In the 21st Century there is still confusion whether Globalization is better Free Essay Example

In the 21st Century there is still confusion whether Globalization is better or harmful to us. According to Wikipedia Globalization is the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide. Which simply means that the whole Globe is seen as a huge market. Where people trade with each other, share technologies, make connections; without considering their race, skin color or ethnicity. People create relations or share knowledges sometimes for their own profits and sometimes to simply help others.

In the book Bound Together by Nayan Chanda he defines Globalizations in the same manner but with a broad implication. He starts by the evolution of the concept of globalization. He tries to analyze the word and the meaning to it. He walks people through the different stages of globalization, from when it started, and how its evolving. But he doesn’t mention when globalization will end, or will it ever end. Chanda believes that globalization as a growing interconnectedness and interdependence of the world is an ancient historical process that began thousand years ago and is still continuing with good acceleration.

He starts the book with stating how our ancestor left Africa in search for better food and security and ended up settling in different continents. Where they adopt different culture, language, and color of skin. The process of globalization was triggered when people from other continents started to preach, trade and began to adventure. Chanda also mentions Globalization meaning was different when it was first discovered. Globalization only meant economic and political changes to the world.

As a result, the first satellite launching, sputnik in 1957, and the first Olympic event broadcasting in 1964 were not considered as globalization process, although these were clearly related to the growth of the world. He claims that the first major change to the definition of globalization came in 1980 when overseas trade started, and multinational companies started to move to other developing countries for lower wages. Although in the beginning it looked like its for betterment of the developing country, but the multinational companies moved from one country to another because of the same reason and left motivated people unemployed. Globalization is the reason behind everything that we see today. Like the internet, lots of people contributed to this technology but it was initially created in the U.S. Now it’s available for everyone and most of the countries have it. We can now easily transfer documents, money or call people overseas, which was hard before U.S. cold war. Internet made life easier, now we can sit in U.S.; order products from China and get it delivered right to our front door. Where we save time, money and energy. In the second chapter of Chanda Form Camel Commerce to E-commerce he mentioned how people functioned during the ancient time and how people function now. He praised the internet throughout the book and also how the transportation system changed. These two were the key factors of Globalization.Globalization also came with pros and cons as everything else. Some of the pros are:i) Globalization Broadens access to goods and services. Which means that more goods and services are available to more people at lower price. With the help of matchiness they cut down prices and time to make a product. Business owners in developed country took the advantage of lower labor rate in other developing countries to make more money.ii) Globalization can lift people out of poverty. Globalization creates new jobs for people that is how it decreased the unemployment rate and helped the economy of developing country. It not only created jobs it makes people specialize into their work and increases their labor price in the huge market. In the chapter Who’s afraid of Globalization Chanda states According to the bank’s study, poverty had declined sharply in poor and populous countries of Asia such as China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Between 1981 and 2001, the percentage of rural people living on less than a dollar a day decreased from 79 to 27 percent in China, from 63 to 42 percent in India, and from 55 to 11 percent in Indonesia. Thanks to globalization, China has achieved unprecedented prosperity within the space of a generation. (Chanda, 299) iii) Globalization increases cultural awareness. Normally when trading with a different country it’s always better to know about the cultural background of the country to check if the product suits that country’s’ market or to see if it need any modification to the product to fit into that country’s’ market. In chapter From Camel Commerce to E-commerce Chanda states The caravan trade connection would later emerge as a cultural bridge when enthusiastic Muslim traders from North Africa carried the Islamic faith to Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, and beyond. In the Senegambian language, the word Muslim became synonymous with trader (Chanda, 42-43)Some of the cons are:i) Workers in developed countries may lose out to workers in countries with cheap labor rate. This is the problem the U.S. is facing now. All jobs from the U.S. are sent overseas because of cheap labor. Most of U.S. garments comes from other countries with cheap labor, so the business owners can make more profit and sell products to customers at an affordable price. Where it benefits the people but at the same time hurt the employment rate.ii) Globalization has failed to deliver desired gains in the labor rights, human rights and environmental protection. Like the U.S. will only practice its right within U.S. but it will not look after any other country that Is producing their products, U.S. will not check if the labors working for U.S. are treated right. Some countries have very dangerous and hazardous industrial area which doesn’t comply with U.S. industrial laws, but still developing countries labors work there to make a living.iii) Globalization may contribute to Cultural homogeneity. Like if all the people around the globe starts to eat sandwich for breakfast, speak English and watch only Hollywood movies. We may lose precious cultural practices and languages. Like Japan has almost lost their samurais. Many other developing countries citizen started to migrate to developed countries for better life and acquiring their culture, if not them their new generations are. When people first started trading with each other, they found difficulty in medium of transaction. Before money was invented they exchanged products. But some countries might not need the products, the other is offering so slowly they moved to gold as a medium of exchange. Soon enough India invented cotton, which had more value than gold and it spread over the world. With globalization came the problem of colonization and slaving people by the developed country. The developed country went to India, Africa and many other countries to colonized them and take that countries minerals and wealth, which the British did the most. Later, each country overthrew the other country’s colonization and started to create their own Government. In the chapter 3 and 4 of Chanda’s book he mentioned about cotton, coffee and microchips; he claims how these products sailed around the world and helped people to make a living. He also mentioned the preaching of religion which lead to wars and colonizing small cities. People stated fleeing from their settlements again and looking for peace. The people from developed countries grew interest in tourism and with the help of modern technologies like ship, aero planes they travelled around the world and sometimes even discover new land. They used these technologies to find out the developing countries. Chanda also criticizes the implementation of globalization in term of unfair’ free world economic system. His arguments are supported by several data lead to the conclusion that the developed countries are paying less to the developing countries. Chanda claims how actually the foreign aid provided by the developed countries to the developing countries eventually will generate bigger economic loss to them. Chanda also tells about other negative effect as the impact of globalization, from disturbing the environment due to the industrial pollution and threat of unemployment in the developed countries because of outsourcing and off-shoring system for people in developed countries. He also argues with to specific negative effects caused by globalization. Based on several studies, although globalization has been creating wider imbalance within people in developing countries, it has been increasing their economic generally and is still demandable by those living there. The fail of some countries in growing their economic is not merely caused by globalization. There are several other factors influencing those fails. Chanda argues that globalization which has passed over millennia is an unstoppable and irreversible process, thus any effort for disconnecting the growing integration may cause higher cost. In the chapter 9 Who’s Afraid of Globalization? Chanda says A survey of 23,500 consumers online in forty-two markets in Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, Latin America, South Africa, and the Middle East conducted by A. C. Nielsen in 2005 offered an interesting glimpse of the newly emerging middle class in the developing world benefiting from globalization. For Indians (78 percent) globalization means better job opportunities that help them to shape their careers better, followed by Filipinos (73 percent), and Chinese (71 percent). Over half of Latin Americans (57 percent) and consumers in Asia Pacific (53 percent) believe that more global business in their markets brings greater job opportunities and better working lives (Chanda, 302). He also gives some more examples, how globalization is helping.

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get a custom paper by one of our expert writers.

Get your custom essay

Helping students since 2015