We all know a huge and powerful word that has been on the center of the public discussion for decades. People all around the world, in the different countries, in different languages and in different ways of life there’s a word, saw it, live it and feel it. This is onl based on one word which means “the world just a click beyond”, this word is “globalization”. Every person around our planet has different meanings for it, and the opinion changes between different world areas, this is because giving a good meaning of it it’s complicated and it requires a study of the subject. In the case of this work we are going to watch from different opinions and areas the meaning of “globalization”, his impact in the politics, the socials and the economics and in the normal life of the persons around our area. This work is only based on people that live in Concepción and it’s made in a range of age from 9 years old to 56 years old, with different professions and different opinions. Here is our way of seeing globalization.
One of the first topics we are going to talk about is “what is globalization?” well; in our case we think that globalization is the phenomenon that happens around the world as a result of the technology advances and transparent communication, it’s the way of life we had, the only one that knows the new generations and the responsible for all the big changes in the last decades. This phenomenon occurs in all the areas that we can think and imagine, from science to politics, passing through politics and economics, social and artistic, health and sports, news and knowledge, globalization affects directly in all directions. So we can define globalization in a phew words as “the phenomenon that occurs all around the world, making all the different areas of the human sphere one, sharing and connecting them into one huge soap of our species knowledge”. A friend of mine, Sebastian Ramis defines globalization as “A huge historical process that involves technology and relationship between men of different areas”. This is also a pretty good contribution to our topic, because his definition is based the history of our planet, we can say about this that the globalization process has been all around the human history, and doesn’t depend on technology advances or the world wide web, it’s doesn’t depend on the United States or any powerful country of any historical time (we can think in this area of the Persian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Carolingian Empire, the Napoleonic Empire, etcetera). The globalization process only depends in the humans, in their way of life and interacting between each other. It’s a natural process and we will define it like that. A doctrinaire definition of globalization would be: “Process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments of different nations, a process driven by international trade and investment and aided by information technology”[1]
After giving a definition of this process it’s a good question to make “who has led to increase this?” The answer is not simple, it requires a lot of different aspects, we are going to talk about the communications and technological advances which has made possible this phenomenon around the world. The telegraph was the first step, this made possible to achieve news from one part to another trough cables, after years and years of innovation and experiments one similar idea became the most spectacular advances in all the human area, this just if we are talking about fast news, the internet, this simple and at the time complex invent transforms all the things we knew, from one day to another we can saw the different parts of the world trough a monitor, a TV screen or any stuff like that. We can knew what’s happening anywhere, anytime and just a few seconds after it happens, this powerful tool was used to inform and to educate people around the globe. So if we said “who has led this process” our answer is: TECHNOLOGY. But some other guys think that this entire thing about globalization is just an excuse from the all mighty governments of Europe and the States to transform the society at their way. This is the opinion of my friend and major classmate Alejandro Troncoso, who says that globalization, is a virus that penetrates in our body and consumes us. In the opinion of Alejandro, USA and the European Union leads this process from the beginning. As we can see, there are different points of view for the same thing, this is explained because there are good and bad things related with globalization. We can manage a lot of this, but as our opinion there are only few which are at the high rank of globalization effects. Let’s see what we had.
