Executive Summary

Day by day our planet is shrinking. Today it is smaller and more fragile than yesterday. And yet are we really any "closer" to each other?

The interdependence of the peoples and nations making up our world has become self-evident. No country, however powerful in terms of its economy or population, can any longer get by completely on its own. Transnational problems - whether they be environmental, cultural or economic - can no longer be solved at the national level. It is through international strategies, through concerted action between states and between regions that such problems can be addressed. Poverty, Aids, pollution, climate change, drugs and violence know no boundaries, whether national, ethnic, natural or political.

Globalization also means that the issues are interconnected. The sectoral, specialized, discipline-specific approach has shown its limitations, and these are becoming more and more of a constraint as real life, or at least our awareness of it, grows in complexity. Bioethics is an obvious example of a domain that "cuts across" several disciplines. If we wish to influence reality, we must adopt a transdisciplinary approach that makes use of all available expertise and skills.

This awareness of the interdependence of human beings and of the interconnectedness of the issues they face has become clearly apparent in recent years at the highest levels of political action and in global forums. Within the United Nations system, a series of major conferences has highlighted the connections between the various challenges we must take up - between environment and development, for example, and between education and population. Jomtien, New Delhi, Vienna, Cairo, Copenhagen and Beijing are among the cities that have hosted these global summits.

Introduction

Definition of Globalization

Globalization is the increasing interconnectedness of people and places as a result of advances in transport, communication, and information technologies that cause political, economic, and cultural convergence. Capra, Fritjof (2002).

Globalization can be defined as the worldwide integration of economic, cultural, political, religious, and social systems.

It should not be narrowly confused with economic globalization, which is only one aspect. While some scholars and observers of globalization stress convergence of patterns of production and consumption and a resulting homogenization of culture, others stress that globalization has the potential to take many diverse forms. In economics, globalization is the convergence of prices, products, wages, rates of interest and profits towards developed country norms. Globalization of the economy depends on the role of human migration, international trade, movement of capital, and integration of financial markets. The International Monetary Fund notes the growing economic interdependence of countries worldwide through increasing volume and variety of cross-border transactions, free international capital flows, and more rapid and widespread diffusion of technology. Theodore Levitt is usually credited with globalization’s first use in an economic context. Sachs, Jeffrey (2005)

Body of the article

In the reading of the two articles, we cannot hard to see that the globalization has become normal in our daily life, in any countries, once it wants to develop well and fast, it needs to make the corporation with other countries

The most important things for every country is not for developed by it, the recent economic globalization become a trend in today’s international market. Also the development of the countries are not vacuum, but full fill with ethnic, religious and other factors happened in the country. All the countries now in this world had linked together and develop the globalization economic together; the globalization is not only concerning with the economic, social and political, but also for the safety of a country, as everybody knows that the terrorist now around the world is very terrible, as a country who is survive in this world now has linked together in order to block this kind of bad things happened to normal citizens.

Some people think that the nation state is ill equipped to deal with this emergent threat, Some anti-globalization groups argue that globalization is necessarily imperialistic; it can therefore be said that "globalization" is another term for a form of Americanization, as it is believed by some observers that the United States could be one of the few countries (if not the only one) to truly profit from globalization.

Many global institutions that have a strong international influence are not democratically ruled, nor are their leaders democratically elected. Therefore they are considered by some as supranational undemocratic powers.

This is what I got from the reading 1, it is concerning about the current situation of the different countries in this world, although there are different race of people who build up different countries, but as the development of the today’s economic, none of them can survive without globalization.

Concerning about the reading case 2, it’s talking about the World Bank.
The people’s income inequality is very normal happened today, but also there is an argument that, this is not correct, income inequality for the world as a whole had diminished. Life expectancy has almost doubled in the developing world since World War II and is starting to close the gap between itself and the developed world where the improvement has been smaller. Even in Sub-Saharan Africa, the least developed region, life expectancy increased from 30 years before World War II to about a peak of about 50 years before the AIDS pandemic and other diseases started to force it down to the current level of 47 years. Infant mortality has decreased in every developing region of the world.

International cooperation is key to the success of the world’s economy. Globalization is a source of progress and not harm. Countries are nothing but lines on a map. People are people, and there’s no reason why in today’s world a large proportion of the world’s 6 billion should have to live below the poverty line.

Often the argument is made that globalization exploits developing nations or globalization will hurt the developed countries as jobs will be lost to cheaper working competitors. Ross Perot mentioned a "great sucking sound" as NAFTA would cause US jobs to make a run for the border. NAFTA’s been around. Neither Mexico nor the US has experienced either of these two effects. In fact, the economic effects of NAFTA have been positive, if anything. Economics can show that freer trade, if it has any effect, will have a positive effect for both nations. Developing nations, where economic growth is so important, especially should gain from freer trade.

