A Globalizing Economy: Some Implications and Consequences
Author(s)
Barnet, Richard J. and Cavanagh, John
Abstract
As human interconnectedness over great distances keeps growing at an ever-increasing rate, globalization has become the buzzword of the moment. The constantly expanding network of commercial, cultural, and financial ties across the planet is defining a new reality. The disappearance of the familiar landscape of the Cold War, the failures and disappointments of twentieth century political ideologies, and the questioning of Enlightenment orthodoxies – ideas of progress, faith in reason itself – all feed our collective craving for a new paradigm and a new language. Globalization has become a popular term in both the academy and the press because it seems to capture the essential changes in the human condition that are taking place in our time. Just as bards and court musicians celebrated the rise of the nation-state, today’s corporate managers, environmental prophets, business philosophers, rock stars, and writers of advertising copy offer themselves as poets-laureate of the global village. It is only in the past twenty years that global technologies have extended the reach of factory assembly lines and financial institutions across the entire planet. It is less than a quarter century since the unforgettable pictures taken from space of the fragile blue planet swathed in its thin membrane of life-sustaining gases were broadcasted around the world. In Spaceship Earth, humanity had, for the first time, a unifying metaphor to awaken the planetary consciousness of which poets, prophets, and philosophers had long dreamed. But thinking globally takes many forms. This chapter is a beginning effort at clarifying the concept of globalization, especially in its economic manifestations, and to assess some of what we believe to be its most significant consequences. Behind the poetry is a complex and contradictory reality with implications for humanity that are both promising and disturbing.
