Globalization Flashcards
What is globalization?
Globalization:“the worldwide exchange of money, goods, and services as well as the socio-cultural changes that occur as a result” (Ravelli& Webber 2010, p. 503).
- Offers people an expanded sense of the world
- Also shrinks the world
- Homogenization of the world in certain aspects
Bretton Woods?
They set up these three big global institutions:
- International Monetary Fund (IMF) -> invested in global capitalism (to lend countries money that need money)
- World Bank (Established to rebuild Europe after the war)
- General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)- later to become the World Trade Organization (WTO) -> fully invested in dictating trade parameters between countries. Often critiqued for siding on the side of business before people
What is modernization theory?
Modernization theory suggested that societies moved through natural stages of development as they progressed toward becoming developed societies (i.e., stable, democratic, market oriented, and capitalist).
They assume countries in the global south want to become like the global north and that the ways of the global north is preferred.
According to this theory, globalization is good
What is dependency theory?
Global North exploits the cheap labor and natural resources of the global south and the Global North becomes dependent on the global south because of this
What is racial capitalism?
Western europe got rich by stealing lives of racialized people around the world. Big drive for them was exporting cotton. America got rich in its early days from labor of racialized people. Fur trade was big for producing canada as a white settler society.
Racial capitalism: “the process of deriving social and economic value from the racial identity of another person” (Leong 2013)
What are transnational corporations?
Under conditions of free trade, corporations have grown to be more powerful than democratically elected governments
Impact work in the global south and north, They dictate conditions of labor. Leads to capital flight (when the money leaves, Occurs when transnational corporations threaten to leave a country or act upon leaving. Therefore, the country that loses the corporation loses that industry which results in freedom of profit for the corporation).
What is neoliberalism?
- Privatisation of public goods (transportation, media infrastructure, etc). Governments selling their assets (such as land, water from rivers), which means the public was at a loss too. Double whammy: We lost those goods and we lose the money for the rest of our public goods. Governments selling rights to water so they get the money but other company own it moving forward.
- Austerity measures (cutting on social spending). General cutting overall, huge implications for society. Welfare estate shrinking. Online courses is a perfect model of austerity measures. (In Ontario, water regulation…)
- Liberalizing markets (increase of free trade). Lead to a total 180 from economic nationalism. (transnational corporation benefit from water bottling). Liberalizing of markets -> celebration of free trade (what makes countries accept trash because they have to or they lose business)
What is an example of neoliberalism?
Water: Corporations are privatizing a public resource for profit
What are neoliberal ideologies?
An increased focus on individual responsibility in all aspects of individual life and society:
- Focus on entrepreneurship
- Focus on celebrity
- make-over shows, New Year’s resolutions!
- Gated communities, private policing
Also say that individuals must take care of themselves.
There’s no such thing as society, only men, women, and children (on your own)
What are structural adjustment programs?
Western countries embraced neoliberalism for themselves. The rich western countries imposed neoliberalism on the rest of the world.
Programs of the IMF and World Bank
Loans will be given to countries in the Global South with strict conditions imposed (cutting spending for example).
Austerity measures- i.e. Limited government spending on social services
Free markets, allowing TNCs to dominate local economies and cultures
Structural Adjustment programs exploit labor more
Consequences:
•Governments lose control over making decisions for citizens
•Loans with high interest rates have left counties in state of constant debt servicing
What are Canadian mining corporations?
2010 study showed Canadian mining companies worst violators of environmental and human rights laws
Myth of the age of entitlement?
Three parts to this myth:
1) millennials are uniquely entitled (more than the past and the most now)
2) millennials are living in a world of actual abundance (they already have it all!)
3) this entitlement is a threat to the economy, democracy, civilization as we know it
