Once upon a time, you had to spend days and months crossing deserts and oceans to eventually deliver a message to the other side of the globe. Now, everything happens with a press of a button. The longest journey to the farthest spot on the planet will probably take you a couple of days in a comfy plane. The world is no longer as vast and spacious as it once was. Technological advances have paved the way to a smaller, more interconnected present. Through globalisation, we are exposed to the various faces of the world’s different cultures.
You probably have a vague idea about globalisation and the cultural, political, and economic aspects of life that are consequently affected by it. What is globalisation? In what way is the whole world changing as a direct result of it? In this article, we will attempt to answer these questions. We will also study the state of the new world we live in: the connection, the openness, the acceptance, and, more often than we would like, the corruption.
Table of Contents
What Is Globalisation?
According to Investopedia, globalisation is the process by which investments, funds, and businesses cross national borders to blend in international markets around the globe. Globalisation is not restricted to economic commodities; the integration involves cultures and politics.
Globalisation is a term for the openness the world has gradually experienced with the rise of modern transportation and technology. People have always travelled from one country to another. With their travels, trade flourished, and their cultures spread out.
A simple example of globalisation would be how you can conveniently try Thai, French, and Brazilian cuisines in one American city. The Internet has probably sealed the globalisation deal, but before the Internet became public, cultures, languages, and beliefs were integrated with immigration and/or colonisation.
Nowadays, we live in an open, culturally diverse world. What a country produces is available in another market a couple of days later. Brand names, movies and technology have become international. Today, the world is familiar with words outside their diction: Spanish, Arabic, French, German, and more words have comfortably found their way into the English dictionaries, and vice versa.
At this point, we have all grown up absorbing the differences so that we can no longer distinguish between what was originally ours and what we adopted over the years. But that’s mostly an upside of globalisation. Nevertheless, the effects of globalisation are almost irreversible—whether that’s an upside or a downside.
Globalisation and Technology
Since economic interest was the main motivation behind globalisation, it was inevitable for technological progress to focus on flattering the economy and multiplying its growth. Technology has remarkably transformed the economic scene. According to Globalisation101, information technology has provided individuals with all the necessary tools to sustain success, including “faster and more informed analyses of economic trends around the world, easy transfers of assets, and collaboration with far-flung partners.”
The Internet has facilitated access and integration in the economic market. Today, business and individual deals can be solely closed online. Purchase and financial transactions are buttons away. Job recruiters can easily find job candidates and job seekers can effortlessly apply for their dream jobs online.
In addition to open markets, the Internet has built bridges between cultures, nationalities, and religions. Knowledge is easier to acquire, and people connect smoothly and fluently. Distance is no longer an issue.
Arguments for Globalisation
Opinions vary on whether globalisation’s impact on individual economies and cultures has been positive. Let’s review a few arguments that support globalisation.
Developing Countries Get a Chance
Globalisation has contributed to economic growth in many developing countries. While the average annual growth rate for all economies in the 1960s was around 3.5%, globalised economies often experienced higher rates, averaging around 4.7%. This suggests that globalisation has played a positive role in accelerating development in many regions.
Local producers are now capable of selling their products in international markets. Now, a country can rely on the efficiency and capacity of a certain field of its industry, such as agriculture, technology, or otherwise. Consequently, wealth increases, and with it, the standard of living. Globalisation can help flourish the economy of a country that once struggled to pay its debts or feed its citizens.
Advancing Better Politics
The interconnectedness of the new world advocates for a better, more democratic system of governance. Now that every culture is open and aware of others, it is easier to tell right from wrong and oppressive from free.
On the other hand, increasing global trade establishes strong, mutually beneficial relationships among the world’s countries, reducing the need for wars. When war has disastrous economic consequences for the countries involved, enmity won’t be the first option any conflicting countries would turn to.
Improving the Quality of Life
With better employment options, the general standard of living will rise. Individuals will be able to support their families and themselves. Because the world has become a small village, individuals have better protection options in cases of prosecution in their own countries.
