Week 1: Global Concepts

Globalization is generally discussed according to its area of impact:  these are usually seen as economic, political, cultural and social.  Let us briefly discuss how these fields of globalization are studied and recognized.  Then let us explore some further dimensions of globalization and how it creates other challenges and prospects, particularly the impact of consumerism in the world economy and its culture.

The Political Aims of Globalization:  From the United Nations to the GCC

1. The first attempt to create an organization of international cooperation came after the end of World War One (1914-1918), when the League of Nations was created.  A short video may be watched here.  An excellent and more detailed video series on the League is found at the UK based GCSE course taught by Simon Hinds.  At the time of its creation much of the world, including the Arab region, Africa and Asia were still ruled by European or American colonial rule, the British in India, Egypt, Palestine, the Sudan and here in the Gulf, the French in Syria, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, the Italians in Libya, and the Americans in the Philippines and Panama.

2. The League of Nations was founded in 1920 and disbanded at the end of World War II in 1946, when the United Nations replaced it.  A short video may be watched from this link. The League of Nations had at most 58 member nations, but did a number of these quit, including Italy and Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia, and some never joined including the United States.  Note how all of these countries became major combatants of the Second World War. 
1. The League of Nations also had responsibility for oversight of the Mandates that were created after World War I, including Syria when it was a mandate or state under French political and military control, and Iraq, Palestine and Transjordan, when they were mandates under British political and military control. 
2. The League of Nations is generally seen as a political failure , however there were significant advances in the treatment of refugees, as well as in the medical aid and research to combat cholera and other diseases.  The World Health Organization is actually the same office and institution that was begun under the League of Nations.

3. Bilateral relations between countries leads to  war
1. A major theory of international relations is that countries that are in one-to-one relations and lack multilateral diplomatic and economic relations are more prone to go to war.  Many theorists suggest that the lack of multilateral agreements and relations in Europe led to both the First World War and the Second World War (Gran, 2011)

4. At the end of World War Two over 61 million people had been killed, and entire cities had been destroyed or devastated (Knell, 2003) - click on the hyperlinks for survivor's stories
1. Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tokyo in Japan  
2. Dresden, Hamburg and numerous other cities in Germany
3. Warsaw in Poland
4. Sevastopol and Stalingrad in Russia
5. The Occupation and Battle of Manila in the Philippines  (1941-1945) and the Massacres in 1937 at Nanking (Nanjing) in China
6. Coventry in England

5. In the aftermath of World War II, the allied countries that were victorious pushed for the creation of a new international organization that would enable multilateral international cooperation.  They agreed to create the United Nations as an organization of all the nations of the world to come together to seek cooperation and avoid violence. 

6. To achieve greater international cooperation the United Nations was created in 1945.  To achieve greater international coordination the UN has six official languages that are recognized equally.  All documents at the UN must be published and all speeches translated simultaneously into each of the six languages.  They are:  Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.
1. Among the major bodies of the UN is its Security Council that meets when necessary to resolve international conflict
2. The UN is also responsible for helping refugees of war and other disasters
3. The UN’s  World Health Organization coordinates responses to disease and threats of epidemics as in the recent Ebola Virus outbreak in Africa.

7. After the UN was created many regional associations for cooperation were created.  Here are  a few:
1. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
2. European Union (EU)
3. Arab League (22 member states)
4. Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)Formed in 1981, it consists of 6 member states:  Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Oman

8. Not all states or political formations have benefitted:  Some states continue to slide into civil war and regional and local factionalism:  Syria, Iraq and Libya in 2012-2014;  Central African Republic;  Nigeria;  The former outlying republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics:  Georgia, Ukraine;  Internal dissidence as in Chechnya. 

Economic Results of Globalization

1. The acceleration of world trade following World War II, was helped by the following major innovations.
1. Transportation
1. Containerized shipping and automation of port facilities and loading and unloading of ships
2. Air travel, the jet airplane
2. Communications, the telephone, computers, email, internet
3. Free trade agreements and free trade zones in ports
1. Fewer tariffs or trade barriers
2. International agreements on trade that comply with the World Trade Organization (WTO)
4. Relocation of manufacturing and production facilities offshore or away from Japan, Europe and the United States to cheaper labor markets found in Mexico, China, India, Bangladesh, etc.
5. Financial expansion of banking, currency and investment in a global market
6. Standardization of time
7. Standardization of measurements (Metric system, Kilos, etc.)
8. Regulation of pharmaceutical products, food safety and labeling
9. Deregulation of rules that restrict manufacturing or that place too much governmental or bureaucratic rules

2. Oil and Development
1. Proponents of the oil based economy
2. Other aspects of oil-led development
1. Some scholars question whether the heavy presence of expatriates and foreign entrepeneurs makes it more difficult for domestic entrepeneurs and investors to compete equally.  Both have to seek alliances with local elites and government agencies, but the history of foreign presence from the early days of development leads to certain advantages or precedence for foreigners (Karl, 2004)

Cultural Transformations in the Globalized World

Language, dress, customs, traditions, the arts:  these are signs of transformation and change that go through a process of globalization or local responses.

