9.9 Continuity and Change in a Globalized World

Continuity and Change in a Globalized World

Introduction

Francis Fukuyama: No country can truly isolate itself from global media or external information sources.
Trends rapidly spread worldwide.
Essential Question: How did science, technology, politics, justice, transportation, communication, and the environment change and stay the same after 1900?
The 20th and 21st centuries were periods of unprecedented change due to rapid scientific and technological advancements.
These advancements impacted society, politics, economics, culture, and the environment.
Outcomes included both positive and negative consequences, eliciting varied responses.

Advances in Science and Technology

The Origin of the Universe

The Big Bang theory is the best-known and well-supported theory about the universe's origin.
It led to a better understanding of the universe and atomic/subatomic science.

Radio Science

Discoveries expanded knowledge and use of radio, sound, and microwaves.
Breakthroughs led to improvements in radio and cellular communications and faster internet service.

Medical Science

Discoveries were made about germs, viruses, diseases, and the human body.
Cures or vaccines were developed for common diseases like polio, tuberculosis, and tetanus.
New treatments were pioneered for chronic diseases like cancer and arthritis.
The discovery of antibiotics like penicillin helped people recover from infections.
Reliable methods of birth control allowed women to control family size.
These advancements led to longer and better lives.

Energy Technologies

Advancements were made in extracting and producing oil.
Nuclear power became a significant energy source.
Renewable energy sources, including wind, solar, and thermal energy, increased.
The International Renewable Energy Agency predicted that renewable energy sources would be consistently cheaper than fossil fuels by 2020.
Increased power sources led to increased productivity, greater production of material goods, and faster transportation.

Communication Technologies

Radio and television technology were further developed.
Telephone coverage increased, with most people eventually having a telephone in their homes.
Internet communication and cell phones replaced older systems of communication.
Mass communications increased, as did the global transfer of information.

Transportation Technologies

Airplanes were invented in the early 20th century.
Jet airplanes reduced travel times between regions.
Shipping technology improved, with faster and larger ships carrying fabricated shipping containers.
These ships and planes could transport more goods farther and faster than before.
This resulted in the expansion of the global trade network and interactions among cultures.

Agricultural Technologies

Scientists produced genetically modified crops that were resistant to drought and disease and had higher yields.
The most significant effect of these advances, known as the Green Revolution, was higher population growth rates, especially in developing countries.
Another effect was the decline in biodiversity as genetically modified crops began to be cultivated at the expense of local crop types.

Changes in a Globalized World

Advances in science and technology led to significant changes in societies, economies, politics, cultures, and the environment.

Social Changes

The world's population grew faster than at any previous time in history.
The increase in population meant increasing challenges to existing social orders.
The greatest growth rate in population occurred in developing countries, while developed countries saw a slowing of their population growth.
In the developing countries, the population growth rate was largest in the lower socioeconomic classes.
Improvements in communication and transportation made it easier for people to migrate from less developed countries to more developed ones.
This led to a "brain drain" from some countries as more highly educated and skilled people left their home countries to find jobs elsewhere.
Women in this era began to experience an increase in economic status, especially in the more developed countries.
Women in these societies began to enter careers traditionally reserved for men.
Their right to vote in elections was finally legalized, and in some cases, women held the highest political offices in their nations.
Because birth control allowed women to make choices, fertility declined in developed countries.
Some women chose to put off having children until later in life or decided not to have children at all.
In some countries, though, women faced resistance to the improvement in their status as societies resisted change.

Economic Changes

The trend toward economic globalization that started in the 19th century intensified during the 20th and 21st centuries.
More developed nations continued to exploit less developed areas of the world, harvesting their raw materials and using the less developed areas as markets for finished goods.
Significant changes to the world economic order took place.
While the West, especially the United States, was still a dominant economic force, its superiority was being challenged by new sources of economic strength.
Governments in Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore began policies that led to economic growth.
These policies started the trend of Asian economies, which relied on inexpensive labor and high-quality manufacturing, competing against Western economies to make consumer goods and high-tech products.
China eventually became the second-largest economy in the world after the United States because of the modernization policies established after the death of Mao Zedong, which relaxed government control.
India became an economic powerhouse by developing a labor force that specialized in software development and engineering.

