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Globalization: Making Connections to Strangers Mistreated women in China who are sought out laborers of transnational corporations; the impoverished citizens of Kensington, Pennsylvania; Mexican women who are systematically raped at the United States-Mexican border; and the first democratically elected president of Haiti: these are all people who seem to have little or no connection because of their different races, physical location, and cultural backgrounds. However, all of these people are connected much closer than anyone would initially think due to the results of systems much greater than they can individually control.
All these people are at the cusps of tremendous detrimental failures from a system called globalization. Ever since the sass’s globalization quickly seeped into almost all the lives of the global population. This has happened because of systematic occurrences which lead to the interconnected powers of global corporations, organizations that allow uncontrolled free trade, international lending institutions, and inalienable ideology. These building blocks of globalization have caused enormous social, economic, and political shifts around the world, connecting al these people quite closely.
In each of my selected readings, Pun Angina’s Made and China; Michael P. Kelly’s “Globalization: It’s Affects on Kensington Philadelphia, PA”; Sylvania Falcon’s “National Security and the Violation of Women: Militaries Border Rape at the US-Mexico Border”; and Jean-Bertrand Arsenide’s “Globalization: A View from Below’; each have their own specific situations yet are brought together by some reoccurring themes such as, a complete loss in individual and national self- sustainability, the creation of a faceless monoculture, and a loss of social and economic stability.
In this essay I will examine how the course readings all connect together with these reoccurring themes and what that meaner in terms of globalization. Despite the intentions of organizations like the NONFAT, WTFO, MIFF, and WEB, in trying to aid third world countries, they have in many cases worsened the everyday lives of third-world citizens by orienting economies to rely completely on transnational corporations’ exports for money and shifting all local trading economies into a total reliance on imported goods. This is depicted in Made In China and “National
Security’ and the Violation of Women, as many women migrate from lands they previously could completely sustain themselves on for centuries. This is even a domestic issue in the United States since transnational corporations leave once industrial towns, as wastelands leaving American citizens without Jobs. A specific example, In Globalization: a View from Below, is clearly displayed in the Haitian economy through the globalization process. For example Arsenide states that in 1986, 7,000 tons of rice was imported to Haiti. As a staple food, the majority of rice as grown in the borders of Haiti.
Then Haiti compiled with trade policies advocated by the international agencies. This caused a lift on tariffs on rice imports and then cheaper US rice dominated the market. After local farmers ran out of business, by 1996 Haiti was importing 196,000 tons of foreign rice which was very costly at $100 heavily on foreign nations. As Haiti sunk deeper into debt, they paid $1 billion more than they receive from the MIFF, Just like many other third world nations while reforming their economy with a structural adjustment plan which is supposed to Essen overall costs.
Yet the situation worsened with the structural adjustment plan even more, as first world corporations annihilated Wait’s peasants’ main form of income, Creole Pigs, which fit perfectly into Wait’s specific economy and lifestyle. These pigs were replaced with ones from Iowa, which were so inefficient that Haitian farmers lost $600 million that year in money alone, not including loss of assets like usable land and healthy animals to sell. Like stated above, this is not specific to on nation, but to the entire global community showing their ever growing connectedness n systematic globalization.
So, here we had a nation which was previously relatively self-sufficient, but with the ‘help’ of organizations like MIFF and the WTFO, they have effectively forced Haiti further in debt, losing almost all of their self-sustainability and identity as a nation. Through the process of globalization, each specific identity of the globe’s countries have begun to meld together to create a singular monoculture. The idea behind a monoculture is a way for transnational industry to appeal to as many people as possible.
They have achieved this by systematic changing in the minds of the global population by reiterating what ‘everyone’ needs and wants. These corporations decide what is trendy or popular, like the cloning of American thinking into Haiti when the Anion pigs replaced the Creole ones, despite their negative effects on the Haitian economy, environment, and especially Wait’s social construct. However, in another text, Made In China, this is also exemplified. In China, this all has to do with the shift from a socialist government and economy to a capitalist one.
