Case Study: Life in the Age of Globalization
The effects of globalization are felt all around the world. The increasingly interconnected global economic system is the most obvious manifestation of the worldwide compression of time and space. However, the consequences of globalization are not limited to the economy. Globalization has had an effect on political systems, religions, and societies in practically every corner of the world. What is globalization exactly? Often globalization and Westernization are used interchangeably, but this proves to be a rather one-sided perspective. Although all around us, globalization can be a tricky concept to pin down.
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy defines globalization as “a process that encompasses the causes, course, and consequences of transnational and transcultural integration of human and non-human activities”. The European Commission, on the other hand, sees globalization as “the combination of technological progress, lower transport costs and policy liberalization in the European Union and elsewhere” that “has led to increasing trade and financial flows between countries”.
Despite the different definitions, globalization is undoubtedly a global phenomenon, which means Europe is a part of it. But what are the implications of a globalizing world on Europe?
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy defines globalization as “a process that encompasses the causes, course, and consequences of transnational and transcultural integration of human and non-human activities”. The European Commission, on the other hand, sees globalization as “the combination of technological progress, lower transport costs and policy liberalization in the European Union and elsewhere” that “has led to increasing trade and financial flows between countries”.
Despite the different definitions, globalization is undoubtedly a global phenomenon, which means Europe is a part of it. But what are the implications of a globalizing world on Europe?
Guiding Question:
What do the goals of major global organizations and anti-global movements reveal about the experience of globalization in the twenty-first century? |
Reading:
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For this case study you are to analyze Chapter 30 Contemporary Culture (Pgs. 973 - 980) and review the sources provided below. You are expected to be able to answer the guiding question in full depth with specific historical evidence and supporting details.
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Economic Shock Therapy in Russia
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Russian Revival Under Vladimir Putin
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Source: Frontline - The Rise of Vladimir Putin
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Tragedy in Yugoslavia - The Balkan Wars
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ETHNIC GROUPS FIGHT FOR CONTROL OF BOSNIA
Bosnian Serbs rebelled, and an armed struggle broke out to determine which ethnic group would control the country. The Serbs justified their aggression by claiming that Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic wanted to turn Bosnia into a fundamentalist Islamic nation. (He is considered a religious moderate by Western diplomats.) Bosnia-Herzegovina was composed of 40 percent Muslims, 30 percent Serbs and 18 percent Croats. Although Bosnia's Muslims were in the majority with 2 million people, Bosnia's Serbian minority was better armed, receiving support from the neighboring Serbian army. Serbian militias, backed by the Serbian armed forces, took control of two-thirds of Bosnia. Afterward, the Bosnian Serbs launched a reign of terror against country's Muslim population.
BOSNIAN SERBS "PURIFYÓ" THE POPULATION
Enforcing a policy of "ethnic cleansing," Bosnian Serbs set out to "purify" Bosnia by expelling Bosnian Muslims from the country. Bosnian Serb forces drove Muslims from their homes, subjecting them to mass rape, confinement in concentration camps and genocide. Although some atrocities also occurred in Croatian-held and Muslim-held areas, international alarm was aroused mainly by pictures of starving concentration camp inmates and civilian casualties in Sarajevo as its Muslim population was besieged by the Serbian army in March 1992. Serbian artillery daily bombarded city streets and marketplaces.
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY INTERVENESA NATO
ultimatum brought about a cease-fire and the withdrawal of Serbian artillery in 1994. After a prolonged period of indecision, the world community took action to restore Bosnia's integrity. Peace negotiations held at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, in late 1995 included presidents Milosevic, Izetbegovic and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia. The three agreed on a government structure for Bosnia -- a six-member council consisting of two Muslims, two Serbs and two Croats, headed by two co-chairmen to function as prime ministers. Government ministries would also be divided among Serbs, Croats and Muslims.
In March 1996, the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina was given back control of the suburbs surrounding Sarajevo. Under the peace treaty, the capital area was to be in the hands of the Muslim-dominated government. The United Nations International War Crimes Tribunal met the same month in The Hague, questioning Serbian soldiers about war crimes and issuing arrest warrants for Bosnian Serb officers. Serbians have refused to hand over officers charged with war crimes, instead regarding them as heroes.
The first national post-war elections were held in Bosnia in September 1996 under the supervision of NATO troops. Bosnia's multi-ethnic parliament met for the first time in January 1997 and appointed a cabinet.