Economic Policy Initiatives

Soviet Union: Lenin's New Economic Policy (1921-1928)
- Goal: Increase farm production and ease the transition to a communist economy.
- Results: Peasants could own land, small businesses were allowed, and the Soviet economy began to recover from the Russian Civil War.
Soviet Union: Stalin's First Five-Year Plan (1928-1932)
- Goal: Rapidly industrialize the Soviet economy.
- Results: Industrial output grew, farms were collectivized, and massive famines occurred.
China: Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward (1958-1960)
- Goal: Rapidly industrialize the Chinese economy.
- Results: Peasants on collective farms were forced to produce steel using crude furnaces, and massive famines occurred.
China: Deng Xiaoping's Four Modernizations (1970s)
- Goal: Attract foreign investment and move toward a market-oriented economy.
- Results: Industrial output increased, and China's economy grew rapidly.
United States: Roosevelt's New Deal (1933-1941)
- Goal: Stimulate the economy and provide jobs during the Great Depression.
- Results: The government hired millions to work on infrastructure projects, enacted Social Security, and regulated investments and banks.
United States: Reagan's Economic Recovery Tax Act (1981)
- Goal: Stimulate the economy out of recession with supply-side economics.
- Results: The economy came out of recession, but stock market instability and income inequality rose.
Great Britain: Welfare State (1945-1951)
- Goal: Reduce income inequality and provide a social safety net.
- Results: The government provided citizens with healthcare, pensions, free education, and help for the poor; it also created huge bureaucracies.
Great Britain: Thatcher's Privatization of Industry (1980s)
- Goal: Stimulate the British economy and reduce inflation.
- Results: The economy grew and inflation was reduced, but unemployment rose to record levels.

Political Changes

Mass protest movements helped bring about political and social change.
Activists championed nonviolent resistance and won civil rights in the United States, Northern Ireland, Canada, and other countries.
The anti-apartheid movement brought an end to racial segregation in South Africa.
Democracy movements led to political protests and revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East, called the "Arab Spring."
Anti-war protests erupted in the United States and Western Europe.
Governments were sometimes slow to respond to calls for change and, in some cases, persecuted, imprisoned, or attacked protesters.
Governments also began to play a larger role in managing or regulating their nations' economies.
This increased government intervention in the economy was a change from the free-market, or laissez-faire, economics practiced in the previous era.

Cultural Changes

Once information (and people) could quickly spread across the globe, the pace of cultural interactions and exchanges intensified.
People all over the world consumed Western culture, particularly aspects that originated in the United States, in the form of movies, television shows, and styles.
Styles that appeared in one area of the world were quickly adopted in other regions.
A consumer culture spread.
One significant change in the process of cultural exchanges from the previous era was that these exchanges were often a two-way street.
For instance, while global audiences watched Hollywood movies, cuisine from China, Japan, India, and Latin America often found its way to the plates of Americans and Europeans.
Music and art from East Asia found a loyal base in the United States.
The Internet helped increase the rate and scope of these transfers, and advances in cellular technology made even the most remote areas on Earth accessible to these cultural exchanges.

Environmental Changes

In the 20th and 21st centuries, humans attempted to overcome the challenges of their environment in many new ways.
With jet airplanes, travel between points on the globe was measured in hours rather than in days, months, or years.
New technologies in petroleum extraction meant that sources of energy were cheaper and more abundant than previously imagined.
The Space Age broke the terrestrial limits placed on humans and their environment, and space exploration became possible.
However, although humans overcame some challenges, they also harmed the environment.
Airborne pollution increased as factories, automobiles, and homes got their power from carbon-based fuels.
Water pollution also increased as people and companies dumped waste in rivers, lakes, and oceans.
Debates about the sources and causes of climate change developed as average temperatures around the globe increased, polar ice caps began to melt, and more intense and catastrophic weather events occurred.

Historical Perspectives: What Happens Tomorrow?

Optimism After Communism

Inspired by the fall of the Soviet Union, some intellectuals felt hopeful.
Francis Fukuyama: In his 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, he argued that history as people knew it was over.
He posited that democracy was the ideal form of government and capitalism was the best economic system, and they were spreading throughout the world.
Eventually, all countries would adopt them, and the political and economic conflicts that had driven wars in the past would vanish.
Critics of Fukuyama argued he was wrong, just as Karl Marx had been in the 19th century when he also argued that people were entering the final phase of history.

Cultural Conflict

Samuel Huntington: He rejected the entire end-of-history argument and wrote The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996).
While Fukuyama was influenced by the end of the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, Huntington was struck by the increasing tensions around religion and culture.
He contended that people's beliefs and affiliations would draw the fault lines for conflicts in the post-Cold War world.
Huntington cited several examples of cultural conflict, including Hindu and Muslim tensions in India and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and its hostility toward Western culture.

Cultural Understanding

Critics asserted that Huntington's generalizations were oversimplified and reflected a pro-Western prejudice.
Amartya Sen: In his 2006 work, Identities and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny, Sen rejected Huntington's suggestion that people of different beliefs and ethnic groups could not get along, pointing to the existence of peaceful diverse societies around the world.
Further, as globalization spread through all parts of life, people found many ways to identify themselves in the 21st century besides by religion and ethnicity.

Hope in Technology

Debates over the post-Cold War world began before the Internet and smartphones were common.
By 2011, technology was connecting people around the globe.
Michio Kaku: When he published Physics of the Future (2011), he was optimistic that technology and trade could break down cultural barriers.
He held out hope for material abundance and greater peace.