Document for Homework

Document A

Map 3. Volkswagen’s transnational production network in Manfred Steger, Very Short Introduction to Globalization

Document B

The term Southernization is a new one. It is used here to refer to a multifaceted process that began in Southern Asia and spread from there to various other places around the globe…Southernization was well under way in Southern Asia by the fifth century C.E. during the reign of India’s Gupta kings. (320 – 535 C.E.) One could argue that within the Northern Hemisphere, by this time the process of Southernization had created an Eastern Hemisphere characterized by a rich south and a north that was poor in comparison. And one might even go so far as to suggest that in Europe and its colonies, the process of Southernization laid the foundation for Westernization.

            Perhaps the oldest strand in the process was the cultivation of cotton and the production of cotton textiles for export. Cotton was first domesticated in the Indus River valley some time between 2300 and 1760 B.C.E…According to one textile expert, “India virtually clothed the world” by the mid-eighteenth century…

…It was also during the time of the Gupta kinds, around 350 C.E., that the Indians discovered how to crystallize sugar. Sugar, however, did not become an important item of trade until the Indians discovered how to turn sugarcane juice into granulated crystals that could be easily stored and transported…

Lynda Norene Shaffer from “Southernization” in Worlds of History: A comparative reader

Document C

McDonald’s in Alexandria, Egypt in April 2005, by Mr. Robert Cotto, Jr.

Document D

This has been building for a long time. Globalization 1.0 (1492to 1800) shrank the world from a large size to a size medium, and the dynamic force in that era was countries globalizing for resources and imperial conquest. Globalization 2.0 (1800 -2000) shrank the world from a size medium to a size small, and it was spearheaded by companies globalizing for markets and labor. Globalization 3.0 (which started  around 2000) is shrinking the world from a size small to a size tiny and flattening the playing field at the same time…Globalization 3.0 is not only going to be driven more by individuals but also by a much more diverse-non-Western, non-white-group of individuals. In globalization 3.0, you are going to see every color of the human rainbow take part.

“Today, the most profound thing to me is that fact that a 14 year old in Romania or Bangalore or the Soviet Union or Vietnam has all the information, all the tools, all the software easily available to apply knowledge however they want.” Said Marc Andreessen, a co-founder of Netscape and creator of the first commercial Internet browser.

           

 “It’s a Flat World, After All” by Thomas Friedman in The New York Times Magazine, April 3, 2005

Document E

“The American Way of Life” by Eric Schossler in Fast Food Nation, p. 47

Document F

The high technology in the world of 1000 A.D. included paper, the printing press, the crossbow, gunpowder, the iron-chain suspension bridge, the kite, the magnetic compass, the wheelbarrow and the rotary fan. A millennium ago, these items were used extensively in China- and were practically unknown elsewhere. Globalization spread them across the world, including Europe.

“Does globalization equal Westernization?” By Amartya Sen in The Globalist March 25, 2002

Document G

Map 2. Major world trade networks, 1000 – 1450. by Steger in Very Short Introduction to Globalization

Document H

                                                                                                                                                           

These qualities are spreading like cancer around the world. McDonald’s, which derives most of its profits from outside the United States, has more than 30,000 restaurants in some 120 countries. In China, fast-food consumption is booming. Importation of French fries from the United States increased ten-fold from 1995 (there’s a solution to our trade deficit!) while the obesity of teenage Chinese children has tripled. KFC is bringing its special brand of high-fat chicken ‘n’ fixins to China at an aggressive rate, and around the world. The Colonel’s secret recipe is available in 90 countries.

“McDonaldization” in 100 Ways America is screwing up the World, by John Tirman

Document I

Man on his roof, Mansoura, Egypt, Nokia cable dish in background, by Robert Cotto, Jr. in 2005

Document J

New Balance Advertisement with and Inca Runner and Macchu Picchu in its background, Cuzco, Peru, by Mr. Robert Cotto, Jr. in 2007

Document K

            And, like jazz and blues and rock and roll, gangsta rap is embraced around the world. Rap

generally is especially popular in Africa, as one might expect, but its gangsta offspring has also found a home in some of the toughest neighborhoods-Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo, and southern Africa-where violence has a much more intensive expression. The teenage soldiers of the warlords armies West Africa particularly were notably taken with rappers Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. As a leading scholar of violence in the region reports, “Calling themselves West Side Boys…they incorporated elements of Sierra Leone youth culture into their war fighting culture. The name “West Side” came from hip-hop music admired by some urban youth…Fighters admired these men who began as enterprising and clever drug dealers, who like them had to live in the informal economy and depend on wits and violence to survive.

“Gangsta Rap and the Culture of Violence” in 100 Ways America is Screwing up the World by John Tirman

Document L

Large lunch with family and MLC students, L. Little and C. Ballyamanda, in home near Mansoura, Egypt, by Mr. Robert Cotto, Jr. April 2005

Document M

One billion television sets have been sold worldwide since the first ones appeared in the 1920’s. The growth in the last three decades of the twentieth century was phenomenal. In China, now the biggest couch potato country, “set ownership increased from a few thousand to 260 million between 1960 and 1994. And from 1975 to 1994 viewers increased from 18 million to 900 million,” says one report. But it is far from benign, or neutral, or even a net gain. It’s not just that television programs are often mind-numbing…More than anything in society-global, national, and local societies-television separates us from one another. It isolates us, not only from our neighbors and communities, but from our families and friends.

“Television” in 100 Ways America is Screwing up the World by John Tirman

Document O

Letter from Omar Sharif, student at MES, New Cairo, Egypt,

 by Mr. Robert Cotto, Jr. in April 2005

Document P

Whatever its causes, work has become an obsession in America, and this sweeping large swaths of the planet in what can succinctly  be termed 24/7: the notion that we’re working, or available to work, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week…Economic growth in Spain has meant that the once proud siesta-proud country is giving up the tradition. Too many connections to the global economy, too much pressure for productivity, too many homes now far from the business districts. One report describes beauty parlors that cater to the sleep-deprived. Silvia Escribano, the owner of a shop called Beauty Boulevard, lets clients catch some Z’s in one of the back rooms after a haircut or a back rub. “It’s painful to see them try to stay awake.” Whether or not these changes from a more sensible lifestyle are driven by American workaholic habits, it is notable that workweeks increasingly conform to U.S. standards. Shorter lunches, fewer lunchtimes at home, working weekends and holidays, and never really being away from the office.

“24/7” Abuses of the Work Ethic 100 Ways America is Screwing up the World by John Tirman