Bosnian Serbs rebelled, and an armed struggle broke out to determine which ethnic group would control the country. The Serbs justified their aggression by claiming that Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic wanted to turn Bosnia into a fundamentalist Islamic nation. (He is considered a religious moderate by Western diplomats.) Bosnia-Herzegovina was composed of 40 percent Muslims, 30 percent Serbs and 18 percent Croats. Although Bosnia's Muslims were in the majority with 2 million people, Bosnia's Serbian minority was better armed, receiving support from the neighboring Serbian army. Serbian militias, backed by the Serbian armed forces, took control of two-thirds of Bosnia. Afterward, the Bosnian Serbs launched a reign of terror against country's Muslim population.
BOSNIAN SERBS "PURIFYÓ" THE POPULATION
Enforcing a policy of "ethnic cleansing," Bosnian Serbs set out to "purify" Bosnia by expelling Bosnian Muslims from the country. Bosnian Serb forces drove Muslims from their homes, subjecting them to mass rape, confinement in concentration camps and genocide. Although some atrocities also occurred in Croatian-held and Muslim-held areas, international alarm was aroused mainly by pictures of starving concentration camp inmates and civilian casualties in Sarajevo as its Muslim population was besieged by the Serbian army in March 1992. Serbian artillery daily bombarded city streets and marketplaces.
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY INTERVENESA NATO
ultimatum brought about a cease-fire and the withdrawal of Serbian artillery in 1994. After a prolonged period of indecision, the world community took action to restore Bosnia's integrity. Peace negotiations held at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, in late 1995 included presidents Milosevic, Izetbegovic and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia. The three agreed on a government structure for Bosnia -- a six-member council consisting of two Muslims, two Serbs and two Croats, headed by two co-chairmen to function as prime ministers. Government ministries would also be divided among Serbs, Croats and Muslims.
In March 1996, the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina was given back control of the suburbs surrounding Sarajevo. Under the peace treaty, the capital area was to be in the hands of the Muslim-dominated government. The United Nations International War Crimes Tribunal met the same month in The Hague, questioning Serbian soldiers about war crimes and issuing arrest warrants for Bosnian Serb officers. Serbians have refused to hand over officers charged with war crimes, instead regarding them as heroes.
The first national post-war elections were held in Bosnia in September 1996 under the supervision of NATO troops. Bosnia's multi-ethnic parliament met for the first time in January 1997 and appointed a cabinet.
The New Age of Globalization
Contemporary observers often assert that the world has entered a new era of globalization (the emergence of a freer, more technologically connected global economy, accompanied by a worldwide exchange of cultural, political, and religious ideas. |
The Digital Age
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Supranational Organizations
- United Nations – UN agencies deal with issues like world hunger, poverty and international court of justice
- World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) – extend loans to developing nations in order that they adopt neoliberal economic reforms (budget reductions, deregulation, and privatization)
- World Trade Organization (WTO) – sets trade and tariff agreements for over 150 countries
- Nongovernmental Organizations (NGO’s) – conduct international programs and activities (Doctors Without Borders, Greenpeace, Oxfam) helped with disease, poverty and famine
The Human Side of Globalization
Pros
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Cons
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Changing Flows of Immigration
- Historically a source rather than a destination of immigrants, western Europe saw rising numbers of immigration in postcolonial population movements beginning in the 1950s, augmented by the influx of manual laborers in its boom years from the 1960s
- Conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Rwanda (and recently Syria) brought thousands more from Central Asia and Africa
- Undocumented immigration into the EU also increased in the 1990s
- Undocumented immigration was aided by powerful criminal gangs that smuggled people for profit. Gangs moved large numbers of young female illegal immigrants from eastern Europe, especially Russia and Ukraine
Source: William Pfaff, Will the French Riots Change Anything?
In late November 2005 young Muslim males rioted for several nights in the suburbs of Paris and other French cities. Receiving saturation coverage from the media, their explosion of car burning and arson ignited controversy and debate throughout France and across Europe. Similar outbreaks occurred in 2007 and 2009. What caused the riots, and why did they persist? Anti-immigrant conservatives interpret the outbursts as an example of the inevitable conflict between Christians and Muslims. More liberal observers have blamed dismal living conditions and failures of assimilation. |
... Religion is important... in the French ghetto, it provides the carapace that protects against the France that excludes Muslims. To the European Muslim, it seems that all of the powerful in the world are in collusion to exclude Muslims - or are at war with them. The war in Iraq, on television, is the constant backdrop to Muslim life in Europe. There are itinerant imams who can put the young ghetto Muslim on the road to danger and adventure in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq - or elsewhere. There are plenty more who preach a still deeper ghettoization; a retreat inside Islamic fundamentalism, totally shutting out a diabolized secular world.
