Maria Forsyth Reading Response #1.
In the book written by Steger, technology only provides a partial explanation for globalization. Globalization, while it seems like a brand new phenomenon that came with the internet and what-not, is actually a dynamic, a changing process, which many scholars would argue on where the starting point should be. Some would say it would be three decades ago, some would say it would be several centuries ago, some would say it would be millennia ago, and then some would say it would be from a whole different time.
THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD (10,000 BCE – 3500 BCE)
12,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers finally settled on all five continents (five because the other two continents were too cold to live on at that point). Sooner or later, those hunter-gatherers began to produce their own food (they domesticated some animals and some plants), making it easier to gather food without actually trying to find, and/or kill it. This domestication led to permanent villages, which led to population increases and fortified towns. The new societies would end up majorly being highly stratified male-led social structures, all in turn being led by chiefs and priests at the highest level. Because of the food surplus, some farmers now had some time to specialize in one of two ways: becoming a craftsman or becoming a bureaucrat/warrior. The craftsman would create new technologies that would benefit their society as a whole, and the bureaucrat/warrior would find a way to rule/conquer/protect their society.
THE PREMODERN PERIOD (3,500 BCE – 1500 CE)
The invention of writing and the wheel had some profound impacts around that affected the whole world as they knew it at the time. The wheel led to animal-drawn carts and permanent roads, which led to faster and more efficient ways of transporting goods and people. Writing helped spread ideas and inventions, as well as coordinated complex social activities and encourage large states to form. Vast empires, or empires that had made a mark on history, fostered long-distance communication and exchange of technology, commodities, culture, and diseases. China is an extraordinary example of an empire who took advantage of the wheel and writing for other innovations, as well as for the Silk Road as a trading route.
THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD (1500 – 1750)
This is the period between the European Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Europe greatly benefited from Islamic and Chinese technology, and wanted to use that technology to find a efficient trade route to get to the profitable, India. Entrepreneurs/capitalists/countries would soon spread the ‘capitalist world system’ to their colonies. Stock companies would be founded just for setting up profitable overseas trading posts. Forced migration of movement (Atlantic Slave Trade) benefited white immigrants and their home countries but ignored the suffering for the non-European involved.
THE MODERN PERIOD (1750 - 1980)
Europeans believe to take global leadership, but oblivious to racist practices and just spread their ideals. Railways, international air transportation and mechanized shipping finally overcame the last geographical barrier separating the continents from each other. Population monumentally increases, and increased migration leads to more culturally mixed countries like America, Australia, and Canada. Extreme nationalism lead to two World Wars, genocides, etc. Decolonization happened during the 1950s – 1960s after the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan and from the threat of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) from the Cold War.
THE CONTEMPORARY PERIOD (1980 – Current era and beyond?)
The age of the internet, wireless communication, digital media is here. As to why globalization spread quicker over the past three decades, well – the internet got us connected and aware of what was going on in the world. One tiny thing from one area can have a major effect on an area from halfway around the world.
MY VIEWPOINT
These just shows that globalizations changes and expands from era to era. Steger is trying to say that all those arguing scholars are right – it’s just that they need to mix their main points together. He shows that by showing those main points/turning points in different eras. A different question; why do more people shed more tears and show more emotion to genocide that is being conducted now as compared to 200 years in the past? That’s easy – because our minds just renegade it as a story, as history that has already passed. The reason why we care more about the concentration camps in Germany than the Atlantic slave trade or the several conducted several thousands of years ago, was because that concentration camp had picture of all those that were suffering before our very eyes. We don’t have that for those other events, so we’re not as emotionally invested into that topic as we should be.
From the Campbell reading, there was the Bretton Woods Conference, which was an attempt to establish global rules and regulations regarding global transactions. Many of those rules were retracted due to some presidents because of their belief in neoliberalism, which then in turn caused a slight decrease in the economy. The very definition of nation-states are changing because of several minorities, which causes some states to either turn violent towards them, or embrace them into their state. Huntington believes that wars are not from economic standpoints, but from cultural standpoints in the end. However, critics say that if that theory were true, what about mixed raced families and their children? What about the fate of the US where our debt is handled by Japan and China? The text then goes off to define what different types of citizenship there are: republican, liberal, and global.
MY VIEWPOINT
I think this text is trying to entice its reader to become a global reader during later chapters, and is doing so by showing the different types of conflicts around the world or by different ways of impacting the world and our role in it. By defining the different types of citizenship, it wants us to think of what we’re doing, and that we should be the type of global citizens that makes the world a better place in our own special way.