Conclusion

Too long overlooked or neglected, the human dimension is once again compelling recognition as the measure of all things. In the United Nations system, the approach to social development, to human development has become broader, more diverse and more flexible. Human beings, with all their unfathomable qualities, their strengths and weaknesses, are again moving to the centre of the economic stage.

And yet compare the hundreds of billions of dollars siphoned off by the arms or drug trade with national education budgets! What a shameful disparity! Is not education a fundamental human right?

"Ecce homo. Behold the man!" exclaimed Pope John Paul II at UNESCO’s Paris Headquarters eighteen years ago in an address that left its mark on all of us. "Behold the man! . . . the rich creativity of the human mind" which makes "untiring efforts to fathom and affirm the identity of man . . . always present in every form of culture".

For human beings to be worthy of the name, they must "belong" to the human species and experience that sense of belonging. If they know and feel themselves to be members of the human family, they will have no difficulty in assisting their fellow beings without ranking people close to them any higher than those who are far away. We must multiply our bonds of allegiance, that is to say, build more bridges between the individual and communities of different kinds and sizes, strengthen "community citizenship" while at the same time promoting the idea of "world citizenship", and think globally while acting locally, so that human solidarity may flourish.

Reference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1310/is_1998_May/ai_20825357
Appendices

Reading 1

SOURCE: United Nations Development Program. 1992 Human Development Report[29]
Most importantly, critics of recent economic globalization see that these developments are not at all occurring in a vacuum, but feed into ethnic, religious, and factional tensions that lead to wars and help breed terrorism. Furthermore, these terrorists, now globally interconnected and empowered with knowledge, create a whole new category of warfare based, in part, on the disruption of the interconnections which are both created by and necessary for globalization. [30] Some commentators believe the nation-state is ill-equipped to deal with this emergent threat.[31]
In terms of the controversial global migration issue, disputes revolve around both its causes, whether and to what extent it is voluntary or involuntary, necessary or unnecessary; and its effects, whether beneficial, or socially and environmentally costly. Proponents tend to see migration simply as a process whereby white and blue collar workers may go from one country to another to provide their services, while critics tend to emphasize negative causes such as economic, political, and environmental insecurity, and cite as one notable effect, the link between migration and the enormous growth of urban slums in developing countries. According to "The Challenge of Slums," a 2003 UN-Habitat report, "the cyclical nature of capitalism, increased demand for skilled versus unskilled labour, and the negative effects of globalization — in particular, global economic booms and busts that ratchet up inequality and distribute new wealth unevenly — contribute to the enormous growth of slums."[32]
Various aspects of globalization are seen as harmful by public-interest activists as well as strong state nationalists. This movement has no unified name. "Anti-globalization" is the media’s preferred term; it can lead to some confusion, as activists typically oppose certain aspects or forms of globalization, not globalization per se. Activists themselves, for example Noam Chomsky, have said that this name is meaningless as the aim of the movement is to globalize justice.[33] Indeed, the global justice movement is a common name. Many activists also unite under the slogan "another world is possible", which has given rise to names such as altermondialisme in French.
There are a wide variety of types of "anti-globalization". In general, critics claim that the results of globalization have not been what was predicted when the attempt to increase free trade began, and that many institutions involved in the system of globalization have not taken the interests of poorer nations, the working class, and the natural environment into account. One of the proposed solutions to the uncontrolled environmental damage created by global econmic expansion is to set prices for that environmental damage done to the biosphere, so that the economy ’sees’ the price signals from the environment, and begins to internalize the value of the environment. [34] The present global economic system, critics of globalization would note, does not price the damage (e.g., pollution) done to limited environmental resources making those resources, in effect, free.[34] Economic theory, however, holds that items of economic utility and in limited supply should be priced in order to be used efficiently by the market.[35] Presently, the two proposals for sending these price signals to the economy are a ’Carbon Tax’, proposed by in the U.S. by Al Gore, and a ’Cap and Trade’ system, as has been create in the European Union.
Economic arguments by fair trade theorists claim that unrestricted free trade benefits those with more financial leverage (i.e. the rich) at the expense of the poor.[36]
Americanization related to a period of high political American clout and of significant growth of America’s shops, markets and object being brought into other countries. So globalisation, a much more diversified phenomenon, relates to a multilateral political world and to the increase of objects, markets and so on into each others contries.
Some opponents of globalization see the phenomenon as the promotion of corporatist interests.[37] They also claim that the increasing autonomy and strength of corporate entities shapes the political policy of countries.[38] [39]
Some argue that globalization imposes credit-based economics, resulting in unsustainable growth of debt and debt crises. [39]
The financial crises in Southeast Asia that began in 1997 in the relatively small, debt-ridden economy of Thailand but quickly spread to the economies of South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, the Philippines and eventually were felt all around the world [40], demonstrated the new risks and volatility in rapidly changing globalized markets [citation needed]. The IMF’s subsequent ’bailout’ money came with conditions of political change (i.e. government spending limits) attached and came to be viewed by critics as undermining national sovereignty in neo-colonialist fashion [citation needed]. Anti-Globalization activists pointed to the meltdowns as proof of the high human cost of the indiscriminate global economy.[citation needed]
The main opposition is to unfettered globalization guided by governments and what are claimed to be quasi-governments (such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) that are not held responsible through transparent or democratic processes by the populations that they affect and instead respond mostly to the interests of corporations. Many conferences between trade and finance ministers of the core globalizing nations have been met with large, and occasionally violent, protests from opponents of "corporate globalism."
Some anti-globalization activists and supporters object to the fact that the currently globalization encompasses money and corporations, but not people, the environment, and unions. This can be seen in the strict immigration controls in nearly all countries, and the lack of labour rights in many countries in the developing world.
Another more conservative camp opposed to globalization is state-centric nationalists who fear globalization is displacing the role of nations in global politics and point to NGOs as encroaching upon the power of individual nations. Some advocates of this warrant for anti-globalization are Pat Buchanan and Jean-Marie Le Pen and Ned Pencil.
Many have decried the lack of unity and direction in the movement, but some, such as Noam Chomsky, have claimed that this lack of centralization may in fact be strength.




