu, which addresses the integration between trust, service and accountability. In the name of efficient governance, central government acts as an initiator, coordinator and auditor in the context of glocalization so that it doesn’t lose authority but employs it in a different form (Sharma 2009). The case of Norwegian teachers echoes this transformation. In order to cope with the challenges of knowledge society with techno-political openness, Norwegian curriculum addressed the importance of students’ basic competence. Accordingly, Norwegian teachers were required to improve themselves in rhetorical agency. However, this openness created tensions and feelings of risk in need of control so that the government set out the frame of self-improvement for its teachers in the surveillance of national tests. As the government-controlled agency was masked in a rhetorical form, globalization doesn’t substantially deteriorate states’ control over education (Trippestad 2016). This phenomenon tends to espouse Krasner’s (2006) argument, rejecting a popular discourse in contemporary society, which the expansion of globalization consistently erodes state sovereignty. Such discourse adopts the Westphalian model created in 1648, which addresses institutional settings and rules corresponding to the logic of appropriateness, to define territoriality and autonomy as the core components for the constitution of state sovereignty. Therefore, sovereignty equals an independent autonomy of the state, excluding external actors from internal organizational arrangements, notable as jurisdiction. However, this approach neglects authority, which plays a predominant role in making domestic policies.

As this authoritative power is seized by state rulers, their intentions are the key element in textualizing the nature of sovereignty, as manifest in their participation in international institutes. Some people claim that such global institutional arrangements create international legal sovereignty, coming to diminish state sovereignty because they violate the principle of the independent autonomy, under the Westphalian model. The IMF, for example, is constantly cited as a typical case for arguing this violation because it insists on a legitimated role in domestic policy formation (Stiglitz 2006). However, most political rulers have devoted themselves to participating in these international institutes. This is because international recognition can promote their political interests, as manifest in increasing the support for them in the domestic agenda.

Hence, international legal sovereignty can promote the interests of rulers by making it easier for them to generate domestic political support not just because they are in a better position to promote the interests of their constituents but also because recognition is a signal about the viability of a political regime and its leaders. (Krasner 2006: 84)

Apparently, they are pleased to see the establishment of transnational institutions that create international legal sovereignty. This relation shows that either Westphalian or international legal sovereignty is decided by the rulers, who are seeking the best outcome in terms of their political interests. Instead of states or the international system, they are the main agents for making choices about policies, rules and institutions that constitute sovereignty. As globalization creates a new context for the cultivation of new rulers, sovereignty proceeds on its dynamic journey. Robinson (2004) argues that globalization fuses many countries into interlocking regions in which international institutions, equipped with a transnational authority, favor international solidarity for capitalists rather than the state independent authority in the domestic sphere. This new economic/political arrangement tends to facilitate the development of a transnational capitalist class. This class will acquire predominant power and behave like the power elites, conceptualized by Mills (1951), who have consistently dominated the operation of states. Therefore, this transnational capitalist class will become the main agents for reshaping of the constitution of state sovereignty. Other factors also contribute to producing the dynamic development of sovereignty. Globalization tends to intensify transnational problems, such as pollution, water supply and drugs, which are transcend territorial jurisdictions, and are unable to be solved by individual governments. This situation requires international cooperation, defined as transgovernmentalism, which facilitates the creation of international institutes. This trend tends to unbundle the relationship between sovereignty, territoriality and political power (Held 2006).

In short, sovereignty changes its meaning and nature constantly, so that its linkage with territory, geographic boundaries and independent autonomy is not stable. This relationship is unable to sustain the core assumption of cultural localization education, which emphasizes the tight connections among culture, territory, national identity and sovereignty. Sovereignty needs to be viewed as an artificial notion, equipped with political intentions that serve certain groups and, thus, impacts the correspondence between national identity and cultural localization.

5 Conclusions

In order to obtain the considerable amount of capitalist profit available in a globalized market, its members need to comply with its rules. This loss is interpreted as a declination of their sovereignty. On the other hand, such authority flows to international institutes that are controlled by the USA. This situation further helps America acquire hegemonic power to export its cultures to other countries. For cultural skeptics, this exportation will replace the cultures of importing countries and, thus, jeopardize their citizens’ national identity. In order to diminish this political crisis, the strategy of cultural localization education will be employed. Therefore, it has been argued that localization occurs in parallel with globalization.

Basically, this argument assumes that cultural localization is rooted in a static and tight connection between sovereignty and national identity. However, as the analysis above indicates, this assumption does not stand up to scrutiny, because it fails to notice the dynamic nature of sovereignty. Sovereignty is an artificial notion equipped with political intentions serving the interests of social elites. It was originally created in individualism to sustain the systems of monarchy and aristocracy, and later reborn with a collective form, notable as civil society. Such dynamic change also occurred in another core element of sovereignty—territoriality—that was equipped with a similar intention to prevent the monarchical authority from being deterritorialized. However, such authority failed to retain its sacred form in the Westphalian model, excluding outsiders’ interferences in domestic arrangements, as manifest in the phenomenon that strong states constantly invade weak countries. This violation indicates that power is the core factor pushing sovereignty away from a static form into a dynamic development. As rulers seize power and authority, their political intentions further intensify this dynamic in the era of globalization, as manifest in their proactive participations in international institutions in order to win international recognition that can work to their advantage in the domestic agenda. As globalization creates an international setting that facilitates the development of a transnational class and transforms them into new elites who favor the issue of globalization, these transnational elites will remold the nature of state sovereignty again. This dynamic change disintegrates the connections among sovereignty, territory and national identity. All the above scenarios indicate that sovereignty needs to be viewed as a social discourse, carrying out political intentions serving the interests of the rulers/elites.

Although sovereignty evolves its forms, meanings and constitutions, its masters are not people but the rulers/elites. This uneven relation is even worse in the era of globalization, because a globalized market stimulates the development of international institutions that assist those rulers/elites to gain capitalist profit and legitimate power, domestically and internationally. This phenomenon shows that sovereignty hasn’t freed itself from the shackles of the political domain, but has constantly functioned as a political tool to serve the interests of the ruler/elites. In the past, people were able to identify this political conspiracy, and wage rebellions against the government in order to integrate justice into state sovereignty. Their contributions finally constructed a civil society in which the state authority would operate in a collectivist form for a common good. However, this transformation doesn’t guarantee that the idea of a civil society can be implemented in practice. Its citizens are incapable of discovering their subjection to the state authority that is under the control of the rulers/elites. This is because the ruling group has transformed sovereignty into a civil society notion, educating people to believe that they are the masters of sovereignty, and that sovereignty operates for a common good. This collectivism increases the sacredness for state sovereignty and sustains the neutrality of state authority. This change assists the rulers/elites to engage in the work of schooling to remold people’s souls. Without critical thought, citizens cannot detect the unbalanced power relations in civil society, largely favoring the ruling group, and are unconsciously subject to the commands of the state. This phenomenon further demonstrates a fact that sovereignty needs to be viewed as an artificial notion, exercising as a social discourse which functions in the political/economic interests of the rulers/elites. This political intention also highlights schools as a locus in which these elites intend to secure their personal gain through schooling and this undetected conspiracy comes to undermine the value of cultural localization education.