Introduction to Sociology

TRY IT

13. 
    Which of the following is not an aspect of globalization?
    
    1. 
       Integrating cultures through international trade
       
    2. 
       Integrating childcare through international trade
       
    3. 
       Integrating governments through international trade
       
    4. 
       Integrating finance through international trade
       

14. 
    Ben lost his job when General Motors closed U.S. factories and opened factories in Mexico. Now, Ben is very anti-immigration and campaigns for large-scale deportation of Mexican nationals, even though, logically, their presence does not harm him and their absence will not restore his job. Ben might be experiencing ________.
    
    1. 
       Xenophilia
       
    2. 
       Global assembly line
       
    3. 
       Global commodity chains
       
    4. 
       Xenophobia
       

Check your answers at the end of this document

Aspects of Globalization

Globalized trade is nothing new. Societies in ancient Greece and Rome traded with other societies in Africa, the Middle East, India, and China. Trade expanded further during the Islamic Golden Age and after the rise of the Mongol Empire. The establishment of colonial empires after the voyages of discovery by European countries meant that trade was going on all over the world. In the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution led to even more trade of ever-increasing amounts of goods. However, the advance of technology, especially communications, after World War II and the Cold War, triggered the explosive expansion of global markets that we see today.

FURTHER RESEARCH

The World Social Forum (WSF) was created in response to the creation of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The WSF is a coalition of organizations dedicated to the idea of a worldwide civil society and presents itself as an alternative to WEF, which it says is too focused on capitalism.

One way to look at the similarities and differences that exist among the economies of different nations is to compare their standards of living. The statistic most commonly used to do this is the domestic product per capita. This is the gross domestic product, or GDP, of a country divided by its population. The table below compares the top 11 countries with the bottom 11 out of the 228 countries listed in the CIA World Factbook.

Not every country is benefitting from globalization. The GDP per capita of the poorest country is 255 times less than that of the wealthiest country. (Table courtesy of the CIA, World Factbook 2014)