Future With The Help Of Globalisation example essay topic

What is Globalisation all about? Why is it so controversial? By Jodie Hennessy Group 4 What is Globalisation all about? There is no one definition for globalisation; many different people have many different descriptions of the word. Critics would say it is a force that attempts to implement a single economic system in the world, a system that is dominated by wealthy, first world countries and yet accountable to no single government or law system.

Ruud Lubbers a Dutch professor of globalisation at Tilburg and Harvard University defines it on his website as 'a process in which geographic distance becomes a factor of diminishing importance in the establishment and maintenance of cross border economic, political and socio-cultural relations'. Others feel that globalisation does not simply and singly cover economic matters; they feel that it encompasses much more. Some believe that it may not only be the sharing of a single economic ideology but a single religious ideology, a single education ideology or a system where every culture is the same; we do the same things, we work in the same types of organisation, we wear the same cloths and eat the same food. The list could go on and on. One thing is clear there is no one, definitive, definition of what globalisation is. It is complex issue, but I am going to attempt to analyse it in this essay.

I am going to examine the roots of globalisation, discover where it comes from, how it evolved, what form it takes in today's world and what affect it will have on the future. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact time that globalisation 'began', but many agree that the colonisation and exploration of much of the world by countries like Spain, Holland, Portugal and England during the 16th Century may have been a primitive form of globalisation. At the beginning of the 16th Century, many countries in Europe wished to expand their empires. This led to many colonies being created and the imposition of European capitalism on many of these colonies / countries. We can draw many parallels between colonisation and globalisation.

Colonisation had many advantages in the 16th century. It allowed countries like England and Spain to gain access to a much larger work force and natural resources they would never had guessed had existed. Colonisation allowed different peoples to explore different cultures. However, in many cases the more powerful nation imposed its culture and its system of government, law and education on the native people in the colony.

The more powerful nation exploited the, in many cases ignorant, natives. Using them as slave labour, managing all the valuable natural resources of the country and exporting the natural resources out of the country for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful. Because of this many feel that the colonies were bad. However in the long run there have been shown to be untold benefits of colonies, would Ireland be in the situation it is in today if we were not planted by the British?

Would we have had the Celtic tiger? Globalisation is about the adoption of a single system of economics around the world, when colonizing the powerful countries did the same thing, and if we look at the long run effects of this we can clearly see that it was immensely helpful to countries like Ireland or the United states. Both these countries gained much from their colonisation. Although after being granted freedom, both there countries experienced Civil Wars, they still benefited greatly from colonisation. Hopefully countries in Africa that have only gained independence in the last few decades' will also learn and benefit from colonisation.

Colonisation began globalisation. It was then helped by the large rise in world trade and investment at the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century. However, the great depression after The Great War interrupted the development of globalisation. After the Second World War, there was another surge in world trade and investment and this led to the continuation of globalisation and its growth. The final factors, which affected globalisation and contributed to globalisation, as it is known today, were the fall of the Soviet Union and the liberation of the former colonies.

So what is globalisation now? Globalisation is the sharing and adoption of information. It is the sharing of technology, culture, economics, politics, medicine and education and it is the infiltration of these things into the psyche of the world population, so that everything is similar. Looking at the world today globalisation is inevitable and whether they like it or not globalisation will affect everyone. As shown during the 2001 Franco / African Summit where Stanley Fisher, the deputy MD of the IMF pointed out that even the opponents of globalisation are beginning to organise themselves on a global scale as they had placards proclaiming; "World wide coalition against globalisation".

Why is globalisation so controversial? Globalisation can cause extreme hardship and extreme luxury, it can be extremely beneficial yet extremely harmful. That is why it is so controversial. Many prominent and knowledgeable people argue both for and against globalisation and that can make it difficult for any one person or organisation to decide whether globalisation is simply good or bad for the world's population. In this part of the essay I am going to elaborate on some of the merits and failures of globalisation in an attempt to illustrate its complex and controversial nature. Michael Elliot (former editor of Newsweek International) in a BBC news online article stated that; "globalisation is based on trade and trade, by allowing economies to concentrate on what they do best, raises income everywhere", in many cases this concept is true.

For example, the World Bank notes that China's opening to world trade has brought it growth in income from $1460 a head in 1980 to $4120 by 1999. In 1980, American's earned 12.5 times as much as the Chinese, per capita. By 1999, they were only earning 7.4 times as much. In many countries in Asia and Latin America, contrary to what critics of globalisation argue, the gap between the rich and poor is decreasing. The only countries, which appear to be getting poorer, are the countries that are not open to world trade and most of these countries are notably located in Africa. This fact would cause many to argue that globalisation is good for Africa, as it will help them to take advantage of the benefits of world trade.

This argument though, is a prediction. This concept argues that globalisation will help people, that globalisation will benefit people in poorer countries, unfortunately tens of thousand of people are dying from globalisation in the form it is now. The question is; can we afford to wait? According to Margaret Scott, 1.3 billion people in the world struggle to survive on less than $1 a day. This point is reiterated by the World Bank which states that the average income in the worlds 20 richest countries is 37 times the average in the poorest 20, a gap that has doubled in the past 40 years. When criticising globalisation there is no need to discuss concepts or theories or future projections, the statistics speak for themselves.

Also critics of globalisation say and many statistics show that globalisation has helped the Asian economies but the people working in the sweatshops may not agree. Many of these people are children, at was estimated the there were 186 million child labourers under 15 in the world in 2000. It appears that globalisation is not helping these children. Breakthroughs in all kinds of technologies, in medicine and in biotechnology can be shared because of increased globalisation. Globalisation causes the sharing of medicines, perhaps without globalisation the benefits of the smallpox vaccine would not have been shared around the whole world and the disease would not have been eradicated.

Does this mean that in the future with the help of globalisation we may be able to share the AIDS medications to the people suffering from the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa? The future may look promising and the pharmaceutical companies are completely willing to share their medicines... but only with those who have the money to pay and it ends up in most cases that the people who need the medicine most are the people who can not afford to pay, they cannot compete with a company that has a budget many times larger than the size of their country's own budget. For example, the budget of Malawi is $0.7 billion per annum where as the pharmaceutical company Pfizer has a budget of over $35 billion per annum. In Bob Geldof's article published on the 24th of December 2002 on independent. co. uk he states that: "Africa's plight is nowhere near as bad as it was. It is immeasurably worse". Unfortunately this appears to be true.

In the same article he states that although progress has been made with cancelling third world debt enough has not been done and even half of the 26 countries that receive debt relief pay 15% of their government revenue to creditors. Despite these facts the IMF and the World Bank say that African debt is sustainable and they are making some effort to help the poor with their HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Countries) initiative. Also the Managing Director of the World Bank does acknowledge the fact that they are not doing enough for the indebted countries. As illustrated globalisation is a force that can do great good and great harm, it is completely multi-faceted and there are many strong arguments for and against. It is extremely complex and at present it appears that globalisation is inevitable. One can only hope that globalisation will help the poor in the future, as well as it has helped the first world.