Global Processes: Technology, Economy, and Society (1900 to Present)

Technology (1900-Present)

• Energy

  • Fossil fuels (e.g., petroleum)
  • Electric grids: Generated power for homes and businesses.
  • Electric motors: Powered industrial machines.
  • Internal Combustion Engine: Central to economic life.
  • Nuclear power

• Transportation

  • Automobiles: Democratization of automobile, linked rural areas with urban areas, facilitated growth of suburbs, contributed to air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
  • Containerized shipping: Made transportation of goods more available
  • Air travel: Made transportation of people more available

• Communication

  • Radios: Reshaped human life, allowing rural people to become aware of national events, challenged governments that sought to restrict people’s access to information (e.g., Soviet Union unable to monopolize mass media).
  • TV/Movies: Informs, educates, and entertains but could erode local cultures.
  • Computers: Transformed education (e.g., online courses) and personal life (e.g., dating apps); many fear being bullied, monitored, and controlled by government.
  • Cell phones
  • Internet

• Military

  • World War I tech: machine guns, submarines, tanks, poison gas, radio, military aircraft.
  • World War II tech: refined WWI technologies.
  • Cold War tech: nuclear weapons + new means of delivering weapons.

Global Economy

• 20th-century globalization can be considered a continuation of earlier interregional trade systems (e.g., Silk, Sea, Sand Roads).
• Industrialization in the Global South in the 20th century:
  • Global South: composed of developing countries where economic development + industrialization was a priority.
    • Colonial rule provided a weak foundation for modern development.
    • Low rates of literacy, few managerial experiences, a weak private economy, and little infrastructure.
  • Asian Tigers: Asian countries primarily focused on exports, leading to strong economic growth (e.g., South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong).
• Major debates surrounding globalization:
  • Did globalization increase or reduce inequality? (Wide range, from economy to general quality of life).
  • Impact of globalization on nation-states because many are unable to act on their own interests.
  • The world is becoming more culturally homogenous/the same.
• Ways in which global economic connections have deepened since ca. 1945:
  • Bretton Woods system: Negotiated rules for commercial + financial dealings among capitalist countries.
  • World Bank + IMF: Laid the foundation for economic development for postwar globalization + viewed the world as a single market.
  • Neoliberalism: Favored reduction of tariffs, global movement of capital, mobile+temporary workforce, privatization of state-run companies, and regulation of economies.
  • Foreign direct investment (FDI): Companies in rich countries sought to take advantage of cheap labor, tax breaks, and looser environmental regulations in developing countries.
  • Transnational corporations (TNCs): Produce goods/deliver services at the same time in multiple countries (Ex. Worldwide Toyota cars).
• Economic and social consequences of deepening global economic connections:
  • Positive: Allowed for great economic growth, gains in life expectancy, literacy, and the reduction of poverty.
  • Negative: Instability of the world economy/distribution of wealth (Ex. Oil prices in 1973-1974, collapse of Asian companies), economic inequalities affecting medical care, water, education, and employment opportunities.
• Various criticisms of globalization and their sources:
  • Global North: Rich countries with well-developed economies.
  • World Trade Organization (WTO): An organization composed of 149 nations that decided on rules for global commerce + the promotion of free trade.
  • North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA): A treaty signed by Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. that created free trade.

Society - Public Life (work, class, income, wealth)

• Impact of technological innovation and economic globalization on social classes and job sectors:
  • The peasantry
    • The number of farmers declined because of mechanization (made farms more productive, still dependent on seasons).
    • Cheaper transportation.
    • Large numbers in agriculture employment leading to the end of private land ownership.
  • Industrial workers
    • In the Global North (1900-present): Production line + “scientific management” that increased productivity.
    • Women forced to abandon "male" jobs.
    • Consumerism: A culture of leisure + consumption of money.
    • Liberalization of global trade + automation of factories led to the decline of industrial centers, leading to the displacement of workers.
    • Export-processing zones: International companies could operate with permits and exemptions from taxes.
  • Service sector and knowledge economy
    • Employment opportunities grew in service industries.
    • Service sector: employed highly educated, well-paid workers such as doctors and bankers.
    • Witnessed a trend toward less stable employment in service industries + knowledge economies.
  • Informal economy
    • Grew rapidly because fewer employees worked in stable, permanent jobs.
  • Middle classes
    • Global North (1950-present): A prosperous middle class defined the 20th century, with a stable wage, own home, and security to health care, education, entertainment, and travel.
    • Global South: Earned a lot above the poverty line.
  • The rich (“one percenters”)
    • Globalization and deregulation of the financial industry allowed industries to make fortunes, meaning humankind has never been so wealthy, lifting a lot of people out of poverty.

