Introduction:
The Idea of Human Rights
The era of globalization is also the era of the individual. Revolutionary innovations in technology and telecommunications have empowered the individual, for better or worse, to exercise a previously unthinkable degree of self-expression. The same age that has seen the advent of the threat of global terror networks is also the one that has given birth to YouTube.
This focus on the individual is part of a broader trend that has been underway for centuries and has only intensified since the end of the Second World War. One of its most important manifestations in the twentieth – and now twenty-first – century has been the development of a conceptual and legal framework for human rights as well as a new dimension of civil society dedicated to ensuring that these rights are protected.
Human rights recognize the dignity inherent in every person as a human being, regardless of his or her particular nationality, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, class or any other group affiliation or characteristic. As a result, they assert the moral and legal primacy of the individual over other entities that have “rights,” such as the family and the state.
This Brief will examine the history of human rights and survey some of the key debates about how these rights should be applied in current real-world situations. Two areas of special focus will be human rights and violence ( genocide and torture) and human rights and groups (children, women, indigenous peoples).
Several of the issues raised in the Brief will touch on topics covered in other issue briefs and news analyses on the Globalization101.org website. Cross-references to these resources will be provided throughout the Brief.
Genocide:
the systematic, planned, and deliberate extermination, attempt to exterminate, or conspiracy to exterminate an entire national, racial, ethnic, or religious group.
Indigenous:
peoples who inhabited a land before it was conquered by colonial societies and who consider themselves distinct from the societies currently governing those territories.
Enlightment:
a philosophical movement in the 18th century that advocated the use of reason and individualism to scrutinize previously accepted traditions; the movement resulted in political, religious, and educational reforms.
Natural Rights:
rights deriving from natural law, a body of law believed to be derived from nature, and therefore to be binding on human actions in addition to law established by human authority.
Classical Liberalism:
a doctrine stressing the importance of human rationality, property rights, natural rights, individual freedom, free markets, and limited government.
Divine Rights:
the notion that monarchs are endowed with their authority to rule by God, not by the people.
Declaration of Independence:
the document that proclaimed the independence of the American colonies from England, adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776.
U.S. Constitution:
the document that provides the fundamental principles and laws that prescribe the structure, functions, and limits of the U.S. government.
Bill of Rights:
the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution that guarantee certain fundamental rights of the people, such as the right to free speech and freedom of religion.
Fraternity:
the quality of being brotherly or of having a common purpose. Similar in meaning to ‘solidarity.’
Human Rights vs. Natural Rights
The modern conception of rights can be traced back to Enlightenment political philosophy and the movement, primarily in England, France, and the United States, to establish limited forms of representative government that would respect the freedom of individual citizens.
John Locke, in his Second Treatise on Government (1690), described a “state of nature” prior to the creation of society in which individuals fended for themselves and looked after their own interests. In this state, each person possessed a set of natural rights, including the rights to life, liberty and property. When individuals came together in social groups, the main purpose of their union was to secure these rights more effectively. Consequently, they ceded to the governments they established “only the right to enforce these natural rights and not the rights themselves” (35).
Locke’s philosophy, known as classical liberalism, helped initiate a new way of thinking about individuals, governments, and the rights that link the two. Previously, heads of state had claimed to rule by divine right, tracing their authority through genealogy to the ultimate source of authority in divine power. This was as true for Roman emperors as it was Chinese and Japanese emperors. The theory of divine right was most forcefully asserted during the Renaissance by monarchs across Europe, most notoriously James I of England (1566-1625) and Louis XIV of France (1638-1715).
Locke’s principles were adopted by the founding fathers of the United States in the Declaration of Independence (1776), which stated:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed… (36)
The echoes of Locke and foreshadowing of the Universal Declaration are unmistakable in the language of the Declaration. These principles would be further developed and enshrined in the U.S. Constitution (1787) and Bill of Rights (1789).
The English had attained their own Bill of Rights following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, just as the French later would with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen that was drafted after the French Revolution in 1789. This document would famously reformulate Locke’s three fundamental freedoms—life, liberty and property—as liberty, equality and fraternity. The differences between the Anglo-American and continental legal, political and social traditions may be neatly summed up by this seemingly minor difference in language (see section on “Three Generations of Rights”).
