MY VIEW OF GLOBALIZATION

INTRODUCTION
Human societies across the globe have established progressively closer contacts over many centuries, but recently the pace has dramatically increased. Jet airplanes, cheap telephone service, email, computers, huge oceangoing vessels, instant capital flows, all these have made the world more interdependent than ever. Multinational corporations manufacture products in many countries and sell to consumers around the world. Money, technology and raw materials move ever more swiftly across national borders. Along with products and finances, ideas and cultures circulate more freely. As a result, laws, economies, and social movements are forming at the international level. Many politicians, academics, and journalists treat these trends as both inevitable and (on the whole) welcome. But for billions of the world’s people, business-driven globalization means uprooting old ways of life and threatening livelihoods and cultures. The global social justice movement, itself a product of globalization, proposes an alternative path, more responsive to public needs. Intense political disputes will continue over globalization’s meaning and its future direction.
GLOBALIZATION OF THE ECONOMY
Advances in communication and transportation technology, combined with free-market ideology, have given goods, services, and capital unprecedented mobility. Northern countries want to open world markets to their goods and take advantage of abundant, cheap labor in the South, policies often supported by Southern elites. They use international financial institutions and regional trade agreements to compel poor countries to "integrate" by reducing tariffs, privatizing state enterprises, and relaxing environmental and labor standards. The results have enlarged profits for investors but offered pittances to laborers, provoking a strong backlash from civil society. This page analyzes economic globalization, and examines how it might be resisted or regulated in order to promote sustainable development.
GLOBALIZATION OF POLITICS
Traditionally politics has been undertaken within national political systems. National governments have been ultimately responsible for maintaining the security and economic welfare of their citizens, as well as the protection of human rights and the environment within their borders. With global ecological changes, an ever more integrated global economy, and other global trends, political activity increasingly takes place at the global level.
Under globalization, politics can take place above the state through political integration schemes such as the European Union and through intergovernmental organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. Political activity can also transcend national borders through global movements and NGOs. Civil society organizations act globaly by forming alliances with organizations in other countries, using global communications systems, and lobbying international organizations and other actors directly, instead of working through their national governments.
GLOBALIZATION OF CULTURE

Technology has now created the possibility and even the likelihood of a global culture. The Internet, fax machines, satellites, and cable TV are sweeping away cultural boundaries. Global entertainment companies shape the perceptions and dreams of ordinary citizens, wherever they live. This spread of values, norms, and culture tends to promote Western ideals of capitalism. Will local cultures inevitably fall victim to this global "consumer" culture? Will English eradicate all other languages? Will consumer values overwhelm peoples' sense of community and social solidarity? Or, on the contrary, will a common culture lead the way to greater shared values and political unity? This section looks at these and other issues of culture and globalization.
Globalization of Law
Law has traditionally been the province of the nation state, whose courts and police enforce legal rules. By contrast, international law has been comparatively weak, with little effective enforcement powers. But globalization is changing the contours of law and creating new global legal institutions and norms. The International Criminal Court promises to bring to justic odious public offenders based on a worldwide criminal code, while inter-governmental cooperation increasingly brings to trial some of the most notorious international criminals. Business law is globalizing fastest of all, as nations agree to standard regulations, rules and legal practices. Diplomats and jurists are creating international rules for bankruptcy, intellectual property, banking procedures and many other areas of corporate law. In response to this internationalization, and in order to serve giant, transnational companies, law firms are globalizing their practice. The biggest firms are merging across borders, creating mega practices with several thousand professionals in dozens of countries.
A GLOBAL LOOK AT GLOBALIZATION
Globalization expands and accelerates the movement and exchange of ideas and commodities over vast distances. It is common to discuss the phenomenon from an abstract, global perspective, but in fact globalization's most important impacts are often highly localized. This page explores the various manifestations of interconnectedness in the world, noting how globalization affects real people and places.
MEASURING GLOBALIZATION
It is impossible to measure a nebulous concept like globalization precisely, but increasing interconnectedness is readily apparent in a host of economic, demographic, technological, and cultural changes. The data below track concrete global linkages that, in sum, begin to trace the more general phenomenon.
Take Action on Globalization
Globalization is a complex, abstract phenomenon, but civil society has shown that it is neither unalterable nor inevitable. Citizens all over the world--human rights advocates and religious leaders, environmentalists and trade unionists, ordinary people from the global North and South--work together to make concrete improvements in people's lives. This page explores how to work for change in a globalized world, and shows concerned individuals how to become involved.










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