UNIT 9: GLOBALIZATION
UNIT 9: GLOBALIZATION
(1900-Present)
9.1: Advances in Technology & Exchange
Globalization: the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide. Globalization has accelerated since the 18th century due to advances in transportation and communication technology.
Communication & Transportation
Radio: created in the early 20th century; allowed individuals and families to hear the voices of the people who were delivering information to them at a distance as opposed to newspaper (which could filter the speaker and listener through writing bias)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt utilized this medium and broadcast his voice into American homes during the Great Depression in WWII to comfort them and update them on policies that he was enacting
Television: invented in the mid-20th century; broadened knowledge of different cultures, promotes tolerance and global understanding of international issues.
Cellular Communication: developed later in the 20th century and gave people the ability to communicate with each other all over the world with ease
Led to social media platforms that democratized communication and gave anyone a platform to speak with an audience
Arab Spring: a series of anti-government protests across the Arab world In the early 2010s; It began in response to oppressive regimes and a low standard of living, starting with protests in Tunisia; Many of these protests were organized and documented on cell phones and social media
Air Travel: large distances could be travelled in a shorter time. People came to much closer and abundant contact with goods: mass shipments of goods could be more easily transported through the air
Shipping Containers: loaded and transported across the sea in bulk without having to unload the cargo, people got more goods faster
Energy Technology
Petroleum: a non renewable resource that releases copious amounts of pollution into the environment; factories went from burning coal to using petroleum; increased the productivity of machines
Nuclear Power: zero-emission clean energy source. It generates power through fission; expensive and dangerous
Chernobyl Power Plant: In the 1980s, one of the reactor cores explode and released extreme amounts of radiation in Russia
Agricultural Technology
Green Revolution: set of research technology initiatives that increased agricultural production worldwide through introduction of high-yielding varieties of crops, use of pesticides, and better management techniques; Social & Political Responses/Effects included…
Political: the Green Revolution encouraged the use of green agricultural techniques to sustain economic development.
Social: environmentalists (like Rachel Carson) increasingly protested against the use of pesticides such as DDT.
Political: weakening of socialist movements in many developing states such as India, as governments increasingly sought to blunt calls for land reform by highlighting potential technological solutions and increasing crop yields.
Social: protests by small farmers in both developed and developing countries because the expense of introducing the new farming techniques associated with the Green Revolution increased significantly, leading over time to the concentration of more and more land in the hands of wealthy landowners and agribusinesses.
Genetic Engineering: Scientists modified the cellular organization of crops to make it accomplish what they wanted
Commercial Farming: a farming in which an agricultural crop is grown for sale to return a profit; All of the new technologies were expensive and out of the reach of average farmers, making them unable to compete on the scale of larger wealthy farmers. This led to the consolidation of small farms in the hands of corporations
Medical Technology
Vaccines: substance used to stimulate the production of antibodies and provide immunity against one or several diseases; a spike in the use of vaccines in the 20th century; shots that inoculated them against diseases like smallpox, measles, and polio
Antibiotics: a substance that kills bacterial infections. Penicillin, the first antibiotic, was developed in 1928 and saved the lives of many people including soldiers in war
Birth Control: A pill developed in 1950 that consisted of a synthetic hormone that prevents pregnancy; gave women greater control over fertility, transformed reproductive practices, and contributed to declining rates of fertility in much of the world.
All of these innovations have led to longer life expectancies and thus led to political/social/economic challenges (ex: countries with long life expectancy may experience an unbalanced ratio of working age and elderly retiree populations that creates an economic strain due to increasing demands for social welfare programs, including healthcare, which require greater taxation to support)
9.2: Technological Advances & Limitations: Disease
Diseases associated with poverty persisted while other diseases emerged as new epidemics and threats to human populations, in some cases leading to social disruption. These outbreaks spurred technological and medical advances. Some diseases occurred at higher incidence merely because of increased longevity.
