EQ1 What are the causes of globalisation and why has it accelerated in recent decades? Flashcards
What is Globalisation?
A term used to describe the variety of ways in which people and places are more connected with one another than they used to be.
What are examples of Economic Globalisation?
- Growth of TNCs
- Growth of ICT systems
- Online shopping
What are examples of Social Globalisation?
- International Immigration
- Improvements in education + health
- Social connectivity (email, SMS etc.)
What are examples of Cultural Globalisation?
- Western culture traits (Americanisation/McDonaldisation)
- Glocalisation
- Circulation of ideas/information on social media
What are examples of Political Globalisation?
- Growth of Trade Blocs
- Bretton Woods institutes
What is a TNC?
Firms whose operations are spread across the world.
- Many are instantly recogniseable ‘global brands’
What is one concern about the impact of growing TNCs on culture?
They are responsible for a global trend of cultural homogeneity
What 3 changes to connections have occurred in modern globalisation (post 1940s)?
- Lengthening of connections (bottled Fiji water travels 10,000 miles)
- Deepening of Connections (food cuisines from a variety of places)
- Faster connections (airplane travel, zoom call etc.)
What 4 reasons have contributed to accelerated globalisation?
- Developments in Technology
- Better Transport links
- Decline in conflict
- Increased mobility of capital/labour
What are the 5 most significant global network flows?
- Capital (money)
- Commodities
- Information
- Tourists
- Migrants
What is Gross Domestic Product?
A measure of the value of all goods and services produced within an area
- this includes foreign firms located there
-often divided per capita for comparison
What are remittances?
Money that is sent home by Migrants, often to support families.
This can be achieved through both formal and informal methods
What is interdependency?
When 2 or more places become over-reliant on financial/political connections with one another
- e.g a reccession in a country with many migrant workers will see a reduced amount of remittances for the source country
What are 4 important transport innovations that accelerated globalisation in the 19th and 20th century?
- Steam Power
- includes ships/trains, helped move goods and armies - Railways
- Trans Siberian Railway (9000km) linked Moscow with China and Japan
- HS2 today set to halve some travel times - Jet aircraft
- arrival of Boeing 747 in the 1960s
-firms like easyJet bring cheap flights to the masses - Container shipping
- 200M individual container movements per year
- ‘Intermodal’ containers are compatible across rail and cargo ship
What is the name given to the design of shipping containers which makes transport more efficient?
Intermodal containers
These are large capacity units which can be transported over multiple types of transport (ship and rail), without the freight being removed from the container
Explain spatial division of labour
This is when TNCs move low-skilled work abroad (or ‘offshore’) as labour costs are lower
Management roles are retained at the TNCs HQ in it’s country of origin
What is the ‘shrinking world’ effect?
When heightened connectivity changes our perception of time and distance.
- As travel times fall due to new innovation, places begin to feel closer together than in the past
What are 4 important technological innovations that have accelerated globalisation?
- Telegraph + Telephone
-first cables laid across the Atlantic in the 1860s, replacing a 3 week boat journey - Broadband + Fibre Optics
- More than 1,000,000km of flexible undersea cables carry all of the worlds emails, searches and tweets - GIS and GPS
- continuously track location and time data
- first satellite launched in 1970s, currently 24 - Social Networks
- first introduced in US defence system in Cold War
- By 2014, 5B Facebook likes per day
Between 2005 and 2015 , how has the ownership of mobile phones changed in Africa?
6% of Africans in 2005, rising to almost 70% in 2015
- due to falling prices and growth of provider companies such as Safaricom in Kenya
What mobile phone service was launched by Safaricom in 2007 to aid money transfer?
M-Pesa - directly allows credit to be transferred via mobile phone
- equivalent of 1/3 of Kenya’s GDP sent per year on M-Pesa
How can global flows be seen as threats?
- Imports of raw materials/commodities: threatens domestic industry
- Cultural change from migration: not everyone welcomes this
- Information: can provide citizens with knowledge that the gov’t find threatening
What is foreign direct investment?
FDI is a financial injection made by a TNC into a nations economy
- achieved through construction of new facilities or acquisition/merging of existing firms
What 3 international organisations act as ‘brokers’ for globalisation?
The Bretton Woods institutions
- The World Bank
- World Trade Organisation (WTO)
- International Monetary Fund (IMF)
When were the Bretton Woods institutions formed and with what objective?
After WW2
- restabilise the world economy
- avoid a return to conditions of the Great Depression of the 1930s
- reduce protectionism
Have also grown to include persuading developing countries to embrace free market economics/globalisation
What factors have caused nations to be more cautious of Bretton Woods institutes?
- Global financial crash 2008-09, originated in the US and EU markets
- New alternatives - e.g China Dev. Bank or New Dev. Bank (BRICS)
- Hard to reach agreements with all 159 members
- Deals unfair on developing nations - many walked out of WTO talks in 2003 in protest
What is the role of the World Trade Organisation (WTO)?
- Advocates trade liberalisation (no subsidies/tariffs)
- Set and enforce rules for international trade
- Calls for abandoning protectionism
164 member nations in 2021
What is the role of The World Bank?
- Finances economic development
- Uses deposits from wealthier countries to provide loans in developing nations
- such nations have to abide by strict conditions for repayment
e.g help given to DR Congo to kick-start a mega-dam building project
What is the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)?
- Maintain international financial stability
- Forces nations into privatising assets to increase size of private sector
- Stablises currencies
What change in the 1980s helped for TNCs to thrive and companies to rapidly globalise?
Financial deregulation for many EU/USA states.
- These rules helped them operate more freely.
- A variety of methods were used to inject capital into foreign economies in the absence of political barriers
What is offshoring?
When TNCs build new production facilities in low-wage economies
e.g US guitar-maker Fender opened it’s Mexican plant in 1987