I don’t remember the first time I heard the term “globalization.”
It could have been something brief in high school or something I read online. Maybe the term appeared in my life just from being on my booklist for the past two semesters and the basis of two of my classes.
This school year has helped me shape my views about how the world around me functions. Thanks to this newfound understanding, I now see how the smallest things make the world turn.
Globalization in a broad sense is the process or processes that increase the movement of people, culture, technology, ideologies and information across the world.
From the songs we hear on the radio to some of the most popular movies and novels out there, fashion, technology, emigration from one country to another—all have to do with globalization and the spread of influences throughout the world.
This is just one definition of globalization. There are plenty of different ways to define the term, but I’ll work with this one.
One of the forces of the late 20th century (and the beginning of the 21st century) was thanks to globalization after World War II. After the events of the war, the countries involved realized, “Hey, we’re not talking like we should be talking! Did you see what Germany did? We need to stop that from happening again! Because hey, we tried the League of Nations after the Great War, but all of the ‘important’ nations need to be involved.”
And then, the United Nations was born in order to keep the countries of the world from killing each other, even though the UN has found itself in many difficult and controversial positions during the past couple of decades. Along with the UN, other organizations (which are all connected with the UN) such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO), were formed to be the checks and balances of the international community as a whole.
After World War II, the world boomed in many different ways. While Europe was rebuilding, America was able to step forward after the Great Depression and become a world power, with the money and resources to help the reconstruction of Europe as a whole.
The Cold War came into existence, and Russia’s push for the same thing as America (global power) caused a global struggle over superpowers until Soviet Russia collapsed in the 90s.
But on a more personal front, globalization influences almost every aspect of your daily lives.
For example, that computer you do homework on? How about the phone you use, along with the tablet? It was most likely built somewhere other than the U.S.. Apple, which shipped the manufacturing of the iPhone and the iPad to China, is one of the best known examples of outsourcing, or the transfer of jobs to other countries for cheaper labor, cheaper manufacturing costs and many other cost-cutting benefits that companies can gain from.
But with changes happening on the economic front in the US, companies are now willing to come back and manufacture products stateside. Apple is bringing the manufacturing of the Mac back to the US, along with other technology-driven companies, seeing the upward trend in moving everything back to the US.
As the world continues to turn, either becoming more integrated or falling out of the integrated state — people, culture, technology, objects, ideologies and information across the world all happen to converge together and mash up. Everyone will realize how global their lives are, from knowing a handful of the words to “Gangnam Style,” to knowing where the everyday products they use have employed workers on the other side of the world. Globalization is something everyone needs to know and sort of understand in order to understand that the U.S. is the only country in the world with the power to do what it’s accomplished so far.
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