what is your definition of globalization essay

Essay on Globalization for Students and Children

500+ words essay on globalization.

Globalization refers to integration between people, companies, and governments. Most noteworthy, this integration occurs on a global scale. Furthermore, it is the process of expanding the business all over the world. In Globalization, many businesses expand globally and assume an international image. Consequently, there is a requirement for huge investment to develop international companies.

How Globalization Came into Existence?

First of all, people have been trading goods since civilization began. In the 1st century BC, there was the transportation of goods from China to Europe. The goods transportation took place along the Silk Road. The Silk Road route was very long in distance. This was a remarkable development in the history of Globalization. This is because, for the first time ever, goods were sold across continents.

Globalization kept on growing gradually since 1st BC. Another significant development took place in the 7th century AD. This was the time when the religion of Islam spread. Most noteworthy, Arab merchants led to a rapid expansion of international trade . By the 9th century, there was the domination of Muslim traders on international trade. Furthermore, the focus of trade at this time was spices.

True Global trade began in the Age of Discovery in the 15th century. The Eastern and Western continents were connected by European merchants. There was the discovery of America in this period. Consequently, global trade reached America from Europe.

From the 19th century, there was a domination of Great Britain all over the world. There was a rapid spread of international trade. The British developed powerful ships and trains. Consequently, the speed of transportation greatly increased. The rate of production of goods also significantly increased. Communication also got faster which was better for Global trade .

Finally, in 20th and 21st -Century Globalization took its ultimate form. Above all, the development of technology and the internet took place. This was a massive aid for Globalization. Hence, E-commerce plays a huge role in Globalization.

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Impact of Globalization

First of all, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) increases at a great rate. This certainly is a huge contribution of Globalization. Due to FDI, there is industrial development. Furthermore, there is the growth of global companies. Also, many third world countries would also benefit from FDI.

Technological Innovation is another notable contribution of Globalization. Most noteworthy, there is a huge emphasis on technology development in Globalization. Furthermore, there is also technology transfer due to Globalization. The technology would certainly benefit the common people.

The quality of products improves due to Globalization. This is because manufacturers try to make products of high-quality. This is due to the pressure of intense competition. If the product is inferior, people can easily switch to another high-quality product.

To sum it up, Globalization is a very visible phenomenon currently. Most noteworthy, it is continuously increasing. Above all, it is a great blessing to trade. This is because it brings a lot of economic and social benefits to it.

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ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Globalization.

Globalization is a term used to describe the increasing connectedness and interdependence of world cultures and economies.

Anthropology, Sociology, Social Studies, Civics, Economics

Freight Trains

Freight trains waiting to be loaded with cargo to transport around the United Kingdom. This cargo comes from around the world and contains all kinds of goods and products.

Photograph by Bloomberg

Globalization is a term used to describe how trade and technology have made the world into a more connected and interdependent place. Globalization also captures in its scope the economic and social changes that have come about as a result. It may be pictured as the threads of an immense spider web formed over millennia, with the number and reach of these threads increasing over time. People, money, material goods, ideas, and even disease and devastation have traveled these silken strands, and have done so in greater numbers and with greater speed than ever in the present age. When did globalization begin? The Silk Road, an ancient network of trade routes across China, Central Asia, and the Mediterranean used between 50 B.C.E. and 250 C.E., is perhaps the most well-known early example of exchanging ideas, products, and customs. As with future globalizing booms, new technologies played a key role in the Silk Road trade. Advances in metallurgy led to the creation of coins; advances in transportation led to the building of roads connecting the major empires of the day; and increased agricultural production meant more food could be trafficked between locales. Along with Chinese silk, Roman glass, and Arabian spices, ideas such as Buddhist beliefs and the secrets of paper-making also spread via these tendrils of trade. Unquestionably, these types of exchanges were accelerated in the Age of Exploration, when European explorers seeking new sea routes to the spices and silks of Asia bumped into the Americas instead. Again, technology played an important role in the maritime trade routes that flourished between old and newly discovered continents. New ship designs and the creation of the magnetic compass were key to the explorers’ successes. Trade and idea exchange now extended to a previously unconnected part of the world, where ships carrying plants, animals, and Spanish silver between the Old World and the New also carried Christian missionaries. The web of globalization continued to spin out through the Age of Revolution, when ideas about liberty , equality , and fraternity spread like fire from America to France to Latin America and beyond. It rode the waves of industrialization , colonization , and war through the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, powered by the invention of factories, railways, steamboats, cars, and planes. With the Information Age, globalization went into overdrive. Advances in computer and communications technology launched a new global era and redefined what it meant to be “connected.” Modern communications satellites meant the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo could be watched in the United States for the first time. The World Wide Web and the Internet allowed someone in Germany to read about a breaking news story in Bolivia in real time. Someone wishing to travel from Boston, Massachusetts, to London, England, could do so in hours rather than the week or more it would have taken a hundred years ago. This digital revolution massively impacted economies across the world as well: they became more information-based and more interdependent. In the modern era, economic success or failure at one focal point of the global web can be felt in every major world economy. The benefits and disadvantages of globalization are the subject of ongoing debate. The downside to globalization can be seen in the increased risk for the transmission of diseases like ebola or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), or in the kind of environmental harm that scientist Paul R. Furumo has studied in microcosm in palm oil plantations in the tropics. Globalization has of course led to great good, too. Richer nations now can—and do—come to the aid of poorer nations in crisis. Increasing diversity in many countries has meant more opportunity to learn about and celebrate other cultures. The sense that there is a global village, a worldwide “us,” has emerged.

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globalization

globalization , integration of the world’s economies, politics, and cultures. German-born American economist Theodore Levitt has been credited with having coined the term globalization in a 1983 article titled “The Globalization of Markets.” The phenomenon is widely considered to have begun in the 19th century following the advent of the Industrial Revolution , but some scholars date it more specifically to about 1870, when exports became a much more significant share of some countries’ gross domestic product (GDP). Its continued escalation is largely attributable to the development of new technologies—particularly in the fields of communication and transportation—and to the adoption of liberal trade policies by countries around the world.

Social scientists have identified the central aspects of globalization as interconnection, intensification, time-space distanciation (conditions that allow time and space to be organized in a manner that connects presence and absence), supraterritoriality, time-space compression, action at a distance, and accelerating interdependence. Modern analysts also conceive of globalization as a long-term process of deterritorialization—that is, of social activities (economic, political, and cultural) occurring without regard for geographic location. Thus, globalization can be defined as the stretching of economic, political, and social relationships in space and time. A manufacturer assembling a product for a distant market , a country submitting to international law , and a language adopting a foreign loanword are all examples of globalization.

Of course history is filled with such occurrences: Chinese artisans once wove silk bound for the Roman Empire ( see Silk Road ); kingdoms in western Europe honoured dictates of the Roman Catholic Church ; and English adopted many Norman French words in the centuries after the Battle of Hastings . These interactions and others laid the groundwork for globalization and are now recognized by historians and economists as important predecessors of the modern phenomenon. Analysts have labeled the 15th to 18th century as a period of “proto-globalization,” when European explorers established maritime trade routes across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and encountered new lands. Integration prior to this time has been characterized as “archaic globalization.”

What distinguishes the process of modern globalization from those forms of global integration that preceded it are its pace and extent. According to some academics, three distinct eras of modern globalization can be identified, each of them marked by points of sudden acceleration in international interaction. Under this scheme, the “first globalization” era refers to the period between approximately 1870 and 1914, during which new transportation and communication technology decreased or eliminated many of the drawbacks to distance. The “second globalization” era is said to have lasted from roughly 1944 to 1971, a period in which an international monetary system based on the value of the U.S. dollar facilitated a new level of trade between capitalist countries. And the “third globalization” era is thought to have begun with the revolutions of 1989–90, which opened the communist Eastern bloc to the flow of capital and coincided with the creation of the World Wide Web . Some scholars argue that a new period of globalization, the “fourth globalization,” is underway, but there is little consensus on when this era began or whether it is truly distinct enough to merit its own designation.

New levels of interconnectedness fostered by globalization are credited for numerous benefits to humanity. The spread of industrial technology and the resulting increase in productivity have contributed to a reduction in the percentage of the world’s population living in poverty. The sharing of medical knowledge has dramatically decreased the incidence of once-feared diseases and even eliminated smallpox. And economic interdependence among countries discourages war between them.

However, the implementation of globalization has been much criticized, leading to the development of the anti-globalization movement. Opponents of globalization—or at least, globalization in its present form ( see neoliberal globalization )—represent a variety of interests on both the political left and right. Labour unions disdain multinational companies’ ability to move their operations to countries with cheaper labour; Indigenous peoples rue the difficulty of maintaining their traditions; and leftists object to the neoliberal character of the new world economy, arguing that the capitalist logic on which they contend globalization is based leads to asymmetrical power relations (both internationally and domestically) and transforms every aspect of life into a commodity. Right-wing critics of globalization believe that it threatens both national economies and national identity. They advocate national control of a country’s economy and rigidly restricted immigration.

Globalization has also produced effects that are more universally worrisome. Expanded transportation networks facilitate not only increased trade but also the spread of diseases. Undesirable trade, such as human trafficking and poaching, has flourished alongside legitimate commerce. Moreover, the pollution generated by the world’s modernization has resulted in global warming and climate change , threatening Earth’s very habitability.

Whether globalization will adapt to these problems remains to be seen, but it is already changing again. For example, globalization began in the 19th century with an explosion in exports, but, even before the COVID-19 pandemic that swept through the world in 2020 resulted in global lockdowns, trade as a share of many countries’ GDP had fallen. It can be argued that the global supply chains today rely more on knowledge than on labour . And services now constitute a larger share of the global economy than goods. A “fourth globalization” might indeed be here—or at least on the way.

Globalization: Definition, Benefits, Effects, Examples – What is Globalization?

• Publié le 21 January 2019
• Mis à jour le 25 March 2024

Globalization – what is it? What is the definition of globalization? Benefits and negative effects? What are the top examples of globalization? What famous quotes have been said about globalization?

What is Globalization? All Definitions of Globalization

A simple globalization definition.

Globalization means the speedup of movements and exchanges (of human beings, goods, and services, capital, technologies or cultural practices) all over the planet. One of the effects of globalization is that it promotes and increases interactions between different regions and populations around the globe.