The doctrine of natural rights, which deals with civil and political rights exclusively, established the rights of citizens in a national context. The innovation of human rights in the twentieth century extended the idea of individual rights to include all human beings, regardless of citizenship or state affiliation. Human rights helped reconstitute individual identity and freedom as something transcending national borders. As the atrocities of the World Wars made clear, there were times when the state became the citizen’s greatest enemy and outside protection was his or her best and only hope.
New Deal:
the programs advocated by and created by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt that were designed to promote economic recovery from the Great Depression as well as social reform.
Cold War:
a term used to describe the relationship between the United States and Soviet Union from World War II until 1990 that was characterized by intense political opposition and military rivalry that never developed into a full-scale, armed war.
Negative vs. Positive Rights
The division in the International Bill of Rights between the two Covenants, which cover civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights separately, hints at a more fundamental difference between these two sets of rights and raises questions about the nature of rights itself.
The first set is essentially a group of negative prohibitions, a list of ways in which individual liberty cannot be restricted or impeded; the second set lays out a group of positive prescriptions as to what actions should and must be taken to allow for the free exercise of that individual liberty.
In a famous lecture delivered at Oxford University in 1958, titled “Two Concepts of Liberty,” the political philosopher Isaiah Berlin clarified this distinction, which he framed in terms of positive and negative liberty. If negative liberty is concerned with the freedom to pursue one’s interests according to one’s own free will and without “interference from external bodies,” then positive liberty takes up the “degree to which individuals or groups” are able to “act autonomously” in the first place. In other words, what are the conditions under which individuals shape their understandings of their own free will? (37) What gives individuals a positive idea about how they should act, rather than negative limitations on how they may not act?
Civil and political rights are concerned with negative liberty,1 while economic, social and cultural rights are grounded in positive liberty; hence the need for two Conventions. There was some disagreement about the relative importance of these two conceptions during the debates over the Universal Declaration and its Conventions.
While the U.S. had adopted a welfare state model under the New Deal reforms of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, economic and social rights were not part of the American political tradition in the same way they had been for many continental European governments (or the increasingly powerful Soviet Union, for that matter).
The brewing Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union would spill over into the arena of human rights (38). The Soviets gave a high place to the collective over the individual. This meant priority for positive liberty, which they believed empowered the state to take sweeping action to provide for the well-being and “self-realization” of its citizens, sometimes at the expense of individual civil and political rights, such as the right to political participation (39).
Many in the West, however, viewed the Soviet position skeptically as a veiled attempt to return to the excesses of authoritarianism that the United Nations had been set up to prevent. Great injustices have often been committed for the benefit of the collective good. Berlin and others were wary of “the way in which the apparently noble ideal of freedom as self-mastery or self-realization had been twisted and distorted by the totalitarian dictators of the twentieth century” (40).
In the end, the Soviet bloc would abstain from approving the Universal Declaration. An understanding on human rights between the Soviet Union and the West was finally reached in the Helsinki Accords of 1975, though disputes about the limitations of government authority in cracking down on human rights continued to linger until the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 (41).
Ultimately, it remains an open question whether the positive and negative forms of liberty are two aspects of a common conception of rights or two distinct types of rights that are closely related without being identical.
Human Rights and Violence
At their most fundamental, human rights seek to protect an individual’s right to life. Such protections range from the basic freedom from physical harm to highly complex forms of welfare assurance that encompass health, education, and the environment.
The very idea of human rights, as opposed to natural rights, emerged as a response to historical events that threatened the very right to exist for millions of vulnerable people. The horrors of the Holocaust led the people of the world to reassert the value of every human life and to create the international legal framework that ensured such atrocities would never occur again.
The practice of multilateral cooperation in matters involving violence had been well-established since the nineteenth century. A series of traditions and international agreements had evolved to address the treatment of prisoners and soldiers on the battlefield. What was new about the genocides of the twentieth century was that they were perpetrated against noncombatant civilians who were largely defenseless.
Often, these extreme acts of violence were committed by governments against the very citizens whose rights those governments were meant to safeguard. International values and standards about the humane treatment of people in times of war needed to be extended to apply to all people in all circumstances. It was clear that the rights of citizenship and strictly national enforcement mechanisms were no longer sufficient.