One would think there wold be a revolutionary potential in these ghettos, vulnerability to a mobilizing ideology. This seems not to be so. We may be living in a religious age, but it is not one of political ideology. In any case, it is difficult to imagine how the marginalized, thirteen - to twenty-three-year-old children of the Muslim immigration could change France other than by what they are doing, which is to demonstrate that the French model of assimilating immigrants as citizens, and not as members of religious or ethnic groups, has failed for them. The Ghettoization of immigrant youth in France is the consequence of negligence. It has been as bad as the ghettoization through political correctness of Muslims in Britain and the Netherlands, where many people who thought of themselves as enlightened said that assimilation efforts were acts of cultural aggression. The immigrant in France is told that he or she is a citizen just like everyone else, with all the rights and privileges of citizenship - including the right to be unemployed. |
Globalization
Thomas L. Friedman
Scholars looking at Western history since the fall of Communism have tried to come up with terms that best characterize the period. Several scholars have focused on "globalization" as the outstanding quality of this period. While some historians also use the term in descriptions of the post-1945 world and even the world during the decades just before World War I, globalization now refers to something different in quantity and quality. In the following selection from his well-received book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas L Friedman analyzes the meaning of the globalization system by comparing it with its predecessor, the Cold War system.
CONSIDER: What Friedman means by the "globalization system"; how it differs from the "Cold War system; the three "balances" that structure the globalization system.
Today's era of globalization, which replaced the Cold War, is a similar international system, with its own unique attributes.
To begin with, the globalization system, unlike the Cold War system, is not static, but a dynamic ongoing process: globalization involves the inexorable integration of markets, nation-states and technologies to a degree never witnessed before-----in a way that is enabling individuals, corporations and nation-states to reach around the world farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before, and in a way that is also producing a powerful backlash from those brutalized or left behind by this new system.
The driving idea behind globalization is free-market capitalism—the more you let market forces rule and the more you open your economy to free trade and competition, the more efficient and flourishing your economy will be. Globalization means the spread of free-market capitalism to virtually every country in the world. Globalization also has its own set of economic rules—rules that revolve around opening, deregulating and privatizing your economy.
Unlike the Cold War system, globalization has its own dominant culture, which is why it tends to be homogenizing. In previous eras this sort of cultural homogenization happened on a regional scale—the Hellenization of the Near East and the Mediterranean world under the Greeks, the Turkification of Central Asia, North Africa, Europe and the Middle East by the Ottomans, or the Russification of Eastern and Central Europe and parts of Eurasia under the Soviets. Culturally speaking, globalization is largely, though not entirely, the spread of Americanization from Big Macs to iMacs to Mickey Mouse—on a global scale.
Globalization has its own defining technologies: computerization, miniaturization, digitization, satellite communications, fiber optics and the Internet. And these technologies helped to create the defining perspective of globalization. If the defining perspective of the Cold War world was "division," the defining perspective of globalization is "integration." The symbol of the Cold War system was a wall, which divided everyone. The symbol of the globalization system is a World Wide Web, which unites everyone. The defining document of the Cold War system was "The Treaty." The defining document of the globalization system is "The Deal.". . .
Last, and most important, globalization has its own defining structure of power, which is much more complex than the Cold War structure. The Cold War system was built exclusively around nation-states, and it was balanced at the center by two superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union.
The globalization system, by contrast, is built around three balances, which overlap and affect one another. The first is the traditional balance between nation-states. In the globalization system, the United States is now the sole and dominant superpower and all other nations are subordinate to it to one degree or another. The balance of power between the United States and the other states still matters for the stability of this system. . . .
The second balance in the globalization system is between nation-states and global markets. These global markets are made up of millions of investors moving money around the world with the click of a mouse. I call them "the Electronic Herd," and this herd gathers in key global financial centers, such as Wall Street, Hong Kong, London and Frankfurt, which I call "the Supermarkets." The attitudes and actions of the Electronic Herd and the Supermarkets can have a huge impact on nation-states today, even to the point of triggering the downfall of governments. . . .
The United States can destroy you by dropping bombs and the Supermarkets can destroy you by downgrading your bonds. The United States is the dominant player in maintaining the globalization gameboard, but it is not alone in influencing the moves on that gameboard. This globalization gameboard today is a lot like a Ouija board—sometimes pieces are moved around by the obvious hand of the superpower, and sometimes they are moved around by hidden hands of the Supermarkets.