Now, industry uses temporary Chinese labor and is legitimated by the government with heir ‘hunk’ system. This allows China to legally provide population and labor control that favors global private capital. These changes a key towards creating a monoculture across the globe. For example, these changes are made because this system calls for much more monetary growth than ever before; China’s government accepted and adopted a inalienable ideology which includes support of free markets, export economies and prevarication, deregulation and foreign investment.
This ideology and the capitalist systems that follow are parallel to those of America and there capitalist first world countries which ultimately lead to this global monoculture. As we unravel these connections within the readings, one can now see how the building blocks of globalization interconnect; the corporations initially provided Jobs for citizens of the first world and effectively sustained itself domestically. Corporations for purely financial reasons, began to outsource creating reason to develop organizations like NONFAT and WTFO to help organize and ‘regulate’ international trade.
This development made it much easier for corporations to have free reign over the third world. Meanwhile, international lending institutions changed their initiative from aiding countries in post-war redevelopment to loaning the third world money as this issue became a more important matter. The MIFF and WEB made countries undergo structural adjustment plans to orient economies to emphasize exports. This ever growing reliance on global industry benefits corporations by allowing expansion. Meanwhile, lending institutions also benefit which mean its’ richest and most powerful citizens receive monetary and material gain.
This self-propelling system has so far come at the expense of the exploitation of he majority of the global population, which causes countries’ loss in self-sufficiency. Local culture is dissipating and with an extreme loss of social and economic stability. This all seems quite counter intuitive based on the so-called positive initiatives of organizations like the WTFO and the MIFF, because they should be helping all of those who need it. Since globalization occurs almost everywhere, everyone has connections to it one way or the other. So what about issues that are not obviously relevant to these connected systems that make up globalization?
For an example, In, “National Security and the Violation of Women”, the connection is not so obvious. Sure, Mexican women and families frequently move across the border and they are physically moving across the ‘globe’, which connects this text to globalization, but the real connection is made to what made these families move from Mexico in the first place. They experienced something similar to the Chinese workers who found themselves migrating to domestic cities after their farms are out of work. When those industries move to cheaper countries to operate, large populations of workers look to emigrate elsewhere for opportunity.
However, due to this broken system, this lack of individual stability damages families economically and more importantly socially. For example in “National Security’ and the Violation of Women, it is because of these systematic events which lead to the ‘Militaries Border Rape at the US-Mexico Border’. These women and families were essentially kicked out of their homeland and forced into a country where they speak a different language, and generally hold great hostility towards immigrants. This causes a big lack in communication and leaves a lot of mom for exploitation of an entire race and gender of people due to globalization.
So let’s remember the differences between mistreated women in China who are sought out laborers of transnational corporations; the impoverished citizens of Kensington, Pennsylvania; Mexican women who are systematically raped at the United States- Mexican border; and the first democratically elected president of Haiti. Now let’s also recognize what connects all these people. From the readings alone I have gathered that each group has undergone a complete loss in national self-sustainability, the reaction of a faceless monoculture, and a loss of individual social and economic stability.
But with further connections, one could see it is the systematic occurrences which lead to the interconnected powers of global corporations, organizations that allow uncontrolled free trade, international lending institutions, and inalienable ideology that connect everything. These building blocks of globalization have caused enormous social, economic, and political shifts around the world, which have all connected these people quite closely. However, all these examples so far are quite active making globalization seem like an indestructible machine in which no one can defeat.
It is probably true no one can make those changes, but it is this kind of analytical connection-making that can help all the mistreated Chinese workers, women who are raped across America’s southern border, exploited Haitian, and impoverished Americans to immobile into a movement. It is when these borders are broken that a true sense of global community exist; this when groups around the world know they are not alone in this unfair corporate rule and realize this machine