At first, the set of issues clustering around the topic of human rights and violence might not seem as controversial as some of the other issues this Brief will be considering later on. After all, who would object to the notion that governments and private citizens alike should not be allowed to kill or torture people? While such principles may seem to be clear cut in theory, they can become far more complicated when brought to bear on real-world situations. We will now turn to some of these debates.
United Nations Efforts To Secure Freedom from Torture
A dedicated Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; was completed in 1984 and entered into force in 1987 (5). Article 1 of the Convention Against Torture defines torture, inhuman or degrading treatment in the following way:
An act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent of or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions (6).
This definition is extremely broad, and the nature and limits of behavior covered by this language has been much debated. The key properties of torture, however, are clearly presented: (a) the infliction of severe pain or suffering, (b) the presence of an intention to torture, (c) a purpose to extract information or a confession or to punish, and (d) some form of authorization by officials in power.
The Convention established a UN Committee on Torture and appointed a Special Rapporteur on Torture to coordinate the UN’s efforts and to investigate individual complaints through country visits and annual reports (7). It should be noted that torture is also discussed in the International Bill of Rights in Article 5 of the Universal Declaration and Article 7 of the ICCPR.
on Torture to coordinate the UN’s efforts and to investigate individual complaints through country visits and annual reports (7). It should be noted that torture is also discussed in the International Bill of Rights in Article 5 of the Universal Declaration and Article 7 of the ICCPR.
The ban on torture encompasses four separate human rights. The first is the right to be protected from torture, whether carried out by states or private individuals, by all legal, administrative and judicial means available (Convention Against Torture, Articles 2 and 4) (8).
The second is the right to have those accused of torture prosecuted, wherever they may be (Convention Against Torture 5, 6, and 8). This is a good example of the blurred line between a right and duty, because the right to prosecution enjoyed by individuals also imposes an obligation on all states either to extradite suspects to the proper jurisdiction or to prosecute them themselves (9).
The third is the right of a person to not “be expelled, returned or extradited to another state” if there is suspicion that that person might be subject to torture, inhuman or degrading treatment (Convention Against Torture, Article 3). This principle of non-refoulement will be examined more closely later in this section (see “Non-Refoulement: Extraordinary Renditions and Outsourcing Torture”) (10).
The fourth is the “right of victims to obtain redress, fair compensation, including rehabilitation and the right of victims to make a complaint, to have it impartially investigated, and to be protected from retaliation for making complaints.” Forms of compensation can include financial awards, medical care, and other measures to restore a victim’s “dignity and reputation” in both the private and public spheres (11).
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
GLOBALIZATION
What Is Globalization?
Globalization is a process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments of different nations, a process driven by international trade and investment and aided by information technology. This process has effects on the environment, on culture, on political systems, on economic development and prosperity, and on human physical well-being in societies around the world.
Globalization is not new, though. For thousands of years, people—and, later, corporations—have been buying from and selling to each other in lands at great distances, such as through the famed Silk Road across Central Asia that connected China and Europe during the Middle Ages. Likewise, for centuries, people and corporations have invested in enterprises in other countries. In fact, many of the features of the current wave of globalization are similar to those prevailing before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.
But policy and technological developments of the past few decades have spurred increases in cross-border trade, investment, and migration so large that many observers believe the world has entered a qualitatively new phase in its economic development. Since 1950, for example, the volume of world trade has increased by 20 times, and from just 1997 to 1999 flows of foreign investment nearly doubled, from $468 billion to $827 billion. Distinguishing this current wave of globalization from earlier ones, author Thomas Friedman has said that today globalization is “farther, faster, cheaper, and deeper.”
This current wave of globalization has been driven by policies that have opened economies domestically and internationally. In the years since the Second World War, and especially during the past two decades, many governments have adopted free-market economic systems, vastly increasing their own productive potential and creating myriad new opportunities for international trade and investment. Governments also have negotiated dramatic reductions in barriers to commerce and have established international agreements to promote trade in goods, services, and investment. Taking advantage of new opportunities in foreign markets, corporations have built foreign factories and established production and marketing arrangements with foreign partners. A defining feature of globalization, therefore, is an international industrial and financial business structure.
