Bronze-level articleGlobalization

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Globalization is the term given to the increased inter-connectedness of culture, economics and social interaction. Planes can carry people (or packages) around the world in less time than it used to take to travel between nearby towns. Money and ownership can change as rapidly as electrons flowing through cable. The globalized world knew about the war in Georgia about as quickly as people in Russia did. People flow freely too, and attempts to stem the tides of immigration have been failing around the world.

All you need to know: it creates a lot of good things, and some bad things at the same time.

Contents

[edit] Impact

The idea disturbs some nations as they see it as an encroachment on their own indigenous cultures.

Experts are divided on what effect globalization is going to have on the socio-political environment. Some argue that culture and national identity will become meaningless, with people instead merging across state lines into larger cooperative groups, like the EU or a stronger UN. Others believe states will become meaningless as people look for strength in smaller, tribal groupings.

[edit] Inability to halt progression

One thing that all proponents do agree on is that globalization is not something that can be easily (or desirably) undone. The communications revolution has opened up trade, and much of globalization is based on the free flow of ideas and markets. Moreover, it's been argued that while states have tried hard to slow or stop the spread of various kinds of transnationalism, they have been unable to do so. Globalization has opened up, and partially removed, nationalistic boundaries.

That said however, it's very easy to take this sentiment and slide into "end of history" mode or what some would call "globaloney."[1] See Thomas Friedman.

[edit] Examples of products

One thing to keep in mind: Whenever someone rails against the evils of globalization to you, ask them if they enjoy any of the following:

  • Foreign cuisine, like the ever trendy Indian food... and contaminated milk and baby formula from China.
  • Foreign entertainment (including martial arts movies and art house flicks)
  • The lowered prices on everything at Wal-Mart OK, never mind.
  • The ability to communicate instantly and quickly with other anti-globalization activists thanks to the Internet and text messaging, but not knowing any of your own neighbors.
  • Websites like this.
  • Closed factories in the Rust Belt that were horribly inefficient anyway.
  • Pittsburgh losing half its population since 1979.

[edit] Critiques of the globalization paradigm

The Jamaican patty, and not the Big Mac, is the culinary legacy of globalization.

[edit] Fred Cooper

As Fred Cooper points out in Colonialism in Question, there are two things wrong with "globalization" as a term for understanding the world's networks of information, economic and cultural exchanges — the "global" and the "-ization." By this, Cooper means that it is still problematic to talk about globalization as a unified, worldwide and singular process when one takes into account the extent to which different social groups experience and are affected by the alleged phenomenon in different ways.

[edit] "Re-branding"

Another criticism is that "globalization" is nothing new — from the Indian Ocean trade of the twelfth century to the Atlantic system of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, people, ideas, information, commodities, technologies and money have been moving around the globe for a very long time now. The pace at which things move may have accelerated somewhat, but the networks carrying them have been around for centuries.

The legacies of these older forms of globalization can be found in the "traditions" that people want to protect against the perils of contemporary globalization. Consider, if you will, the Jamaican patty, a "traditional" West Indian food. It's essentially a Scottish meat pie filled with Indian curry, prepared by and sold to disaporic Africans in the Caribbean — a delicious treat impossible to conceive of in a pre-globalized world.

In fact, history has shown that contrary to much of what was said on the aforementioned "inability to halt progression," globalization could not only be slowed but can actually go in reverse as well. Much of the rhetoric about the impending borderless world had been repeated ad nauseam in previous generations under different words. One example was Norman Angell's 1909 book The Great Illusion, which in addition to espousing the bright globalized future posited that there's no more need for such things as war.[2]

[edit] A real critique

In modern trade, with lowered tariff barriers, manufacturers chase the cheapest source of labor available. This has led to the de-industrialization of Western democracies and a horrible trade deficit with low-wage nations. Not only are Third World nations prone to incredibly cheap labor (infamously referred to as sweatshops), on top of that they keep their currency cheap to encourage exports, instead of letting it float on the market — which true globalism would expect.

The upside to this is that it can't last for much longer. Historically, increased industrialization has led to the creation of trade unions intended to alleviate the more harmful effects of capitalism; due to the PR debacles related to treating workers like shit, companies are being inclined to shape up their social responsibility or face the risk of losing their consumer base (and the emergence of the dastardly fair trade).[3][4] Simply put, we're in the corporate version of Catch Me if You Can: hiding behind a catchy ad or a flashy logo isn't going to persuade anyone anymore.[5]

Other critiques focus on the tendencies to exaggerate just how "global" globalization is in practice and conflate an "ought" with "is." Despite the rhetoric and buzzwords, the global economy in reality (for now, at least) still acts more like a series of clustered regional markets. The flow of labor and transnational issues like terrorism and climate change meanwhile reveal the continuing significance of nation-states and regional blocs. Only a small proportion of the world's population live in countries other than their place of origin[6] (though this doesn't necessarily reflect choice; it's still ridiculously difficult to migrate internationally outside of preexisting treaty blocs like the EU or ECOWAS and there are far more people who want to migrate than are allowed to) while even the most seemingly cosmopolitan regions of the world remain largely domestic, with little sign of this changing in the immediate future. Neither are local identities on the verge of being erased anytime soon, given the trend towards "glocalization" as well as the fact that online traffic remains largely confined to one's backyard.[7]

[edit] Be careful

If you're going to debate someone on the nature of globalization and it morphs into a debate on the "race to the bottom," prepare for a load of bullshit.[8]

[edit] See also

[edit] Footntotes

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