Hit Me Globalization

When I was taking Sociology 10 in UP Diliman, my teacher asked me two questions about Globalization. It was really odd for me to answer such question since I “do” Social Science for academics reasons only.

• How do the various dimensions of globalization affect your life?

The dimensions of globalizations have affected me both intra and inter ranges. First, in the inter-self view, which is the personal, I am driven by the Internet or the crossing of information across national borders in the cyberspace. The latter has been a salient part of my everyday life and it has played a major role as my main stream of partaking myself to the globalized world. I’ve had many acquaintances through the Internet and it has helped me connect with my family and my friends abroad. As said in the reading Globalization: An Introduction, human geography becomes irrelevant.

On the other hand, on a personal or intra level, globalization has changed my way of living inside and out. I had different mindsets of achieving certain standards set by foreign countries through mass media. Recently, I’ve thought of working for a multinational firm so that I could be paid higher if I were placed to a developed country (concept of Movement of People in the text). Higher income means higher living standards. Finally in aesthetics: who doesn’t care about fashion nowadays? I buy the clothes that I want with my own preference in accordance to what I see in movies, TV shows, malls, and the like.

The next question that should be asked here is “Is it good that those things happen to you?” For some cultural view, it’s sad to see these things happen, but I have to say these are good for me because I don’t feel any bad effect. Time changes people; time moves globalization. Thus, it is inevitable for us to grow from who we have been.

• The reading Globalization: Wonderland or Wasteland?  focuses on the consequences of globalization for societies and opportunities for individuals. Are the arguments more persuasive for “globalization is good” or for “globalization is bad?” Explain your answer.

First of all, I commend the writer for having written a profound article that may have presented both good and bad effects of globalization. In the first paragraphs, it was systematically presented the good side, which is economic growth. Truly, globalization helps so much in international trades. However, little by little, the writer introduced why he his thinking changed – the bad side of global change was injected to his mind. Throughout the text, the bad effects were weighed more than the good ones.

Let’s not deny the obvious. Although it was not explicitly written, the arguments were more persuasive for “globalization is bad.” The fact that he presented recommendations for change already claims that something is wrong with globalization. Alongside, specifically the second recommendation, it was proposed to help the people “hurt” by globalization. For me, it was a wrong subtopic if the content was fairly presented. Yes, there were people who lost their jobs because capitalists place their manufacturing sites at developing countries where there is cheap labor. I’m not against this; in fact, I guess this is a way of helping the poor sustain their livelihood.

For the succeeding recommendations, they didn’t assert the bad side, but it actually went against the flow of one dimension of globalization – Washington consensus. Strengthening the International Labor Organizations and Reducing the Frequency of Global Encounters are more of the beaurocratic side or the government side. Globalization cannot abide with a set of rules; I mean who can create rules if people from different distant places want to connect with each other?

Even in the last paragraphs, he entices his readers to be open-minded to the bad effects of this interconnectedness – “greedy, profiteering monopolists, and impractical free-trade theorists.”

Good or bad, his main point was to persuade for us to make one modest change that would help our world to interconnect without risking morality and personhood.