OPEN WORLD
THE TRUTH ABOUT
GLOBALISATION
GLOBALISATION
-
PHILLIPE LEGRAIN
LEGRAIN, P (2003) 'OPEN WORLD: THE TRUTH ABOUT GLOBALISATION', LONDON, ABACUS
On the surface and to the ill-informed it looks black and white but when looking deeper it's really not that one sided.
Legrain is predominantly pro-Globalisation whereas other economists such as Naomi Klein are pretty strongly against the issue, such as in her book No Logo which I'm still trying to get hold of.
Notes
Analysis
'This ugly word is shorthand for how our lives are becoming increasingly intertwined with those of distant people and places around the world - economically, politically and culturally. These links are not always new, but they are more pervasive than ever.' - p4
'Globalisation is all-embracing , and yet profoundly misunderstood - two reasons why so many people fear it. Is globalisation ending our identity, national or otherwise? Are global brands colonising the world economy (and our minds)? Are we losing control of our lives to heartless mega-corporations and faceless markets? Many people think so - and there is an element of truth to these worries.' - p4
'The ties that bind us together are first the economic ones of trade, investment and migration. As goods, money and people move around the world, they bring far-off places closer together. We drive German cars, listen to Japanese hi-fis, eat French food, drink Colombian coffee, wear Italian clothes, buy Chinese toys, chat on Finnish mobile phones, work on computers made in Taiwan and use American software.' -p5
'The links are also political: the unique experiment in governments working together that is the European Union (EU)' - p5
'The cultural ties: the mixing of cultures through migration; the rapid spread of news, ideas and fashions through trade, travel and the media: and the growth of global brands - Coca Cola, McDonalds' Disney - that serve as common reference points.' -p5
'Whites are no longer a majority in California. By 2050, a third of Americans are set to have Asian or Hispanic roots. Islam is the second most popular religion in France: one in thirteen Frenchman worship Allah.' - p5
'Robin Cook, the then foreign secretary, famously declared that Britain's national dish was chicken tikka masala.' - p6
'Many of us have foreign colleagues, as well as foreign friends from school, university or holidays. We chat on the Internet to 'buddies' who might be on the other side of the world, or across the street. Westerners snort Colombian cocaine, suffer from diseases of African origin like Aids, fret about Islamic terrorists and worry about global warming.' - p6
'American films, music, food and clothes spread with no respect for national borders. Western ideas about human rights permeate traditional societies in the Third World. Virtually all countries compete in the Olympic Games and most in football's World Cup.' - p6
'All this globalisation is driven partly by cheaper, easier and faster transport and communications: airplanes, radio, television, telephones, the Internet (and before that railways, steamships and the telegraph). In 1850 it took a year to sail - or send a message - around the world. Now, you can fly around the globe in a day or so and send an email anywhere almost instantly. Sending a forty-page document from Chile to Kenya costs $50 by courier, $10 by fax and less than 10 cents by email.' - p6Communication is key to globalisation, internet is a huge leap in communication, no matter where you are in the world, you can engage, be influenced by and communicate with other countries in seconds. How much has internet usage gone up?
Until recently, foreign holidays were a preserve of the rich; now the poor in rich countries expect them. A telephone was once a luxury; now Internet cafés have sprung up in Third World shanty towns.' - p6
Globalisation involves more than technological change It is also a political choice. It involves consciously opening national borders to foreign influences. The explosion in cross-border links is as much a result of government decisions to remove restrictions on trade, foreign investment and capital flows as it is of better transport and communications.' -p7
First World War and Great Depression following Wall Street Crash stopped wave of globalisation and trade, countries thinking further inwards.
'After The First World War and then the Great Depression convinced them to turn inwards, governments put a stop to the first great wave of globalisation that had begun in the nineteenth century. Imports to America, which had bought nearly two-fifths of the world's exports in 1929, fell by 70% between 1929 and 1932. International lending fell by over 90% between 1927 and 1933.' - p7
Globalisation also further helped by choice, for trade, communication and creating relations between countries. Countries like North Korea are a great example of a country hardly embracing or being affected by Globalisation in terms of politics, trade and culture. By purposeful force...
'If governments wanted to, they could put globalisation into reverse again. So when people like Thomas Friedman, a journalist for the New York Times and author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, tell you 'Globalisation isn't a choice. It's a reality,' they are very much mistaken. We have opened our borders to international trade over the past fifty years; we can close them again.
