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1. Introduction to Globalization

Advanced Professional Communication 1

  • Read from these specific sections.
    • Chapter 10.1 Why Use Sources
    • Chapter 10.3 Types of Sources
    • Chapter 10.9 Evaluating Sources
  • Higher-level research involves defining needs and criteria and serves the same general purpose: to address a situation/ solve a problem in a way that would be found most advantageous (“best”) by our readers.

Types of Sources

  • A source can be categorized by asking the following questions:
  • Why was the source created? => Purpose:
    • To inform and educate.
    • To persuade.
    • To entertain.
    • To sell a product or service.
  • How will you use the source?
    • Primary sources: associated with primary research; where the authors gather data directly.
    • Secondary sources: associated with secondary research; where the authors rely on data gathered by other primary sources.
    • Tertiary Sources: consist of indexes or other types of texts that condense, summarize, organize, compile, or digest information.
  • Who was the original audience of the source?
    • How much expertise does the audience need to understand the source?
  • What format is the source in?

CRAAP Test

  • The CRAAP test shows you a series of questions you can ask yourself to determine whether a piece of information is trustworthy and useful.
  • The guide is here: https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/app/uploads/sites/1167/2020/05/Chapter_10.9_Craap_Test.pdf
  • Currency:
    • When was the information published or posted?
    • Sometimes the latest information is not the most important, but in other cases, it is.
    • The range of acceptable dates will depend on your topic and the context of the work.
  • Relevance:
    • Does the information relate to your topic or answer your question?
  • Authority:
    • Who is the author/publisher/source/sponsor?
    • The author of the resource must have the authority to write about the topic.
  • Accuracy:
    • How reliable and free from error is the information?
    • You should examine the methodology and evidence used in the work.
  • Purpose:
    • Why was the information created?

SIFT Test

  • The SIFT test is a series of “moves” you will make to evaluate information.
  • The SIFT test was developed by Mike Caulfield, Director of Blended and Networked Learning at WSU Vancouver.
  • Stop:
    • Stop for a moment and ask yourself some questions:
      • Do you know the website?
      • Does the website have a good reputation?
  • Investigate the source:
    • Make sure you know what you are reading before you read it.
  • Find better coverage:
    • Ignore the source, and look for other sources that cover the same topic.
    • Find other coverage that better suits your needs — more trusted, more in-depth, etc.
    • Do you have to agree with the consensus once you find it? Not necessarily. Still, understanding the context and history of a claim will help you better evaluate it and better define your starting point for future investigation.
  • Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context:
    • Look for the bigger picture and the original context of the information.
    • Some information is stripped from their original context, and this can lead to misunderstandings.

Considering Multiple Views and Avoiding Bias 2

  • When comparing sources, you must consider:
    • Depth: How much information is provided?
    • Breadth: How many perspectives are included?
  • To avoid bias:
    • Be fair with your sources.
    • Is the author fair or biased?
  • Explicit bias: you are consciously committing bias and you are aware of it.
  • Implicit bias: you are unconsciously committing bias and you are not aware of it.=

World-System Theory: A Sociopolitical Approach to Explain World Economic Development in a Capitalistic Economy 3

  • Classical Theories Of Modernization And Development
    • Rostow 1960
    • Seymour M. Lipset 1955
    • The nation-state as the sole unit of analysis
    • All countries go through the same stages of development
    • Poor countries can rely on exports to develop
    • Traditional culture and institutions block the modernization process
  • Theories Of Dependency And World System
    • Wallerstein 1974
    • core-periphery geoeconomic interaction in a world trade market of commodities
    • economic division of labor in a world market
    • multiple political sovereignties, no one of which can control the entire economic system
    • a power hierarchy between core and periphery, in which powerful and wealthy “core” societies dominate and exploit weak and poor peripheral societies
    • world system can sustain economic development because some economic subjects have more freedom to appropriate and reinvest resources and surpluses.

What is the Evidence for Deglobalization? 4

What is Globalization? 5

  • Globalization is the worldwide movement of people, ideas, money, goods, data, drugs, weapons, computer and biological viruses, greenhouse gases and more.