International travel, immigration, getting a job abroad, and international scholarships are available to the world’s citizens. If you’re dedicated and want it enough, you can have opportunities for a better living or a more specific education.
Aside from that, the latest technology, advances in medicine, or new educational methods are not limited to their country of origin. Now, the benefit is universal. Wherever there is good, it will reach the rest of the world.
Promoting Tolerance
It’s difficult to keep a closed, intolerant mind when surrounded by an ever-connected world. If you’re aware that the device you’re holding in your hand right now is a combination of Chinese, Taiwanese, American, German, and Emirati efforts, how can you hold on to any preconceived notions you’ve had of any of these nations?
In a way, globalisation facilitates the road to a more accepting, more tolerant world. We are now fully knowledgeable of the atrocities around the globe and can understand and even intervene to protect and save our fellow humans.
But like everything, there are also drawbacks. Is our world ready to continue as one big diverse unit? Have the bad guys already found a way to exploit what the new globalised system offers for their good, leaving silent victims here and there?
Arguments against Globalisation
Those who argue against globalisation have a few valid reasons, too. Among them are the following:
Unemployment
If we can zoom out and look at the bigger picture, we’ll have to face the fact that the world has a limited number of jobs at any given moment. Providing a part of the world with more jobs means fewer jobs for the other parts.
It goes like this: employers are aware that employees in a certain company in the developed world demand specific rights: social and medical insurance, humane work conditions, regular holidays, etc. They also require a minimum of salary/wages. When said employers relocate to a developing country where employees are less aware of their rights, they’ll demand less costs and less effort.
This is a direct consequence of globalisation. While it does provide developing countries with more job opportunities, it is not often done with good intentions. It results in unemployment in the home country and the exploitation of unknowing individuals who will do the same job for much less.
Environmental Problems
Environmental laws are not globalised. When a country prohibits a certain factory for environmental reasons, either because it seriously contaminates the environment or poses grave dangers to humans and/or animals around the area, factory owners could easily relocate to another country that doesn’t have similar laws or prohibitions. Nothing governs this process. What doesn’t work here could just work there, and corruption and exploitation can easily fit in poorly supervised countries.
The Poor Could Get Poorer
Capitalism does not have a heart. It’s a simple equation of whether you can compete in the fierce competition. Although globalisation gives developing countries a chance to get out there, engage in international trade, and establish their place on the economic map, it only works if they have what it takes and what the world wants to consume. A poor country with nothing to offer at the moment due to either civil wars, natural disasters or dictatorships is only doomed to get poorer.
Spreading Diseases
Because people are always on the move, it’s often difficult to contain new viruses or diseases. Most health threats take a while to get public attention; during this period, millions of people would have already crossed borders back and forth, possibly bringing with them a new or dangerous disease.
Most of the above-mentioned arguments are valid, though unavoidable. The buse of loopholes and manipulating the system will always be an issue whether we lived in a big wide world or a conservative closed tribe.
Speaking of tribes, one of the major concerns regarding globalisation is that it allows less popular or indigenous cultures to fade away and vanish, replacing them with a version of the fanciest, most eye-catching culture of our times: that of America.
Americanisation
Americanisation has recently become a main concern for non-Western countries. The American lifestyle has greatly influenced the world. American TV shows and movies orbit the whole planet, spreading American customs, language, habits of living, and even expectations.
Conservative communities regard Americanisation as a serious threat to their values and heritage. Other cultures worry that their youth’s infatuation with America negatively affects their pride and connection in and to their homelands.
Between McDonald’s and the new Brad Pitt movie, Apple’s fascinating new iPhone, the finale of “How I Met Your Mother,” and the green currency that controls pretty much everything, in a way, we’re all living in America.
The steps the world took towards an open global world cannot be reversed. The human race cannot afford solitude and confinement after the degree of freedom and communication we have already established. Because globalisation cannot be done without, we need new systems and laws that ensure every country can profit from globalisation, eliminate abuse, and protect both workers and consumers.