Emily’s Blog on Globalization

So this may be a dumb thought but all this talk about the environment and the world has really started to freak me out and get me thinking about the future. Today we talked about oil and how it is a non renewable resource, yeah I get all that but it didnt really dawn on me until today. What if we run out of oil?! What do we do? I understand that there are other ways to make cars go but come on! How will the world adapt to using something other than oil?

      Then the whole air pollution thing…I feel really bad for the people in China that live under a smog. Is that eventually going to happen to the whole world? Are we all going to die because of air pollution?  Thank goodness for Prof. G talking about buying tickets for pollution and those big fan things to make energy. I have never taken an environmental class before so I am not sure about the whole story behing air pollution and stuff like that so I may be overreacting just a bit. I wish we had more time to talk about the environment and the affects that globalization has on it. Let me know if anyone else is a bit concerned or if I am just overreacting…..

I think that Jihad is the sense of Nationalism and styaing true to your culture and country. Like we said in class, this can be forced upon a person. I think that it can be both influenced and forced.  Some people in the U.S. are very passionate about their relgiion, tradition, culture, etc. This doesnt mean that it has been forced upon them. In other countries, like Iraq, their culture seems to be forced upon them. They grew up knowing this religion and have not been able to go out and explore other ones. This is true for many countries over in the middle east. I disagree when the author says that both Jihad and McWorld bother promote democracy. In countries that have Authoritarian governments they people are forced to live a certain way, that is not democracy at all.

I agree with the idea of McWorld to a certain degree. Of course people are going to be modified according to public demand. That is how the world is always going to be. But people do not have to give into this. Of course you can find a McDonalds anywhere you go now a days but you dont have to eat there. They all arent the same either. I remember my mom telling me that when she went to Maine for her honeymoon, her and my dad ate a a McDonald’s and they had a lobster sandwich.

I’m not sure if I am right at all about these things, but that is just what I got from them.

Recently I have had to read a book called Nickle and Dimed for my sociology class. The book is about an experiement about what life would be like as a minimum wage worker. The author Barbara Ehrenreich has her Ph. D in Biology and is a well known author.  She worked as a maid, a waitress, and a employee of Wal- Mart. She worked at Wal- Mart for $7 an hour and realized that for the amount of time and work she put in, she was paid unfairly. The author thought that the employees at Wal- Mart should form a union to help make their lives better. No one really went along with her because they are uneducated and unions are against everything Wal- Mart stands for. Toward the end of her two week career at Wal- Mart she began to realize that Wal- Mart was a closed sytem. She began to wonder if there was a world outside of Wal- Mart and then relaized that there wasnt and it was because of globalization. She says ” I liek to read the labels to find out where the clothing we sell is made- Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Brazil- but the labels serve only to remind me that none of these places is “exotic” anymore, that they’ve all been eaten by the great blind profit making global machine.” When I read that it made me think about our discussion of culture today. She pretty much sums it by saying these places are no longer exotic to us. Everything is merging together. She says that the only things left are highways, parking lots, and stores, the rest is reigned of globalized, totalized, paved- over corporatized everything.  This was just a very interesting thing to me that people in the minimum wage America are suffering from globalization just like people in thrid world countries or where ever else are being affected.

Hungary’s economy has been boosted because of its foreign manufacturers. Each year Hungary is seeing a very noticeable difference between domestically and foreign owned companies. Foreign companies hold about 25 percent of Hungary’s GDP.

In 1989, General Electric Company bought a large stake in Tungsram. Tungsram is a European company that manufactures light bulbs. With these foreign countries coming into Hungary, their industrial economy is booming. According to the International Herald Tribune, “Hungary has become something of a laboratory for economists studying the effects of foreign investments in post- Communism economies.” Ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Hungary has received one- third of foreign equity investment. Hungary really relies on foreign exports. “GE Tungsram accounts for more than 2 percent of all Hungarian exports.” (Herald Tribune)

Another big problem that Hungarians are facing is that most of the population is retiring now. There are more people retiring than there are coming into the workforce. The current employment rate is 4.19 million. The unemployment is 6%. This past year, due to the financial crisis, Audi has cut 20% of its workforce in Hungary. This puts many people out of work and furthers the problem of unemployment.

