The Contemporary World Rhin Francine

INFORMATION SHEET PR-1.1.
“Globalization?”
What is Globalization?
Different people encounter globalization in a variety of ways, it is deemed useful to ask

simple questions like: “Is globalization good or bad? Is it beneficial or detrimental?” First,
globalization is a complex phenomenon that occurs at multiple levels. Second, it is an uneven
process that affects people differently.
Globalization: A Working Definition
Globalization refers to both the time-space compression of the world and the
intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole (Robertson, 1992). The concept of
‘time-space compression’ refers to the processes that change the qualities of space and time
that we experience and our conceptions of it. Compression is meant, the speed-up in the pace
of life and the overcoming of spatial barriers. This compression of the world has been
understood in terms of the institutions of modernity that is the globalization of modern
economic and cultural practices.
Globalization means the speedup of movements and exchanges (of human beings,
goods, and services, capital, technologies or cultural practices) all over the planet. One of the
effects of globalization is that it promotes and increases interactions between different regions
and populations around the globe.
According to WHO, globalization can be defined as “the increased interconnectedness and

interdependence of peoples and countries. It is generally understood to include two
inter-related elements: the opening of international borders to increasingly fast flows of goods,
services, finance, people and ideas; and the changes in institutions and policies at national and
international levels that facilitate or promote such flows.”
According to the Committee for Development Policy (a subsidiary body of the United
Nations), from an economic point of view, globalization can be defined as:
“(…) the increasing interdependence of world economies as a result of the growing scale
of cross-border trade of commodities and services, the flow of international capital and the
wide and rapid spread of technologies. It reflects the continuing expansion and mutual
integration of market frontiers (…) and the rapid growing significance of information in all types
of productive activities and marketization are the two major driving forces for economic
globalization.”
Because of trade developments and financial exchanges, we often think of globalization

as an economic and financial phenomenon. Nonetheless, it includes a much wider field than
just flowing of goods, services or capital. Often referred to as the globalization concept map,
some examples of globalization are:
Economic globalization: is the development of trade systems within transnational actors

such as corporations or NGOs;
Financial globalization: can be linked with the rise of a global financial system with
international financial exchanges and monetary exchanges. Stock markets, for instance, are a
great example of the financially connected global world since when one stock market has a
decline, it affects other markets negatively as well as the economy as a whole.
Cultural globalization: refers to the interpenetration of cultures which, as a

consequence, means nations adopt principles, beliefs, and costumes of other nations, losing
their unique culture to a unique, globalized supra-culture;
Political globalization: the development and growing influence of international
organizations such as the UN or WHO means governmental action takes place at an
international level. There are other bodies operating a global level such as NGOs like Doctors
without borders or Oxfam;
Sociological globalization: information moves almost in real-time, together with the

interconnection and interdependence of events and their consequences. People move all the
time too, mixing and integrating different societies;
Technological globalization: the phenomenon by which millions of people are

interconnected thanks to the power of the digital world via platforms such as Facebook,
Instagram, Skype or Youtube.
Geographic globalization: is the new organization and hierarchy of different regions of

the world that is constantly changing. Moreover, with transportation and flying made so easy
and affordable, apart from a few countries with demanding visas, it is possible to travel the
world without barely any restrictions;
Ecological globalization: accounts for the idea of considering planet Earth as a single
global entity – a common good all societies should protect since the weather affects everyone
and we are all protected by the same atmosphere. To this regard, it is often said that the
poorest countries that have been polluting the least will suffer the most from climate change.
In geography, globalization is defined as the set of processes (economic, social, cultural,