1. Language Death, diglossia, Arabizi and other symptoms
1. Language Death:  Globalization has been linked with the disappearance of numerous languages and local dialects.  The following are languages that have disappeared entirely within the past 100 years (Ostler, 2000)
1. In Alaska in the United States only 2 of 20 original Native American languages survive today
2. By the year 2050 about 6,000 languages will have disappeared or cease to be used
2. Diglossia or the mixing of two languages together is a phenomenon of mixing of peoples and colonialism.  In colonial North Africa the French policy of forcing French use resulted in the weakening of Arabic and Berber languages, and a mixing of vocabulary, grammar so that some are not actually proficient in any single language.
3. The rise of technical intermediary languages for the computer age, SMS and so forth:  Arabizi.  (Allehaiby, 2013) or (Muhammed, 2011) or (Ghanem, 2011)

2. Dress and customs of dress, music, arts
1. The rise of global clothing and lifestyle brands like Nike, Adidas, UnderArmour, etc. have led to a concern about the displacement or replacement of traditional clothing styles. 
2. In response to this threat the Abaya and the Thawb or  Dishdasha may be seen as a Gulf response to protecting local identities and fashion.  How women’s fashion and women designers in the GCC have responded has been studied (Rehmani, 2011).
3. Watch this Ted Talks video in Arabic with English subtitles on the experience of globalization's effect on Arabic in Lebanon and the speaker's advocacy for reinstating the presence of Arabic in everyday public speech and public space.

Social Transformations of Globalization

1. Benefits of globalization and human consciousness or awareness
1. Abolition of slavery
2. Recognition of human rights, the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights
3. Abolition of child labor
4. Abolition of child marriage

2. The migration of capital and investments worldwide has led to movements of locations of industry and manufacturing to search for places with cheaper labor and with fewer labor laws. 
3. The migration of industries and location of capital leads to large movements of laborers around the globe
1. Take the UAE for example:  a population of 900,000+ Emiratis is a minority population in a country with a population of around 8 million people, where 7 million or more are all from other countries who are brought in to perform labor in various professions, crafts, trades, and services. 
2. This also leads to temporary or indeterminate imbalances of population.  In the UAE  women total about 2 million, but there are about 6 million men.
3. In Kerala, the southern district of India, the large movement of largely male workers from Kerala to work in the UAE has led to an imbalance of the population of Kerala, where depopulation leads to rural population emigration and an imbalance of fewer men.

Resistance and the Local, Environmental movements, Going Green

• Numerous examples of resistance to globalization abound. 
• In Seattle and elsewhere, there were protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its policies of emphasizing unrestricted free trade
• In the GCC countries women designers have found ways to design and advance fashion and textiles that account for local preferences.
• A global awareness of the environmental costs of global consumption and overproduction or overreliance on carbon based fuels and emissions has led to concerns about human links to global warming.

Consumption and Women’s Products in the Globalized World

Beginning the 1920s and 1930s cosmetics and other products for hygiene and beauty became a global market.  Advertisers had to adapt their ads to local conditions or languages.  The expansion of products for consumption, the buying and selling of personal products became a global trend that continues to this day and is seen in every mall in the UAE and around the world, at airport terminals and the like.  The rise in the marketing and selling of products for women also closely followed the new movie and film industry in Hollywood, London, and eventually in India (Bollywood) where the image of the modern woman was being developed (Group, 2008).  Similarly products for men became a newly marketable product as in shaving, deodorants and hair products. 

1. McDonaldization:  the spread of McDonald’s restaurants worldwide and other franchise restaurants or stores is widely seen as a symptom of globalized consumer oriented products, brands and chains.  The fear is that it overspills into a cultural displacement model of American McDonalds standard foods, and style that will display local foods and preferences. 
2. The Globalized Brand:  Other brands that have similar effect include Starbucks, Nike, Adidas, to name a few. The idea of the brand name being displayed is of paramount concern to the multinational corporation, like Coca Cola, or its rival Pepsi, in seeking to gain markets.  You buy the drink to look or act young and refreshed!  For a critique of this idea see, Naomi Klein, No Logo. (Klein, 2010)  See the documentary here by Naomi Klein
3. Is there overconsumption?  Is there an oversupply of products needed?  For example how many watches are there for sale in the UAE for a population of 8 million? 

A Note on Ancient Trade Routes as an early form of Long Distance Trade:

Map by Patrick Kane based on Michael Rice, The Archaeology of Ancient Arabia (1994) p. 267

Works Cited

Allehaiby, W. h. (2013). Arabizi: An Analysis of the Romanization of the Arabic Script from a Sociolinguistic Perspective. Arab World English Journal, 4(3), 52-62.

Ghanem, R. (2011, April 20). Arabizi is destroying the Arabic language. Arab News.

Gran, P. (2011). Rise of the Rich: A New View of World History. New York: Syracuse University Press.

Group, T. M. (2008). Modern Girl Around the World : Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization. Durham, NC : Duke University Press.

Karl, T. L. (2004). Oil-Led Development: Social, Political, and. In Encylopedia of Energy (Vol. 4, pp. 661-672). Elsevier, Inc.

Klein, N. (2010). No Logo. Fourth Estate.

Knell, H. (2003). To Destroy a City: Strategic Bombing and Its Human Consequences in World War II. New York: Da Capo Press.

Muhammed, R. (2011). Summary of Arabizi or Romanization: The dilemma of writing Arabic texts. Jīl Jadīd Conference, University of Texas at Austin. Austin, TX.

Ostler, R. (2000). Disappearing Languages. Retrieved September 10, 2014, from Wholearth.com: http://www.wholeearth.com/issue/2100/article/138/disappearing.languages

Rehmani, M. (2011). The Long Black Dress: Abaya, Fashion and the Female Body in the New GCC. Women and Globalization in the GCC: Negotiating States, Agency, and Social Change. Gulf Research Meeting Workshop. Cambridge and others: Dubai School of Government; Lund University; Gulf Research Center.