Technology has been the other principal driver of globalization. Advances in information technology, in particular, have dramatically transformed economic life. Information technologies have given all sorts of individual economic actors—consumers, investors, businesses—valuable new tools for identifying and pursuing economic opportunities, including faster and more informed analyses of economic trends around the world, easy transfers of assets, and collaboration with far-flung partners.
Globalization is deeply controversial, however. Proponents of globalization argue that it allows poor countries and their citizens to develop economically and raise their standards of living, while opponents of globalization claim that the creation of an unfettered international free market has benefited multinational corporations in the Western world at the expense of local enterprises, local cultures, and common people. Resistance to globalization has therefore taken shape both at a popular and at a governmental level as people and governments try to manage the flow of capital, labor, goods, and ideas that constitute the current wave of globalization.
To find the right balance between benefits and costs associated with globalization, citizens of all nations need to understand how globalization works and the policy choices facing them and their societies. Globalization101.org tries to provide an accurate analysis of the issues and controversies regarding globalization, especially to high-school and college students, without the slogans or ideological biases generally found in discussions of the topics. We welcome you to our website.
Globalization is international integration. It can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society. This process is a combination of economic, technological, sociocultural and political forces.
Effects of globalization
Globalization has various aspects which affect the world in several different ways such as:
Industrial (alias trans nationalization) - emergence of worldwide production markets and broader access to a range of foreign products for consumers and companies
Financial - emergence of worldwide financial markets and better access to external financing for corporate, national and subnational borrowers
Economic - realization of a global common market, based on the freedom of exchange of goods and capital. Globalization, when considered in a sociological context, has increased economic inequality throughout the world and within the United States.
Poorer countries are at disadvantage: While it is true that Globalization encourages free trade among countries on an international level, there are also negative consequences. The main export of poorer countries is usually an agricultural good. It is difficult for these countries to compete with stronger countries that subsidize their own farmers. Because the farmers in the poorer countries cannot compete, they are forced to sell their crops at much lower price than what the market is paying. [49]
Exploitation of foreign impoverished workers: The deterioration of protections for weaker nations by stronger industrialized powers has resulted in the exploitation of the people in those nations to become cheap labor. Due to the lack of protections, companies from powerful industrialized nations are able to force workers to endure extremely long hours, unsafe working conditions, and just enough salary to keep them working. The abundance of cheap labor is giving the countries in power incentive not to rectify the inequality between nations. If these nations developed into industrialized nations, the army of cheap labor would slowly disappear alongside development. With the world in this current state, it is impossible for the exploited workers to escape poverty. It is true that the workers are free to leave their jobs, but in many poorer countries, this would mean starvation for the worker, and possible even his/her family. [50]
Shift from manufacturing to service work: The low cost of off-shore workers have enticed corporations to more production to foreign countries. The laid off unskilled workers are forced move into the service sector where wages and benefits are low, but turnover is high. This has contributed to the widening economic gap between skilled and unskilled workers. The loss of these jobs has also contributed greatly to the slow decline of the middle class which is a major factor in the increasing economic inequality in the United States. Families that were once part of the middle class are forced into lower positions by massive layoffs and outsourcing to another country. This also means that people in the lower class have a much harder time climbing out of poverty because of the absence of the middle class as a stepping stone. [51]
The rise of contingent work: As Globalization causes more and more jobs to be shipped overseas, and the middle class declines, there is less need for corporations to hire full time employees. Companies are less inclined to offer benefits, or reduce benefits, to part time workers. Most companies don’t offer any benefits at all. Such benefits include health insurance, bonuses, vacation time, shares in the company, and pensions. Even though most of the middle class workers still have their jobs, the reality is that their buying power has decreased due to decreased benefits. Job security is also a major issue with contingent work. [52]
Weakening of labor unions: The surplus in cheap labor coupled with an ever growing number of companies in transition has caused a weakening of labor unions in the United States. Unions loss their effectiveness when their membership begins to decline. As a result unions hold less power over corporations that are able to easily replace workers, often for lower wages, and have the option to not offer unionized jobs anymore. [53]
Political - political globalization is the creation of a world government which regulates the relationships among nations and guarantees the rights arising from social and economic globalization. [54] Politically, the United States has enjoyed a position of power among the world powers; in part because of its strong and wealthy economy. With the influence of Globalization and with the help of The United States’ own economy, China has experience some tremendous growth within the past decade. If China continues to grow at the rate projected by the trends, then it is very likely that in the next twenty years, there will be a major reallocation of power among the world leaders. China will have enough wealth, industry, and technology to rival the United States for the position of leading world power. [55]
Informational - increase in information flows between geographically remote locations
Cultural - growth of cross-cultural contacts; advent of new categories of consciousness and identities such as Globalism - which embodies cultural diffusion, the desire to consume and enjoy foreign products and ideas, adopt new technology and practices, and participate in a "world culture"
Ecological- the advent of global environmental challenges that can not be solved without international cooperation, such as climate change, cross-boundary water and air pollution, over-fishing of the ocean, and the spread of invasive species. Many factories are built in developing countries where they can pollute freely.