We can talk about effects of globalization, so in this case we had a lot of positive and negative effects. In order of this we can say that the phenomenon of education can be mark as good, because there are knowledge for everyone, a world wide web of free information is in our hands, also the information help us, this is based on that news and topics in an instant, just one click ago you can know what’s happening in any part of the world is a perfect example of this process. Now, in the topic of industries and corporations we can say that enterprises can invest money in poor countries, helping them to create job and improve the way of life of their population, this also happens in politics, in which the political ideas are becoming one, increasing the trade of products and giving new opportunities to exporting countries. Finally we can say that the mixture of cultures became in a big family around the world, with a common language (English), similar food, and similar customs, all of this make us believe that globalization is a pretty good phenomenon for all the people around the world. But also we had negative effects, some pretty hard like that many times the quality of the info is not the best, and it can deform our knowledge or route it to the wrong path. Also in communication aspects we can say that the news is based on only a little bit of newspapers, this causes the contrary effect, making the people sometimes more ignorant about different topics, and this is not a good stuff because it leads to false opinions and managing of the population way of think. Another point in this area is the companies, corporations and industries, which made enormous profits from developing countries and do not have any consideration with the environment and health of the people that lives in those areas, this is also related with the object that many times the powerful countries abuses of their status around the world, buying cheap the raw materials and after that they sell industrial products to the same little countries at big prices, this stuff happens ir our country with copper and other natural minerals that we sell to the powerful states and they transform in products that are the import to Chile. Finally we must talk about the culture, because this had also negative effects in nations and countries in order that the big mixture of cultures is killing the native ones, transforming the persons in part of the world, and not in part of their nations and cultures. This topic is concerning, because if we lost our identity as nations, countries and local history a lots and lots of events will be useless, or do we imagine a soccer world cup without countries? Or maybe, an Olympic Games without competitors or rivals? All this little stuff makes us think that the globalization culture will kill the way of life we know nowadays, we must question ourselves, is there a better way of connecting people that globalization? Is globalization the only way for progress around the world? Why we give such an importance to this process? All the answer for this questions are in our nations, we must and we should try to reach the maximum progress without losing our particular and specific features.
In our opinion the benefits of the globalization are far more than the negative effects, so we shouldn’t stop it, but we must prevent the bad stuff and trying to eliminate them, in the opinion of Mauricio Cabezas (cell phone seller) the governments must do something to prevent the abuses of big companies, whit national laws and also with a international court that can stop these abuses all around the world. The last opinion also reflects the way we think, the United Nations and other international courts and organism must regulate the process of globalization, it’s true that we had some international courts (as the international human court, and other that watch the international trade and international relationship between countries), but this is not enough, it’s an imperative that we do something, and do something fast, because if we don’t we are going to lose all the specific things that made the world such a lovely place, imagine the world without native dances, native food, clothing or architecture. We must stop the destruction of the native people, because if we not do this we will have to imagine the world as a different place, with no variety or diversity, a simple and boring world, where we all dress the same, think the same and do the same, that’s not so pretty, isn’t it?.
Now we must talk about the future of globalization. As the Chilean people said when there’s no accurate answer for something, “Only God knows”. For Patricia Díaz (second grade teacher in the Charles de Gaulle School) it would never consume the countries, because the national spirit will be stronger. In our opinion we hope the technological advances would be better and would not pollute our environment, so in case the globalization still remains in 40 more years it will be a planet which can host this phenomenon, because this topic is a pretty hard one, as a result of the industrial revolution at the end of the XIX century, the emission of C02 has raise, as we saw in class, this is not a direct consequence of globalization, but the global process of industrialization around the world, that has been accelerated by the globalization and the exchange of technology and machines, this caused the poor environment we are living and it also awakes all the concerning about this subject and it’s possible to see around the governments the preoccupation and dedication to the area, so in 100 years more we still had a planet to live in.
The globalization it’s a complex and all area related topic because it pass through politics, economics, social, industrial, cultural, educational and many, many others topics, which made huge changes in the way of life and in the conception of the world we had, we all know that the world we see today it’s not the same our grandparents saw and it will be not the same that our grandchildren will see. We will end this work whit the opinion of my brother Rafael (9 years old), who says: “We will end in a world government, in which we will have only one President and no wars”. Cause this last phrase is the way we all like to think, the way we all like our planet to be and the way we all hope someday will be, so like Lenon sing in 1971, we all want to “imagine all the people living life in peace…”[2].
Bibliography
- Ramis, Sebastián. Personal interview. 25 Sept. 2010.
- Troncoso, Alejandro. Personal interview. 25 Sept. 2010.
- Fernández, Rafael. Personal interview. 27 Sept. 2010.
- Cabezas, Mauricio. Personal interview. 28 Sept. 2010.
- Díaz, Patricia. Personal interview. 28 Sept. 2010.
- Boudreaux, Donal . "Introduction." Globalization. New York: Greenwood Press, 2008. 01. Print.
- Jurgensen, Caitlin . "Globalization." Global Issues and Diversity. Universidad del Desarrollo. BA 607, Concepción. 20 Apr. 2010. Class lecture.
- Lenon, John. "Imagine." Music. Apple Records. MP3, Liverpool. 11 Oct. 1971. Reading.
