A website revolving around the social and economical injustices brought about by Globalization. Also, questioning if Globalization does in fact exist or just a progression from 18th Century imperialism?

Sunday, July 11, 2004

Does Globalization exist?

"In 1914 there were eight great powers, now there is the G8. The difference between then and now is that now the Russians turn up as poor guests and Austro-Hungary has been replaced by Canada" (Held, 2002). This paradox illustrates the continuation and the progression of order. Has anything really changed from a century or even for that matter, a decade ago? Didn’t the British Empire import cotton from Raj India? diamonds from Sierra Leone? Didn’t the European empires of the 19th century do to Africa what the EU is doing to them now? Wasn’t there global communication in 1865 with the Telegraph (Morse code)? Wasn’t there supra-national NGO‘s (Non-Governmental Organizations) in 1864 with the “First International” under Karl Marx? Not so dissimilar to the Oxfam, Amnesty International models we see today: a global cause against a global problem.

But compare that to the elephantine shift in trade relations we are experiencing in this millennia: how we communicate; what we watch on TV, the variety of goods in super/hyper markets imported from every continent of the globe and the fact you’re able to read this passage off a global satellite network, beaming down information to computer monitors for everyone to read, partial to none. Doesn’t this prove “something” has in fact changed? When the WTO regulates (or deregulates as is often the case!) trade relations, when the UN oversees and instigates foreign diplomacy, does this show that the old nation-state has lost its powers to govern? Again, is this a sign of ultimate change and not gradual progression?



How you synthesize and conclude from this argument is a personal adventure. There are a multitude of opinions and anecdotes, stories and narratives that you will inevitably come across that will sway your assumed convictions.

The purpose of this website however, is to give information which isn’t unbiased. Through my studies as a Social Science undergraduate and by reading bits and pieces from the likes of Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Tony Benn et al, going to lectures given by “fallen politicians” and experiencing mass protests, I have instinctively been caught up in the “movement” where solidarity is important. This is a profound statement because it denotes everyone is human and equal and that the “chain of being” (the Christian belief that white European men are superior and closer to god than anyone else) has dissolved.



References:

http://www.geocities.com/zed_chaotics/english/dialogue.htm

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