Globalization – Good or Bad, Essay Example

Globalization is the buzz of the new millennium. The quality and impact of globalization has been the subject of extensive debate and concern in economic circles since the mid-1990s. The proponents and opponents construe major theories and examples to evolve the theology of globalization on grounds of being attributed as ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

Proponents of globalization consider the goodness of the term and consider it as an analogy of information exchange- which is responsible for higher standards of living, increase in purchasing power (West), better scope of cultural development and triumph of democracy over communism. While the opponents consider is as another form of imperialism- a mechanism that encourages corporations to relocate their factors in pursuit of cheap labor as well as flexible environmental laws. Moreover, they argue that even in the developed world, adverse globalization leads to insecurity of unskilled workers as the corporations shift their base to low wage economies (Broad & Cavanagh 22)

There is nothing new about globalization, if by that we mean the patching together of different regions of the earth through economic and cultural exchange; or political domination and alliance. Immanuel Wallerstein, whose book The Modern World-System marks an important point of departure for recent thought on globalization, argues that the system became firmly established in the sixteenth century, at the time when European hegemony began its long process of entrenchment (Wallerstein 4).

Globalization as a concept and as an empirical phenomenon has coagulated endless debate. How is Globalization defined? When did Globalization begin? Whether the impact of Globalization on local societal, economic, and cultural structures are good or bad? There are four divergent views of globalization. Some critics consider globalization as an ideology, a myth, for nation-states, while some critics argue that globalization is nothing new, for as Rick Wolf contends in Europe and the People without History, the process of globalization began with the beginning of the world. According to Wolf, the Neolithic Age already had global trade routes: Polynesian products traveled to Africa and Asian pottery pieces were scattered all over the world. Some scholars argue that globalization began with the emergence of colonial capitalism—or in the year of 1492. Still others take globalization as a fairly new historical phenomenon, whose inauguration is marked by the end of Cold War (Wang & Xie 1)

Globalization can be defined as the starting point of a truly modern world-system. Another definition though not so praiseworthy is that it is the prodigal outcome of the brutal world wars in this century and was enough to ascertain that the earth has been for some time undergoing a process of increasingly intense integration. In the sense, it is an intense coherence that has been immeasurably enhanced and made an intimate fact of everyday life by advances in transportation and communication (Buell 5). Globalization is the shift towards a more integrated and interdependent world economy. It has two basic components: the globalization of markets and the globalization of production. Today it is an overarching international system shaping the domestic policies and foreign relations of virtually every country, and we need to understand it as such.

The globalization of markets refers to the merging of historically distinct and separate markets into one huge global marketplace. The globalization of production refers to the tendency among firms to source goods and services from locations around the globe to take advantage of national differences in the cost and quality of factors of production (such as labor, energy, land and capital). By doing so companies hope to lower their overall cost structure/ or improve the quality or functionality of their product offering, thereby allowing them to compete more effectively (Katsioloudes & Hadjidakis 20)

The proponents of globalization celebrate it as an invigorating form of modernity that leads to universal prosperity, progress, and democracy as well as to new structures of feeling, imagination, and subjectivity. The opponents of globalization perceive it as a phenomenon that  originated and perpetuated by the centers of capitalist power, emerges as a rerun of Western imperialism via TNCS, IMF, Hollywood films, computer technology, American values and lifestyles, all of which work together to re-subjugate the previous third and second worlds to the first world’s domination. Those who embrace a Hegelian dialectical view of globalization processes embrace globalization as historically inevitable while at the same time condemning it as overpowered villains that purge negative effects on social life.

Bad: Of all the debates on globalization, the most important and productive is the interest on its effect on economics, politics, and culture – how globalization seems to concern the consequences of interaction between the local and the global that is, the change of local or unique cultures under the impact of the global exchange of information, capital, ideology, technology and values. For culture, as Raymond Williams has taught us, is a whole way of life, and everyone adopts a certain way of life or wants to have a changed way of life. A general anxiety permeates these discussions: the anxiety that ongoing globalization would threaten to eradicate various historically formed local cultures. In this particular debate, each side seems to be resistant or opposed to the perceived prospects of disappearing indigenous or local cultures. Some critics believe that globalization means the Americanization or the unification of the world culture; some insist that that globalization is not necessarily Americanization or cultural homogenization; instead it encourages and creates cultural diversity and protean difference.