A Brief History of Globalization 6

  • The birth of globalization can be traced back to the Silk Road, which connected China and Europe.
  • We are now in the fourth wave of globalization, aka Globalization 4.0, which is characterized by the digital revolution.
  • Silk roads (1st century BC-5th century AD, and 13th-14th centuries AD):
    • Connected China and Europe.
  • Spice routes (7th-15th centuries):
    • Arabs and Indians controlled the spice trade from Asia to Europe.
  • Age of Discovery (15th-18th centuries):
    • Columbus discovered America in 1492.
    • Magellan circumnavigated the globe in 1519-1522, thus Europe had its own spice route, and no need for Arab and Indian middlemen.
    • Each European empire had its own routes from colonies to the motherland.
  • First wave of globalization (19th century-1914):
    • Steam engines, industrial weaving machines, and telegraphs.
    • British Empire was the main player.
    • Trade grew 14% every year by 1914.
    • The invention of the refrigerated cargo ship or “reefer ship” in the 1870s, for example, allowed for countries like Argentina and Uruguay, to enter their golden age.
  • Second and third wave of globalization (1945-1990s, 2000-2010s):
    • The end of World War II marked a new beginning for the global economy.
    • The United States was the main player.
    • Planes, cars, container ships, and the internet.
    • The Cold War limited the trade between the East and the West, but the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 opened up new markets.
    • The newly created World Trade Organization (WTO) encouraged nations all over the world to enter into free-trade agreements.
    • You could do R&D in one country, sourcing in others, production in yet another, and distribution all over the world.
  • Globalization 4.0:
    • In a world increasingly dominated by two global powers, the US and China, the new frontier of globalization is the cyber world.
    • The digital economy, in its infancy during the third wave of globalization, is now becoming a force to reckon with through e-commerce, digital services, and 3D printing.

The End of Globalization?

  • Many middle-class workers are fed up with a political and economic system that resulted in economic inequality, social instability, and mass immigration, even if it also led to economic growth and cheaper products.
  • Protectionism, trade wars and immigration stops are once again the order of the day in many countries.
  • As a percentage of GDP, global exports have stalled and even started to go in reverse slightly.
  • As a political ideology, “globalism”, or the idea that one should take a global perspective, is on the wane.
  • The power that propelled the world to its highest level of globalization ever, the United States, is backing away from its role as a policeman and trade champion of the world.

The Global Citizen Issue 2: Globalization 7

  • People move across borders for many reasons.
  • Wealth in the form of money or property is called capital, and globalization has meant that capital investments now move across borders more easily than ever before.
  • Ideas cross borders in the era of globalization as well. Social theories, cultural beliefs, and religious and political ideologies spread rapidly around the world due to improvements in information and communication technologies (ICTs).

The World Inside Your Shirt

  • T-shirts don’t come from just one factory in one country; they are created from materials and with labor from all over the world and travel from one country to another to another in the process.
  • Each of these steps has a story, and each story tells us something about the interconnectedness of the world.
  • Today, many multinational corporations (MNCs) that make products in developing countries have codes of conduct requiring that employees be treated humanely and paid fairly.

Case Studies from Around the World

  • Americas:
    • Mexican Government Advises Migrants on how to stay safe during the desert crossing to the US.
    • However, border crossings are down, with 356,000 immigrants detained in 2012, compared to 1.5 million in 1999.
  • Africa:
    • Liberian Plantation Workers Allege Poor Conditions.
    • Twelve adults and 23 children from Liberia sued the Firestone tire company in 2005, claiming that Firestone was forcing them to work in a “gulag of misery.”
    • US courts dismissed the case, saying that the workers should have sued in Liberia.
  • Europe:
    • Charities Hijacked by Terrorism?
    • In 2005, the Russian parliament passed strict laws making it very difficult for charities to operate in the country of Chechnya.
    • But charities were once the world’s largest source of terrorist funding.
    • For years, charities in Saudi Arabia were the most important source of funding for al-Qaeda, an infamous terrorist group in the Middle East.
  • Asia and the Middle East:
    • Call Center Jobs, Once Offshored to India, Now Offshored from India.
    • Callers often recognize operators’ Indian accents. This can lead to rude, or racist, reactions by Western customers.
    • Companies began sending their Indian operators to “accent neutralization schools” and Western pop-culture classes. Operators learned to speak with American accents and watched Oprah.
    • Soon, though, American companies began moving call centers to the Philippines, where wages are slightly higher than in India, but people learn English in school at a younger age and watch more American television.

