Monday, October 4, 2010

What is Globalizaton?

Name: Shahnawaz Syed

Personally I believe the word Globalization defines the relationship or connection between people at one part of the world, to another who might be thousands of miles away from him/her. Now as these two people are connected, slowly their customs, their marketing, their economy, their religion, their friends and family and even their technology start becoming connected too. Eventually, people realize that the other might possess something better in the form of custom, technology etc; so they slowly adapt it, ultimately creating similarities between the two.
According to a credible pocket dictionary, Globalization is the process enabling financial and investment markets to operate internationally, largely as a result of deregulation and improved communications. It is also the emergence since the 1980s of a single world market dominated by multinational companies, leading to a diminishing capacity for national governments to control their economies and the process by which a company, etc, expands to operate internationally (This paragraph is straight from dictionary.com).
Globalization in itself is supposed to be a good thing. As people are connected with each other they can share their information and progress as a human race, as a biology major I further support the notion because it means that scientists from all over the world can share their tips and tricks; making it easier to save more lives and improve the standard of living for everyone. But writers such as CurranMuyung-Jinin in De westernizing Media Studies (2000) argue that the concept is not always as harmless as it sounds, throughout history various nations have used propaganda to turn globalization into global imperialism, where simply the western ideologies were considered a standard for the rest of the world to follow. Eventually however according to him, it became global capitalism after much conflict. As time passes by the term is gaining more and more meaning and becoming neutral in nature, but the threats towards it are also becoming more advanced too. While countries such as Costa Rica and Puerto Rico might benefit from the influx of tourists due to globalization, countries such as Jamaica are unable to self sustain because they can’t compete with the low prices of outside vendors. It is cheaper for Jamaicans to expert goods then to grow it themselves, making it hard to provide jobs to the locals. Most of public now looks up to tourism and crime to provide their livelihood, a rather dangerous trend.
Pippa Norris further emphasizes on the negativity of Globalization in Information Poverty and the Wired World (2000) by explaining that a simple thing such as the explosion of internet can cause many nations to fall behind. While countries with easy internet access will rely heavily on it, making their pupils communicate faster and learn faster, it will also exclude them from now actually to travelling to countries where internet is not accessible and communicating with those people. They can now just Google the country and learn just as much, while the local inhabitants unfortunately are blind to what’s going on outside their communities. Hence these countries without internet, no longer have information coming in, and their progress is further slowed down. The wise get wiser and the dumb get dumber.
Globalization has lots of positives for it going too. I mean walk out of your class one day and look around, you will see beauties and brains from all over the world here in Binghamton out of all places. Life without diversity is like food without spices, it makes every experience different, ultimately creating the aura which Benjamin Walter talks about in Illuminations. Human rights organizations, NGOs and global aid would not be possible if it weren’t for globalization
Sources:-
1- Curran, James and Park, Myung Jin. De-westernizing Media Studies: Edited By James Curran and Myung Jin Park. London: Routledg, 2000.Book
2- "globalization." Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. HarperCollins Publishers. 04 Oct. 2010. .
3- Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations: Edited and with an introduction by Hannah Ardent. New York: Shocken Books,1968.Book
4- Norris, Pippa “Information Poverty and the Wired World”. Press/Politics.2000: 5(3)1-6. Editorial.

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