• Related: Traveling Today And Tomorrow: Cities And Countries With More Travelers

An Official Definition of Globalization by the World Health Organization (WHO)

According to WHO , globalization can be defined as ” the increased interconnectedness and interdependence of peoples and countries. It is generally understood to include two inter-related elements: the opening of international borders to increasingly fast flows of goods, services, finance, people and ideas; and the changes in institutions and policies at national and international levels that facilitate or promote such flows.”

What Is Globalization in the Economy?

According to the Committee for Development Policy (a subsidiary body of the United Nations), from an economic point of view, globalization can be defined as: “(…) the increasing interdependence of world economies as a result of the growing scale of cross-border trade of commodities and services, the flow of international capital and the wide and rapid spread of technologies. It reflects the continuing expansion and mutual integration of market frontiers (…) and the rapid growing significance of information in all types of productive activities and marketization are the two major driving forces for economic globalization.”

• Related: Planet VS Economy: How Coronavirus Is Unraveling A Dysfunctional System

What Is Globalization in Geography?

In geography, globalization is defined as the set of processes (economic, social, cultural, technological, institutional) that contribute to the relationship between societies and individuals around the world. It is a progressive process by which exchanges and flows between different parts of the world are intensified.

Globalization and the G20: What is the G20?

The G20 is a global bloc composed by the governments and central bank governors from 19 countries and the European Union (EU). Established in 1999, the G20 gathers the most important industrialized and developing economies to discuss international economic and financial stability. Together, the nations of the G20 account for around 80% of global economic output, nearly 75 percent of all global trade, and about two-thirds of the world’s population.

G20 leaders get together in an annual summit to discuss and coordinate pressing global issues of mutual interest. Though economics and trade are usually the centerpieces of each summit’s agenda, issues like climate change, migration policies, terrorism, the future of work, or global wealth are recurring focuses too. Since the G20 leaders represent the “ political backbone of the global financial architecture that secures open markets, orderly capital flows, and a safety net for countries in difficulty”, it is often thanks to bilateral meetings during summits that major international agreements are achieved and that globalization is able to move forward.

The joint action of G20 leaders has unquestionably been useful to save the global financial system in the 2008/2009 crisis, thanks to trade barriers removal and the implementation of huge financial reforms. Nonetheless, the G20 was been struggling to be successful at coordinating monetary and fiscal policies and unable to root out tax evasion and corruption, among other downsides of globalization. As a result of this and other failures from the G20 in coordinating globalization, popular, nationalist movements across the world have been defending countries should pursue their interests alone or form fruitful coalitions.

How Do We Make Globalization More Just?

The ability of countries to rise above narrow self-interest has brought unprecedented economic wealth and plenty of applicable scientific progress. However, for different reasons, not everyone has been benefiting the same from globalization and technological change: wealth is unfairly distributed and economic growth came at huge environmental costs. How can countries rise above narrow self-interest and act together or designing fairer societies and a healthier planet? How do we make globalization more just?

According to Christine Lagarde , former President of the International Monetary Fund, “ debates about trade and access to foreign goods are as old as society itself ” and history tells us that closing borders or protectionism policies are not the way to go, as many countries doing it have failed.

Lagarde defends we should pursue globalization policies that extend the benefits of openness and integration while alleviating their side effects. How to make globalization more just is a very complex question that involves redesigning economic systems. But how? That’s the question.

Globalization is deeply connected with economic systems and markets, which, on their turn, impact and are impacted by social issues, cultural factors that are hard to overcome, regional specificities, timings of action and collaborative networks. All of this requires, on one hand, global consensus and cooperation, and on the other, country-specific solutions, apart from a good definition of the adjective “just”.

When Did Globalization Begin? The History of Globalization

For some people, this global phenomenon is inherent to human nature. Because of this, some say globalization begun about 60,000 years ago, at the beginning of human history. Throughout time, human societies’ exchanging trade has been growing. Since the old times, different civilizations have developed commercial trade routes and experienced cultural exchanges. And as well, the migratory phenomenon has also been contributing to these populational exchanges. Especially nowadays, since traveling became quicker, more comfortable, and more affordable.

This phenomenon has continued throughout history, notably through military conquests and exploration expeditions. But it wasn’t until technological advances in transportation and communication that globalization speeded up. It was particularly after the second half of the 20th century that world trades accelerated in such a dimension and speed that the term “globalization” started to be commonly used.

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Examples of Globalization (Concept Map)

Because of trade developments and financial exchanges, we often think of globalization as an economic and financial phenomenon. Nonetheless, it includes a much wider field than just flowing of goods, services or capital. Often referred to as the globalization concept map, s ome examples of globalization are:

• Economic globalization : is the development of trade systems within transnational actors such as corporations or NGOs;
• Financial globalization : can be linked with the rise of a global financial system with international financial exchanges and monetary exchanges. Stock markets, for instance, are a great example of the financially connected global world since when one stock market has a decline, it affects other markets negatively as well as the economy as a whole.
• Cultural globalization : refers to the interpenetration of cultures which, as a consequence, means nations adopt principles, beliefs, and costumes of other nations, losing their unique culture to a unique, globalized supra-culture;
• Political globalization : the development and growing influence of international organizations such as the UN or WHO means governmental action takes place at an international level. There are other bodies operating a global level such as NGOs like Doctors without borders  or Oxfam ;
• Sociological globalization : information moves almost in real-time, together with the interconnection and interdependence of events and their consequences. People move all the time too, mixing and integrating different societies;
• Technological globalization: the phenomenon by which millions of people are interconnected thanks to the power of the digital world via platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Skype or Youtube.
• Geographic globalization: is the new organization and hierarchy of different regions of the world that is constantly changing. Moreover, with transportation and flying made so easy and affordable, apart from a few countries with demanding visas, it is possible to travel the world without barely any restrictions;
• Ecological globalization: accounts for the idea of considering planet Earth as a single global entity – a common good all societies should protect since the weather affects everyone and we are all protected by the same atmosphere. To this regard, it is often said that the poorest countries that have been polluting the least will suffer the most from climate change .

The Benefits of Globalization

Globalization has benefits that cover many different areas. It reciprocally developed economies all over the world and increased cultural exchanges. It also allowed financial exchanges between companies, changing the paradigm of work. Many people are nowadays citizens of the world. The origin of goods became secondary and geographic distance is no longer a barrier for many services to happen. Let’s dig deeper.

The Engine of Globalization – An Economic Example

The most visible impacts of globalization are definitely the ones affecting the economic world. Globalization has led to a sharp increase in trade and economic exchanges, but also to a multiplication of financial exchanges.

In the 1970s world economies opened up and the development of free trade policies accelerated the globalization phenomenon. Between 1950 and 2010, world exports increased 33-fold. This significantly contributed to increasing the interactions between different regions of the world.

This acceleration of economic exchanges has led to strong global economic growth. It fostered as well a rapid global industrial development that allowed the rapid development of many of the technologies and commodities we have available nowadays.

Knowledge became easily shared and international cooperation among the brightest minds speeded things up. According to some analysts, globalization has also contributed to improving global economic conditions, creating much economic wealth (thas was, nevertheless, unequally distributed – more information ahead).

Globalization Benefits – A Financial Example

At the same time, finance also became globalized. From the 1980s, driven by neo-liberal policies, the world of finance gradually opened. Many states, particularly the US under Ronald Reagan and the UK under Margaret Thatcher introduced the famous “3D Policy”: Disintermediation, Decommissioning, Deregulation.

The idea was to simplify finance regulations, eliminate mediators and break down the barriers between the world’s financial centers. And the goal was to make it easier to exchange capital between the world’s financial players. This financial globalization has contributed to the rise of a global financial market in which contracts and capital exchanges have multiplied.

Globalization – A Cultural Example

Together with economic and financial globalization, there has obviously also been cultural globalization. Indeed, the multiplication of economic and financial exchanges has been followed by an increase in human exchanges such as migration, expatriation or traveling. These human exchanges have contributed to the development of cultural exchanges. This means that different customs and habits shared among local communities have been shared among communities that (used to) have different procedures and even different beliefs.

Good examples of cultural globalization are, for instance, the trading of commodities such as coffee or avocados. Coffee is said to be originally from Ethiopia and consumed in the Arabid region. Nonetheless, due to commercial trades after the 11th century, it is nowadays known as a globally consumed commodity. Avocados , for instance, grown mostly under the tropical temperatures of Mexico, the Dominican Republic or Peru. They started by being produced in small quantities to supply the local populations but today guacamole or avocado toasts are common in meals all over the world.

At the same time, books, movies, and music are now instantaneously available all around the world thanks to the development of the digital world and the power of the internet. These are perhaps the greatest contributors to the speed at which cultural exchanges and globalization are happening. There are also other examples of globalization regarding traditions like Black Friday in the US , the Brazilian Carnival or the Indian Holi Festival. They all were originally created following their countries’ local traditions and beliefs but as the world got to know them, they are now common traditions in other countries too.

Why Is Globalization Bad? The Negative Effects of Globalization

Globalization is a complex phenomenon. As such, it has a considerable influence on several areas of contemporary societies. Let’s take a look at some of the main negative effects globalization has had so far.

The Negative Effects of Globalization on Cultural Loss

Apart from all the benefits globalization has had on allowing cultural exchanges it also homogenized the world’s cultures. That’s why specific cultural characteristics from some countries are disappearing. From languages to traditions or even specific industries. That’s why according to UNESCO , the mix between the benefits of globalization and the protection of local culture’s uniqueness requires a careful approach.

The Economic Negative Effects of Globalization

Despite its benefits, the economic growth driven by globalization has not been done without awakening criticism. The consequences of globalization are far from homogeneous: income inequalities, disproportional wealth and trades that benefit parties differently. In the end, one of the criticisms is that some actors (countries, companies, individuals) benefit more from the phenomena of globalization, while others are sometimes perceived as the “losers” of globalization. As a matter of fact, a recent report from Oxfam says that 82% of the world’s generated wealth goes to 1% of the population.

• Related: Globally, Business And Government Lack Trust, A New Survey Shows

The Negative Effects of Globalization on the Environment

At the same time, global economic growth and industrial productivity are both the driving force and the major consequences of globalization. They also have big environmental consequences as they contribute to the depletion of natural resources, deforestation and the destruction of ecosystems and loss of biodiversity . The worldwide distribution of goods is also creating a big garbage problem, especially on what concerns plastic pollution .

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Globalization, Sustainable Development, and CSR

Globalization affects all sectors of activity to a greater or lesser extent. By doing so, its gap with issues that have to do with  sustainable development  and  corporate social responsibility  is short.

