Online Document Assignment 30

CONTESTING GLOBALIZATION

Global Organizations, Movements, and Antiglobal Protest

The forces of globalization have always been a part of human history, from the first migrations of Homo sapiens out of Africa to the present day. The ancient Greeks and Romans were connected by trade to Africa, the Middle East, India, and China. The plague that wiped out one-third of Europe’s population in the late Middle Ages began in southwestern China, and its effects were exacerbated by climate change. European westward expansion, along with the subsequent colonization of the Americas, was prompted by the loss of access to the products of the Indian Ocean trade, a trade that was already more than two thousand years old when Columbus set sail in 1492.

And yet we distinguish our own era from those that have come before by calling it the Age of Globalization. We do so, in part, because innovations in transportation and communication technology have dramatically accelerated the speed and scope of globalization. With all places in the world reachable within a single day’s journey and all-but-instantaneous global communication, the web of connections that binds the peoples of the world together is growing at an exponential rate. We also refer to our time as the Age of Globalization because we are aware of globalization to a much greater degree than the members of earlier human societies were. The same technology that has accelerated globalization has made the effects of globalization more visible. We know we live in an Age of Globalization, and that knowledge shapes the way we interpret and respond to our world. It has also politicized globalization, making the process itself a central focus of political conflict and debate.

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