The third balance that you have to pay attention to in the globalization system—the one that is really the newest of all—is the balance between individuals and nation-states. Because globalization has brought down many of the walls that limited the movement and reach of people, and because it has simultaneously wired the world into networks, it gives more power to individuals to influence both markets and nation-states than at any time in history. So you have today not only a superpower, not only Supermarkets, but, as I will also demonstrate later in the book, you have Super-empowered individuals. Some of these Super-empowered individuals are quite angry, some of them quite wonderful—but all of them are now able to act directly on the world stage without the traditional mediation of governments, corporations or any other public or private institutions.
Thomas L. Friedman
Scholars looking at Western history since the fall of Communism have tried to come up with terms that best characterize the period. Several scholars have focused on "globalization" as the outstanding quality of this period. While some historians also use the term in descriptions of the post-1945 world and even the world during the decades just before World War I, globalization now refers to something different in quantity and quality. In the following selection from his well-received book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas L Friedman analyzes the meaning of the globalization system by comparing it with its predecessor, the Cold War system.
CONSIDER: What Friedman means by the "globalization system"; how it differs from the "Cold War system; the three "balances" that structure the globalization system.
Today's era of globalization, which replaced the Cold War, is a similar international system, with its own unique attributes.
To begin with, the globalization system, unlike the Cold War system, is not static, but a dynamic ongoing process: globalization involves the inexorable integration of markets, nation-states and technologies to a degree never witnessed before-----in a way that is enabling individuals, corporations and nation-states to reach around the world farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before, and in a way that is also producing a powerful backlash from those brutalized or left behind by this new system.
The driving idea behind globalization is free-market capitalism—the more you let market forces rule and the more you open your economy to free trade and competition, the more efficient and flourishing your economy will be. Globalization means the spread of free-market capitalism to virtually every country in the world. Globalization also has its own set of economic rules—rules that revolve around opening, deregulating and privatizing your economy.
Unlike the Cold War system, globalization has its own dominant culture, which is why it tends to be homogenizing. In previous eras this sort of cultural homogenization happened on a regional scale—the Hellenization of the Near East and the Mediterranean world under the Greeks, the Turkification of Central Asia, North Africa, Europe and the Middle East by the Ottomans, or the Russification of Eastern and Central Europe and parts of Eurasia under the Soviets. Culturally speaking, globalization is largely, though not entirely, the spread of Americanization from Big Macs to iMacs to Mickey Mouse—on a global scale.
Globalization has its own defining technologies: computerization, miniaturization, digitization, satellite communications, fiber optics and the Internet. And these technologies helped to create the defining perspective of globalization. If the defining perspective of the Cold War world was "division," the defining perspective of globalization is "integration." The symbol of the Cold War system was a wall, which divided everyone. The symbol of the globalization system is a World Wide Web, which unites everyone. The defining document of the Cold War system was "The Treaty." The defining document of the globalization system is "The Deal.". . .
Last, and most important, globalization has its own defining structure of power, which is much more complex than the Cold War structure. The Cold War system was built exclusively around nation-states, and it was balanced at the center by two superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union.
The globalization system, by contrast, is built around three balances, which overlap and affect one another. The first is the traditional balance between nation-states. In the globalization system, the United States is now the sole and dominant superpower and all other nations are subordinate to it to one degree or another. The balance of power between the United States and the other states still matters for the stability of this system. . . .
The second balance in the globalization system is between nation-states and global markets. These global markets are made up of millions of investors moving money around the world with the click of a mouse. I call them "the Electronic Herd," and this herd gathers in key global financial centers, such as Wall Street, Hong Kong, London and Frankfurt, which I call "the Supermarkets." The attitudes and actions of the Electronic Herd and the Supermarkets can have a huge impact on nation-states today, even to the point of triggering the downfall of governments. . . .
The United States can destroy you by dropping bombs and the Supermarkets can destroy you by downgrading your bonds. The United States is the dominant player in maintaining the globalization gameboard, but it is not alone in influencing the moves on that gameboard. This globalization gameboard today is a lot like a Ouija board—sometimes pieces are moved around by the obvious hand of the superpower, and sometimes they are moved around by hidden hands of the Supermarkets.
The third balance that you have to pay attention to in the globalization system—the one that is really the newest of all—is the balance between individuals and nation-states. Because globalization has brought down many of the walls that limited the movement and reach of people, and because it has simultaneously wired the world into networks, it gives more power to individuals to influence both markets and nation-states than at any time in history. So you have today not only a superpower, not only Supermarkets, but, as I will also demonstrate later in the book, you have Super-empowered individuals. Some of these Super-empowered individuals are quite angry, some of them quite wonderful—but all of them are now able to act directly on the world stage without the traditional mediation of governments, corporations or any other public or private institutions.