By promoting large-scale industrial production and the globalized circulation of goods, globalization is sometimes opposed to concepts such as resource savings, energy savings or the limitation of greenhouse gases . As a result, critics of globalization often argue that it contributes to accelerating climate change and that it does not respect the principles of ecology. At the same time, big companies that don’t give local jobs and choose instead to use the manpower of countries with low wages (to have lower costs) or pay taxes in countries with more favorable regulations is also opposed to the criteria of a CSR approach. Moreover, the ideologies of economic growth and the constant pursuit of productivity that come along with globalization, also make it difficult to design a sustainable economy based on  resilience .

On the other hand, globalization is also needed for the transitioning to a more sustainable world, since only a global synergy would really be able to allow a real ecological transition. Issues such as global warming indeed require a coordinated response from all global players: fight against CO2 emissions, reduction of waste, a transition to renewable energies . The same goes for ocean or air pollution, or ocean acidification, problems that can’t be solved without global action. The dissemination of green ideas also depends on the ability of committed actors to make them heard globally.

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The Road From Globalization to Regionalization

Regionalization can also be analyzed from a corporate perspective. For instance, businesses such as McDonald’s or Starbucks don’t sell exactly the same products everywhere. In some specific stores, they consider people’s regional habits. That’s why the McChicken isn’t sold in India, whereas in Portugal there’s a steak sandwich menu like the ones you can get in a typical Portuguese restaurant.

Politically speaking, when left-wing parties are in power they tend to focus on their country’s people, goods and services. Exchanges with the outside world aren’t seen as very valuable and importations are often left aside.

• Related: Why Is It Important To Support Local And Small Businesses?

Globalization Quotes by World Influencers

Many world leaders, decision-makers and influential people have spoken about globalization. Some stand out its positive benefits and others focus deeper on its negative effects. Find below some of the most interesting quotes on this issue.

Politic Globalization Quotes

Globalization quote by the former U.S President Bill Clinton ??

No generation has had the opportunity, as we now have, to build a global economy that leaves no-one behind. It is a wonderful opportunity, but also a profound responsibility.

Globalization quote by Barack Obama , former U.S. president ??

Globalization is a fact, because of technology, because of an integrated global supply chain, because of changes in transportation. And we’re not going to be able to build a wall around that.

Globalization quote by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former International Monetary Fund Managing Director ??

“We can’t speak day after day about globalization without at the same time having in mind that…we need multilateral solutions.”

Globalization quote by Stephen Harper , former Prime Minister of Canada ??

“We have to remember we’re in a global economy. The purpose of fiscal stimulus is not simply to sustain activity in our national economies but to help the global economy as well, and that’s why it’s so critical that measures in those packages avoid anything that smacks of protectionism.”

Globalization quote by Julia Gillard , Prime Minister of Australia ??

“My guiding principle is that prosperity can be shared. We can create wealth together. The global economy is not a zero-sum game.”

Other Globalization Quotes

Globalization quote by the spiritual leader Dalai Lama ??

“I find that because of modern technological evolution and our global economy, and as a result of the great increase in population, our world has greatly changed: it has become much smaller. However, our perceptions have not evolved at the same pace; we continue to cling to old national demarcations and the old feelings of ‘us’ and ‘them’.”

The famous German sociologist Ulrich Beck also spoke of globalization ??

“Globalization is not only something that will concern and threaten us in the future, but something that is taking place in the present and to which we must first open our eyes.”

Globalization quote by Bill Gates, owner and former CEO of Microsoft ??

“The fact is that as living standards have risen around the world, world trade has been the mechanism allowing poor countries to increasingly take care of really basic needs, things like vaccination.”

Globalization quote by John Lennon, member of the music band The Beatles ??

Imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for. And no religion, too. Imagine all the people. Living life in peace. You, you may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one. I hope someday you will join us. And the world will be as one

What Is Globalization?

Explore examples of globalization to understand the benefits and challenges of our increasingly interconnected world in this video.

What are the effects of globalization?

We live in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world. The growing interdependence of the world’s economies, cultures and populations—or "globalization"—touches every part of our lives, from the products we buy to the food we eat to the ways we communicate with one another. Globalization is also tied to some of the other biggest issues we face in the modern era, including climate change , trade , terrorism , and the spread of deadly diseases.

The intertwining of countries and markets all over the world has both benefits and downsides, so policies that support integration have both proponents and detractors. No matter which side you’re on, globalization is simply a reality of modern life; therefore, it’s important to understand how it affects us and the choices we make.

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• Globalisation Essay

Essay on Globalisation

Globalization means the integration of economies and societies through the flow of information, ideas, technology, goods, services, capital, finance, and people. The true meaning of Globalization in a broad sense is connecting in all areas of human life. It is the process by which other companies or organizations enhance their international reputation or start operating internationally. 

Globalization began thousands of years ago when people and companies bought and sold in distant lands. In the Middle Ages, Central Asia was connected to China and Europe via the famous Silk Road. After World War II and the last two decades, governments of many countries have adopted free-market economies. They have greatly increased their own production potential and created countless new opportunities for international trade and investment. New routes and means to transport goods have been discovered, which has allowed the people to expand their business easily and efficiently. 

The government has reduced all trade barriers and concluded new international agreements to promote trade in goods, services and investment. This profitable action has created opportunities for international trade. In foreign markets, companies with these new opportunities set up new factories and establish production and marketing relationships with foreign partners. Hence, Globalization is defined as an international industrial and financial enterprise.

Overview of Globalization

Globalization means the assimilation of economics and societies through the flow of information, ideas, technologies, goods, services, capital, finance, and people. The real meaning of Globalization in a broad sense is connectivity in all aspects of human life. It is the process where the businesses or other organizations expand international authority or start operating on an international scale.

How the Existence of Globalization Came Into Being?

Globalization had started many thousands of years ago when people and corporations were buying and selling across lands at great distances. In the middle age, Central Asia connected with China and Europe through the famed Silk Road. After the Second World War II and during the last two decades, the governments of many countries have adopted free-market economic systems. They increased their own productive potential immensely and created innumerable new opportunities for international trade and investment.

The governments have reduced all barriers to commerce and established new international agreements to promote trade in goods, services and investments. These beneficial measures gave rise to opportunities for global trade. With these new opportunities in the foreign markets, corporations established new factories and started production and marketing alliances with foreign partners. Hence, Globalization is defined as an international industrial and financial business structure.

Advantages and Disadvantages

The frontiers of the state with increased confidence in the market economy and renewed policies in the private capital and resources, a process of structural adjustment spurred by the studies and with the support of the World Bank and other international organizations have started in many of the developing countries. Globalization has also brought in new opportunities to developing countries. Greater access to developed country markets and technology transfer has promised to improve their productivity and higher standards. 

At the same time, Globalization has also created challenges like growing inequality across and within nations, instability in the financial market and environmental deterioration. Globalization is a fascinating exhibition that can be understood as a global system of competition and connectivity. It has created tough competition among countries and global corporations.

Impact of Globalization in India

The British Colonial rule had destroyed the self-sufficient economy of India and left India to be the poorest Independent country. Our first Prime Minister gave preference to a mixed economy to boost the economic condition of the country. Public sectors were set up along with the private enterprises, but because of the socialistic model of the economy, the new strategy did not produce profitable results. Due to this, a number of public sectors became sick and the growth rates of production began to fall. 

During that time, the poverty of the people in India was increasing at an alarming rate and because of low domestic savings and acute balance of payment crisis, there was no adequate capital for investment. During that time of crisis, Prime Minister PV Narsimha Rao introduced the policy of liberalization, privatization to overcome the financial situation. 

India opened up to Globalization after the economic policy of 1991 came into force. Mounting debts and pressure from the International Monetary Fund drove the nation to go global. The process of Globalization has been an integral part of the recent economic growth of India. Globalization has played a very significant role in the growth of export, leading to the expansion of the job market in India. One of the major sectors of Globalization in India has been in the growth of outsourced IT and Business Process Outsourcing services. There has been an incredible increase in the number of skilled professionals in India employed by domestic and foreign companies to cater service to the customers globally, especially in the USA and Europe. 

There was not a doubt that Globalization in India brought a monumental change in the living standards of the people. People in India realized many benefits from Globalization. The establishment of multinational companies generating billions of jobs and access to umpteen numbers of brands and an increase in the forex reserves of the country took India to a higher platform globally. Despite this monumental change in the economy of the country, India also faced the challenges of severe competition from the foreign market and the domestic producers started fearing marginalization and pulverization because of the better quality products produced by the foreign producers.

Globalization had both desirable and undesirable consequences for India and the world. Even though it has accelerated progress in some countries, it has also widened the gap between the rich and the poor.

The impact of Globalization has been both positive and negative on the entire world, but we can surely hope for more advancement in the global economy due to this process.

FAQs on Globalisation Essay

1. How Did Globalization Help India to Improve the Economic Conditions?

Globalization generated umpteen employment opportunities for the people of India by establishing multinational companies. The policy of liberalization and privatization invited foreign traders to do business with India. This has increased the inflow of men, money, material, labor, technology, etc., from foreign countries to India. People have access to foreign brands and the living standards have improved drastically.

2. How is Globalization a Threat to Domestic Producers?

The domestic producers fear marginalization and pulverization because of the entry of foreign and better quality products.

3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of Globalization?

With increasing confidence in market economies and new policies on private capital and resources, many developing countries are beginning to adapt to developments with the support of the World Bank and other international institutions involved in research and development. Globalization also offers new opportunities for developing countries. Greater access to markets in developed countries and the transfer of technology will increase their productivity and demand.

At the same time, Globalization has created challenges such as increasing inequality between and within countries, instability of financial markets and environmental degradation. Globalization is an interesting exhibition that can also be seen as a system of competition and international relations. This has created intense competition between countries and international companies. 

4. What do you mean by Globalization?

Globalization means the integration of economies and societies through the flow of information, ideas, technology, goods, services, capital, finance, and people. The true meaning of Globalization in a broad sense is a connectedness in all areas of human life. It is the process by which other companies or organizations enhance their international reputation or start operating internationally. Globalization has its own benefits and drawbacks. We can learn more about Globalization and how to write an essay on it in detail on the Vedantu website, which has all the necessary materials that students need in order to write an essay on Globalization. 

5. How can Globalization help India improve its economic situation?

In our present times, Globalization has been a boon to many people as it not only allows companies to expand their business but also makes things accessible for everyone. In a simple sense, we can say that it helps in connecting people with the world. Globalization has created many job opportunities in India through the creation of multinational companies. Policies of liberalization and privatization have encouraged foreign traders to trade with India. This has increased the number of people, money, materials, labor, technology and so on—inflows from abroad to India. People have access to foreign brands and the standard of living has improved significantly.

