Globalisation

by: phanivarma

Globalization describes an ongoing process by which regional economies, societies and cultures have become integrated through globe-spanning networks of exchange. The term is sometimes used to refer specifically to economic globalization: the integration of national economies into the international economy through trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows, migration, and the spread of technology.However, globalization is usually recognized as being driven by a combination of economic, technological, sociocultural, political and biological factors.
Saskia Sassen writes that "a good part of globalization consists of an enormous variety of micro-processes that begin to denationalize what had been constructed as national - whether policies, capital, political subjectivities, urban spaces, temporal frames, or any other of a variety of dynamics and domains".

History:
The historical origins of globalization are the subject of on-going debate. Though some scholars situate the origins of globalization in the modern era, others regard it as a phenomenon with a long history.
The Islamic Golden Age was also an important early stage of globalization, when Muslim traders and explorers established a sustained economy across the Old World resulting in a globalization of crops, trade, knowledge and technology. Globally significant crops such as sugar and cotton became widely cultivated across the Muslim world in this period, while the necessity of learning Arabic and completing the Hajj created a cosmopolitan culture.
Modern globalization:
Globalization, since World War II, is largely the result of planning by politicians to break down borders hampering trade to increase prosperity and interdependence thereby decreasing the chance of future war. Their work led to the Bretton Woods conference, an agreement by the world's leading politicians to lay down the framework for international commerce and finance, and the founding of several international institutions intended to oversee the processes of globalization.Since World War II, barriers to international trade have been considerably lowered through international agreements - GATT. Particular initiatives carried out as a result of GATT and the World Trade Organization (WTO), for which GATT is the foundation, have included:

1.Promotion of free trade:
2.elimination of tariffs; creation of free trade zones with small or no tariffs
3.Reduced transportation costs, especially resulting from development of containerization for ocean shipping.
4. Reduction or elimination of capital controls
5.Reduction, elimination, or harmonization of subsidies for local businesses.
Effects of globalization:
1. Industrial :emergence of worldwide production markets and broader access to a range of foreign products for consumers and companies. Particularly movement of material and goods between and within national boundaries.
2. Financial : emergence of worldwide financial markets and better access to external financing for borrowers. As these worldwide structures grew more quickly than any transnational regulatory regime, the instability of the global financial infrastructure dramatically increased, as evidenced by the financial crises of late 2008.
3.Economic : realization of a global common market, based on the freedom of exchange of goods and capital. The interconnectedness of these markets, however meant that an economic collapse in any one given country could not be contained.
4.Political :some use "globalization" to mean the creation of a world government which regulates the relationships among governments and guarantees the rights arising from social and economic globalization.
5.Legal/Ethical :The creation of the international criminal court and international justice movements.
Crime importation and raising awareness of global crime-fighting efforts and cooperation.
The emergence of Global administrative law.
Cultural effects:
Culture is defined as patterns of human activity and the symbols that give these activities significance. Culture is what people eat, how they dress, beliefs they hold, and activities they practice. Globalization has joined different cultures and made it into something different. As Erla Zwingle, from the National Geographic article titled “Globalization” states, “When cultures receive outside influences, they ignore some and adopt others, and then almost immediately start to transform them".

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