Free Economics Dissertations - Can Globalization Be Sustainable? Globalization Is A Phenomenon Which Has
Can Globalization be Sustainable?
Globalization is a phenomenon which has not been given a strict definition. Globalization can mean more interaction between people in different parts of the world, with increasing opportunities of personal exchange, mutual understanding and friendship between different peoples of the world, and thus formation of a single unit called a global village. Through the process of globalization, the barriers of time and space that once seperated people have been successfully overcome. This rapid integration of economies and societies around the globe has had both positive and negative sides to it.
Increasing growth and decline in the level of poverty in China, India, and other countries that were considered poor around years ago has been a positive aspect of globalization. But globalization has also been a cause of considerable international opposition over concerns that it has increased inequality, discrimination and environmental degradation. According to Kofi Annan arguing against globalization is like arguing against the laws of gravity. Sharan Burrow states that globalization could be the answer to many of the world's seemingly intractable problems.
The period of liberalization of the nineteenth century is often called the first era of globalization. This era grew along with industrialization. Globalization was damaged during the First World War and then collapsed in the crisis of the gold standard in the late 1920's and early 1930's. Globalization in the time periods after the Second World War has been driven by Trade Negotiation Rounds, that resulted in some agreements regarding the removal of restrictions on free trade.
Transformationalism
Transformationalism is a new tendency in the concept of globalization. The heart of the transformationalist thesis lies in the fact that, in this era, for good or for evil, a more interconnected world is now emerging where globalization is a major driving force which brings about rapid changes in the social, political and economic situation of the world that is reshaping and restructuring modern societies and the whole world order. According to the followers of this tendency, modern-day progression of globalization is historically unprecedented. Governments and societies across the globe have to tune themselves to a world in which there is no longer a clear distinction and demarcation between international and domestic, external and internal affairs. Therefore, according to this tendency of the proponents of globalization, globalization is taken to be a powerful and dominant transformative force which is responsible for a ‘massive shake-out’ of societies, economies, institutions of governance and world order.
In the transformational analysis of globalization however, the direction of globalization remains uncertain, since globalization is taken to be an essentially contingent historical process saturated with contradictions.
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