6. How does Globalization threaten domestic producers?

Domestic producers are afraid of marginalization and due to the entry of foreign and better quality products into the market. Globalization can be associated with increasing income and wealth inequality. Many of the world's poorest people lack access to basic technologies and public goods. They are excluded from treatment. Some critics of globalization point to the loss of economic and cultural diversity as international multinational giants and brands dominate domestic markets in many countries. Globalization can hinder competition if international companies with dominant brands and high technology gain a foothold in key markets, be it telecommunications, the automotive industry, and so on.

7. What are the main industries that have grown tremendously because of Globalization?

The integration of national economies into the global economy is one of the most important developments of the last century. This process of integration, often referred to as Globalization, has manifested itself in a tremendous increase in cross-border trade.

The outsourcing business has grown exponentially due to Globalization. The main industries resulting from Globalization are trade and commerce. Automobile companies, clothing manufacturers and transportation, are the three main industries taken over as a result of Globalization.

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Globalization

Covering a wide range of distinct political, economic, and cultural trends, the term “globalization” remains crucial to contemporary political and academic debate. In contemporary popular discourse, globalization often functions as little more than a synonym for one or more of the following phenomena: the pursuit of classical liberal (or “free market”) policies in the world economy (“economic liberalization”), the growing dominance of western (or even American) forms of political, economic, and cultural life (“westernization” or “Americanization”), a global political order built on liberal notions of international law (the “global liberal order”), an ominous network of top-down rule by global elites (“globalism” or “global technocracy”), the proliferation of new information technologies (the “Internet Revolution”), as well as the notion that humanity stands at the threshold of realizing one single unified community in which major sources of social conflict have vanished (“global integration”). Globalization is a politically-contested phenomenon about which there are significant disagreements and struggles, with many nationalist and populist movements and leaders worldwide (including Turkey’s Recep Erdoğan, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and former US President Donald Trump) pushing back against what they view as its unappealing features.

Fortunately, recent social theory has formulated a more precise concept of globalization than those typically offered by politicians and pundits. Although sharp differences continue to separate participants in the ongoing debate about the term, most contemporary social theorists endorse the view that globalization refers to fundamental changes in the spatial and temporal contours of social existence, according to which the significance of space or territory undergoes shifts in the face of a no less dramatic acceleration in the temporal structure of crucial forms of human activity. Geographical distance is typically measured in time. As the time necessary to connect distinct geographical locations is reduced, distance or space undergoes compression or “annihilation.” The human experience of space is intimately connected to the temporal structure of those activities by means of which we experience space. Changes in the temporality of human activity inevitably generate altered experiences of space or territory. Theorists of globalization disagree about the precise sources of recent shifts in the spatial and temporal contours of human life. Nonetheless, they generally agree that alterations in humanity’s experiences of space and time are working to undermine the importance of local and even national boundaries in many arenas of human endeavor. Since globalization contains far-reaching implications for virtually every facet of human life, it necessarily suggests the need to rethink key questions of normative political theory.

1. Globalization in the History of Ideas

2. globalization in contemporary social theory, 3. the normative challenges of globalization, other internet resources, related entries.

The term globalization has only become commonplace in the last three decades, and academic commentators who employed the term as late as the 1970s accurately recognized the novelty of doing so (Modelski 1972). At least since the advent of industrial capitalism, however, intellectual discourse has been replete with allusions to phenomena strikingly akin to those that have garnered the attention of recent theorists of globalization. Nineteenth and twentieth-century philosophy, literature, and social commentary include numerous references to an inchoate yet widely shared awareness that experiences of distance and space are inevitably transformed by the emergence of high-speed forms of transportation (for example, rail and air travel) and communication (the telegraph or telephone) that dramatically heighten possibilities for human interaction across existing geographical and political divides (Harvey 1989; Kern 1983). Long before the introduction of the term globalization into recent popular and scholarly debate, the appearance of novel high-speed forms of social activity generated extensive commentary about the compression of space.

Writing in 1839, an English journalist commented on the implications of rail travel by anxiously postulating that as distance was “annihilated, the surface of our country would, as it were, shrivel in size until it became not much bigger than one immense city” (Harvey 1996, 242). A few years later, Heinrich Heine, the émigré German-Jewish poet, captured this same experience when he noted: “space is killed by the railways. I feel as if the mountains and forests of all countries were advancing on Paris. Even now, I can smell the German linden trees; the North Sea’s breakers are rolling against my door” (Schivelbusch 1978, 34). Another young German émigré, the socialist theorist Karl Marx, in 1848 formulated the first theoretical explanation of the sense of territorial compression that so fascinated his contemporaries. In Marx’s account, the imperatives of capitalist production inevitably drove the bourgeoisie to “nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, and establish connections everywhere.” The juggernaut of industrial capitalism constituted the most basic source of technologies resulting in the annihilation of space, helping to pave the way for “intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of nations,” in contrast to a narrow-minded provincialism that had plagued humanity for untold eons (Marx 1848, 476). Despite their ills as instruments of capitalist exploitation, Marx argued, new technologies that increased possibilities for human interaction across borders ultimately represented a progressive force in history. They provided the necessary infrastructure for a cosmopolitan future socialist civilization, while simultaneously functioning in the present as indispensable organizational tools for a working class destined to undertake a revolution no less oblivious to traditional territorial divisions than the system of capitalist exploitation it hoped to dismantle.

European intellectuals have hardly been alone in their fascination with the experience of territorial compression, as evinced by the key role played by the same theme in early twentieth-century American thought. In 1904, the literary figure Henry Adams diagnosed the existence of a “law of acceleration,” fundamental to the workings of social development, in order to make sense of the rapidly changing spatial and temporal contours of human activity. Modern society could only be properly understood if the seemingly irrepressible acceleration of basic technological and social processes was given a central place in social and historical analysis (Adams 1931 [1904]). John Dewey argued in 1927 that recent economic and technological trends implied the emergence of a “new world” no less noteworthy than the opening up of America to European exploration and conquest in 1492. For Dewey, the invention of steam, electricity, and the telephone offered formidable challenges to relatively static and homogeneous forms of local community life that had long represented the main theatre for most human activity. Economic activity increasingly exploded the confines of local communities to a degree that would have stunned our historical predecessors, for example, while the steamship, railroad, automobile, and air travel considerably intensified rates of geographical mobility. Dewey went beyond previous discussions of the changing temporal and spatial contours of human activity, however, by suggesting that the compression of space posed fundamental questions for democracy. Dewey observed that small-scale political communities (for example, the New England township), a crucial site for the exercise of effective democratic participation, seemed ever more peripheral to the great issues of an interconnected world. Increasingly dense networks of social ties across borders rendered local forms of self-government ineffective. Dewey wondered, “How can a public be organized, we may ask, when literally it does not stay in place?” (Dewey 1927, 140). To the extent that democratic citizenship minimally presupposes the possibility of action in concert with others, how might citizenship be sustained in a social world subject to ever more astonishing possibilities for movement and mobility? New high-speed technologies attributed a shifting and unstable character to social life, as demonstrated by increased rates of change and turnover in many arenas of activity (most important perhaps, the economy) directly affected by them, and the relative fluidity and inconstancy of social relations there. If citizenship requires some modicum of constancy and stability in social life, however, did not recent changes in the temporal and spatial conditions of human activity bode poorly for political participation? How might citizens come together and act in concert when contemporary society’s “mania for motion and speed” made it difficult for them even to get acquainted with one another, let alone identify objects of common concern? (Dewey 1927, 140).

The unabated proliferation of high-speed technologies is probably the main source of the numerous references in intellectual life since 1950 to the annihilation of distance. The Canadian cultural critic Marshall McLuhan made the theme of a technologically based “global village,” generated by social “acceleration at all levels of human organization,” the centerpiece of an anxiety-ridden analysis of new media technologies in the 1960s (McLuhan 1964, 103). Arguing in the 1970s and 1980s that recent shifts in the spatial and temporal contours of social life exacerbated authoritarian political trends, the French social critic Paul Virilio seemed to confirm many of Dewey’s darkest worries about the decay of democracy. According to his analysis, the high-speed imperatives of modern warfare and weapons systems strengthened the executive and debilitated representative legislatures. The compression of territory thereby paved the way for executive-centered emergency government (Virilio 1977). But it was probably the German philosopher Martin Heidegger who most clearly anticipated contemporary debates about globalization. Heidegger not only described the “abolition of distance” as a constitutive feature of our contemporary condition, but he linked recent shifts in spatial experience to no less fundamental alterations in the temporality of human activity: “All distances in time and space are shrinking. Man now reaches overnight, by places, places which formerly took weeks and months of travel” (Heidegger 1950, 165). Heidegger also accurately prophesied that new communication and information technologies would soon spawn novel possibilities for dramatically extending the scope of virtual reality : “Distant sites of the most ancient cultures are shown on film as if they stood this very moment amidst today’s street traffic…The peak of this abolition of every possibility of remoteness is reached by television, which will soon pervade and dominate the whole machinery of communication” (Heidegger 1950, 165). Heidegger’s description of growing possibilities for simultaneity and instantaneousness in human experience ultimately proved no less apprehensive than the views of many of his predecessors. In his analysis, the compression of space increasingly meant that from the perspective of human experience “everything is equally far and equally near.” Instead of opening up new possibilities for rich and multi-faceted interaction with events once distant from the purview of most individuals, the abolition of distance tended to generate a “uniform distanceless” in which fundamentally distinct objects became part of a bland homogeneous experiential mass (Heidegger 1950, 166). The loss of any meaningful distinction between “nearness” and “distance” contributed to a leveling down of human experience, which in turn spawned an indifference that rendered human experience monotonous and one-dimensional.

Since the mid-1980s, social theorists have moved beyond the relatively underdeveloped character of previous reflections on the compression or annihilation of space to offer a rigorous conception of globalization. To be sure, major disagreements remain about the precise nature of the causal forces behind globalization, with David Harvey (1989 1996) building directly on Marx’s pioneering explanation of globalization, while others (Giddens 19990; Held, McGrew, Goldblatt & Perraton 1999) question the exclusive focus on economic factors characteristic of the Marxist approach. Nonetheless, a consensus about the basic rudiments of the concept of globalization appears to be emerging.