Let for example if comparison is made on the effect of globalization in third world countries- What does globalization means to them? Globalization to them is more than a transpiration – a rapid inflow of culture, systems, abhorrence and influence, which percolates easily in the hearts and minds of individual. Here, instead of treating globalization as a methodology, it receives the treatment of a fantasy, an illusion that leads to indiscrete aping of the West. People forego eating their staple food and adhere to burger and fast food, relent to styles and clothing cloning the west and changing their aptitudes in consortium of West. The result is an aboriginal group of people, in loose correlation to their culture- striving and copying the western culture in its most crude form.

It is in view of this perceived global situation that critics like Fredric Jameson, Masao Miyoshi, and Samir Amin argue that US-centered global capitalism is colonizing both the unconscious and the previous third world, recreating the world after its own image, converting lands into territories of the global Empire, people into its appendages, and things into commodities. In the moment of global capitalism, Jameson argues, the distinction between economics and culture has disappeared, for “commodification today is also an aestheticization” and, together with weapons and food, “the entertainment business in itself is one of the biggest  and the most profitable exports of America” (Jameson 53).

In his view, American postmodern culture, due to the constant expansion of American military and economic forces, is aggressively penetrating into every corner of the world. It is in this sense that Marxist critics see capitalist globalization as threatening to lead to cultural homogenization–world cultures homogenized or unified by the logic of commodity and reification. It needs to be pointed out that these critics’ views of globalization as Americanization are radically different from Francis Fukuyama’s Americanist globalism. In critiquing global capitalism, Marxist critics like Amin, Jameson, and Miyoshi also take globalization for Americanization; however, they see it as vicious, bloody American expansionism. In describing globalization as standardization or Americanization in manufacture, market, and consumption, they, unlike Fukuyama, do not celebrate or propagate the idea of Americanization. Rather, what they do is to map out an objectively happening reality, and their ultimate purpose is to expose the vices of global capitalism, calling upon the violently and unequally globalized to imagine utopian alternatives to the existing social order defined by social disintegration, atomization, and commodification (Wang & Xie 1).

Good: The most austere and spectacular aspect of globalization is perhaps is that it can free people from the geographical boundaries.  Just because someone was born in India does not mean they circumscribe and limit their creativity in their birth country. Globalization gives wings to the aspirations and dreams of an individual, bringing him outside of his domain to a universal culture and interaction. Diverse culture, creativity and talent help flourish economic and universal prosperity. People are more connected and interactive, with information and money flowing in succession. Products that are produced in one part of the world reach to the other easily.

The free movement of capital, flexibility of commercial market that works beyond boundaries, flow of capital that allows investment to percolate in untapped areas, reduction of global space (internet, TV etc) by new global communication systems, mutual dependence among nations, reduction of warfare, free international trade across countries, competition increases product quality, ushers open economy, technological improvements and reduces cultural blockages (Economy Watch)

Globalization also offers a higher standard of living for people in the rich countries and is envisaged as the only plausible exit out of poverty for the poor nations of the world. Pro-globalization groups like the World Economic Forum and World Trade Organization profess that- globalization eradicates poverty and enhances international co-operation to solve the environmental and social problems.
According to Freidman, “Globalization can be incredibly empowering and incredibly coercive. It can democratize opportunity and democratize panic.” It is said to make the whales bigger and the minnows stronger. It leaves one behind faster and faster- while on the other hand homogenizing cultures, enabling people to start their unique individuality farther and wider. Though globalization has an ugly side, condemned by various critics and organizations- it also has immense benefits and opportunities in its bag. Just as capitalism requires a network of governing systems to keep it from devouring societies, globalization requires vigilance and the rule of the law.

Thus globalization is a more open and comprehensive process, with a good intention of universal interaction and amalgamation. However, if it is treated as a weapon by the powerful nations to maneuver their economic and political interests- it purges the real essence of the term globalization. Thus, globalization has its share of good and bad. It is on the individual to take a positive stride in the direction of healthy globalization and countries should differentiate globalization and imperialism.

Works Cited

Broad, R & Cavanagh, J (1996) “Don’t neglect the Impoverished South.” Foreign Policy, Winter.

Wallerstein, I (1974) The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century, New York: Academic Press.

Wang, F & Xie, S (2003) “Introductory notes: dialogues on globalization and indigenous cultures.”

Buell, F (1994) National Culture and the New Global System, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP

Katsioloudes & Hadjidakis (2007) “International Business: A global perspective”, Butterworth- Heinemen

Jameson, F (2000) “Globalization and Political Strategy” New Left Review, 4, pp 49-68. Economy Watch, nd, retrieved from http://www.economywatch.com/economics-theory/globalization/advantages.html