The internet cannot be uninvented, but access to foreign websites can be restricted - just ask the Chinese government. For all the talk about the technological inevitability of globalisation, North Korea is doing a good job at shutting itself off from the rest of the world.' - p7
'Globalisation is blurring the borders between nation states. Yet it is neither uniform nor universal.' -p7
'Three quarters of what Britons buy in the shops is made domestically; nine-tenths is from within the EU. Most people in Britain work for British companies: the biggest employer by far is the quintessentially British National Health Service... Moreover most Britons have mainly British friends, live within ten miles of where they were born, and are obsessed by Big Brother, Pop Idol, Eastenders, Posh and Becks, and Premiership football - all reassuringly (or depressingly) parochial ' - p8
We're still not perhaps as global in our pop culture and interactions as we think, but it's probably inevitable which way the curve is going. I still definitely feel developing countries are much more effected and influenced by the first world than vice versa, without having a chance to build their own trade, culture, design and entertainment industries all the western stuff like The Simpsons, Premiership football and so on are forced upon them. In countries such as Jordan, and UAE in the middle-east all everyone watches is Hollywood movies and the Premier League..
America...
'Television news is overwhelmingly about America or Americans abroad (in Afghanistan, for instance). American TV is overwhelmingly produced at home; few foreign films break Hollywood's stranglehold.' - p9
Democracy and Globalisation. Globalisation will not fully get rid of local cultures and tastes, as long as democracy survives which relies on individual localities.
'Democracy remains rooted in local communities and national states - as does our identity. As long as that stays true, nation states - and the borders that they imply - are not going to disappear' - p9
The perceived positives of Globalisation such as bringing countries closer together, and focusing on trade and services is an objective of modernism itself, Swiss Style designers and social responsibility.
'Politically, consider what an incredible achievement the EU is. War in western Europe is unthinkable. Fifteen countries share a single market; twelve a single currency.' - p12
'Globalisation has the potential to do immense good. Just look at the amazing leap in American and European living standards since the Second World War. Or see how the Japanese went from rages to riches in a generation.' - p12
Rise of less developed countries. Idealism "Europe will be whole and free"
'The lure of joining the European club has helped curb any wayward instincts. Soon many will be EU members: Poles will travel as freely as the Europe as Ireland's has, people in western Europe will not need to fret about war or terror on their Eastern doorstep. Europe will be whole and free: the wounds of communism and the Second World War will finally heal.' -
The amazing rise of China's economy and trade in a few decades.
'By the nineteenth century, China was so weak and backward that it humiliatingly had to concede trading posts to Europe's colonial powers.' - p15
'The trasnformation of China since 1978 is nothing short of astounding. Skyscrapers have sprouted from rice paddies. Teenagers worship Madonna, not Mao. Supermarkers are stocked full of foreign consumer goods. In just twenty years, China's economy has grown eight times bigger. The average Chinese - over one in five of the world's population - has become six times richer.
Between 1990 and 1998, the number of Chinese living on less than a dollar a day fell by 150 million. That is the fastest fall in poverty the wold has ever seen.' - p15
'Globaphobes'
'The anti-globalisation movement is led by an unlikely alliance of media-savvy pressure groups and old-fashioned protectionists. Greens make common cause with smokestack industries, consumer activists with trade unions, development lobbyists with rich-country farmers. These 'globaphobes' have all sorts of gripes, many of them contradictory and wrong-headed. Some on the right bemoan the erosion of national sovereignty; many on the left warn against America's negative influence in the Third World.' - p17
Not just a recent issue. Countries have been trading and making links for centuries. But hugely in line with developments in technlogy and communication
'Arguably, globalisation was well underway by the time the Industrial Revolution kicked off around 1770. But some economic historians beg to differ. Kevin O'Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson do not dispute that global trade boomed in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They estimate that it rose by just over 1% a year. That may not sound fast, but it was probably faster than the growth of the economy as whole: technological process (and hence economic growth) was slower in those days. -p85
'Kings and scholars had long believed in the benefits of trade. But far fewer were keen on free trade. Typically, they were mercantilists: they believed that exports were good and imports bad.' - p86
Worker conditions overseas. Can't all be this black and white. Not all sweatshops are brilliant
'That seamstresses in Bangladesh are paid less than in Britain does no necessarily mean they are exploited. They earn more than they would as farmers. Moreover, conditions in a Nike factory are far better than in a typical local one. Wages are higher too: studies show that in poor countries workers in foreign firms earn twice the national average. More importantly, 'sweatshops' are generally the first step up on the development ladder - in the 1960s, Westerners used to bemoan the conditions in Japanese sweatshoops.' - p21
Globalisation takes off
'In 1780 even the best-educated man knew only patches of the inhabited globe... Steamships, railways and the telegraph made nineteenth-century globalisation possible, but it was also a political choice. The British government adopted free trade and convinced others to follow.' - p90
TECHNOLOGY! TRAVEL.