Many of the jobs are industrial as well as agricultural. Hungarian exports include machinery, food products, raw materials and fuel.

If it were not for the foreign investors and foreign owned companies, I think that Hungary would be struggling tremendously. Although they are not a third world country I do think that they would have many problems surviving by themselves.

       Hungary, formally known as the Republic of Hungary, is located in Central Europe. It is landlocked by Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. The capital of Hungary is Budapest. It consists of 19 different counties. The official language is Hungarian.

            Their government is a parliamentary democracy and you must be 19 years old to vote in an election. The President of the Republic is elected by Parliament every 5 years. The prime minister is also elected by Parliament and chooses his cabinets members and is the only one who has the right to dismiss them. The national assembly initiates and approves legislation by the Prime Minister. Their GDP per capita is $19,000. Their economy is based on agriculture, industry, and services. Agriculture makes up 5.5%, industry 33.3%, and services 61.2%. Their agriculture products consist of wheat, corn, sunflower seed, potatoes, sugar beets, pigs, cattle, poultry, and dairy. The industries are mining, construction materials, processed foods, textiles, and chemicals.

            They are a very religious country. They have the largest Synagogue in Europe, the largest medicine bath in the world, and the third largest church in Europe. Most of their music consists of Hungarian folk music which has a dactylic rhythm. Some famous composers are Liszt, Rozsa, and Bartok. Many traditional Hungarian meals have paprika and sour cream as a main ingredient. Chicken Paprikash among other dishes like turos csusza are traditional meals. There are many festivals that take place in specific seasons throughout the year. They are one of the leading European countries in westernization.

I think that this picture represents globalization because it shows an American company in a foreign country. Starbucks can be found all over the world. It shows just house easy whole businesses can be moved into countries on the other side of the world. Just imagine what else can be moved into another country.

Since I dont know much about globalization yet, I really dont have too many questions….but here goes the ones I have thought of:

1. Is it going to directly effect me in good and bad ways?

2. Are factory workers going to be completely jobless because of new technology and outsourcing?

3. Even though people with specialized jobs arent worried about loosing their jobs now, should they be worried about being replaced in the future?

4. Is globalization really americanization?

5. Are countries eventually going to start loosing their true culture to other cultures around the world?

6. Is there a way to stop globalization?

7. What are good aspects of globalization?

8. What are bad aspects of globalization?

9. Is globalization going to effect me when I start looking for jobs when I get out of college?

10. Is one language going to be a dominate language of the world because of globalization?

To me globalization has two different meanings. It is the influence of cultural, economic, and political factors of countries on other countries. After reading some of The World is Flat I began to wonder if it was Americanization. The author talked about going to India and other European countries and seeing American companies like HP and Texas Instrument. A quote from the book says, ” We could be sitting here, somebody form New York, London, Boston, San Francisco, all live. And maybe the implementation is in Singapore, so the Singapore person could also be live here…that’s globalzation.” It is absolutely amazing how people from countries on the other side of the world can be communticating by video live in another country. If you put culture in as part of globalization, you could say that it happens all over the world. Almost every city in the United States has a Chinatown or a Little Italy. They have McDonald’s every where in other countries. In fact this summer I went to Ireland and ate at Burger King. It wasnt the same as the Burger King here but it was the same concept. I am very new to this globalization thing so I am not sure if I am anywhere close to be correct about any of this but as I think about it more and more I realize that it is surrounding us.

I am just trying to get a hang of this blogging thing. It is all very new to me and I am just looking around the site to try to get an idea of what I am doing. The reason I am starting this blog is because I am taking a freshmen seminar on globalization. I dont know much of anything about it but I am really excited to learn. The people in the class all seem like they are very interested in the topic so I think we are going to have a fun semester. Ok enough of pointless rambling.