Essay On A Closer Look At Globalization

The world is slowly but surely becoming a village. Through globalization, people and places have continued to become more connected through economic, political and cultural interactions (page 4). However, this connectedness has come at an expense e.g. the erosion of culture and moral values, the advent of terrorism and illegal drug trade. This essay takes a closer look at globalization and presents an analysis of its demerits.
One of the complicated linkages of globalization is the increased free trade amongst nations of the world. Thomas Friedman states that globalization has made the world ‘flat’, and this has made it possible for goods and services to freely flow from one region of the world to another (page 11). This free trade has enabled the dumping of goods into a country. For example, there has been an influx of Asian-made smartphones in the American market. Companies such as HTC, Huawei and Samsung have continued to mass-produce smartphones that target the American user. In spite of the advantage that Americans get to enjoy quality products at a relatively lower price, these huge companies enjoy economies of scale thus cannot compete fairly with relatively smaller American manufacturers such Motorola. These American manufacturers are thus forced to close shop and leave the smartphone market to be dominated by foreign manufacturers.
One of the places that globalization has greatly affected is the rural area. Populated by people who can be described as ‘conservative’, globalization introduces these people to strange ways of life. For example, people from African and other third world countries are of the notion that the Western culture is more superior to their indigenous culture. They are thus more likely to abandon their culture in preference of the Western. Such people forget their traditions and beliefs. They may even forget their indigenous language. In the long run, these people cannot identify themselves as either Americans or Europeans neither can they term themselves as Africans. This lack of belonging and identity is the cause of depression, and migration i.e. most Africans want to migrate to Europe or the US, a place they feel they can relate to.