First, recent analysts associate globalization with deterritorialization , according to which a growing variety of social activities takes place irrespective of the geographical location of participants. As Jan Aart Scholte observes, “global events can – via telecommunication, digital computers, audiovisual media, rocketry and the like – occur almost simultaneously anywhere and everywhere in the world” (Scholte 1996, 45). Globalization refers to increased possibilities for action between and among people in situations where latitudinal and longitudinal location seems immaterial to the social activity at hand. Even though geographical location remains crucial for many undertakings (for example, farming to satisfy the needs of a local market), deterritorialization manifests itself in many social spheres. Business people on different continents now engage in electronic commerce; academics make use of the latest Internet conferencing equipment to organize seminars in which participants are located at disparate geographical locations; the Internet allows people to communicate instantaneously with each other notwithstanding vast geographical distances separating them. Territory in the sense of a traditional sense of a geographically identifiable location no longer constitutes the whole of “social space” in which human activity takes places. In this initial sense of the term, globalization refers to the spread of new forms of non-territorial social activity (Ruggie 1993; Scholte 2000).

Second, theorists conceive of globalization as linked to the growth of social interconnectedness across existing geographical and political boundaries. In this view, deterritorialization is a crucial facet of globalization. Yet an exclusive focus on it would be misleading. Since the vast majority of human activities is still tied to a concrete geographical location, the more decisive facet of globalization concerns the manner in which distant events and forces impact on local and regional endeavors (Tomlinson 1999, 9). For example, this encyclopedia might be seen as an example of a deterritorialized social space since it allows for the exchange of ideas in cyberspace. The only prerequisite for its use is access to the Internet. Although substantial inequalities in Internet access still exist, use of the encyclopedia is in principle unrelated to any specific geographical location. However, the reader may very well be making use of the encyclopedia as a supplement to course work undertaken at a school or university. That institution is not only located at a specific geographical juncture, but its location is probably essential for understanding many of its key attributes: the level of funding may vary according to the state or region where the university is located, or the same academic major might require different courses and readings at a university in China, for example, than in Argentina or Norway. Globalization refers to those processes whereby geographically distant events and decisions impact to a growing degree on “local” university life. For example, the insistence by powerful political leaders in wealthy countries that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or World Bank recommend to Latin and South American countries that they commit themselves to a particular set of economic policies might result in poorly paid teachers and researchers as well as large, understaffed lecture classes in São Paolo or Lima; the latest innovations in information technology from a computer research laboratory in India could quickly change the classroom experience of students in British Columbia or Tokyo. Globalization refers “to processes of change which underpin a transformation in the organization of human affairs by linking together and expanding human activity across regions and continents” (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt & Perraton 1999, 15). Globalization in this sense is a matter of degree since any given social activity might influence events more or less faraway: even though a growing number of activities seems intermeshed with events in distant continents, certain human activities remain primarily local or regional in scope. Also, the magnitude and impact of the activity might vary: geographically removed events could have a relatively minimal or a far more extensive influence on events at a particular locality. Finally, we might consider the degree to which interconnectedness across frontiers is no longer merely haphazard but instead predictable and regularized (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt & Perraton 1999).

Third, globalization must also include reference to the speed or velocity of social activity. Deterritorialization and interconnectedness initially seem chiefly spatial in nature. Yet it is easy to see how these spatial shifts are directly tied to the acceleration of crucial forms of social activity. As we observed above in our discussion of the conceptual forerunners to the present-day debate on globalization, the proliferation of high-speed transportation, communication, and information technologies constitutes the most immediate source for the blurring of geographical and territorial boundaries that prescient observers have diagnosed at least since the mid-nineteenth century. The compression of space presupposes rapid-fire forms of technology; shifts in our experiences of territory depend on concomitant changes in the temporality of human action. High-speed technology only represents the tip of the iceberg, however. The linking together and expanding of social activities across borders is predicated on the possibility of relatively fast flows and movements of people, information, capital, and goods. Without these fast flows, it is difficult to see how distant events could possibly posses the influence they now enjoy. High-speed technology plays a pivotal role in the velocity of human affairs. But many other factors contribute to the overall pace and speed of social activity. The organizational structure of the modern capitalist factory offers one example; certain contemporary habits and inclinations, including the “mania for motion and speed” described by Dewey, represent another. Deterritorialization and the expansion of interconnectedness are intimately tied to the acceleration of social life, while social acceleration itself takes many different forms (Eriksen 2001; Rosa 2013). Here as well, we can easily see why globalization is always a matter of degree. The velocity or speed of flows, movements, and interchanges across borders can vary no less than their magnitude, impact, or regularity.

Fourth, even though analysts disagree about the causal forces that generate globalization, most agree that globalization should be conceived as a relatively long-term process . The triad of deterritorialization, interconnectedness, and social acceleration hardly represents a sudden or recent event in contemporary social life. Globalization is a constitutive feature of the modern world, and modern history includes many examples of globalization (Giddens 1990). As we saw above, nineteenth-century thinkers captured at least some of its core features; the compression of territoriality composed an important element of their lived experience. Nonetheless, some contemporary theorists believe that globalization has taken a particularly intense form in recent decades, as innovations in communication, transportation, and information technologies (for example, computerization) have generated stunning new possibilities for simultaneity and instantaneousness (Harvey 1989). In this view, present-day intellectual interest in the problem of globalization can be linked directly to the emergence of new high-speed technologies that tend to minimize the significance of distance and heighten possibilities for deterritorialization and social interconnectedness. Although the intense sense of territorial compression experienced by so many of our contemporaries is surely reminiscent of the experiences of earlier generations, some contemporary writers nonetheless argue that it would be mistaken to obscure the countless ways in which ongoing transformations of the spatial and temporal contours of human experience are especially far-reaching. While our nineteenth-century predecessors understandably marveled at the railroad or the telegraph, a comparatively vast array of social activities is now being transformed by innovations that accelerate social activity and considerably deepen longstanding trends towards deterritorialization and social interconnectedness. To be sure, the impact of deterritorialization, social interconnectedness, and social acceleration are by no means universal or uniform: migrant workers engaging in traditional forms of low-wage agricultural labor in the fields of southern California, for example, probably operate in a different spatial and temporal context than the Internet entrepreneurs of San Francisco or Seattle. Distinct assumptions about space and time often coexist uneasily during a specific historical juncture (Gurvitch 1964). Nonetheless, the impact of recent technological innovations is profound, and even those who do not have a job directly affected by the new technology are shaped by it in innumerable ways as citizens and consumers (Eriksen 2001, 16).

Fifth, globalization should be understood as a multi-pronged process, since deterritorialization, social interconnectedness, and acceleration manifest themselves in many different (economic, political, and cultural) arenas of social activity. Although each facet of globalization is linked to the core components of globalization described above, each consists of a complex and relatively autonomous series of empirical developments, requiring careful examination in order to disclose the causal mechanisms specific to it (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt & Perraton 1999). Each manifestation of globalization also generates distinct conflicts and dislocations. For example, there is substantial empirical evidence that cross-border flows and exchanges (of goods, people, information, etc.), as well as the emergence of directly transnational forms of production by means of which a single commodity is manufactured simultaneously in distant corners of the globe, are gaining in prominence (Castells 1996). High-speed technologies and organizational approaches are employed by transnationally operating firms, the so-called “global players,” with great effectiveness. The emergence of “around-the-world, around-the-clock” financial markets, where major cross-border financial transactions are made in cyberspace at the blink of an eye, represents a familiar example of the economic face of globalization. Global financial markets also challenge traditional attempts by liberal democratic nation-states to rein in the activities of bankers, spawning understandable anxieties about the growing power and influence of financial markets over democratically elected representative institutions. In political life, globalization takes a distinct form, though the general trends towards deterritorialization, interconnectedness across borders, and the acceleration of social activity are fundamental here as well. Transnational movements, in which activists employ rapid-fire communication technologies to join forces across borders in combating ills that seem correspondingly transnational in scope (for example, the depletion of the ozone layer), offer an example of political globalization (Tarrow 2005). Another would be the tendency towards ambitious supranational forms of social and economic lawmaking and regulation, where individual nation-states cooperate to pursue regulation whose jurisdiction transcends national borders no less than the cross-border economic processes that undermine traditional modes of nation state-based regulation. Political scientists typically describe such supranational organizations (the European Union, for example, or United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA) as important manifestations of political and legal globalization. The proliferation of supranational organizations has been no less conflict-laden than economic globalization, however. Critics insist that local, regional, and national forms of self-government are being supplanted by insufficiently democratic forms of global governance remote from the needs of ordinary citizens (Maus 2006; Streeck 2016). In contrast, defenders describe new forms of supranational legal and political decision as indispensable forerunners to more inclusive and advanced forms of self-government, even as they worry about existing democratic deficits and technocratic traits (Habermas 2015).

The wide-ranging impact of globalization on human existence means that it necessarily touches on many basic philosophical and political-theoretical questions. At a minimum, globalization suggests that academic philosophers in the rich countries of the West should pay closer attention to the neglected voices and intellectual traditions of peoples with whom our fate is intertwined in ever more intimate ways (Dallmayr 1998). In this section, however, we focus exclusively on the immediate challenges posed by globalization to normative political theory.

Western political theory has traditionally presupposed the existence of territorially bound communities, whose borders can be more or less neatly delineated from those of other communities. In this vein, the influential liberal political philosopher John Rawls described bounded communities whose fundamental structure consisted of “self-sufficient schemes of cooperation for all the essential purposes of human life” (Rawls 1993, 301). Although political and legal thinkers historically have exerted substantial energy in formulating defensible normative models of relations between states (Nardin and Mapel 1992), like Rawls they typically have relied on a clear delineation of “domestic” from “foreign” affairs. In addition, they have often argued that the domestic arena represents a normatively privileged site, since fundamental normative ideals and principles (for example, liberty or justice) are more likely to be successfully realized in the domestic arena than in relations among states. According to one influential strand within international relations theory, relations between states are more-or-less lawless. Since the achievement of justice or democracy, for example, presupposes an effective political sovereign, the lacuna of sovereignty at the global level means that justice and democracy are necessarily incomplete and probably unattainable there. In this conventional realist view of international politics, core features of the modern system of sovereign states relegate the pursuit of western political thought’s most noble normative goals primarily to the domestic arena (Mearsheimer 2003.) Significantly, some prominent mid-century proponents of international realism rejected this position’s deep hostility to international law and supranational political organization, in part because they presciently confronted challenges that we now typically associate with intensified globalization (Scheuerman 2011).

