Final Summary

After reading the news concerning globalization for the length of this semester I have identified a couple of overall themes that are recurrent. The first theme is the fear of globalization encroaching on local culture. I summarized four articles concerning this emerging trend. There was not really any progress in field during the semester. I think this is because not every country has responded to this perceived threat in the same way. The articles I found were all just focusing on one specific culture or place and how they felt about globalization’s threat to their native culture. The second theme I identified was the growing concern about the interconnectivity of the global economy in the era of globalization. I wrote about seven articles that focused on this topic. All of the articles cited the growing risk that we all face because of the interconnectivity of our economies. More so now than ever, if something happens in one country, it has an affect in some way on all the others in turn. The articles I read did not suggest any solutions to reduce the risk we face, but mostly just pointed out the situation in reference to various places. A third theme that I identified was the increasing amount of attention paid to the growing wage divide in globalizations biggest winners. These article focused on the US, China, India, Singapore, and Angola. In each case, the article showed how globalization was benefiting mostly the middle and upper classes, while leaving the poor behind. There was not any progress in this trend either. For the most part, the articles were proclamation of the problems and statements of what needs to improve for the future.

In the immediate future, I do not think that globalization or the themes that I identified will change. There may be some legislative reform in the area of narrowing the divide between the rich and the poor that is widening due to globalization. However, the sweeping changes, needed to make real change in this area, are slow to materialize. I think that, even though I identified a theme of increased attention to the risk faced by interconnected economies, the world’s economies will continue to become closer in the immediate future. For now, the potential benefits seem to outweigh the risks for many governments. I think that there will continue to be a backlash against the globalization of cultures in the future. Culture is a product of one’s history, upbringing, family, and lifestyle, which will be hard for globalization to destroy. However, I think will see more of an integration of world cultures into the local cultures. The movement of workers and the ability to share ideas globally will make this transition smoother, but I think we will continue to see resistance by the older generations.

The commenting process has been very disappointing for me. I worked really hard on my blog entries to not only give a summary of the articles, but to provide important insight as to why this information was important for the larger issue of globalization. I received no comments on my entries. However, I myself did not comment on anyone else’s blogs either. I was very hesitant to comment because I read many other people’s blogs and did not have any idea what to write in response other than good job. This was especially true because most of the people’s blogs that I read only included a short summary of the article, with no explanation of why they chose the article or why it was important to their topic. I’m sorry that I felt that I could not have been more active in this part of the assignment.