'Better transport was bringing the world together. Shoddy toads and slow sailboats gave way to canals, steamships and railways. By 1820 Britain had four times as many miles of navigable waterway as in 1750; the French soon matched this British feat.
In America, the Erie Canal, built between 1817 and 1825, cut the cost of transport between Buffalo and New York City by 85% and the journy time from 21 to 8 days.
Shipping freight from Cincinnati to New York City by wagon and riverboat took 52 days in 1817 but only 6 by canal in 1852.' - p92
'The invention of fridges allowed Europeans to dine on American beef' - p93
'Railways made an even bigger mark, connecting factories and towns to ports. The railway age started in 1929, when the world's first passenger train ran between Liverpool and Manchester. By 1841, there were 8,500 kilometres of track in the world....in 1914 there were over 1,000,000 kilometres of track.
Between 1850 and 1910, Britain's railway network nearly quadrupled. Germany's grew ten-fold; France's eighteen-fold. Over the same period, America's rail network multipled over twenty-seven-fold, from 14,000 kilometres to 400,000.
Railways united America's regional markets, spawning national companies in place of local ones.' - p93
The telegraph!
'The breakthrough in communication was even more remarkable. The telegraph (1953) meant that news could cross the world in minutes rather than weeks. News for share prices, for instance - that previously took up to three weeks to cross the atlantic now took less than a day. As the century closed, the telephone (1877) and the radio (1896) brought the world even closer together. In 1900 Europeans and Americans were first able to talk to each other by phone.' - p95
Immigration - Countries much more diverse than they've ever been, although immigration isn't as loose as it used to be. Different languages call for a crisp and International Style of design
'Even more significantly, millions of people were on the move. Around 60 million Europeans set sail for the resource-rich and labour-scarce Americas in the century following 1920, three-fifths of them to the United States - the biggest migration in history.
The US population soared from 10 million in 1821, to 94 million in 1914.' - p95
Diffusion of culture and arts
'The birth of a global economy in the nineteenth-century had a burgeoning cultural impact too. Romantic literature and music (think Keats or Goethe), which seeped across European borders in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, did not have much of an impact in the US until many decades later (Walt Whitman). Yet by 1875 Charles Dickens' novels has been translated into ten languages; British culture was spreading throughout the Empire and the US; and French Culture was permeating Latin America, the Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe.' - p100
Universal Language - even more opportunity now?
Universal language attempt = Esperanto
'Educated elites around the world dressed like Europeans and spoke English or French. Hopes for a new universal language, Esperanto, which was devised in the 1880s, soon foundered though.' - p101
Japan going mad with Westernisation. Less developed/rapidly developing world hugely influenced by West, but not vice versa again
'Emulation was as powerful a force as empire. Japan took aping the West to absurd lengths. In its bid to catch up with the West, nothing was taboo: the simplification, even the abandonment of the Japanese language was considered, as was systematic cross-breeding with Westerners. The Japanese took to eating meat; many converted to Christianity.
In the 1870s Japanese 'statesmen and politicians vied in salutes to westernisation. They went about in formal European dress more suitable to a Paris wedding than to everyday business in Tokyo; wore absurd top hats on cropped polls.' -p101
Swiss Tourism Rate - Affect of language and multiculturalism at an early stage. Americans with English flooding into German/French speaking Switzerland.
'Rich Americans flocked to European centres of culture. Rich Europeans developed a taste for spas or summers by the sea. Baedeker produced his first guide to Egypt in 1877 In 1879 Switzerland was already receiving a million tourists a year, 200,000 of them American.' - p101
Silent movies and Hollywood. Silent movies = Ubiquiotous and helped Hollywood expand around the world. Similarly ubiquitious design? Design which accounts for the top 3 languages in the world, visually looks really interesting and three times less chance of someone not understanding the content.
