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... The new world order, commonly known as Globalisation, is characterised by the widespread use of ultra efficient modern media, and a global spread of Western culture. Globalisation has been occurring for centuries in the forms of colonialisation, trade, missionisation, and processes by which nations endeavour to increase their sovereignty or spread their beliefs and ways of life across borders. Despite this, the extent that globalisation now affects the world and its inhabitants is unprecedented. This essay will give a brief definition of globalisation, and will go on to study the issue of international trade, a defining feature of globalisation, and the way individuals are affected by the changes made to trade in the new world order. Two ethnographic case studies concerned with this issue, set in San Francisco, America and the industrial town of Tangerang, Indonesia will be presented to demonstrate that the extent to which globalisation now affects both the developed and the underdeveloped worlds is a new phenomenon.
With the resolution of hostilities and differences between major world powers at the end of the Cold War, globalisation has become a force pulling the world together and creating a tightly knit global community. The speed and intensity with which globalisation is now transforming the world, and the extent to which it affects each and every individual is extraordinary. As American journalist Thomas Friedman has described it, ‘this era of globalisation is shrinking the world from a size “medium” to a size “small”.’ (Friedman 1999:xvi) Whereas earlier periods of globalisation were propelled by the developments of the steamship, automobile and the telegraph, the globalisation of today is powered (literally) by microchips, satellites, fibre optics and the Internet (Friedman:xv).
The current globalisation has been branded as being not only the Westernisation, but the Americanisation of the world, a new characteristic to the present world order. There is ample evidence to support the argument that cultural globalisation has the United States of America at its epicentre.
Approximate Word count = 1612
Approximate Pages = 6.4
(250 words per page double spaced)
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