Society - Private Life (marriage, family, sexuality, gender roles)

• Ways in which family structures and marriage patterns have been transformed over the past century:
  • Education became state-run instead of family-run.
  • Families functioned to provide emotional+financial security.
  • Smaller families: children are economic burdens.
  • People married much later, second marriages became more common.
• Ways in which sexuality has been transformed over the past century:
  • The most transformational development was increased access to contraception, especially "the pill," which came on the scene in the 1960s, and the consequences that had.
  • Birth control allowed many to separate sex from reproduction.
  • Highly sexualized public culture.
  • Premarital sex + LGBTQ+ became more accepted.
• Ways in which states (governments) have shaped personal life over the past century:
  • Governments became more intrusive in personal life, as marriage, family, gender, and sexuality became more intertwined with politics.
  • One-child policy: Limited Chinese families to one child.

Feminism

• Causes of global feminism:
  • Social movements committed to liberation from inequalities/oppression.
  • Global feminism to address concerns of women across the world.
• Different strands in second-wave Western feminism:
  • Sought for emphasis on education+employment instead of voting.
  • Women’s liberation —> aimed at patriarchy.
• Compare the issues that were important to Western feminists vs. feminists from the Global South:
  • Emphasis on education + employment.
  • Aimed at patriarchy as a system of domination similar to race/class.
• Key Concepts (Period 4: 1900-present)
  • $6.1$ Rapid advances in science and technology altered the understanding of the universe and the natural world and led to advances in communication, transportation, industry, agriculture, and medicine.
  • $6.1.I.A$ New modes of communication—including radio communication, cellular communication, and the internet—as well as transportation, including air travel and shipping containers, reduced the problem of geographic distance.
  • $6.1.I.B$ The Green Revolution and commercial agriculture increased productivity and sustained the earth’s growing population as it spread chemically and genetically modified forms of agriculture.
  • $6.1.I.D$ Energy technologies, including the use of petroleum and nuclear power, raised productivity and increased the production of material goods.
  • $6.1.III.B$ More effective forms of birth control gave women greater control over fertility, transformed reproductive practices, and contributed to declining rates of fertility in much of the world.
  • $6.3$ The role of the state in the domestic economy varied, and new institutions of global association emerged and continued to develop throughout the century.
  • $6.3.I$ States responded in a variety of ways to the economic challenges of the 20th century.
  • $6.3.I.D$ 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.
  • $EX.$ Governments’ increased encouragement of free-market policies:
    • United States under Ronald Reagan
    • Britain under Margaret Thatcher
    • China under Deng Xiaoping
    • Chile under Augusto Pinochet
  • $6.3.I.E$ 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.
  • $EX.$ Knowledge economies: Finland, Japan, U.S.
  • $EX.$ Asian production and manufacturing economies: Vietnam, Bangladesh
  • $EX.$ Latin American production and manufacturing economies: Mexico, Honduras
  • $6.3.II.A$ New international organizations, including the United Nations, formed with the stated goal of maintaining world peace and facilitating international cooperation.
  • $6.3.II.B$ Changing economic institutions, multinational corporations, and regional trade agreements reflected the spread of principles and practices associated with free-market economics throughout the world.
  • $EX.$ Economic institutions and regional trade agreements: World Trade Organization (WTO), North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
  • $EX.$ Multinational corporations: Nestlé, Nissan, Mahindra and Mahindra
  • $6.3.II.C$ Movements throughout the world protested the inequality of the environmental and economic consequences of global integration.
    • $EX.$ Environmental movements: Greenpeace, Professor Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement in Kenya
    • $EX.$ Economic movements: World Fair Trade Organization
  • $6.3.III.i$ Rights-based discourses challenged old assumptions about race, class, gender, and religion.
    • $EX.$ Challenges to assumptions about race, class, gender, and religion.
      • U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, especially as it sought to protect the rights of children, women, and refugees.
      • Global feminism movements.
      • Negritude movement.
      • Liberation theology in Latin America
  • $6.3.III.ii$ 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.
    • $EX.$ Increased access to education and political and professional roles:
      • 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).
      • Rising rate of female literacy and the increasing numbers of women in higher education, in most parts of the world.
      • U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1965.
      • End of apartheid, caste reservation in India
  • $6.3.IV.iii$ Consumer culture became globalized and transcended national borders.
    • $EX.$ Global consumerism: Online commerce: Alibaba, eBay; Global brands: Toyota, Coca-Cola
  • $6.3.IV.iv$ Responses to rising cultural and economic globalization took a variety of forms.
    • $EX.$ Responses to economic globalization: anti-IMF and anti-World Bank activism, advent of locally developed social media (Weibo in China)