Globalization poses a fundamental challenge to each of these traditional assumptions. It is no longer self-evident that nation-states can be described as “self-sufficient schemes of cooperation for all the essential purposes of human life” in the context of intense deterritorialization and the spread and intensification of social relations across borders. The idea of a bounded community seems suspect given recent shifts in the spatio-temporal contours of human life. Even the most powerful and privileged political units are now subject to increasingly deterritorialized activities (for example, global financial markets or digitalized mass communication) over which they have limited control, and they find themselves nested in webs of social relations whose scope explodes the confines of national borders. Of course, in much of human history social relations have transcended existing political divides. However, globalization implies a profound quantitative increase in and intensification of social relations of this type. While attempts to offer a clear delineation of the “domestic” from the “foreign” probably made sense at an earlier juncture in history, this distinction no longer accords with core developmental trends in many arenas of social activity. As the possibility of a clear division between domestic and foreign affairs dissipates, the traditional tendency to picture the domestic arena as a privileged site for the realization of normative ideals and principles becomes problematic as well. As an empirical matter, the decay of the domestic-foreign frontier seems highly ambivalent, since it might easily pave the way for the decay of the more attractive attributes of domestic political life: as “foreign” affairs collapse inward onto “domestic” political life, the insufficiently lawful contours of the former make disturbing inroads onto the latter (Scheuerman 2004). As a normative matter, however, the disintegration of the domestic-foreign divide probably calls for us to consider, to a greater extent than ever before, how our fundamental normative commitments about political life can be effectively achieved on a global scale. If we take the principles of justice or democracy seriously, for example, it is no longer self-evident that the domestic arena is the exclusive or perhaps even main site for their pursuit, since domestic and foreign affairs are now deeply and irrevocably intermeshed. In a globalizing world, the lack of democracy or justice in the global setting necessarily impacts deeply on the pursuit of justice or democracy at home. Indeed, it may no longer be possible to achieve our normative ideals at home without undertaking to do so transnationally as well.

To claim, for example, that questions of distributive justice have no standing in the making of foreign affairs represents at best empirical naivete about economic globalization. At worst, it constitutes a disingenuous refusal to grapple with the fact that the material existence of those fortunate enough to live in the rich countries is inextricably tied to the material status of the vast majority of humanity residing in poor and underdeveloped regions. Growing material inequality spawned by economic globalization is linked to growing domestic material inequality in the rich democracies (Falk 1999; Pogge 2002). Similarly, in the context of global warming and the destruction of the ozone layer, a dogmatic insistence on the sanctity of national sovereignty risks constituting a cynical fig leaf for irresponsible activities whose impact extends well beyond the borders of those countries most directly responsible. Global warming and ozone-depletion cry out for ambitious forms of transnational cooperation and regulation, and the refusal by the rich democracies to accept this necessity implies a failure to take the process of globalization seriously when doing so conflicts with their immediate material interests. Although it might initially seem to be illustrative of clever Realpolitik on the part of the culpable nations to ward off strict cross-border environmental regulation, their stubbornness is probably short-sighted: global warming and ozone depletion will affect the children of Americans who drive gas-guzzling SUVs or use environmentally unsound air-conditioning as well as the future generations of South Africa or Afghanistan (Cerutti 2007). If we keep in mind that environmental degradation probably impacts negatively on democratic politics (for example, by undermining its legitimacy and stability), the failure to pursue effective transnational environmental regulation potentially undermines democracy at home as well as abroad.

Philosophers and political theorists have eagerly addressed the normative and political implications of our globalizing world. A lively debate about the possibility of achieving justice at the global level pits representatives of cosmopolitanism against myriad communitarians, nationalists, realists, and others who privilege the nation-state and moral, political, and social ties resting on it (Lieven 2020; Tamir 2019). In contrast, cosmopolitans tend to underscore our universal obligations to those who reside faraway and with whom we may share little in the way of language, custom, or culture, oftentimes arguing that claims to “justice at home” can and should be applied elsewhere as well (Beardsworth 2011; Beitz 1999; Caney 2006; Wallace-Brown & Held 2010). In this way, cosmopolitanism builds directly on the universalistic impulses of modern moral and political thought. Cosmopolitanism’s critics dispute the view that our obligations to foreigners possess the same status as those to members of particular local and national communities of which we remain very much a part. They by no means deny the need to redress global inequality, for example, but they often express skepticism in the face of cosmopolitanism’s tendency to defend significant legal and political reforms as necessary to address the inequities of a planet where millions of people a year die of starvation or curable diseases (Miller 2007; 2013; Nagel 2005). Nor do cosmopolitanism’s critics necessarily deny that the process of globalization is real, though some of them suggest that its impact has been grossly exaggerated (Kymlicka 1999; Nussbaum et al . 1996; Streeck 2016). Nonetheless, they doubt that humanity has achieved a rich or sufficiently articulated sense of a common fate such that far-reaching attempts to achieve greater global justice (for example, substantial redistribution from the rich to poor) could prove successful. Cosmopolitans not only counter with a flurry of universalist and egalitarian moral arguments, but they also accuse their opponents of obscuring the threat posed by globalization to the particular forms of national community whose ethical primacy communitarians, nationalists, and others endorse. From the cosmopolitan perspective, the tendency to favor moral and political obligations to fellow members of the nation-state represents a misguided and increasingly reactionary nostalgia for a rapidly decaying constellation of political practices and institutions.

A similar divide characterizes the ongoing debate about the prospects of democratic institutions at the global level. In a cosmopolitan mode, Daniele Archibugi (2008) and the late David Held (1995) have argued that globalization requires the extension of liberal democratic institutions (including the rule of law and elected representative institutions) to the transnational level. Nation state-based liberal democracy is poorly equipped to deal with deleterious side effects of present-day globalization such as ozone depletion or burgeoning material inequality. In addition, a growing array of genuinely transnational forms of activity calls out for correspondingly transnational modes of liberal democratic decision-making. According to this model, “local” or “national” matters should remain under the auspices of existing liberal democratic institutions. But in those areas where deterritorialization and social interconnectedness across national borders are especially striking, new transnational institutions (for example, cross-border referenda), along with a dramatic strengthening and further democratization of existing forms of supranational authority (in particular, the United Nations), are necessary if we are to assure that popular sovereignty remains an effective principle. In the same spirit, cosmopolitans debate whether a loose system of global “governance” suffices, or instead cosmopolitan ideals require something along the lines of a global “government” or state (Cabrera 2011; Scheuerman 2014). Jürgen Habermas, a prominent cosmopolitan-minded theorist, has tried to formulate a defense of the European Union that conceives of it as a key stepping stone towards supranational democracy. If the EU is to help succeed in salvaging the principle of popular sovereignty in a world where the decay of nation state-based democracy makes democracy vulnerable, the EU will need to strengthen its elected representative organs and better guarantee the civil, political, and social and economic rights of all Europeans (Habermas 2001, 58–113; 2009). Representing a novel form of postnational constitutionalism, it potentially offers some broader lessons for those hoping to save democratic constitutionalism under novel global conditions. Despite dire threats to the EU posed by nationalist and populist movements, Habermas and other cosmopolitan-minded intellectuals believe that it can be effectively reformed and preserved (Habermas 2012).

In opposition to Archibugi, Held, Habermas, and other cosmopolitans, skeptics underscore the purportedly utopian character of such proposals, arguing that democratic politics presupposes deep feelings of trust, commitment, and belonging that remain uncommon at the postnational and global levels. Largely non-voluntary commonalities of belief, history, and custom compose necessary preconditions of any viable democracy, and since these commonalities are missing beyond the sphere of the nation-state, global or cosmopolitan democracy is doomed to fail (Archibugi, Held, and Koehler 1998; Lieven 2020). Critics inspired by realist international theory argue that cosmopolitanism obscures the fundamentally pluralistic, dynamic, and conflictual nature of political life on our divided planet. Notwithstanding its pacific self-understanding, cosmopolitan democracy inadvertently opens the door to new and even more horrible forms of political violence. Cosmpolitanism’s universalistic normative discourse not only ignores the harsh and unavoidably agonistic character of political life, but it also tends to serve as a convenient ideological cloak for terrible wars waged by political blocs no less self-interested than the traditional nation state (Zolo 1997, 24).

Ongoing political developments suggest that such debates are of more than narrow scholarly interest. Until recently, some of globalization’s key prongs seemed destined to transform human affairs in seemingly permanent ways: economic globalization, as well as the growth of a panoply of international and global political and legal institutions, continued to transpire at a rapid rate. Such institutional developments, it should be noted, were interpreted by some cosmopolitan theorists as broadly corroborating their overall normative aspirations. With the resurgence of nationalist and populist political movements, many of which diffusely (and sometimes misleadingly) target elements of globalization, globalization’s future prospects seem increasingly uncertain. For example, with powerful political leaders regularly making disdainful remarks about the UN and EU, it seems unclear whether one of globalization’s most striking features, i.e., enhanced political and legal decision-making “beyond the nation state,” will continue unabated. Tragically perhaps, the failure to manage economic globalization so as to minimize avoidable inequalities and injustices has opened the door to a nationalist and populist backlash, with many people now ready to embrace politicians and movements promising to push back against “free trade,” relatively porous borders (for migrants and refugees), and other manifestations of globalization (Stiglitz 2018). Even if it seems unlikely that nationalists or populists can succeed in fully halting, let alone reversing, structural trends towards deterritorialization, intensified interconnectedness, and social acceleration, they may manage to reshape them in ways that cosmopolitans are likely to find alarming. Whether or not nationalists and populists can successfully respond to many fundamental global challenges (e.g., climate change or nuclear proliferation), however, remains far less likely.

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Globalization: A Resource Guide

Defining globalization.

• Introduction
• Historical Analysis
• History of International Economics & Trade
• History of International Finance & Global Markets
• Elements of Globalization
• Trends in Globalization
• Globalization and Pandemics
• Organizations & Research Institutions
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Literature about globalization is produced by sociologists, political theorists, economists, historians, anthropologists, and journalists. Globalization is a term variously employed, even by experts within a single discipline. There is substantial debate, not only about its definition, but also about its significance, and how it shapes our world. Most agree that globalization rests upon, or simply is, the growth in international exchange of goods, services, and capital, and the increasing levels of integration that characterize economic activity. In this sense, globalization, is only another word for internationalization. Importantly, it is economic activity that is fuel and furnace of cross-border integration.

Listed below are books and online resources that help researchers understand globalization and related concepts. The following materials link to fuller bibliographic information in the  Library of Congress Online Catalog . Links to digital content are provided when available.