Social - the achievement of free circulation by people of all nations
Transportation - fewer and fewer European cars on European roads each year (the same can also be said about American cars on American roads) and the death of distance through the incorporation of technology to decrease travel time.[clarify]
Greater international cultural exchange
Spreading of multiculturalism, and better individual access to cultural diversity (e.g. through the export of Hollywood and Bollywood movies). However, the imported culture can easily supplant the local culture, causing reduction in diversity through hybridization or even assimilation. The most prominent form of this is Westernization, but Sinicization of cultures has taken place over most of Asia for many centuries.
Greater international travel and tourism
Greater immigration, including illegal immigration
Spread of local consumer products (e.g. food) to other countries (often adapted to their culture)
World-wide fads and pop culture such as Pokémon, Sudoku, Numa Numa, Origami, Idol series, YouTube, Orkut, Facebook, and MySpace.
World-wide sporting events such as FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games.
Formation or development of a set of universal values
Technical/legal
Development of a global telecommunications infrastructure and greater transborder data flow, using such technologies as the Internet, communication satellites, submarine fiber optic cable, and wireless telephones
Increase in the number of standards applied globally; e.g. copyright laws, patents and world trade agreements.
The push by many advocates for an international criminal court and international justice movements.
Sexual awareness – It is often easy to only focus on the economic aspects of Globalization. This term also has strong social meanings behind it. Globalization can also mean a cultural interaction between different countries. Globalization may also have social effects such changes in sexual inequality, and to this issue brought about a greater awareness of the different (often more brutal) types of gender discrimination throughout the world. Women and girls in African countries have long had to deal with genital mutilation as a form of control enforced by the men in their society.
[edit] Trade barriers
Since World War II, barriers to international trade have been considerably lowered through international agreements - General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Particular initiatives carried out as a result of GATT and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), for which GATT is the foundation, have included:
Promotion of free trade:
Reduction or elimination of tariffs; construction of free trade zones with small or no tariffs
Reduced transportation costs, especially from development of containerization for ocean shipping.
Reduction or elimination of capital controls
Reduction, elimination, or harmonization of subsidies for local businesses
Restriction of free trade:
Harmonization of intellectual property laws across the majority of states, with more restrictions.
Supranational recognition of intellectual property restrictions (e.g. patents granted by China would be recognized in the United States)
Globalization is also defined as the internationalization of everything related to different countries; Internationalization however, is a contrasted phenomenon to globalization.
Globalization is a process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments of different nations, a process driven by international trade and investment and aided by information technology. This process has effects on the environment, on culture, on political systems, on economic development and prosperity, and on human physical well-being in societies around the world.
Globalization is not new, though. For thousands of years, people—and, later, corporations—have been buying from and selling to each other in lands at great distances, such as through the famed Silk Road across Central Asia that connected China and Europe during the Middle Ages. Likewise, for centuries, people and corporations have invested in enterprises in other countries. In fact, many of the features of the current wave of globalization are similar to those prevailing before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.