Diseases Associated with Poverty
Malaria: a disease carried by mosquitoes and it’s especially prevalent in tropical environments. Many outbreaks of malaria have been documented in Africa. There is currently no vaccine
Tuberculosis: airborne disease which is transmitted through coughing and sneezing associated with the impoverished because they tend to live in very close quarters with one another and that makes transmission very easy. (especially in urban areas)
Cholera: bacterial disease which is transmitted through contaminated water that causes severe vomiting, and diarrhea, and dehydration. Kills 95,000 a year, as the impoverished usually don't have access to clean water
Emergent Epidemic Diseases
Epidemic: Occurrences of diseases in which many people in the same place at the same time are affected
Pandemic: Disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects a very high proportion of the population.
1918 Influenza Pandemic/Spanish Flu: As World War I drew to a close, many soldiers were infected with a particularly brutal strain of the flu, and as they returned home all over the world, they brought this flu with them. ⅕ of the world became infected and 20 to 50 million people were killed
Ebola: spread in the 20th and 21st century, killing about half the people infected. In 1976 there was a major outbreak of Ebola in the Congo and then in 2014 there was another in West Africa that killed 11,000 Africans.
HIV/AIDS: HIV was a deadly disease that caused the condition of AIDS: depresses a person’s immune system so that normal viruses and bacteria that they would normally be able to fight off end up killing them.
There was a major outbreak of HIV in the 1980s and it was spread through the exchange of bodily fluids. 25 million people died
Recently, new medical treatment has been developed to treat patients with AIDS.
Coronavirus: spread along trade and travel routes, altering social and economic realities.
Diseases Associated with Increased Longevity (longer life expectancy)
Heart Disease: caused by poor eating. According to the World Health Organization cardiovascular disease is the number 1 cause of death globally, claiming the lives of about 18 million people annually.
Alzheimer’s Disease: a form of dementia that disproportionately affects the aging population: they suffer memory loss, and the disease undermines basic bodily functions and eventually leads to death.
9.3: Technological Advances: Debates About the Environment
Deforestation: the permanent removal of trees to make room for something besides forest; more land needed to be devoted to agriculture for the increased demand for food.
Desertification: the process by which fertile land becomes desert, typically as a result of drought, deforestation, or inappropriate agriculture; Land becomes useless for crops
Air Pollution/Decline in Quality: Industrial byproducts were released into the air, impairing vascular functions and atmospheric climate
Great Smog (1952): industrial coal emissions and fog created poisonous smog that killed thousands of people in London
Water Pollution: decrease in freshwater supply, rise in global temperature
Causes of Environmental Change
Globalization & Industrialization: As industries spread among developing nations, more energy was needed. Standard of living rose for some (The rise of the middle class), which led to increased demand for industrial goods
Population Growth & Urbanization: With more people to feed, more resources were needed to make such food. Additionally, many people lived in cities, and city dwellers produce a lot more waste than their rural counterparts
Both the development of Agricultural Technology and Medical Innovations increased population numbers, placing more strains on the environment through more pollution and resource extraction
Effects of Environmental Change
Increased competition for scarce non-renewable resources like oil
The non-renewable resource of fresh water is depleting, with only 3% of the world's water being usable. As the population grows, water is needed to grow crops. Many developing nations have a problem with finding clean water for their population
Climate Change: global warming driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases and the resulting large-scale shifts in weather patterns; Pollutants like carbon dioxide emissions released by industrialization factories, automobiles, and airplanes combine with the atmosphere to prevent the earth’s heat from escaping; induce Melting ice caps, rising sea levels, desertification of farmland
Kyoto Protocol (1997): an international agreement to reduce carbon emissions. The regulatory burden was placed more on developed nations who could afford to spend extra to curb their emissions
Paris Agreement (2015): Legally bind countries to no more than 2 percent increase in global temperature compared to previous industrial levels
The U.S. signed, but Trump withdrew in 2017, Biden joins back
Globalized solutions are necessary to fix serious environmental problems that are caused from a growing population
9.4: Economics in the Global Age
Government’s Increased Encouragement of Free-Market Policies
In a trend accelerated by the end of the Cold War, many governments encouraged free market economic policies and promoted economic liberalization in the late 20th century.
Economic Liberalization: the lessening of government regulations and restrictions in an economy in exchange for greater participation by private entities.