Reading 2

SOURCE: World Bank, Poverty Estimates, 2002[6]
Income inequality for the world as a whole is diminishing.[9] As noted below, there are others disputing this. The economist Xavier Sala-i-Martin in a 2007 analysis argues that this is incorrect, income inequality for the world as a whole has diminished. [6]. Regardless of who is right about the past trend in income inequality, arguably absolute poverty is more important than relative inequality. If everyone lived in abject absolute poverty, then relative income inequality would be very low.
Democracy has increased dramatically from there being almost no nations with universal suffrage in 1900 to 62.5% of all nations having it in 2000.[11]
Feminism has made advances in areas such as Bangladesh through providing women with jobs and economic safety.[5]
The proportion of the world’s population living in countries where per-capita food supplies are less than 2,200 calories (9,200 kilojoules) per day decreased from 56% in the mid-1960s to below 10% by the 1990s.[12]
Between 1950 and 1999, global literacy increased from 52% to 81% of the world. Women made up much of the gap: female literacy as a percentage of male literacy has increased from 59% in 1970 to 80% in 2000.[13]
The percentage of children in the labor force has fallen from 24% in 1960 to 10% in 2000.[14]
There are similar increasing trends toward electric power, cars, radios, and telephones per capita, as well as a growing proportion of the population with access to clean water.[15]
The book The Improving State of the World also finds evidence for that these, and other, measures of human well-being has improved and that globalization is part of the explanation. It also responds to arguments that environmental impact will limit the progress.
Others, such as Senator Douglas Roche, O.C., simply view globalization as inevitable and advocate creating institutions such as a directly-elected United Nations Parliamentary Assembly to exercise oversight over unelected international bodies.
Supporters of globalization are highly critical of some current policies. In particular, the very high subsidies to and protective tariffs for agriculture in the developed world. For example, almost half of the budget of the European Union goes to agricultural subsidies, mainly to large farms and agricultural businesses, which form a powerful lobby.[16] Japan gave 47 billion dollars in 2005 in subsidies to its agricultural sector,[17] nearly four times the amount it gave in total foreign aid.[18] The US gives 3.9 billion dollars each year in subsidies to its cotton sector, including 25,000 growers, three times more in subsidies than the entire USAID budget for Africa’s 500 million people.[19] This drains the taxed money and increases the prices for the consumers in developed world; decreases competition and efficiency; prevents exports by more competitive agricultural and other sectors in the developed world due to retaliatory trade barriers; and undermines the very type of industry in which the developing countries do have comparative advantages. Tarrifs and trade barriers, thereby, hinder the economic development of developing economies, adversely affecting living standards in these countries.[20]
Although critics of globalization complain of Westernizaion, a 2005 UNESCO report[21] showed that cultural exchange is becoming mutual. In 2002, China was the third largest exporter of cultural goods, after the UK and US. Between 1994 and 2002, both North America’s and the European Union’s shares of cultural exports declined, while Asia’s cultural exports grew to surpass North America.
Going Global
Daniel L. Hicks
(this was originally published in the shortrun weekly)

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