The modern technological age, in which improved worldwide transport and communications allow the instantaneous diffusion of ideas and innovations, has accelerated the phenomenon called globalization. Geographer Matthew Sparke states that the term refers to “processes of economic, political, and social integration that have collectively created ties that make a difference to lives around the planet.” Simply put, actions and conditions in one place are increasingly linked to actions and conditions in other places around the globe.

This interconnected and interdependent world has been created from a set of factors: faster and more reliable transportation, particularly the jet plane; the almost-instantaneous communication that computers, phones, faxes, and so on have allowed; and the creation of digital sources of information and media, such as the Internet. Thus, globalization in this sense is a rather recent phenomenon, dating from the late twentieth century. Yet, we know that long before that time, different countries and different parts of the world were linked. For example, in early medieval times overland trade routes connected China with other parts of Asia. The British East India Company maintained maritime trading routes between England and large portions of South Asia as early as the seventeenth century, thereby creating interdependencies between the regions that persisted for centuries.

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Interdependence in the context of colonial empire refers to the reciprocal ties established between regions that over time collectively create a global economic system. Interdependence does not mean equality. It simply means that there is a two-way flow of goods, money, people, and ideas that create dependencies at both ends of the connection, but not dependencies of equal consequence. Spain, Portugal, and England all established interdependent global empires rooted in Europe’s Age of Exploration and Discovery. Some geographers refer to such moments as early global encounters and suggest that they set the stage for contemporary globalization. That is, they trace today’s interdependencies under globalization to the interdependencies established under yesterday’s colonial empires.

While some may locate its historical roots in European empires, most agree that globalization is a fundamentally different phenomenon. Beginning around the 1970s, new and advanced communication technologies allowed encounters between different cultures to take place not face-to-face but rather through technologies such as film, computers, the Internet, and, most recently, smart phones. These new media forms allowed such encounters to happen simultaneously in many different places, at any time. Moreover, multinational corporations play a leading role in globalization, sometimes exceeding the wealth and power of national governments. Collectively, these trends have significantly diminished the relevance of national borders to the global circulation of people, goods, and ideas. According to geographers R. J. Johnston, Peter Taylor, and Michael Watts, with globalization, activities and outcomes “do not merely cross borders, these processes operate as if borders were not there.” Most importantly from a human geography perspective, globalization means that an ever-greater proportion of social life is organized on a global scale.

These increasingly linked and interdependent economic, political, and cultural networks around the world might lead many to believe that different groups of people around the globe are becoming more and more alike. In some ways this is true, but what these new global encounters have enabled is an increasing recognition of the differences between groups of people. And some of those differences have been caused by globalization itself.

Some groups of people have access to advanced technologies, better health care, and education, whereas others do not. Even within our own neighborhoods and cities, we know that there are people who are less able to afford these things. If we mapped certain indicators of human well-being on a global scale, such as life expectancy, literacy, and standard of living, we would find quite an uneven distribution. Figure 1.11 shows us that different cultures around the world have different access to these types of resources. These differences are what scholars mean when they refer to stages of development. In Figure 1.11, you can see regions of the world that have a fairly high Human Development Index (HDI) and those that have a relatively low HDI. Scholars often refer to these two types of regions as developed (relatively high HDI) and developing (relatively low HDI). This inequitable distribution of resources is referred to as uneven development. We will discuss development in depth in Chapter 9.

Globalization helps make us aware of these uneven developments and contributes to some of them. How does this happen? Globalization may be thought of as both a set of processes that are economic, political, and cultural in nature, and as the effects of those processes. For example, economic globalization refers to the interlinked networks of money, production, transportation, labor, and consumption that allow, say, the parts of an automobile to be manufactured in several countries, assembled in yet another, and then sold throughout large portions of the world. These economic networks and processes, in turn, have significant and often uneven effects on the economies of different countries and regions. Some regions gain employment, whereas others lose jobs; some consumers are able to afford these cars because they are less expensive, whereas other potential consumers who have become unemployed cannot afford to purchase them. These global economic processes and effects are, in turn, linked to politics and culture. In other words, globalization entails not only certain processes and effects but also the relationships among these things. For example, those countries chosen by the automobile manufacturer as sites of production might see their standards of living improve, leading to larger consumer markets, better communications and media, and often changing political sensibilities. And these changing political ideas, in turn, will shape economic decisions and other factors. Globalization, therefore, involves looking at complex interconnections between a set of related processes and their effects.

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Culture, of course, is a key variable in these interactions and interconnections. In fact, as we have just suggested, globalization is occurring through cultural media, for example, in films, on television, and on the Internet (see Mona's Notebook, in the next section). In addition, if we consider culture as a way of life, then globalization is a key shaper of culture and is shaped by it. Some scholars have suggested that globalizing processes and an increase in mobility will work to homogenize different peoples, breaking down culture regions and eventually producing a single global culture. Other scholars see a different picture, one where new forms of media and communication will allow local cultures to maintain their distinct identities, reinforcing the diversity of cultures around the world. Throughout Contemporary Human Geography, we will return to these issues, asking and considering the complex role of culture and cultures in an increasingly global world.

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