The following internet resources provide further definition of the topic of globalization.

• Globalization (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) External An online encyclopedia that provides a comprehensive analysis on the history of globalization, covering: 1. Globalization in the History of Ideas; 2. Globalization in Contemporary Social Theory; 3. Normative Challenges of Globalization; Bibliography; and Other Internet Resources.
• What Is Globalization? And How Has the Global Economy Shaped the United States? External An online guide by Peterson Institute for International Economics. "After centuries of technological progress and advances in international cooperation, the world is more connected than ever. But how much has the rise of trade and the modern global economy helped or hurt American businesses, workers, and consumers? Here is a basic guide to the economic side of this broad and much debated topic, drawn from current research."--Publisher description.
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• Next: History of Globalization >>
• Last Updated: Jan 3, 2024 10:59 AM
• URL: https://guides.loc.gov/globalization

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✍️Essay on Globalisation: Samples in 100, 150 and 200 Words

• Updated on  
• Oct 25, 2023

Globalisation means the combination of economies and societies with the help of information, ideas, technology, finance, goods, services, and people. It is a process where multinational companies work on their international standing and conduct operations internationally or overseas. Over the years, Globalisation has had a profound impact on various aspects of society. Today we will be discussing what globalisation is and how it came into existence with the essay on globalisation listed below.

Table of Contents

• 1 How Globalisation Came Into Existence?
• 2 Essay on Globalisation in 100 Words
• 3 Essay on Globalisation in 150 Words
• 4 Essay on Globalisation in 200 Words

How Globalisation Came Into Existence?

For all those unaware, the concepts of globalisation first emerged in the 20th century. Here are some of the key events which led to the development of globalisation in today’s digital world.

• The ancient Silk Route as well as the maritime routes led to the exchange of goods, ideas and culture in several countries. Although these were just trade routes, but later became important centres for cultural exchange.
• Other than this, the European colonial expansion which took place from the 15th to the 20th century led to the setting up of global markets where both knowledge and people were transferred to several developing countries. 
• The evolution and exchange of mass media, cinema and the internet further led to the widespread dissemination of cultures and ideas.

Also Read: Essay on the Importance of the English Language for Students

Essay on Globalisation in 100 Words

Globalization, the interconnectedness of nations through trade, technology, and cultural exchange, has reshaped the world. It has enabled the free flow of goods and information, fostering economic growth and cultural diversity. However, it also raises challenges such as income inequality and cultural homogenization. 

In a globalized world, businesses expand internationally, but local industries can suffer. Moreover, while globalization promotes shared knowledge, it can erode local traditions. Striking a balance between the benefits and drawbacks of globalization is essential to ensure a more equitable and culturally diverse global community, where economies thrive without leaving anyone behind.

Also Read: Essay on Save Environment: Samples in 100, 200, 300 Words

Essay on Globalisation in 150 Words

Globalization is the process of increasing interconnectedness and interdependence among countries, economies, and cultures. It has transformed the world in various ways.

Economically, globalization has facilitated the flow of goods, services, and capital across borders. This has boosted economic growth and reduced poverty in many developing nations. However, it has also led to income inequality and job displacement in some regions.

Culturally, globalization has resulted in the spread of ideas, values, and cultural products worldwide. While this fosters cultural exchange and diversity, it also raises concerns about cultural homogenization.

Technologically, globalization has been driven by advances in communication and transportation. The internet and smartphones have connected people across the globe, allowing for rapid information dissemination and collaboration.

In conclusion, globalization is a complex phenomenon with both benefits and challenges. It has reshaped the world, bringing people closer together, but also highlighting the need for responsible governance and policies to address its downsides.

Also Read: Essay on Unity in Diversity in 100 to 200 Words

Essay on Globalisation in 200 Words

Globalization, a multifaceted phenomenon, has reshaped the world over the past few decades. It involves the interconnectedness of economies, cultures, and societies across the globe. In this essay, we will briefly discuss its key aspects and impacts.

Economically, globalization has led to increased international trade and investment. It has allowed companies to expand operations globally, leading to economic growth in many countries. However, it has also resulted in income inequality and job displacement in some regions.

Culturally, globalization has facilitated the exchange of ideas, values, and traditions. This has led to a more diverse and interconnected world where cultures blend, but it can also challenge local traditions and languages.

Socially, globalization has improved access to information and technology. It has connected people across borders, enabling global activism and awareness of worldwide issues. Nonetheless, it has also created challenges like cybercrime and privacy concerns.

In conclusion, globalization is a double-edged sword. It offers economic opportunities, cultural exchange, and global connectivity, but it also brings about disparities, cultural tensions, and new global challenges. To navigate this complex landscape, the world must strive for responsible globalization that balances the interests of all stakeholders and promotes inclusivity and sustainability.

Related Articles

The movement of goods, technologies, information, and jobs between countries is referred to as globalisation. 

Globalization as a phenomenon began with the earliest human migratory routes, or with Genghis Khan’s invasions, or travel across the Silk Road.

Globalisation allows wealthy nations to access cheaper labour and resources, while also providing opportunity for developing and underdeveloped nations with the jobs and investment capital they require.

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World History Project - Origins to the Present

Course: world history project - origins to the present   >   unit 7, read: introduction to globalization.

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• BEFORE YOU WATCH: Eradicating Smallpox
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• BEFORE YOU WATCH: Global China into the 21st Century
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• READ: Goods Across the World
• BEFORE YOU WATCH: Globalization I - The Upside
• WATCH: Globalization I - The Upside
• BEFORE YOU WATCH: Nonviolence and Peace Movements
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• READ: Population and Environmental Trends, 1880 to the Present
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• Global Interactions and Institutions

First read: preview and skimming for gist

Second read: key ideas and understanding content.

• What late twentieth-century trends, according to the author, led people to create the term “globalization”?
• What are some historical trends that accelerated globalization before the late twentieth century?
• What are some impacts of globalization in terms of migration and economics?
• What are some positive impacts of globalization, according to the author?
• What are some negative impacts of globalization, according to the author?

Third read: evaluating and corroborating

• What does globalization look like from your perspective? How does it affect your family and community? Do you think it has been a good thing for you? Why or why not?
• Globalization looks very differently studied through each of the three course frames. Pick one of the three course frames and describe the effects of globalization on your home town or neighborhood using only that frame narrative. How would your results have been different if you had chosen a different frame?

Introduction to Globalization

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What is globalization?

Globalization is the process by which ideas, knowledge, information, goods and services spread around the world. In business, the term is used in an economic context to describe integrated economies marked by free trade, the free flow of capital among countries and easy access to foreign resources, including labor markets , to maximize returns and benefit for the common good.

Globalization is driven by the convergence of cultural and economic systems. This convergence promotes -- and in some cases necessitates -- increased interaction, integration and interdependence among nations. The more countries and regions of the world become intertwined politically, culturally and economically, the more globalized the world becomes.

How globalization works

In a globalized economy, countries specialize in the products and services they have a competitive advantage in. This generally means what they can produce and provide most efficiently, with the least amount of resources, at a lower cost than competing nations. If all countries were specializing in what they do best, production should be more efficient worldwide, prices lower, economic growth widespread and all countries benefiting -- in theory.

Policies that promote free trade, open borders and international cooperation drive economic globalization. They enable international businesses to access lower priced raw materials and parts, take advantage of lower cost labor markets, and access larger and growing markets around the world in which to sell their goods and services.

Money, products, materials, information and people flow more swiftly across national boundaries than ever. Advances in technology enable and accelerate this flow and the resulting international interactions and dependencies. These technological advances have been especially pronounced in transportation and telecommunications .

Among the recent technological changes that have played a role in globalization are the following:

Internet and internet communication. The internet has increased the sharing and flow of information and knowledge, access to ideas and exchange of culture among people of different countries. It has contributed to closing the digital divide between more and less advanced countries.

Communication technology. The introduction of 4G and 5G technologies has dramatically increased the speed and responsiveness of mobile and wireless networks.

Internet of things and artificial intelligence. IoT and AI technologies are enabling the tracking of assets in transit and as they move across borders, making cross-border product management more efficient.

Blockchain. This technology provides a transparent ledger that centrally records and vets transactions in a way that prevents corruption and breaches. It facilitates the secure access to data required in industries such as healthcare and banking. It has also enabled the development of decentralized databases and storage that support the tracking of materials in the supply chain .

Transportation. Advances in air transport and fast rail technology have facilitated the movement of people and products. Changes in shipping logistics technology have made it possible to move raw materials, parts and finished products around the globe more efficiently.

Manufacturing. Advances in manufacturing, such as automation and 3D printing, have reduced geographic constraints in manufacturing. 3D printing enables digital designs to be sent anywhere and physically printed, making distributed, smaller-scale production near the point of consumption easier. Automation speeds up processes and supply chains, giving workforces more flexibility and improving output.

Why is globalization important?

Globalization changes the way nations, businesses and people interact. Specifically, it changes the nature of international economic activity, expanding trade, opening global supply chains and providing access to natural resources and labor markets.

Changing the way trade and financial exchange and interaction occur among nations also promotes the cultural exchange of ideas. It removes the barriers caused by geographic constraints, political boundaries and political economies.

For example, globalization enables businesses in one nation to access another nation's resources. More open access changes the way products are developed, supply chains are managed and organizations communicate. Businesses find cheaper raw materials and parts, less expensive or more skilled labor and more efficient ways to develop products.

With fewer restrictions on trade, globalization creates opportunities to expand. Increased trade promotes international competition. This, in turn, spurs innovation and, in some cases, the exchange of ideas and know-how. In addition, people coming from other nations to do business and work bring with them their own cultures, which influence and mix with other cultures.

The many types of exchange that globalization facilitates can have positive and negative effects. For instance, the exchange of people and goods across borders can bring fresh ideas and help business. However, this movement can also increase the spread of disease and promote ideas that might destabilize political economies.

For example, increased international trade and travel in the late 1990s led to West Nile Virus being introduced to North America, likely as a result of infected species being transported or people traveling there.

History of globalization

Although many people consider globalization a twentieth-century phenomenon, the process has been happening for millennia. Examples include the following:

• The Roman Empire. Going back to 600 B.C., the Roman Empire spread its economic and governing systems through significant portions of the ancient world for centuries.
• Silk Road trade. These trade routes, which date from 130 B.C. to 1453 A.D., represented another wave of globalization. They brought merchants, goods and travelers from China, through Central Asia and the Middle East, to Europe.
• Pre-World War I. European countries made significant investments overseas in the decades before World War I. The period from 1870 to 1914 is called the golden age of globalization.
• Post-World War II. The United States led the effort to create a global economic system with a set of broadly accepted international rules. Multinational institutions were established such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organization to promote international cooperation and free trade.

