Jody Williams, an anti-landmine
activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, has traveled the world. As she talked
about the places she had been and the things she had seen, one word she repeated
was stuck in my mind: globalization. She kept bringing up the effects of
globalization on the world. After some thought, I decided that my paper would
be about globalization: what it is, what it affects, what it does and what the
new era of globalization means for America.
The definition of globalization in
the dictionary is “growth to a global or worldwide scale.” It has also been
defined as “[t]he compression of the world and the intensification of
consciousness of the world as a whole (Robertson, 8).” It seems like a relatively new phenomenon, but
the world has been heading towards globalization for centuries.
As mankind reached out to each
other through trade routes, we were connected. In fact, the economy is why
globalization is so important in the first place. Without globalization, trade
would stop and the economy would collapse. The first example of a trade route
connecting the known world is the Silk Road. Created
around the second century BCE and maintained until about 1600 CE, the Silk
Road connected Europe and Asia,
East and West. As empires waxed and waned, so did the Silk Road.
The economy is one of the many things the economy affects.
Culture is another one of the
things that globalization affects. There are many different examples of this
effect. For instance, when I traveled through Europe,
everything was new and exciting, except for one thing: “The American Embassy,”
McDonalds. Anywhere I went, I was within ten minutes of a McDonalds. In some
cases, it was harder to find local food than it was to find a McDonalds.
Because people and places of the world are coming into contact more often with
each other, cultural diversity is being lost. The world is becoming a large
melting pot, absorbing and swallowing everything. Is this a good or bad thing? Looking
at America, we
see a large melting pot. America
has millions of people living in this country, with more being born or
immigrating each year. With these people come holidays, traditions, and
history. For example, in my house I celebrate Chinese New Year and the American
New Year. I don’t have “cousins,” I have “brothers” and “sisters.” When I was sixteen, my grandmother tried to
get a matchmaker to find me a husband! All in all, we have a multi-cultural
household. If my family had been absorbed into the melting pot, I would have
never had all those experiences. “It is estimated that just 10% of over 6,500
languages spoken today will survive (Breidenbach / Zukrigl).” If the world
becomes a melting pot, we will lose our individuality.
Knowledge/technology is an additional factor affected by globalization.
As the world gets closer, we are influenced by other countries’ inventions,
ideas, and innovations. These ideas can be brought by businessmen, by
immigrants, and even by ambassadors. These changes have influenced industries,
education, and agriculture, among other things. How?
In 1900, we would have never dreamed of outsourcing our industries to
other countries. In the year 2004, we think almost nothing of it as we send
other countries low-paying jobs that have been taken away from Americans. In
education, we are learning more about our neighbors’ everyday, from their
history to their architecture. We now have to come up with better techniques to
grow food in agriculture; in fact, we’re working with other countries to
develop a better, faster, more efficient way of growing plants.
So what is globalization doing? Is it making our world a better place or
dragging it down into chaos and anarchy? What is it doing to the American
people?
Globalization is tearing the world apart, starting with America. Let’s discuss the effects of globalization
on America’s economy. Out of all of the Most Developed Countries in the world, the United States has the highest amount of people under the
established poverty line. How did this happen? American men and women have
steadily been losing their jobs for the past twenty years. We still need the
same amount of labor, if not more labor, to support American businesses. The
question is, if the labor is getting done, but the
amount of workers who are being fired is rising consistently, how is it getting
done? The answer is found as easily as looking overseas to India, or to China.
More than 70 percent of footwear, 60 percent
of audio and video equipment, and 45 percent of apparel sold in the United States have their origin in low-cost Asia, Latin America,
or Eastern Europe. (Boston Consulting Group, 2)
Companies are giving all of the lower-paying jobs to Asia and Europe, taking jobs away from Americans. Why? It’s
cheaper to do so. None of this outsourcing could be possible without
globalization. This is a horrible thing.
America’s
culture is under attack as well. The “melting pot” of American society should
no longer apply in the world of globalization. Instead, we have to learn to
adopt other people’s culture and habits, instead of drowning them under
“integration.” Everyone’s culture is like a different type of food. If you
drown it in the melting pot, it will come out with the same shape, but not the
same taste. Globalization has now begun to take the form of Americanization.
Thomas L. Friedman states in his article, “Commentary: Why those angry men want
to kill America,” that “globalization wears Mickey Mouse ears, it drinks Pepsi
and Coke, eats Big Macs, [and]does its computing on an IBM laptop with Windows
98.” The world likes parts of our culture; it does not want to become us. The world is trying to share what it has
experienced and Americans have ignored it. What should have been the wake-up
call for America was on 9/11. Every American was paying attention then; this was a sign
that someone was unhappy with the way that America was.
Instead of embracing change, we ignored the message and went to war.. I think it’s a good thing that globalization is trying to
take over our culture.
Globalization has brought so much to the world and taken so much away. “American-made”
fifty years ago meant that all parts were made in the United States. The products themselves were durable, but more expensive. Today, “American-made”
now means that it was assembled here, with parts from Sweden, Japan, China and Taiwan. There
is almost no world, just trade lanes. Is this truly a bad thing? With
globalization, we can help poorer countries. Because globalization has brought
us together, we cannot ignore those countries that are in need. The European
Union, for instance, has helped to rebuild Portugal since
the mid-eighties. By making Portugal a
functioning member of the Union, they make their own selves stronger.
On the other hand, globalization can be a terrible thing. In the 1300’s,
the Silk Road was one of the major pathways that the bubonic plague traveled, along
with the Maritime Sea Trade Lanes. If the world had not been so relatively
connected, the effects of the Black Death would have been less
devastating. When invaders attacked
empires, the first thing they went for were the trade routes, which brought
more devastation and bloodshed. Even today, America’s weak
spots are along our trade routes. If the European Union wanted to bring America to its
knees, all it would have to do is withhold trade. We have grown so dependant on
the trade we get to maintain our standard of living that we could not function
without it.
Well, can’t we withhold trade from the European Union? The answer is no. America is so
far in debt that we do not have the money to boycott European goods. Besides,
the greatest amount of our imports comes from countries within the European
Union. If it comes to the point that battle lines must be drawn, the trade
routes will be the greatest prize. This is why I advocate learning about other
people’s culture as opposed to fusing it with your own. To understand the
European and Asian mindset, we must immerse ourselves into their culture; only
then will we have a true globalization.
In conclusion, the era of
globalization is upon us. No longer can America
ignore Europe and Asia. Instead,
we must learn to embrace their cultures. While doing this however, we cannot
afford to ignore our people. They represent what is it to be American, to be
proud, brave and daring. To have our own people starve while other countries
get jobs that we need is horrendous. Ignoring what other countries have to
offer is just as bad, though. America
must find a median ground if it is to function at all in the new era.
The known world always had
globalization in different forms; the modern world’s version is more advanced.
That does not mean that the lessons of yesterday are not important today. It
means that we cannot dwell in the past; we must move forward. We must remake America
into a shining example of what a country should be; we must adapt to all of the
changes that globalization brings.
In The
Lexus and the Olive Tree, by Thomas Friedman, he states that,
“Globalization is not a phenomenon. It is not just some passing trend. Today it
is an overarching international system shaping the domestic politics and
foreign relations of virtually every country, and we need to understand it as
such.” Truer words were never written. In understanding that globalization is
here to stay, we can learn to adapt to it. We should not continue our course of
Americanization; we should become a model for all nations.