Globalization transformed the lives of millions of people as the technological changes associated with postindustrial society (see Chapter 29) remade workplaces and lifestyles around the world. Widespread adoption of neoliberal free-trade policies and low labor costs in the developing world encouraged corporations to outsource labor-intensive manufacturing jobs to these regions. In the 1990s, China, with its low wages and rapidly growing industrial infrastructure, emerged as an economic powerhouse that supplied goods around the world — even as the West’s industrial heartlands continued to decline.

The outsourcing of manufacturing jobs dramatically changed the nature of work in western Europe and North America. Fewer and fewer people worked in manufacturing, while more and more entered the service sector. The numbers varied country by country, yet across Europe the trend was clear: by 2005, only about one in three workers was still employed in the once-booming manufacturing sector.1

The deindustrialization of Europe established a multitiered society with winners and losers. At the top was a small, affluent group of experts, executives, and professionals — about one-quarter of the total population — who managed the new global enterprises. In the second, larger tier, the middle class struggled with stagnating incomes and a declining standard of living as once-well-paid industrial workers faced unemployment and cuts in both welfare and workplace benefits.

In the bottom tier — in some areas as much as a quarter of the population — a poorly paid underclass performed the unskilled jobs of a postindustrial economy or were chronically unemployed. In western Europe and North America, inclusion in this lowest segment of society was often linked to race, ethnicity, and a lack of educational opportunity.

Geographic contrasts further revealed the unequal aspects of globalization. Regions in Europe that had successfully shifted to a postindustrial economy enjoyed prosperity, while regions historically dependent on heavy industry lagged behind. In addition, a global north-south divide increasingly separated Europe and North America — both still affluent despite their economic problems — from the industrializing nations of Africa and Latin America. Though India, China, and other East Asian nations experienced solid growth, other industrializing nations struggled to overcome decades of underdevelopment.

The human costs of globalization resulted in new forms of global protest. Critics accused global corporations and financial groups of doing little to address problems caused by their activities, such as social inequality, pollution, and unfair labor practices. The Slow Food movement that began in Italy, for example, criticized American-style fast-food chains that proliferated in Europe and the world in the 1990s. Cooking with local products and traditional methods, followers argued, was healthier and kept jobs and profits in local neighborhoods.

The general tone of the antiglobalization movement was captured at the 1999 meeting of the WTO in Seattle, Washington. Tens of thousands of protesters from around the world, including environmentalists, consumer and antipoverty activists, and labor rights groups, marched in the streets and disrupted the meeting. Comparable demonstrations took place at later meetings of the WTO, the World Bank, and other supranational groups. As one angry participant put it, “The WTO seems to be on a crusade to increase private profit at the expense of all other considerations, including the well-being and quality of life of the mass of the world’s people. . . . It seems to have a relentless drive to extend its power.”2

Similar feelings inspired the Occupy movement, which began in the United States in 2011 and quickly spread to over eighty countries. Under the slogan “We are the 99 percent,” thousands of people camped out in (or “occupied”) public places to protest the rapidly growing social inequality that divided a tiny wealthy elite (the “1 percent”) from the vast majority of ordinary people.