The Rise Of The Global Justice Movement

  • Corporations wanted rules that would make it possible for them to do business all over the world.
  • Governments wanted rules that would allow them to protect and grow their economies.
  • Citizens wanted rules that would help create jobs but also protect the environment, their cultures, and their rights as workers.
  • There is a wide variety of perspectives represented among the so-called “anti-globalization” activists.
  • Many say they are not against globalization at all, but feel that global trade must be fairer and more inclusive of all people.
  • They often prefer the term “alter-globalization” to “anti-globalization” and many identify themselves as part of the “global justice movement”.
  • The movement is extremely diverse. Its members come from both developing and developed countries.
  • Many fear that globalization, as it is currently practiced, gives multinational corporations more power and influence, allowing them to behave unethically.
  • Some worry about the challenges associated with international competition, such as job losses and offshoring.
  • Others focus their attention on the policies of international trade and financial institutions such as the WTO, the IMF, the WEF, and the World Bank.
  • Much of the global justice movement’s energy now goes into less sensational activities such as the World Social Forum, an annual meeting of groups that promote alternatives to the trade policies embraced by the WEF and WTO.
  • Issues of the global justice movement include:
    • The environment:
      • Global trade requires more energy and resources than local trade, thus contributing to global warming.
      • Corporations exploit the environmental laws in developing countries that are less strict than those in developed countries.
    • Fair Trade:
      • Developing countries are commodity-based economies, and they are at the mercy of the world market.
      • Fair Trade is a movement that seeks to ensure that producers in developing countries receive a fair price for their goods.
      • Small companies and individuals in developing countries are in disadvantageous positions when negotiating with large corporations.
    • Worker Rights:
      • Many globalization protesters believe that the current system encourages corporations to keep wages low and even set up sweatshops.
    • Democracy and Governance:
      • There is no world government to make rules on the international level so countries work together in treaty-based organizations such as the United Nations (UN) to make international laws and agreements.
      • These organizations are not elected by any people, and their negotiations are often held in secret.

Globalization, Poverty, and Inequality: The “Bottom Line”

  • To understand whether globalization leaves the world better off, experts often ask two questions:
    • First, does globalization help reduce poverty?
    • Second, does globalization make people’s incomes more equal or less equal?
  • Indeed, in the past century, more people have escaped poverty than ever before in human history.
  • Real (meaning adjusted for inflation) average income has more than quintupled (5X) since the early 1900s, even as the population has increased from 1.6 billion to well over 7 billion people.
  • In all of the regions but one, poverty decreased over that period of time. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the number of poor people increased.
  • Overall, by 2010, there was a decrease of about 550 million (0.55 billion) in the total, or absolute, number of people living in extreme poverty.
  • These numbers indicate that millions of people have managed to escape extreme poverty. Other positive signs include an increase in average life expectancy, a decrease in the infant mortality rate, and an increase in people’s general standard of living.
  • There are several ways to look at equality—by comparing countries:
    • by comparing people worldwide,
    • or by comparing people to others in their own country.
  • Statistics show that the gap between the richest and poorest countries is widening significantly.
  • Figure 4 shows that the gap between high-income countries and low-income countries has more than tripled over the past 40 years.
  • “There is compelling evidence that globalization has played an important catalytic role in accelerating growth and reducing poverty in developing countries.” However, the Bank also warned that the results are mixed when it comes to inequality: “Global inequality has been reduced because of the inclusion of the most populous developing countries in the benefits of globalization, but many countries are still falling behind and there has been some increase in inequality within countries”.

References

  1. Ashman, M., Cruthers, C., eCampusOntario., Ontario Business Faculty. & the University of Minnesota. (2021, September 1). Advanced professional communication. ECampusontario Pressbooks. Licensed under CC-4.0. https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/llsadvcomm/ ↩

  2. Long, L., Minervini, A., & Gladd, J. (2021). 83. Considering multiple views and avoiding bias. In Write what matters. Idaho Open Press. https://idaho.pressbooks.pub/write/chapter/considering-multiple-views-depth-breadth-fairness/ ↩

  3. Coccia, M. (2018). World-System Theory: A sociopolitical approach to explain world economic development in a capitalistic economy. Journal of Economics and Political Economy. 5(4), p.459-465. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3315556 ↩

  4. Goldberg, P., Reed, T., Milesi-Ferretti, G., & Stock, J. (2023). What is the evidence for deglobalization? [Podcast]. Brookings Institute. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-is-the-evidence-for-deglobalization/ ↩

  5. The Counsel on Foreign Relations. (2021). What is globalization?  [Video]. World101 Global Era Issues. https://education.cfr.org/learn/video/what-globalization ↩

  6. Vanham, P. (2019). A brief history of globalization.World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/how-globalization-4-0-fits-into-the-history-of-globalization/ ↩

  7. Pier, D., Mehling, K. C., Zerzan, R., Friedman, T., Auguston, A., & Wolfe, T.(2014). The Global Citizen Issue 2: Globalization. United Nations Association of the United States of America. https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/1874608/mod_book/chapter/519533/U1LJ-Globalization%20in%20POLS.pdf?time=1718963563559 ↩