'Even though economic globalisation was going into reverse, technology was still bringing distant people closer together. Newspapers took off: production doubles in the US between 1920 and 1950. Radio spread news and mass culture even more widely; a medium unkown in America at the end of the First World War was listened to by 10 million households by 1929, over 27 million by 1939 and over 40 million by 1950.
The 1920s saw a boom in cinema, with Hollywood films rapidly conquering the world. Hollywood bought up talent from the rest of the world and sold films back to it: movies were initially silent - remember early Charlie Chaplin - and so an immediately international product.
Movies and TV from growing world hardly seen in the West. But I feel design is much more of a worldwide practice than media and entertainment.
'India produces more films (855 in 2000) than Hollywood does (762), but they are largely for a domestic audience. Japan and Hong Kong also make lots of movies, but few are seen outside Asia. France and Britain have the occasional global hit - Amelie of Four Weddings and a Funeral, for instance - bu they are still basically local players.' - p303
Not only does Hollywood dominate the global movie market. It swamps local products in most countries. Even in Japan, American fare accounts for over half the market. US films accounted for 63 percent of box-office receipts in the EU in 1996, with a 53% share in France and an 81% share in Britain.' - p304
In the last 50 years Globalisation, has become fully global with a variety of developing countries also becoming increasingly mulicultural and capitalist. Further reinforcing the need, opportunity or experimentation with an International Style. More progressive and answering the criticisms of the original International Style.
'Globalisation is more genuinely global than before. In the late 19th century, globalisation was driven by Europe and the Americas. The rest of the world was either plundered for raw material by its imperial masters or ignored and isolated from the world economy. From 1945 until 1980, globalisation mostly encompassed western Europe and North America, as well as a fistful of Asian exporters: first Japan, then South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and a few others. So it involved countries that accoung for roughly a quarter of the world's popuation.
Since then, the opening up of China and the collapse of the Soviet Union and its puppet states have brought another 1.7 billion people into the capitalist world.' - p108
Air travel - Interacting with worldwide culture with ease and high frequency
'Foreign travel has skyrocketed: tourists made 700 million international trips in 2000, up from a mere 25 million in 1950. A three-minute telephone call between New York and London cost $245 in 1930. It is now virtually free on the Internet.' - p108
Speed of communication - - -
'Even remote African villages have Radio and Television - though perhaps not the laptops in the IBM advertisements. Globalisation is also more intense and immediate. In a mass-media world, people and events across the globe feel closer. September 11th had such a global impact in part because people watched it live on TV. Within minutes of the tragic events, millions of people everywhere were emailing each other and texting each other on their mobile phones.' - p115
Thomas Friedman - Anti globalisation
"I believe you can reduce the world's economies today to basically five different gas stations... What is going on today, in the very broadest sense, is that through the process of globalisation everyone is being forced toward America's gas station. If you are not an American and don't know how to pump your own gas, I suggest you learn. With the end of the Cold War, globalisation is globalising Anglo-American-style capitalism and the Golden Straitjacket.
It is globalising American culture and American culture icons. It is globalising the best of America and the worst of America. It is globalising the American Revolution and it is globalising the American gas station"
- Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree - p293
Naomi Kyle - 'No Logo' - Anti globalisation
"Today the buzzword in global marketing isn't selling America to the world, but bringing a kind of market masala to everyone in the world... Nationality, language, ethnicity, religion and politics are all reduced to their most colourful exotic accesories... Despite the embrace of polytechnic imagery, market-driven globalisation doesn't want diversity, quite the opposite. Its enemies are national habits, local brands and distinctive regional tastes."
- Naomi Klein, No Logo - p294
'Fears that globalisation is imposing a deafening cultural uniformity are as ubiquitous as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Mickey Mouse - and house music. Europeans and Latin Americans, left, right, right and poor - all of them dread that local cultures and national identities are dissolving into a crass all-American consumerism. This cultural imperialism is said to impose American values as well s products, promote the commercial at the expense of the authentic, substitute shallow gratification for deeper satisfaction.' - p295
Coca-Colanisation. On one hand, people think it's forced upon us. Perhaps the frequency of their marketing is widespread but do you blame them? That's the aim of every business. On the other hand, no one forces you to drink Coke, or eat McDonalds. If you're sensible, the local food is still there. Perhaps less frequent and a little harder to experience - if anything you have more variety?
