StudySpace: Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, 2 e.

Today, more than ever, people, ideas, and things flow from one end of the world to the other. Ironically, while this phenomenon leads to diversification in one sense, as in Los Angeles, it also destroys diversity, as in the Amazon. Globalization has led to greater integration, but not equality. While some live the jet-set life, others battle to lift themselves out of poverty.

Global Integration

Large political empires no longer drive change as in the past. With the fall of the three-world order, the open marketplace has appeared as a new interpretative paradigm. U.S. success has driven the globe in this direction, even as global cultures have redefined America. Also significant is the rise of transnational forces that have begun to affect the sovereign autonomy of nation-states. Education, economic prosperity, and political rights are expanding. Nevertheless, many still remain behind.

Removing Obstacles to Globalization

As the three-world order crumbled, Second World options disintegrated leaving new ties to integrate the world.

ENDING THE COLD WAR

Cold-war hostilities greatly limited global exchange. Countries caught between the superpowers fell into chaos and war. The arms race led to enormous expenditures for weaponry that eventually bankrupted the Soviet Union and greatly raised U.S. debt. Economic challenges from outside their respective blocs and dissatisfaction from within eroded confidence. The Soviet bloc collapsed, revealing terrible shortages, lagging health care, and political lies. Gorbechev’s efforts to reform the Soviet system undermined party control. It fell to Yeltsin to dismantle and privatize the vast Soviet system. Some states ceased to exist, such as East Germany. Others broke apart, such as Yugoslavia. For the majority, the breakup of the Soviet Union meant political and economic stagnation. Unable to absorb subtle technological changes, like the computer, in an information age meant that Communism could not sustain itself.

AFRICA AND THE END OF WHITE RULE

In the 1970s, few remnants of Africa’s colonial experience continued to exist. The collapse of the Portuguese colonies ended all formal imperialist holdings, but some states continued to be dominated by white governments. When Rhodesia’s white government buckled in 1979, South Africa’s white leaders remained alone. In 1994, due to the failure of increasingly harsh measures against Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress and fears of becoming even more of a pariah nation, South Africa’s de Klerk organized free elections that swept white leaders out of power. Despite progress, most African states struggled to build their economies, to avoid falling too deep into cold war political rivalries, and to integrate various peoples within their states. Ethnic and local rivalries, however, beset such efforts, ensuring that neither peace nor stability could be guaranteed even after the end of the cold war.

Unleashing Globalization

As obstacles to international integration dissolved, most states moved to stimulate “agents” of globalization, thus increasing contact but also widening inequities.

FINANCE AND TRADE

Pulling back from formal management of money, state leaders turned to policy that called for unrestricted, deregulated markets and profits rather than the welfare-oriented Keynesian approach. This made it easier for investors to transact business in the international financial sector. In the 1980s, Latin American nations, defaulting on IMF loans, widely opened domestic markets and initiated a boom in international finance which other countries followed. The Internet has allowed rapid movement of money. Globalization has stimulated commercial interdependence as goods move around the globe. Trade has also shifted the division of labor as manufacturing spreads internationally and economic growth accelerates in places like Asia. Fearing competition, regional open-trade blocs such as NAFTA and the European Union have arisen. As changes occur, new goods have risen in importance, including services, computers, and pharmaceuticals. Information-based production has risen dramatically in wealthy nations while knowledge remains scarce in poorer nations.

MIGRATION

The movement of people has also increased integration as individuals and families leave poor countries to seek opportunities in wealthier ones. Ironically, migrants frequently follow the tracks of vacating imperialist powers. Even as corporations locate their factories in poorer nations, laborers there often prefer migration and the lowest wages in richer nations. International migration has been accompanied by regional and national migration from poor rural areas to urban centers, as in Nigeria. Migration is often viewed as temporary, particularly since it is difficult to integrate into European or Japanese society. Nevertheless, labor shortages often require these temporary migrant workers, who, establishing homes, become targets of exclusion and violence. The United States has had less trouble integrating migrants coming from places like Mexico or Asia, and migration has transformed the ethnic composition of cities, particularly Los Angeles. As the number of migrant workers has increased, nations have had to grapple with relative integration and the ethnic makeup of political communities. While most migrants move voluntarily, many are still forced to move as a result of violence. Africa hosts the largest concentration of such migrants.

CULTURE

While American culture’s popularity and spread is largely responsible for the rise of a global entertainment culture, it takes its cues increasingly from other parts of the world. Thus, on a global scale there is less diversity, but from the perspective of an individual with technological access there is opportunity for much more.

New Media Cassettes and CDs, television, films, and even international cable networks have helped distribute culture around the globe. Sports have became an international industry, as evidenced by Michael Jordan’s popularity and the impressive support of international sporting events like the World Cup.

Global Culture Migration has allowed cultures to spill into new areas and take root or generate completely new genres. Often music or TV serials, for example, have become tied to youth or ethnic cultures trying to express dissatisfaction with the political status quo. Governments do not ignore these challenges and sometimes seek to resist “Americanization.” At the same time, American culture has expanded to embrace other non-American performers.

Local Culture Local cultural developments do not merely imitate global cultural norms, but they have often created expressions based on local or national cultural icons that have opened the way for black, female, and homosexual performers. Globalization has led to an increasingly homogenized world culture, yet has also stimulated local cultures that have become increasingly diverse.