The term globalization as it's used today came to prominence in the 1980s, reflecting several technological advancements that increased international interactions. IBM's introduction of the personal computer in 1981 and the subsequent evolution of the modern internet are two examples of technology that helped drive international communication, commerce and globalization.

Globalization has ebbed and flowed throughout history, with periods of expansion and retrenchment. The 21st century has witnessed both. Global stock markets plummeted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, but rebounded in subsequent years.

More recently, nationalist political movements have slowed immigration, closed borders and increased trade protectionism. The pandemic had similar effects on borders and immigration, and it also disrupted supply chains . However, overall, the early 21st century has seen a dramatic increase in the pace of global integration. Rapid advances in technology and telecommunications are responsible for much of this change, according to economists.

What is the G20?

The G20, or Group of Twenty, is an international forum that aims to foster international cooperation by addressing global economic issues, such as financial stability and climate change. The G20 is made up of 19 countries and the European Union, including most of the world's largest economies.

The nations involved account for 80% of the planet's population, 75% of global exports and 85% of world GDP. It was founded in 1999, following the 1997 financial crisis, and has met every year since then.

Since 2008, the G20 has held an annual summit that brings together heads of state to discuss important economic issues. The G20's president is selected annually on a rotating basis, and that person's home country hosts the summit.

In 2021, the summit was held in Rome, Italy, and it addressed issues such as climate change, vaccines, taxes, the global economy and development aid. The 2022 summit was held in Bali, Indonesia. The main themes addressed were energy, governance, health, industrial development, economics and investment, as well as countering Russian aggression in Ukraine. The 2023 summit was held in New Delhi, India , with a focus on similar issues as well as an agreement to dramatically expand sustainable energy.

The members of G20 are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, India, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union and the African Union. Spain is a permanent guest of the organization.

Types of globalization: Economic, political, cultural

There are three types of globalization.

• Economic globalization. This type of globalization focuses on the integration of international financial markets and the coordination of financial exchange. Free trade agreements, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, are examples of economic globalization. Multinational corporations , which operate in two or more countries, play a large role in economic globalization.
• Political globalization. This type covers the national policies that bring countries together politically, economically and culturally. International organizations such as NATO and the United Nations are part of the political globalization effort.
• Cultural globalization. This aspect of globalization focuses in large part on the technological and societal factors that are causing cultures to converge. These include increased ease of communication, the pervasiveness of social media and access to faster and better transportation.

These three types of globalization influence one another. For example, liberalized national trade policies drive economic globalization. Political policies also affect cultural globalization, enabling people to communicate and move around the globe more freely. Economic globalization also affects cultural globalization through the import of goods and services that expose people to other cultures.

Effects of globalization

The effects of globalization can be felt locally and globally, touching the lives of individuals as well as the broader society in the following ways:

• Individuals. A variety of international influences affect ordinary people. Globalization can make it easier for people to access raw materials, products and services. It can also lower the prices they pay and their ability to travel to other countries.
• Communities. Globalization also changes how local and regional organizations, businesses and economies function and interact. It affects who lives in communities, where they work, who they work for, their ability to move out of their community and into one in another area, etc. Globalization also changes the way local cultures develop within communities.
• Institutions. Multinational corporations, national governments and other organizations such as colleges and universities are all affected by their country's approach to and acceptance of globalization. Globalization affects the ability of a company to grow and expand, a university's ability to diversify and grow its student body and a government's ability to pursue specific economic policies.

While the effects of globalization can be observed, analyzing the net impact is more complex. Proponents often see specific results as positive, and critics of globalization view the same results as negative or somewhat ineffective. A relationship that benefits one entity may damage another, and whether globalization benefits the world at large remains a point of contention.

Examples of globalization

Multinational corporations are a tangible example of globalization. Some examples include the following:

• McDonald's had more than 40,000 fast-food restaurants in 118 countries and territories in 2022.
• Ford Motor Company works with about 1,400 tier 1 suppliers around the globe.
• Amazon has expanded in recent years and now has nearly 10 million sellers globally and employs approximately 1.5 million employees.

Multinational corporations influence the social and economic development of the countries that host them. They also embody the contradictions of globalization. They bring jobs, skills and wealth to the region they're investing or doing business in. But they also can destroy local businesses, exploit cheap labor and threaten indigenous cultures. The benefits they offer are often unsustainable because the loyalty of multinationals is to their investors and bottom lines and not to the local people, economies and cultures where they're doing business.

Another example of globalization is the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Because the world was able to communicate across boundaries, some nations worked together to quickly produce vaccines for the virus. In addition, doctors traveled where they were needed. For example, Cuba sent doctors to Italy at the beginning of the pandemic to assist with the crisis as it developed there.

However, countries also enacted strict travel restrictions, and many closed their borders to cut down on the free movement of people and spread of the virus.

Benefits of globalization

Globalization enables countries to access less expensive natural resources and lower cost labor. As a result, they can produce lower cost goods that can be sold globally. Proponents of globalization argue that a global economy improves the state of the world in many ways, such as the following:

• Solving economic problems. Globalization moves jobs and capital to places that need these resources. It gives more developed countries access to lower cost resources and labor, and less developed countries access to jobs and the investment funds they need for development.
• Promoting free trade. Globalization puts pressure on nations to reduce tariffs, subsidies and other barriers to free trade. This promotes economic growth, creates jobs, makes companies more competitive and lowers prices for consumers.
• Spurring economic development. Globalization can give developing countries access to foreign capital and technology they wouldn't otherwise have, thus bridging the digital divide. Foreign investment can result in an improved standard of living for the citizens of those nations.
• Encouraging positive trends in human rights and the environment. Advocates of globalization point to improved attention to human rights on a global scale and a shared understanding of the impact of people and production on the environment.
• Promoting shared cultural understanding. Advocates view the increased ability to travel and experience new cultures as a positive part of globalization that can contribute to international cooperation and peace.

Negative consequences of globalization

Many proponents view globalization as a way to solve systemic problems in the world economy, but critics see it as increasing global income inequality. Among the critiques of globalization are the following issues:

• Destabilizes markets. Critics of globalization blame the elimination of trade barriers and the freer movement of people for undermining national policies and local cultures. Labor markets in particular are affected when people move across borders in search of higher paying jobs and companies outsource work and jobs to lower cost labor markets.
• Damages the environment. The transport of goods and people among nations generates greenhouse gases and all the negative effects it has on the environment. Global travel and trade also can introduce, sometimes inadvertently, invasive species to foreign ecosystems. Industries such as fishing and logging tend to go where business is most lucrative or the regulatory environment is less restrictive, which has resulted in overfishing and deforestation in some parts of the world.
• Lowers living standards. When companies move operations overseas to minimize costs, such moves can eliminate jobs, increasing unemployment in sectors of the home country.
• Facilitates global recessions. Tightly integrated global markets carry a greater risk of global recessions. The 2007-2009 financial crisis and Great Recession is a good example of how intertwined global markets are and how financial problems in one country or region can quickly affect other parts of the world. Globalization reduces the ability of individual nations to use monetary and fiscal policies to control the national economy.
• Damages cultural identities. Critics of globalization decry the decimation of unique cultural identities and languages that comes with the international movement of businesses and people. At the same time, the internet and social media are driving this trend even without the movement of people and commerce.
• Increases the likelihood of pandemics. Increased travel has the potential to increase the risk of pandemics. The H1N1 swine flu outbreak of 2009 and coronavirus in 2020 and 2021 are two examples of serious diseases that spread to multiple nations quickly.

Examples of deglobalization

Globalization critics promote deglobalization, where nations are skeptical of global integration. Independence, particularly economic independence, is viewed as more beneficial than interdependence on other nations.

For example, the COVID-19 pandemic's effect on global supply chains caused bottlenecks and shortages of many goods, straining various nations' economies. To proponents of deglobalization, a shift toward locally sourced raw materials and products made sense.

However, it's not just countries that are becoming deglobalized. Companies are disengaging from certain countries, as well. Many companies closed their offices in Russia and suspended service in light of the Russia-Ukraine war. Others have partially ceased operations there, as Sketchers did in suspending shipments to Russia but not online sales.

In recent decades, companies in certain sectors -- particularly manufacturing -- have outsourced operations to other countries to take advantage of lower labor costs. More recently, there have been targeted efforts to reduce reliance on countries like China and reshore U.S. manufacturing so that products can be sourced in the U.S. For example, Intel is building two semiconductor plants in central Ohio, and Hyundai is building an electric vehicle and battery manufacturing plant in Georgia.

Future of globalization

Technological advances, particularly in blockchain, mobile communication and banking, are fueling economic globalization.

Nonetheless, rising levels of protectionism and antiglobalization sentiment could slow or even reverse the rapid pace of globalization. Nationalism and increasing trends toward conservative economic policies are driving these antiglobalization efforts.

Global trade is also made more difficult by rising threats from other factors, such as the following:

• Climate change.
• Decaying infrastructure.
• Cyber attacks.
• Human rights abuses.

The takeaway

Globalization is a longstanding trend that's in the process of changing and possibly slowing. There are advantages to the open border and free trade that globalization promotes, especially with technological advancements that facilitate international trade, in terms of both imports and exports. There are also negative consequences.

In the post-pandemic world, individuals, businesses and countries must consider both sides of the globalization issue. The fact that there are pros and cons to consider is shaping how companies are rethinking global supply chains to avoid disruption while still reaping some benefits of globalization.

Globalized supply chains can slow down due to component supply issues or shrinking demand. Find out how the recent decline in global smartphone shipments exemplifies this.

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Home / Essay Samples / Social Issues / Globalization / The Effects of Globalization: A Comprehensive Analysis

The Effects of Globalization: A Comprehensive Analysis

• Category: Economics , Social Issues
• Topic: Globalization , Indian Economy

Pages: 3 (1463 words)

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History of Globalization

Features of globalization.

• It leads to greater interaction between different populations in social terms.
• Culturally, globalization represents the exchange of ideas, values and artistic expression between cultures and even a trend towards the development of a single world culture.
• Globalization has paid political attention to intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization.
• Legally, globalization has changed the creation and enforcement of international law.

Factors That Led to Globalization

Globalization on the example of indian economy.

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