2008-1-SSK13.Essay.1

Globalisation Essay

Method

• get the instructions
  • get the essay question
  • go over the course discussion
  • get the lecture notes
  • get the readings
  • get info on "how to write an essay"
  • go over the chat sessions
  • do the library tut
  • research the topic

• need to know:
  • topic
  • how to cite
  • tone to use (third person, etc.)
  • position to take

• follow the instructions

1st Essay

Write an 800-1000 word academic essay on globalisation. When did globalisation begin? Where did it start? What were the main changes in the world that supported its development? Is it restricted to certain countries? These are areas that you should cover in your essay.

Then linked to that question is the Group Presentation collaborative assignment.

Group Presentation

Produce a Group Presentation based on your 1st essay and expand it to include an analysis of globalisation as it is today. The 1st essay material that each group member brings along is combined to form an introduction to a discussion/presentation of what are some of the manifestations of globalisation. So the idea is to take the early research and build on that by showing some of the areas where it has grown into. The topics that I suggest that you can look at are: Movements like make poverty history; Live aid (including considerations of celebrity e.g. Geldof and Bono); Music; Sport; Business; Crime (drugs, corporate and Internet scams); e-Commerce/Business; environmentalism & global warming; politics; & media. In the course of presenting these topics you will consider their historical development, their success or influence and their durability in a global context.

Write a conclusion summing up the evidence that you have produced and point to what you think may be future developments in these areas.

Cover at least four from this list so that you can divide the presentation into 500 word units (including the introduction: the introductions will need editing together so that is an nearly equivalent job if you are dividing the work up amongst each group member.

Resources

• Google Scholar
• Swinburne Library
• Papers from Dicky
• Course Discussion Fri Mar 07 2008 20:21
  • Wikipedia gives some information
  • link via Google Scholar
• Course Discussion Mon Mar 17 2008 07:55
  • i'm finding "The World is Flat" by Thomas L Friedman interesting and helpful
  • a government report
  • a dictionary definition
  • some papers on the subject
  • a quick article
• Course Discussion Mon Mar 17 2008 23:04
  • Science and Religion - A Unitarian Universalist Perspective by Helen Lutton Cohen

Research

What is an academic essay?

• contains a Bibliography or Reference List section at the end
  • Bibliography: everything ever read
  • Reference List: everything cited in essay

What are the specific requirements of *this* essay?

• treat the first essay as an introduction to the topic:
  • stay general
  • in the conclusion point to the application that will be used to expand on it (i.e. as globalisation applies to the environment)
• include a minimum of
  • 5 references
  • 1 quote
• no need to take a position in the essay
  • will take a position in the group wiki
• any reference you cite in your text (McIntosh, 2008, p. 3) goes in the Reference List at the end
  • no need for Bibliography for this essay

What is globalisation?

Chat Mar 26, CM: Two key areas for background. Build a picture of a world looking for opportunities to buy things, consume things and be entertained:

• the emergence of business as the dominant form of economic and social organisation.
  • post-fordism
  • death of the welfare state
  • shift from production to consumption (virtual world is about consuming rather than producing in the manufactured goods sense)
• the internet revolution and the electronic demand for content:
  • celebrity
  • world sport
  • global social movements (make poverty history)
  • etc.

When did globalisation begin?

• Colonisation
• Taylorism
• Fordism

Group Presentation

Here are some notes that will apply when I get to the group presentation.

Take a position:

• Globalisation as it applies to the environment is a big hairy intractible-looking issue, essentially:
  • We need to burn stuff to supply energy to create wealth to remove poverty, BUT,
  • If we burn stuff we'll wreck the environment which will affect everyone even those not burning stuff, AND
  • Developing nations have the greatest and poorest populations who will be demanding they burn stuff.
• All sorts of nasty outcomes could eventuate. Lots of thinking needs to be done to manage the intersection of these two issues to avoid war and environmental destruction.

Admin

Craig's phone number

Thoughts

consumerism is the basic driving factor of globalisation

a precursor to a "meta federation" of sorts..?

Essay

What is globalisation? It's the The Future. When did it start? In The Past. Where did it start? Right here, on Planet Earth.

