- Economic
- Social
- Political
- Cultural
Globalization is a situation where a producer may produce anywhere in the world, sell,wherever he wants, use resources of any country and have his headquarters anywhere in the world (M. Friedman). Take a look at this for understanding Globalization. Many of us would have read this as a forward message.
An English princess and her Egyptian lover perish in a car crash inside a French tunnel while traveling in a German vehicle with a Dutch engine driven by a Belgian, who had earlier had a sip of Scottish whisky and was trying to elude their Italian paparazzi pursuers driving a Japanese motorbike. She is subsequently administered CPR by an American paramedic using Brazilian pharmaceuticals.
And this text was written by a Filipino operating on technology patented by Bill Gates, who had borrowed it from the Japanese. And you're probably sitting there reading this on a clone of the American IBM that depends heavily on Taiwanese hardware and has a Korean monitor assembled by Bangladeshi workers at a Singaporean factory transported by truck by Indians,stolen in an ambush orchestrated by Indonesians and finally sold to your country of residence by the Chinese.
THAT is globalization!”
Globalization started to revolutionize during the 80's with the advent of Internet and mobile phone in the 90's. But,there is no single force responsible for globalisation – it is rather a result
of parallel development of technology, market consumption behaviour and changes of political climate in the world.
A group of American tourists arrived in Italy. Amazing! said one to their guide. You have pizza here too! (S.Codrington, Planet Geography, p.702). This is a typical example of consumption behaviour.☺
The most disturbing aspect for Globalization is its unbalanced character in the current phase.The international policies that are currently in place are weak and favor the devoloped countries and especially U.S.A. The United States have a phenomenal 16% share in the World bank. Thus all the economic interconnections are dominated by the americans.No wonder everyone wants to earn in dollars.Infact, even their cultural interconnections(movies, music,lifestyle) are being adopted by many countries. Another example to validate cultural interconnections would be a phenomena called "McDonaldisation of the world". This picture below says it all.
Yet, there are many advantages of globalization. It leads to,
- free movement of people (tourism, migration)
- free exchange of goods (trade gains, lower prices)
- free exchange of ideas and information
- international division of work (specialisation of work)
- quicker economic benifits
- higher level of life
- international barriers are removed (Indian shares traded on NYSE)
Globalization is here to stay. It does have its own share of problems but we must learn to reap its benifits and negate the issues surroniding it.