The United States under Ronald Reagan & Britain under Margaret Thatcher: Both leaders fiercely encouraged growth of free market economies throughout the world
China: when Deng Xiaoping came to power, relaxed China’s communist policies and allowed peasants to lease land and sell part of their own crops. He also allows private ownership of businesses. Led to the Tiananmen Square Massacre when the Chinese wanted more freedoms
Chile: Under the leadership of Augusto Pinochet, the economy was led away from state control and into the area of free market
Chicago Boys: graduated from University of Chicago and set out to solve economic problems in Chile. They addressed Chile’s inflation and privatized state run businesses
Knowledge Economies: a system of consumption and production that is based on intellectual capital and the quality/quantity of information available, which can then be monetized as a commodity (engineers, teachers, lawyers)
Finland: Previously an agrarian society that invested heavily in communication technology, leading to a healthy share of the world’s cell phone and software development markets in the 1990s
Japan: invested heavily in education to transition to a knowledge economy. Still had mercantilist policies: subsidizing manufacturing in order to keep costs low and enacting steep tariffs to stifle imported goods
Workers paid for this progress as they could not afford the things they manufactured
Labor Unions gathered strength for higher wages
Japan became a churning engine of manufacturing but diversified their economy in the later part of the 20th century and became a world leader in the knowledge economy by focusing on banking, finance, and the development of IT (Information Technology)
USA: capitalize on scientific discoveries and basic and applied research; the only political, military, and economic superpower in the world.
Asian & Latin American Production & Manufacturing Economies: where knowledge work increased, manufacturing work decreased. The manufacturing jobs were increasingly situated in Asia and Latin America because of cheaper labor
Vietnam, Bangladesh, Mexico, Honduras: clothing and other goods are often manufactured in these areas because workers are paid lower wages and suffer conditions that are illegal in other places
Economic Institutions & Regional Trade Agreements: an agreement between nations (regional or global in scope) that eliminates barriers of exchange between them
World Trade Organization (WTO): intergovernmental organization that regulates and facilitates international trade between nations; represents over 95 percent of global trade and goods, services, and intellectual property; tries to reduce barriers in trade in the forms of tariffs and quotas
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA): agreement between the US, Canada, Mexico to reduce/eliminate tariffs on imports and exports between the three participants, creating a huge free-trade zone (encouraged trade)
Mexican factories would produce goods and then export them tariff free to the U.S. and Canada; Mexican workers in the manufacturing sector received much lower wages and had terrible working conditions that were not legal in the US or Canada
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): regional grouping that promotes economic, political, and security cooperation among its ten members: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Multinational Corporations: An entity which is incorporated in one country but manufactured and sells goods in other
Nestlé: company headquartered in Switzerland, purchase and manufacture chocolate with low wage work in West Africa or child and enslaved labor, and sell it on the world market
Nissan: Japanese automobile manufacturer
Mahindra and Mahindra: Indian company that makes automobiles and farm equipment etc. They have operations in Africa, China, Southeast Asia, and the United States
9.5: Calls for Reforms & Responses
After 1900, the world became increasingly connected via economics, communication, and transportation, which led to debates about assumptions concerning race, class, gender, and religion
Challenges to Assumptions about Race, Class, Gender, and Religion
The U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights: international document that asserts basic human rights that belong to all human beings by virtue of the fact that they are human. It sought to protect the rights of those citizens of the global community who have been trampled under oppressive structures (children, women, and refugees)
United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF): responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide; devoted its resources to feeding children who were hungry after World War II
Global Feminism Movements
World Conferences on Women: UN called for these conferences to promote gender equality and plan steps for the advancement of women of the next decade; proposed an internal Bill of Rights for Women
International Bill of Rights for Women: defines the rights of women free from discrimination; included provisions for women’s suffrage, the right to marry the spouse of their choosing, equality in education, and the right to birth control and other family planning measures
Negritude Movement: African movement to celebrate African culture and heritage; especially in French West Africa, where people were oppressed; Great poetry and art emerged that glorified African culture; began among French-speaking African and Caribbean writers living in Paris as a protest against French colonial rule and the policy of assimilation/Europe’s devastation of Africa
Liberation Theology in Latin America: synthesis of Christian theology that emphasizes social concern for the poor and political liberation for oppressed peoples; Jesus is on the side of the poor and always against the rich and powerful. Christianity ought to free the oppressed from economic, political, and social abuses; began in mid-20th century, where oppressed classes in Latin America united to reinterpret the role of the Catholic Church in society
Solidarity Movement in Poland: first independent labor union in a Soviet-bloc country. Solidarity gave rise to a broad, non-violent, anti-communist social movement that, at its height, claimed some 9.4 million members. It is considered to have contributed greatly to the fall of communism; examples of how dissent from individuals could provoke collective action that would form into a social movement to protest injustices and eventually lead to political change.