The idea of The Future has been relentlessly crafted, tirelessly honed, and continuously beamed out to the collective conscious of technologically advanced communities over all forms of cultural media, not least television, for decades. The Future as depicted in television shows like "Beyond 2000"; as promised by popular journals such as "Scientific American"; as speculated by films such as "2001: A Space Odyssey", anime such as "Ghost in the Shell", or cartoons like "Futurama"; and as simulated by console game after console game. That future, The Future, now, is more than an idea: it's a reality, for some. We're still learning to adjust, and still waiting for culture to catch up. This, in essence, is globalisation: it's a "connectedness" that has resulted from the state of the art in transportation and information technology, which in turn are the result of the wealth of knowledge and resources amassed and harvested by human civilisation to date.

The culmination for those on the forefront of the expedition of the Modern Project, the Modern Project being "Better Living Through Science and Technology", has been the realisation of that which was only dreamed of but decades ago. That is, the commoditisation and broad public access of: notebook computers that resemble "crystal balls"; colour flat screen monitors; compact discs; microwave ovens; mobile telephones; 3D simulations; the control of the forces of nature to provide always-on, always-connected, instantaneous communication with anyone, anywhere; electronic money; flight; pervasive surveillance; weapons of mass destruction; medicine; agricultural technology; genetically modified food stuffs; artificial intelligence (you can, in fact, ask a question of a search engine and get a sophisticated and timely answer -- for free); automated manufacturing; GPS navigation; resilient, aesthetic, cheap and robust materials; and even robots that will talk to you.

The Future has been a dream, a dream of being free from manual toil, and though far from over, in the large, it's been realised. It came, however, with a problem, and a twist.

The central problem of globalisation that humanity faces presently, is that The Future has not been realised equally for all members of the globe, and that humanity may not in fact be able to pay the price, in energy, that it costs to sustain, let alone expand. The twist is that the philosophical foundation for Modernism, the general philosophy underlying the Modern Project itself, undid itself, or at the very least discovered its limits, giving rise to the quandary that is post-modernism. In other words: the problem is one that can in essence be reduced to a problem of economics, that in turn plays out culturally and politically; and the twist is of a philosophical bent, having cultural and political ramifications in its own right.

Technological and social progress has seen the more traditional dichotomies that served to divide people become increasingly defunct: Communism vs. Democracy, Left vs. Right, East vs. West. These debates are old news. Communism and Democracy alike are becoming less relevant as the cultures which propound either are augmenting themselves with an emphasis on a capitalist market-based ideology more akin to the Feudal systems from which they were originally conceived. The Left essentially achieved its original goals, and the more sophisticated aspect of the debate has morphed from one of economics to one of Liberalism vs. Authoritarianism. Racial issues are far from resolved, although they too can be expected to fade as the results of modernism meet more and more of individuals' base needs (Maslow's Hierarchy).

Technological progress has meant that the tedium and burden of material production is increasingly not applicable to great swathes of the populace. The nature of 'production' in sophisticated economies has changed from being the result of the labour of the body, to the labour of the mind. Sophisticated markets can reward a person with great wealth for the timely and brief application of their fingers to a keyboard, and more and more people have access to this reality. The ethereal nature of production in such societies has given rise to an emphasis on consumerism. Consumption being the flip side of production, production being necessary for growth, and growth being necessary for the social tenability of the capitalist model of resource distribution in a free society where individuals have a level of social mobility as "merited" by "the market".

While technology has permeated contemporary societies and thus modified the nature of commerce, crime, education, communication, entertainment, power, and so on, from their prior conceptions in ways that are interesting to dissect, the truly pressing issue that has resulted from this technological progress is as it applies to the environment. This is especially the case given that technological advancement has not applied evenly across the now heavily connected globe, and as large nations such as China and India seek to enjoy the benefits of technological advancement that their friends in the West have, and even as the West continues to enjoy the benefits of technology, the toll on the environment is forecast to be severe.

In conclusion, globalisation is a connectedness that is the result of technological and cultural advancement. Globalisation began by degrees as technological progress in transport and information technology allowed. Globalisation, like human progress, is a function of technology; it is the inevitable consequence of the evolution of human civilisation, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. There is much that is good about it, and it has a lot to offer. Globalisation embodies change, and as things change there is much of interest to speculate about and discuss. The trouble is that we're burning too much too fast to make it all happen, and we suspect this isn't sustainable. This environmental issue is worthy of the most attention, as if we can solve the environment problem, then other social ailments ought heal themselves, for as Benjamin Disraeli said: "Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilisers of man."