Globalization

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article moves beyond the international economics of research

and development and is intended to strike a more cautionary note about

the broader implications of globalization. In some respects it focuses

on the “seamy” side of the process. While there are obvious benefits

Order essays on Globalization and other topics

associated with globalization, particularly the pace of the process raises

critical questions of unanticipated costs and how to minimize collateral

damage.

There are obviously many positive aspects of globalization. Analyt-ically,

a much more refined division of labor and the emergence of glo-bal

markets should maximize production of goods and services. A

worldwide flow of images, information, and ideas could produce better

understanding among people, and also holds the potential for closer

scientific collaboration. On the personal level it is useful to be able to

send e-mail to colleagues in Asia or to watch the evening news from Paris

on local television.

Contemporary globalization represents a real revolution in human

affairs. It is a massive change in the way that civilization is organized.

The related revolution in the information and knowledge economy ob-viously

has its benefits, but like all revolutions, there are unforeseen costs

and unforeseen casualties. Caught up in globalization fervor, there is

normally little reflection on the downside. Globalization exacts very

significant costs, and these costs often are exacted largely from those

who do not have voices in the process.

There are four sets of problems and issues associated with rapid glo-balization.

The first of these is the weakening of the political authority

of the state with no substitute authority in sight.

The second is an in-crease in the risks of spreading economic maladies. The third is cultur-al

simplification and destruction. Last, but not least, is something that

could best be called increasing ecological insecurity.

Homo sapiens live in and identify with basic groups called popula-tions

or societies. The history of the movement of Homo sapiens out of

North Africa and the Middle East has been admirably documented in a

recently published book The Great Human Diasporas.

Without tracing the movements of these prehistoric peoples, assume

a moment in time at which migrating human populations reached max-imum

scatter across the earth’s surface. Since that point in time, the

world’s dispersed populations have been slowly and sporadically com-ing

back together. Thus, integration and globalization are not neces-sarily

a new thing. Looking back to the Roman or Persian Empires, for

example, the integration of peoples under one empire could be seen as

a precursor of contemporary globalization. The thing that is novel about

this era is the scope and pace of the globalization process.

There is no reason to dwell on the world of ancient empires. Let us

fast forward to the present. The contemporary world is still composed

of between 5,000 and 6,000 distinguishable biological human popula-tions.

On the other side of the disciplinary divide these are called cul-tures.

Each of these populations carries a collective biological and

sociocultural genome that represents evolutionary learning. In other

words each population represents a unique biological and a cultural

heritage. This is the evolutionary material that globalization is leveling

in unprecedented genetic and cultural simplification.

The pace of this re-integration is now frenetic by historical standards.

The combined impact of well-known innovations in transportation, tele-communications,

computers, and aerospace is to draw or drive togeth-er

human populations or cultures that have been evolving apart for

millennia. The problem is not that it is occurring. These and other tech-nological

innovations make it inevitable. But it is the pace of change

that is critical. The question that now must be addressed is how much

globalization and how quickly.

Let us focus briefly on some of the often ignored costs, problems, and

issues associated with rapid globalization. The image often used to de-scribe

the process is that of creating a global village. But this emerging

village or city has many different neighborhoods. Some neighborhoods are

rich and others are poor. And one of the most critical problems that must

be faced is that the growing global village or city has no village council.

Let me begin with the first category of concerns the many new chal-lenges

to political authority, also known as the state. Politics refers to

the methods by which societies collectively decide upon goals and poli-cies.

To retreat to some professional jargon, politics is called the “au-thoritative

allocation of values.” The political arena is where we

supposedly collectively debate and decide the nature of our future soci-eties.

But globalization is in many ways dramatically weakening the

capabilities and authority of the state and providing no obvious replace-ment

for it.

Globalization challenges the power of the state because it increasing-ly

makes state borders obsolete. There are growing concerns that ac-tivities

banned as immoral within states may simply be transferred to

the Internet. These activities include gambling in virtual casinos, por-nography,

and even prescription drug sales. And as commerce increas-es

over the Internet, the loss of sales tax revenue is becoming an

important consideration. There are also challenges to state power in

the economic realm. Of the one hundred largest economic units in the

world, as measured by the value of their products, nearly one-half are

now corporations. And while corporations, for the most part, do not

raise armies, they have enough clout to interfere with politics in many

countries. In brief, governments have increasing difficulty controlling

the flow of images which could be a negative or positive development

and a diminishing role in determining their own economic destinies.

