Critically Evaluate the Concept That Globalisation Will Continue on Its Development/expansion Path and Will Not Be Reversed.
By: Mike • Research Paper • 2,750 Words • April 10, 2010 • 1,436 Views
Critically Evaluate the Concept That Globalisation Will Continue on Its Development/expansion Path and Will Not Be Reversed.
Critically evaluate the concept that globalization will continue on its development/expansion path and will not be reversed.
Globalization today is one of the most active topics. In generally there are different types of globalization: political, economical, technological and education. We are living in the times where the whole process of globalization is taking place and we can see the results of it on our own eyes. The process of globalization makes the process of doing business far away from the mother company much more easier and brings a huge demand and increases in the fields of transportation, communication and IT. Globalization works as a very good boost for countries who establish international trade but also crates a problem of outsourcing third world countries by multinational companies in order to reduce costs.
Today a single nation market can be just too small for some large corporations, thanks to the globalization they can go abroad and create facilitates all around the world. Not only that, because of the race to reduce costs outsourcing have become a very popular way of reducing costs simply by shifting the factories into poor countries where the labor force is much cheaper.
So let's say that we have a giant corporation. Because of the of globalization they can create a factory in for example India, China or any other third world country because it's simply cheaper. Labor force is also much cheaper in third world than in the United States or Europe so the company can save a lot of money, later one they just put in on a ship or plane shift it back and sell it for some really good money here. It's a very real example of a multinational corporation this days.
In order to understand how globalization works we should be aware that even if the term globalization was recognized in the year 1981 but before that there were many different examples of attempts to create a global trade between nations. They result maybe was not so astonishing like the globalization we can see today, mostly because of the knowledge and technology level, but still if we look at them we can recognize many factors that are typical for globalization.
Roots of globalization reach very deep. According to Wikipedia It reaches the times of Roman Empire when the Chinese series of trade routes, called the silk road, reached Parthian Empire and later one Rome. Silk Road was the attempt to create something like global trade between east and west, and it played an important role in trade and developing civilizations.
Later on there were other examples of globalization present. During the golden age Muslims explores and merchants who were traveling through the "old world" and created a system of trade networks which can be recognized as globalization in crops, knowledge and trade between the "old" world.
Good example of the global trade in the old world can be the Knights Templers, who created something what can be recognized as a global banking system. They also had outpost there a trader could deposit money and travel across the county without worries of getting robbed and then take out the money in a different spot.
Later on we have many examples of Europe creating international trade and people movement with their colonies across the world and later on the newly created United States. In every of those cases we can witness how the need of international trade was boosting the technology growth.
Everything presented above is considered as the first wave of globalization. During that time globalization was expanding really fast and would probably continue to do so. However there is something which always comes together with a rapid development of countries which at some point may decide that they lack of space or want to develop faster than the others. Rapid growth in technology, which is interesting that technologies that always develop first are military technologies, creates increase demand and conflicts and conflicts like to turn into wars. following the example the first and later second World War was the factor that stopped the first era of globalization.
Since world war mostly blocked international trade, the concept of globalization couldn't work properly. However when war ends the international trade begins again, countries need to resupply and the globalization process has opportunity to rise once more. War however has it's good sides. During the war technology increase is even much more rapid than during the normal global trade. New technologies and ways of lowering costs or finding alternatives are being discovered, Later on after the conflict calms down they are implemented into a civilian use. That's how now we have jet engines, the Internet, mobile phones,