But policy and technological developments of the past few decades have spurred increases in cross-border trade, investment, and migration so large that many observers believe the world has entered a qualitatively new phase in its economic development. Since 1950, for example, the volume of world trade has increased by 20 times, and from just 1997 to 1999 flows of foreign investment nearly doubled, from $468 billion to $827 billion. Distinguishing this current wave of globalization from earlier ones, author Thomas Friedman has said that today globalization is “farther, faster, cheaper, and deeper.”
This current wave of globalization has been driven by policies that have opened economies domestically and internationally. In the years since the Second World War, and especially during the past two decades, many governments have adopted free-market economic systems, vastly increasing their own productive potential and creating myriad new opportunities for international trade and investment. Governments also have negotiated dramatic reductions in barriers to commerce and have established international agreements to promote trade in goods, services, and investment. Taking advantage of new opportunities in foreign markets, corporations have built foreign factories and established production and marketing arrangements with foreign partners. A defining feature of globalization, therefore, is an international industrial and financial business structure.
Technology has been the other principal driver of globalization. Advances in information technology, in particular, have dramatically transformed economic life. Information technologies have given all sorts of individual economic actors—consumers, investors, businesses—valuable new tools for identifying and pursuing economic opportunities, including faster and more informed analyses of economic trends around the world, easy transfers of assets, and collaboration with far-flung partners.
Globalization is deeply controversial, however. Proponents of globalization argue that it allows poor countries and their citizens to develop economically and raise their standards of living, while opponents of globalization claim that the creation of an unfettered international free market has benefited multinational corporations in the Western world at the expense of local enterprises, local cultures, and common people. Resistance to globalization has therefore taken shape both at a popular and at a governmental level as people and governments try to manage the flow of capital, labor, goods, and ideas that constitute the current wave of globalization.
To find the right balance between benefits and costs associated with globalization, citizens of all nations need to understand how globalization works and the policy choices facing them and their societies. Globalization101.org tries to provide an accurate analysis of the issues and controversies regarding globalization, especially to high-school and college students, without the slogans or ideological biases generally found in discussions of the topics. We welcome you to our website.
Globalization is international integration. It can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society. This process is a combination of economic, technological, sociocultural and political forces.
Effects of globalization
Globalization has various aspects which affect the world in several different ways such as:
Industrial (alias trans nationalization) - emergence of worldwide production markets and broader access to a range of foreign products for consumers and companies
Financial - emergence of worldwide financial markets and better access to external financing for corporate, national and subnational borrowers
Economic - realization of a global common market, based on the freedom of exchange of goods and capital. Globalization, when considered in a sociological context, has increased economic inequality throughout the world and within the United States.
Poorer countries are at disadvantage: While it is true that Globalization encourages free trade among countries on an international level, there are also negative consequences. The main export of poorer countries is usually an agricultural good. It is difficult for these countries to compete with stronger countries that subsidize their own farmers. Because the farmers in the poorer countries cannot compete, they are forced to sell their crops at much lower price than what the market is paying. [49]
Exploitation of foreign impoverished workers: The deterioration of protections for weaker nations by stronger industrialized powers has resulted in the exploitation of the people in those nations to become cheap labor. Due to the lack of protections, companies from powerful industrialized nations are able to force workers to endure extremely long hours, unsafe working conditions, and just enough salary to keep them working. The abundance of cheap labor is giving the countries in power incentive not to rectify the inequality between nations. If these nations developed into industrialized nations, the army of cheap labor would slowly disappear alongside development. With the world in this current state, it is impossible for the exploited workers to escape poverty. It is true that the workers are free to leave their jobs, but in many poorer countries, this would mean starvation for the worker, and possible even his/her family. [50]
Shift from manufacturing to service work: The low cost of off-shore workers have enticed corporations to more production to foreign countries. The laid off unskilled workers are forced move into the service sector where wages and benefits are low, but turnover is high. This has contributed to the widening economic gap between skilled and unskilled workers. The loss of these jobs has also contributed greatly to the slow decline of the middle class which is a major factor in the increasing economic inequality in the United States. Families that were once part of the middle class are forced into lower positions by massive layoffs and outsourcing to another country. This also means that people in the lower class have a much harder time climbing out of poverty because of the absence of the middle class as a stepping stone. [51]