COMMUNICATIONS

Advanced communications in the form of telecommunications, computers, and the World Wide Web have greatly increased the trend toward globalization. New opportunities for wealth creation over international boundaries have produced some of the world’s richest people. Indian, Mexican, and Taiwanese firms produce computers and educate fleets of computer programmers. As communication opportunities expand, the gap between rich and poor has become increasingly determined by who can get online and who cannot. In short, globalization has led to integration, but also to wider economic disparities.

Characteristics of the New Global Order

Globalization is changing the world. Expanding populations require greater agricultural and industrial productivity. Families are changing as are sources of social status. Material goods have become widely available but are not necessarily equitably distributed.

THE DEMOGRAPHY OF GLOBALIZATION

Declining mortality rates have boosted the world’s population dramatically but at faster rates in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Wealthier nations and the poorest nations show slower growth rates or declining rates. China’s burgeoning growth rates led the government to adopt a “one-child policy.” In wealthier nations, declining birthrates came as a matter of choice and lifestyle.

Families The definition of family has become fluid, with divorces and out-of-wedlock births increasing.

Aging People live longer, creating older populations. Lower fertility rates have allowed the percentages of older citizens to rise, increasing the burden on society’s yuonger generations as they try to support an expanding aged population. In societies that have no welfare programs, this creates dire circumstances.

Health In rich, modernized cities, epidemics have been held in check. Developing nations hosting urban squalor, however, still have trouble containing disease. The spread of AIDS has changed personal behavior and has led to a variety of expensive treatments unavailable in poorer nations where education has not been readily available.

Education In some areas like India, more men are better educated, while women still lag behind, often laboring under severe poverty. In the United States, women secure more than half of all college degrees. In China, education has made great strides but still has far to go in rural areas, particularly for women.

Work Women have entered the workplace in greater numbers but have yet to reach parity with men in their competition for top positions. Child care continues to divide the time of women. Working women in Canada and Australia needing child-care services often employ others who frequently end up being women from Jamaica or the Philippines with children of their own.

Feminism Feminist calls for changes in the status and condition of women went global in the 1970s. Seeking equal pay and opportunity, global feminism fights discrimination that keeps women in positions of subordination. In 1995, Beijing hosted the Fourth World Conference on Women to produce “a platform for action” on policies affecting women.

PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

Production and consumption have also changed considerably. How to feed a global population has been the predominant challenge.

Agricultural Production Chemistry and biology have accelerated agricultural production, but more so in America and Asia than elsewhere, where opening new land by destroying rain forests is cheaper. In Africa, agriculture simply has not kept up due to political constraints, lack of incentives, and poor markets for goods. Starvation, therefore, became common during the 1980s.

Natural Resources Americans produce much, but they consume great quantities of water, energy, and fossil fuels. In 1991, these consumption needs led to the Gulf War.

Environment Pollution has become a problem of global proportions. Many polluters have merely moved to poorer nations, thus shifting the onus. Pollution in poorer nations is often the price paid for economic development and payment of international loans. As pollution problems rise, national leaders find it increasingly difficult to reach agreements. In 1986, Chernobyl’s meltdown signaled a new level of international urgency.

Citizenship in the Global World

Globalization has enriched some but left others far behind, who then turn to religious or nationalist ideals. Nation-states have also found their autonomy and influence compromised by increasing global integration. In some ways, international organizations have come to enjoy more clout in defining citizenship than even national governments—particularly in the Third World. Nevertheless, local differences continue to give the globe a strong element of diversity.

SUPRANATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

International bodies have risen to facilitate global interaction, but they have also encroached on the autonomy of nationstates. TheWorld Bank and International Monetary Fund are the most important world financial institutions, aiding development while exacting promised reforms from borrowing nations. Challenging dictatorial regimes in the 1970s and gaining support from major foundations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) emerged to promote various causes with funds and clout to rival those of national governments.Amnesty International, for example, grew from obscurity to become the world’s most powerful human rights organization.

VIOLENCE

Fierce ethnically or religiously charged violence has also become a global concern. Violence of other sorts—natural disasters and poverty—affects billions. Competition and corruption has led to fierce outbreaks with regional, if not global, implications. Violence in Rwanda, for example, affected many countries in the region. Other societies, seeking healing and progress, have endeavored to investigate past abuses. “Truth” commissions, as seen in South Africa, not only legitimize democratic successors to oppressive regimes, they also aim to open the way for peace to blossom rather than vengeance. At the same time, however, in the Balkans, violence could only be halted through an escalation of warfare.

RELIGIOUS FOUNDATIONS OF POLITICS

As globalization spreads, religion has produced a way to redefine the nation-state and restore some of its autonomy. In India, Hindu nationalists claim that the secular state has trampled on the rights of the majority Hindu population by coddling the minority Muslims, and they insist on changes that would produce a moral community featuring a social hierarchy with themselves at the top. In the Islamic Middle East, critics of modernity assert Islam as a means of averting crass materialism and individualism. Khomeini’s Iran is just one example. In the United States, fundamentalist Protestant groups also rally against secularization and many of the social changes arising since the 1960s.

DEMOCRACY

Democracy has spread largely due to new political and social movements and has become the standard political model for most world nations. China continues to resist, in spite of the great demonstrations for democratization bloodily crushed by government troops, as in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Government control of information has become increasingly difficult. Many individuals prefer to risk their lives getting smuggled out of their country for a chance at greater opportunities elsewhere. In Mexico, democracy finally triumphed after the Zapatistas rebelled against Mexico City and supranational forces and international news agencies intervened to change world opinion. Embarrassed, Mexico City decided to negotiate and set up elections that swept the ruling party from power.

 

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