Sunday, April 25, 2010

The Theoretical Globe for a Steep Cost

Brittany Liebenow

Globalization

25 April 2010

The Theoretical Globe for a Steep Cost

Globalization essentially allows for powerful countries to gain more power and less powerful countries to remain dependent on these powerful countries. Although globalization technically unites countries in the name of trade and the economy, it does globalize the world both culturally and economically. What does that mean exactly? Globalization expands the markets of a company past that company’s home country. It allows the company to distribute both its products, and the cultural aspects they carry with them, across the globe. Once exposed to these outside markets and products, the people of the new country start using these products just as the original country would. The act of using and buying these products is, in it of itself, part of a country’s culture. Once people start consciously choosing newly introduced products over their own traditional products, the people are moving away from their traditional products and traditional cultures. An excellent example of this is the spread of so-called modern clothing. Jeans and t-shirts, because of increased globalization, have infiltrated the styles of many countries throughout the world.

This globalization of products thus leads to globalization of culture. The globalization of culture is something that most people would agree is a very bad thing. Because one global culture cannot include every aspect of every culture, vast amounts of cultural heritage would fall out of use. These cultural aspects are not only important to maintain because of their intrinsic value, but many cultural aspects lost to time are dearly missed. Latin, although not necessarily lost to globalization, was lost to time and lack of use. Have we as a world missed Latin? Of course we have. One only needs to look at the course catalogue for a typical American high school to realize that Latin is missed enough to become a full foreign language program. It is also the basis of the English and many other languages. Upon the decline of Latin, few were worried about the impact learning Latin would have on learning other languages, which brings up another important point. Globalization of culture could push aspects of culture away that no one realizes are important. Like Latin, we could later be striving to keep alive something important that we, as a world, let die.

In this day and age, globalization is usually discussed less in terms of culture and more in terms of economies and business. Globalization of business is also bad for two reasons. The first reason is that large companies that have the money and ability to globalize often also have the ability to offer lower prices than already established, smaller companies. As a result, large global companies can create worldwide monopolies and drive small businesses to extinction. As an American, this concept is absolutely appalling.

The second reason is one often repeated: globalization leads to human rights violations. If a business does not want to abide by the human rights laws of their original host country, the business can, with globalization, move production to a country filled with people willing to work in abusive conditions with little pay. People in poverty in such countries are not willing to fight against these human rights violations because they desperately need the money. This creates a never-ending spiral backwards in human rights history.

1 comment:

  1. After reading Brittany's response on globalization, I conclude that I completely agree. These steps towards uniting the globe under one main culture cannot be anything but harmful to individuals everywhere. Through this, no one retains their unique heritage that bonds them with those of the same. This mass of blended and some forgotten cultures would create a world with no distinguishing characteristics within the world. This would end up as an extremely boring and mundane world to live in. However, a sense of unity in a smaller scale could be welcomed. Through finding the right balance between the two, a better world could be in turn created.

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