The rise of contingent work: As Globalization causes more and more jobs to be shipped overseas, and the middle class declines, there is less need for corporations to hire full time employees. Companies are less inclined to offer benefits, or reduce benefits, to part time workers. Most companies don’t offer any benefits at all. Such benefits include health insurance, bonuses, vacation time, shares in the company, and pensions. Even though most of the middle class workers still have their jobs, the reality is that their buying power has decreased due to decreased benefits. Job security is also a major issue with contingent work. [52]
Weakening of labor unions: The surplus in cheap labor coupled with an ever growing number of companies in transition has caused a weakening of labor unions in the United States. Unions loss their effectiveness when their membership begins to decline. As a result unions hold less power over corporations that are able to easily replace workers, often for lower wages, and have the option to not offer unionized jobs anymore. [53]
Political - political globalization is the creation of a world government which regulates the relationships among nations and guarantees the rights arising from social and economic globalization. [54] Politically, the United States has enjoyed a position of power among the world powers; in part because of its strong and wealthy economy. With the influence of Globalization and with the help of The United States’ own economy, China has experience some tremendous growth within the past decade. If China continues to grow at the rate projected by the trends, then it is very likely that in the next twenty years, there will be a major reallocation of power among the world leaders. China will have enough wealth, industry, and technology to rival the United States for the position of leading world power. [55]
Informational - increase in information flows between geographically remote locations
Cultural - growth of cross-cultural contacts; advent of new categories of consciousness and identities such as Globalism - which embodies cultural diffusion, the desire to consume and enjoy foreign products and ideas, adopt new technology and practices, and participate in a "world culture"
Ecological- the advent of global environmental challenges that can not be solved without international cooperation, such as climate change, cross-boundary water and air pollution, over-fishing of the ocean, and the spread of invasive species. Many factories are built in developing countries where they can pollute freely.
Social - the achievement of free circulation by people of all nations
Transportation - fewer and fewer European cars on European roads each year (the same can also be said about American cars on American roads) and the death of distance through the incorporation of technology to decrease travel time.[clarify]
Greater international cultural exchange
Spreading of multiculturalism, and better individual access to cultural diversity (e.g. through the export of Hollywood and Bollywood movies). However, the imported culture can easily supplant the local culture, causing reduction in diversity through hybridization or even assimilation. The most prominent form of this is Westernization, but Sinicization of cultures has taken place over most of Asia for many centuries.
Greater international travel and tourism
Greater immigration, including illegal immigration
Spread of local consumer products (e.g. food) to other countries (often adapted to their culture)
World-wide fads and pop culture such as Pokémon, Sudoku, Numa Numa, Origami, Idol series, YouTube, Orkut, Facebook, and MySpace.
World-wide sporting events such as FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games.
Formation or development of a set of universal values
Technical/legal
Development of a global telecommunications infrastructure and greater transborder data flow, using such technologies as the Internet, communication satellites, submarine fiber optic cable, and wireless telephones
Increase in the number of standards applied globally; e.g. copyright laws, patents and world trade agreements.
The push by many advocates for an international criminal court and international justice movements.
Sexual awareness – It is often easy to only focus on the economic aspects of Globalization. This term also has strong social meanings behind it. Globalization can also mean a cultural interaction between different countries. Globalization may also have social effects such changes in sexual inequality, and to this issue brought about a greater awareness of the different (often more brutal) types of gender discrimination throughout the world. Women and girls in African countries have long had to deal with genital mutilation as a form of control enforced by the men in their society.
[edit] Trade barriers
Since World War II, barriers to international trade have been considerably lowered through international agreements - General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Particular initiatives carried out as a result of GATT and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), for which GATT is the foundation, have included:
Promotion of free trade:
Reduction or elimination of tariffs; construction of free trade zones with small or no tariffs
Reduced transportation costs, especially from development of containerization for ocean shipping.
Reduction or elimination of capital controls
Reduction, elimination, or harmonization of subsidies for local businesses
Restriction of free trade:
Harmonization of intellectual property laws across the majority of states, with more restrictions.
Supranational recognition of intellectual property restrictions (e.g. patents granted by China would be recognized in the United States)
Globalization is also defined as the internationalization of everything related to different countries; Internationalization however, is a contrasted phenomenon to globalization.
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