'The push of the corporate giants that peddle these icons of Americana is more than matches by the pull of consumer demand.
Coca-Cola aims to be 'within an arm's reach of desire', but it has yet to fit drips to everybody at birth. People still have to desire to reach for a can of Coke. Clearly, they often prefer it to the local alternative. Nobody is forced to drink Coke. Nobody should be prevented from drinking it either.' - p295
'Start with a simple observation: although Coke's global spread creates greater uniformity across countries, it adds diversity within them. Cubans once swigged rum or water; now they can also choose to gulp down Coke and tuKola.' p296
This concept of Coke can probably be extended to Western TV, or other cultural factors brought upon other countries, but AGAIN - it's always a question of something from the West, there's far greater influence from the less developed, or growing world. Who almost seem to be growing as little baby versions of the west.
Developing countries swamped with Western cultural objects and products, instead of vice versa
'American shows like Friends, ER and The Simpsons have a global following. Nearly three-quarters of television drama exported worldwide comes from the US. America is capturing a big chunk of the global TV market, which is growing fast as cable and satellite channels multiply and governments relax controls on programming.' - p303
'If the fear is that national cultures are under threat, individual choices, not 'Coca-colonisation', are to blame. If the worry is that countries are becoming more alike, this is because people's tastes have converged, not because American companies are stamping out local competition.' - p296
Countries are obviously converging together, that much is undisputable but I feel what perhaps is disputable is the extent of the diffusion, what perhaps is more diffused and creating the confusion - is peoples tastes and needs.
'The really profound cultural changes have nothing to do with Coca-Cola. Western ideas about liberalism and science are taking root in the most unlikely places. Immigration, mainly from developing countries, is creating multicultural societies in Europe, and North America. Technology is reshaping culture: just think of the Internet.
Individual choice is fragmenting the imposed uniformity of national culture.
New hybrid cultures are emerging. National identity is not disappearing, but the bonds of nationality are loosening.' - p297
^^ Great quote! - - Also relates to international dialogue and growing uniformity within design sensibilities and collaboration/communication over the internet and greater distance. Rather than working in little collectives and these collectives becoming collaborators through exhibitions and travel like in the 50s. Hybrid culture = Hybrid design to reflect the culture.Multicultural = International Design
'When Levi Strauss, a German imigrant, started making his famous blue jeans in the 1860s for the prospectors and frontiersment of the Californian Gold Rush, he combined denim cloth with Genes, a traditional style of trousers worn by Genoese sailors.
So Levi's jeans are in fact an American twist on a European model. Pizza Hut peddles an Italian dish; Burger King is owned by Britain's Diageo' - p298
Cultural diffusion is nothing now, it changes our perceptions of what actually is "british", or "American" it's all part of the process. Over generations a German, becomes American. Our Royal Family is/was German.
MTV in Asia devotes a fifth of its airtime to local programming.' -p299
Developing countries swamped with Western cultural objects and products, instead of vice versa
Uniformity of English - becoming the default language! All airports include local language + English. English is everywhere. International design, must include English. Be communicative and concise. English becoming one of two main languages in US. 30 million Americans speak Spanish
'There is another American export that is conquering the globe; English. Around 380 million people speak it as their first language, and a further 250 million as their second. A billion are learning it, about a third of the world's population are exposed to it. By 2050, it is reckoned, half the world will be more or less proficient in it.
Losing national languages would be especially sad if people had not feely chosen to abandon them. English may usurp other languages not because it is what people prefer to speak, but because, like Microsoft software, there are compelling advantages to using it if everyone else does.' - p305
A DIFFERENT WORLD
'The twentieth century is ending with a search to find out where the modern phase of globalisation is supposed to be leading us all: a world in which the question of production is solved once and for all, and all nations share in universal peace and prosperity?
Or a soulless, standardised materialism in which the greed of the favoured few and a system skewed in favour of the rich and powerful drive the planet to the brink of extinction.' - p320- Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson, The Age of Insecurity
Closing line
'My point is simple: all sorts of things are wrong with the world, but globalisation is overwhelmingly a force for good.' - p324
No comments:
Post a Comment