There are related changes that increasingly complicate foreign policy

decision-making. The most prominent is the loss of time and distance

buffers. In the good old days before e-mail, before the Internet, and

before CNN policymakers had time to reflect carefully on issues. There

was an opportunity to reflect, deliberate, and to decide. Today decision-making

must be immediate. The media revolution has accelerated and

globalized foreign policymaking. In recent administrations, presidents

have turned from intelligence analysis to watching CNN to get more

immediate information on foreign events. The global telecommunica-tions

revolution freely penetrates the borders of previously protected

nation-states. And televised images increasingly have an impact on

domestic politics. Witness the political odyssey of little Elian Gonzalez

in Miami or the impact of live television coverage of Serb atrocities in

the former Yugoslavia.

The second category of globalization concerns relates directly to the

process of economic integration. Much is made about the virtues of an

integrated global economy. But is there a downside?

I see four sets of problems to be directly associated with deeper economic integration

contagion, vulnerability, exploitation, and dislocation.

Contagion. The emerging global economic system now has more

closely linked economies that can quickly become victims of rapidly

spreading economic “viruses.” Why the persisting concern with the

health of the Japanese economy? Why the frequent concern with infla-tion

in Brazil? Why in recent years has there been such concern with

the economic health of Asian countries? The answer is simple. With

all key economies closely connected in a globalization process, they now

have become mutually vulnerable. This means that various forms of

economic diseases can spread rapidly from one country to another.

Vulnerability. Vulnerability refers to rapid capital movements and the

associated destabilizations of currencies. Predators can make a lot of

money speculating on currencies, but at a heavy cost to the countries

being attacked. Recent examples are the huge fluctuations in the value

of the yen over the last five years or the wholesale destruction of the

currencies of several other Asian countries.

Exploitation. This, in many ways, could be considered old wine in

new bottles. Exploitation of labor and natural resources has been tak-ing

place since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. But the ex-ploitation

of cheap labor has increased greatly as has the devastation of

natural resources in poorer countries. Witness the ecological devasta-tion

associated with the recent collapse of the Indonesian economy.

Dislocation. Globalization is accompanied by a related human trag-edy

in displaced workforces. Regard the wandering heavy industries that

move frequently from one country to another. My favorite example of

this is the tennis shoe industry in Asia. It has moved every few years

from one country to the next, leaving behind displaced workers while

jobs are created in other countries.

My third set of concerns is that greater global integration brings in-creasing

ecological insecurity. Bringing together thousands of different

populations that have previously evolved in isolation is filled with risks

of the spread of various kinds of illnesses and possibly epidemics. Mc-Neill’s

classic work, Plagues and Peoples, demonstrates that from the

time of the Roman Empire to the present, occasions when previously

isolated civilizations or societies have been brought together have been

times of increased risk of disease and plagues. This occurs because na-ive

immune systems suddenly encounter pathogenic microorganisms with

which they have little previous experience.

Globalization is also associated with increased bio-invasion, species

hitchhiking from the ecosystems in which they have evolved to other

ecosystems where they often create havoc. Many kinds of animals and

some kinds of plants are now moving around the world with commer-cial

cargoes. These scourges range from the zebra mussel, which is do-ing

tremendous damage in the Great Lakes region, to the Formosan

termite, which is munching its way through Louisiana.

The last set of concerns involves cultural simplification and destruc-tion.

Cultural diversity, like biological diversity, is an important resource.

Cultures contain important survival wisdom that is the product of hun-dreds

of generations of evolutionary experience. Indigenous cultures

around the world are now being threatened by the monoculture associ-ated

with western industrialization. The process of cultural integration

is much more of a monologue than a dialogue. Western values, or lack

thereof, will soon overcome these other cultural voices speaking from a

weaker position. This “soft power” of the United States is anchored in

control of the mass media, films, and global telecommunications. The

term “McWorld” has been used to describe this homogenous and bor-ing

new reality. Why travel to distant parts of the world to have the

experience of feasting on a Big Mac?

But cultural diversity is also an issue among developed countries.

Under the guise of free trade, for example, Canadians cannot interfere

with the cultural invasion from the United States and the French can-not

even protect their domestic film industry. From the U.S. perspec-tive,

protecting domestic cultures could be considered reactionary. But

it is essential to pause and reflect for a moment on preserving some of

the attributes of different cultures and the losses that might be involved

in the long run.

In conclusion, I return to the main point. The issue is not whether

globalization should be reversed, but rather whether the pace can be

slowed and tremendous collateral damage can be avoided. Significant

ecological and cultural trade-offs are involved in this hectic rush to glo-balize.

Are the rapidly changing and supposedly more efficient markets

worth the associated cultural and ecological damage? Surely an extended

political dialogue over the risks and rewards of globalization is in or-der,

unless market forces are to be the sole arbiters of the direction of

human progress or possibly regress.



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