Increased Access to Education and Political and Professional Roles
Suffrage & Political Involvement
The right to vote and/ or to hold public office granted to women in the United States (1920), Brazil (1932), Turkey (1934), Japan (1945), India (1947), and Morocco (1963)
The rising rate of female literacy and the increasing numbers of women in higher education, in most parts of the world
The U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 & Voting Rights Act of 1965: both made strides to prohibit inequality on all fields
The End of Apartheid: Apartheid separated White, Black and South Asian races in South Africa; White people were the minority but they gained all the privileges. Nelson Mandela lead the African National Congress to fight against apartheid (he was incarcerated)
Black South Africans gathered for peaceful protest and were met with white brutality
This led to strict economic sanctions against Africa and its expulsion from the United Nations in 1974
In 1990, a more reform minded leader took power, released Mandela, and ended apartheid. In 1994, Mandela was elected as the first black president
Caste Reservation in India: affirmative action program for protecting the oppressed castes of India from caste based discrimination; reserved a percentage of certain jobs and spots in higher education for the dalit and others whose cast had been the source of social inequality (previously, lower castes experienced social inequality and abuse)
Environmental Movements
Greenpeace: global, independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future; opposes practices that led to deforestation, desertification, and global warming
Green Belt Movement: founded by Professor Wangari Maathai’s in Kenya, works at the grassroots, national, and international levels to promote environmental conservation; to build climate resilience and empower communities, especially women and girls; to foster democratic space and sustainable livelihoods (created to address problems from decolonization such as dried up streams, scarce food) (plant trees, revive soil, collect rainwater)
Economic Movements
World Fair Trade Organization: a global association of 401 organizations who are committed to improving the livelihoods of economically marginalised producers; agreed to fair, trading practices respect for the environment, good working conditions for laborers, and non-discrimination among genders and races
Was in response to economic inequality spurred by global integration
9.6: Globalization Culture
After centuries of wars, global competition gave way to a more cooperative effort in the world through globalization culture
Social Changes
Pablo Picasso used cubism, which challenged the traditional norms of painting and composition
Harlem Renaissance: intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater and politics; Harlem, New York became the place which many black southerners had migrated to escape the oppressive structures of the South (the birth of jazz, which relied on freeform improvisation)
New communication and transportation technologies allowed for people to diffuse their culture throughout the world at high speed through cultural artifacts like films and music and by means of trade through exported goods brought all over the world
Music
Reggae: music genre that fuses American jazz and cmento (calypso music/Afro-Caribbean music); became a global kind of music that originated in Jamaica (spread by Bob Marley)
Kpop spread throughout the world as well
Pan-African and Korean cultures are being exported to the wider world
Movies
Hollywood: American powerhouse of movie production. American movies have had great international influence, values are within these stories and have influence in many places (Americanization)
Bollywood: films that come out of Mumbai, known for bright colors and musical numbers. While not as popular as American films, India has had a significant international influence
Social Media
Facebook & Twitter from the US, WeChat from China
interactive technologies that allow the creation or sharing/exchange of information, ideas, career interests, and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks (instant cultural diffusion)
Television
BBC: up-to-the-minute news, breaking news, video, audio and feature stories
Sports
World Cup Soccer: draw the worlds collective attention on screens
Olympics: set of international sports competitions
Global Consumerism: encourages the production and consumption of globally traded goods and brands
Global Brands: Toyota, Coca-Cola, Nike, Apple, all push many people to consume the same products
Online Commerce/Shopping: Alibaba (China, specializes in e-commerce, retail, Internet, and technology), eBay, Amazon
9.7: Resistance to Globalization
Responses to rising cultural and economic globalization took a variety of forms.
