Chapter 24

Chapter 24 deals with globalization in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It says that 4 major processes led to a global interaction and connection that has never been seen before. These are "the transformation of the world economy, the emergence of global feminism, the confrontation of world religions with modernity and the growing awareness of human-kinds enormous impact of the environment." In this period the world economy became truly international. Technology led to the internet, shipping containers and the ability of multi-national companies to use developing countries as a source of cheap labor. Companies that were regulated by labor and environmental laws in the United States could go to India, China, Mexico or other foreign nations and squeeze money from the cheap labor and lack of environmental controls without any thought or care of the damage they might be doing. This is called global capitalism. Money moved everywhere as investors gambled trillions of dollars purchasing foreign currencies and then quickly selling them. Credit cards were everywhere. Workers themselves migrated to where they could try to find work and some of them ended up in conditions that were like slavery. Philippino domestic workers were working in 130 countries by 2003. There was international sex trafficking and a brain drain when doctors, nurses and engineers left developing nations to work in the global north. Political oppression and civil war also led to huge refugee problems and movement of populations. In 2008, the bubble of the world economic banking and housing growth burst and effected economies everywhere. One of the things about globalization is that people who were wealthy or who lived in the United States and the rest of the Western world have more possessions and gadgets and goods then ever before while millions of people in Africa and Asia and Latin America do not have clean drinking water. The West cannot escape the bad effects of globalization because the burning of fossil fuels has led to global warming and this effects everyone in the world. Even though you can say the environmental movement is global it may come too late. Global capitalism has led to instability and inequality. The dominance of the west has been challenged by Islamic movements. Feminism has spread slowly but remains an important force in the world. If women are educated and given small loans to start businesses they can bring their whole families out of poverty. But this feminism exist at the same time wars over African resources have left whole countries there without governments and hundreds of thousands of girls and women have been raped of killed. The world is more closely tied together through the internet. We can see the Arab Spring uprisings as they happened and the tragedy of the Syrian war. All these connections brought about by globalization seems to have led to more instability, suffering and environmental disasters everywhere. I fear for the future of the world and wonder what it will be like for my children.