Post 8: Globalization

In your readings, Knox and Marston describe globalization as "the expansion and intensification of linkages and flows of capital, people, goods, ideas and cultures across national borders." If you think about it, much of the material objects we interact with and rely on are symbols  and products of this globalization. Our clothes, our computers, our cell phones, even our food -- all most likely come from some place else, were made or grown by far away people, and were put together and transported to the US.

Many globalization theories focus on the newness of this phenomenon. But as you all should have seen so far in this class, globalization is not new. All communities have been interacting with each other for all of human history. Nomadic peoples traveled widely, made war, and intermarried. Sedentary peoples have always sent traders and explorers to other communities. Ideas, like religion, spread rapidly in our world long before the electronic age.

But there is something different now -- speed and scale. Objects, ideas, people move about our planet with an increased speed that is unprecedented in human history. Most obviously, we communicate nearly instantaneously with others halfway around the world. News travels incredibly fast. And indeed, the scale has increased as well. Almost all of our goods are global, rather than local, products.

As you read this blog and the readings for this week, think about that. Where does our food come from? What about the jeans we're wearing, or the computers we use to take this class? What does it mean for the future of nations and local regions when such territorial boundaries seem so pointless? Will we one day have a world not defined by country or nation? Or does globalization only intensify these boundaries because it challenges them?