Visual Sources: Considering the Evidence: Experiencing Globalization

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Not many people in the world of the early twenty-first century remain untouched by globalization. For most of humankind, the pervasive processes of interaction among distant peoples has shaped the clothing we wear, the foods we eat, the products we consume, the ways we work, the music we listen to, the religions we practice, and the identities we assume. Globalization has bound the various peoples of the planet more tightly together and in some respects has made us more alike. Almost all of us, for example, live in nation-states and seek the health, wealth, and prosperity that modern science and technology promise. And yet in other ways we are very different, divided, and conflicted. The enormous gap in wealth between the rich countries of the Global North and the poorer nations of the Global South represents a sharp and quite recent rift in the human community. The visual sources that follow illustrate just a few of the ways in which the world’s peoples have experienced globalization in recent decades and have responded to it.