In general, the Global North (economically developed nations such as the USA, the UK, Canada, Western European nations and developed parts of Asia) benefited the most from the process of globalization in terms of prosperity and cultural influence
Nations of the Global South (represents the economically backward countries of Africa, Asia, India, China, Brazil, Mexico, etc.) came together in the 1970s and demanded that correctives be applied to the current international economic order, but no reforms were made
Anti-IMF and Anti-World Bank Activism
Protests broke out against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, as both work together to foster global monetary cooperation and to reduce global poverty
In 1988, people protested in West Berlin that the World Bank and the IMF favored richer countries and not the poorer nations
Protests expanded by 2001 to include protests across the world in 23 nations
Battle for Seattle (1999): a series of protests that challenged the WTO (World Trade Organization) because many felt the WTO lowered labor standards and human rights, prevented developing nations from protecting themselves against wester interests, and led to environment degradation; movement brought global inequality to the attention
World Social Forum (2001): created in response to embody the ideals of anti-globalization and worked to create a more equitable world; now held annually to champion counter-hegemonic globalization
Advent of Locally Developed Social Media (Weibo in China)
China shut down Facebook and Twitter because they were responsible for creating unrest in their country. In 2009, a riot broke out between the ethnic Hans and the Uyghur population (Muslims that have a long history of abuse in China)
China blames social media sites for trafficking in ideas and replaced it with Weibo, which filters out any information deemed unfit
Globalization Threatens National Sovereignty
Great Britain departed from the European Union through Brexit because conservatives argued that membership put constraints on their ability to make political and economic decisions in Britain’s best interest. It forced them to accept more immigrants than wanted
9.8: Institutions Developing in a Globalized World
International organizations have risen to help facilitate global cooperation peacefully
United Nations: an intergovernmental organization that aims to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations.
Security Council: has the authority to use military force to maintain peace if a member nation violates the principles established and agreed upon
Made up of the U.S., Russia, France, China, and Great Britain, with each having veto power over any measure proposed
Caused difficulty in deploying UN troops to address issues of world peace
Ineffective during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, the peacekeepers are sometimes unsuccessful
International Court of Justice: settle disputes between nations when international law is applicable
Dispute between U.S. and Canada regarding their international border in the gulf of Maine
Iranians held U.S. diplomats hostage in 1980
Economic and Social Council: directs all the humanitarian and economic projects that member nations agree to (protecting refugees)
World Food Program: largest body in the world helping to feed the hungry: help nations build infrastructure to feed the people & help in times of crisis like war
The UN also exists to facilitate international cooperation, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:The right to life, prohibition of slavery and torture, the right to equality among genders and ethnicities
The UN investigate war crimes, genocides, and other abuses of human rights
G20 (Group of Twenty): international forum for the governments and central bank governors from 19 countries and the European Union (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, France, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the UK and the US)
forum for the world’s major industrialized democracies
powerful leaders meets annually to discuss issues of mutual or global concern such as climate change, terrorism, and trade.
Non Governmental Organizations
International Peace Bureau: nuclear disarmament (reduce military spending)
International Committee of the Red Cross: responds to human needs in countries at war and where natural disasters have left people without food or water
9.9: Continuity & Change
In the late 20th century, revolutions in information and communications technology led to the growth of knowledge economies in some regions, while industrial production and manufacturing were increasingly situated in Asia and Latin America.
New international organizations, including the United Nations, formed with the stated goal of maintaining world peace and facilitating international cooperation.
Changing economic institutions, multinational corporations, and regional trade agreements reflected the spread of principles and practices associated with freemarket economics throughout the world.
Movements throughout the world protested the inequality of the environmental and economic consequences of global integration.
Rights-based discourses challenged old assumptions about race, class, gender, and religion.
In much of the world, access to education as well as participation in new political and professional roles became more inclusive in terms of race, class, gender, and religion.
Political and social changes of the 20th century led to changes in the arts and in the second half of the century, popular and consumer culture became more global.
Arts, entertainment, and popular culture increasingly reflected the influence of a globalized society.
Consumer culture became globalized and transcended national borders.
Responses to rising cultural and economic globalization took a variety of forms.