Assignment 2
Globalisation in itself is usually described as the process of interaction and integration among the people companies and governments of different nations (Globalization101.org, 2017), therefore, not solely an economic phenomenon. As the world becomes more interconnected it becomes more globalised, Economics may play a large part in globalisation but to say it's the only component that plays a part in globalisation is untrue. Politics and culture are among the other factors which do play a part in globalisation. All three in which are interlinked and work hand in hand with another, this will all be explained in the following paragraphs.
“Economic globalisation refers to the intensification and stretching of economic interrelations across the globe,” for example the Coca-Cola brand established in the 1880’s is now one of the most well-known brands, it began in just Cuba and Panama but rapidly expanded and is now labeled as a global brand. This example itself goes to show how companies became globalised due to economic factors. The expansion of may companies such as Coca-Cola can be due to a “flow of international capital and wide and rapid spread of technologies” this flow of international capital has helped economies all around the world link up and essentially become one economy, companies and people can trade on an international level due to several advancements in technology throughout the world assisting communication and therefore allowing all this to happen.
The effects of economic globalisation have not always been positive, one case of this is a report published by the UN in 1999 stating that “The number of developing countries that have benefited from economic globalisation is smaller than 20. The difference of income per capita between the richest country and the poorest country has enlarged from 30 times in 1960 to the current 70 times” therefore we can see that only some countries are really benefiting and globalisation is only bringing together only the richest economies and not all of them, therefore, leaving the less economically developed countries behind, for example, “over 80% of the capital is flowing among the US, Western European and East Asian countries” resulting in the gap of economies. But on the other hand, all these countries mentioned above are on good terms economically and therefore can communicate and allow trading despite geographical borders which is an advantage of economic globalisation.
The largest piece of evidence of economic globalisation would have to link back to the global economic crisis which all begun from wall street due to the crumble of mortgage system but had an effect on many banks around the world consequently presenting us with an example of the connection between the financial system around the world hence economic globalisation.
Politics also plays a large part in globalisation, the fact that many countries join up to make decisions that essentially help multiple countries shows the bond politically around the globe, “a clear example of political globalisation is the UN, as it brings together nation states”. The UN is made up of the majority of countries around the world, therefore, bringing together all these countries to virtually make decisions together on the world. One of these decisions was NATO’s intervention in Kosovo where the people of Kosovo were being massacred by Serbian soldiers which the Serbs labeled ethnic cleansing and NATO an army set up by the UN were sent in to help the nation of Kosovo. This was a ruling made by the UN to help out another country and in essence, showing us a glimpse of political globalisation. A disadvantage to political globalisation is that state sovereignty is reduced meaning that countries are less independent and can no longer make decisions by themselves and points they make can easily be overruled by supranational organisations.
Globalisation has already been discussed in terms of politics and economics but a factor that's not spoken of very often is the cultural side of globalisation which in essence is one of the fundamental reasons for globalisation, “Globalisation refers to all those processes by which the peoples of the world are incorporated into a single world society, global society.” (Albrow, 1990). For example restaurants and food, originally Italian dishes, for example, were only made in Italy but now they have spread all around the world and there are Italian restaurants and dishes almost everywhere around the globe, therefore, incorporating the Italian culture with many others around the world, but food is not the only influence for cultural globalisation, there is also language for example: schools all around the world are teaching students a foreign language separate to their first one. In the EU alone English makes up 94% of the languages taught in schools (“Insert reference to statistics here.”) Thus the fact that communication between different countries and cultures has become so easy.
Additionally if we have a look at the different nationalities living in England and Wales in 2011(Ons.gov.uk, 2018) which is currently the most recent consensus we find that 86% of the population is white as we would’ve thought but 7.5% is made up of Asians, 3.3% is Black/African/Caribbean/Black British and the last 3.2% is made up of Mixed or other ethnic groups. Moreover, if we have a look at the net migration into the UK since the mid-2000s we see that it had fluctuated from 150,000 to 300,000 doubling from its original value (Ons.gov.uk, 2018) and as a result driving globalisation.
Economics plays a very large factor in the drive of globalisation but works hand in hand with cultures and politics, a case of this can be seen with language, for example, communication between different nationalities across the world is vital when expanding a business as without such communication there would be a very weak link between business headquarters separated geographically that speak different languages, hence cultural globalisation and economic globalisation working hand in hand. Moreover economic globalisation exists within political globalisation, when we spoke about Coca-Cola expanding around the world we saw it in an economic perspective but what we didn’t discuss was that in some states e.g North Korea coca-cola was not sold due to political sanctions (Rosenberg, M. (2018), hence preventing complete economic globalisation due to a political decision being made.
So to finally conclude this discussion categorising globalisation as purely an economic phenomenon would be absurd, cultural globalisation, political globalisation, and economic globalisation are not independent of another but rather interconnected and they also overlap heavily with each other giving us the idea that globalisation is a 3 dimensional term used to not only describe the expansion of trade and capital around the world but to also describe the connection between countries politically and the link between people more so.