technological, and institutional) that contribute to the relationship between societies and
individuals around the world. It is a progressive process by which exchanges and flows between
different parts of the world are intensified.
For some people, this global phenomenon is inherent to human nature. Because of this,
some say globalization begun about 60,000 years ago, at the beginning of human history.
Throughout time, human societies’ exchanging trade has been growing. Since the old times,
different civilizations have developed commercial trade routes and experienced cultural
exchanges. And as well, the migratory phenomenon has also been contributing to these
population exchanges. Especially nowadays, since traveling became quicker, more comfortable,
and more affordable.
This phenomenon has continued throughout history, notably through military conquests
and exploration expeditions. But it wasn’t until technological advances in transportation and
communication that globalization speeded up. It was particularly after the second half of the
20th century that world trades accelerated in such a dimension and speed that the term
“globalization” started to be commonly used.
The best scholarly definition of globalization is provided by Manfred Steger who

described the process as “the expansion and intensification of social relations and
consciousness across world-time and across world-space.” Expansion refers to “both the
creation of new social networks and the multiplication of existing connections that cut across
traditional political, economic, cultural, and geographic boundaries.” Intensification refers to
the expansion, stretching, and acceleration of these networks. Not only are global connections
multiplying, but they are also becoming more closely-knit and expanding their reach.
Steger notes that “globalization processes do not occur merely at an objective, material
level but they also involve the subjective plane of human consciousness.” In other words,
people begin to feel that the world has become a smaller place and distance collapsed from
thousands of miles to just a mouse-click away.
Steger posits that that his definition of globalization must be differentiated with an
ideology he calls globalism. If globalization represents the many processes that allow for the
expansion and intensification of global connections, globalism is a widespread belief among
powerful people that the global integration of economic markets is beneficial for everyone,
since it spreads freedom and democracy across the world.
For anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, different kinds of globalization occur on multiple

and intersecting dimensions of integration that he calls “scapes.” An “ethnoscape”, for
example, refers to the global movement of people, while a “mediascape” is about the flow of
culture. A “technoscape” refers to the circulation of mechanical goods and software; a
“financescape” denotes the global circulation of money; and an “ideoscape” is the realm where
political ideas move around. Although they intersect, these various scapes have differing logics.
They are thus distinct windows into the broader phenomenon of globalization. His argument is
simple: there are multiple globalizations.
References:
 Claudio and Abinales (2018) The Contemporary World

 https://youmatter.world/en/definition/definitions-globalization-definition-benefits-effects-
examples/
 https://www.globalization101.org/what-is-globalization/
 https://www.piie.com/microsites/globalization/what-is-globalization
INFORMATION SHEET PR-2.1.1
“The Globalization of World Economics”
The International Monetary Fund regards ―economic globalization‖ as a historical process

representing the result of human innovation and technological progress.
International Trading Systems
The oldest known international trade route was the Silk Road – a network of pathways in
the ancient world that snapped from China to what is now the Middle East and to Europe. It was
called as such because one of the most profitable products traded through this network was silk,
which was highly prized especially in the area that is now the Middle East as well as in the West. It
was international but not global.
According to historians Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giraldez, the age of globalization
began when ―all important populated continents began to exchange products continuously – both
with each other directly and indirectly via other continents – and in values sufficient to generate
crucial impacts on all trading partners.‖
Thus, in 1571, with the establishment of the Galleon Trade, as part of the age of
Mercantilism, this was the first time the Americas were directly connected to Asian trading routes.
A more open trading system emerged in 1867 when, following the lead of the United
Kingdom, the United States and other European nations adopted the gold standard at an
international monetary conference in Paris. Its goal was to create a common system that would
allow for more efficient trade and prevent the isolationism of the mercantilist era. The countries
thus established a common basis for currency prices and a fixed exchange rate system – all based
on the value of gold.
Economic historian Barry Eichengreen argues that the recovery of the United States really
began when, having abandoned the gold standard, the US government was able to free up money
to spend on reviving the economy. Today, the world economy operates based on what are called
fiat currencies – currencies that are not backed by precious metals and whose value is determined
by their cost relative to other currencies.
The Bretton Woods System
The Bretton Woods System inaugurated in 1944 during the United Nations Monetary and
Financial Conference to prevent the catastrophes of the early decades of the century from
reoccurring and affecting international ties – a network of global financial institutions that would
promote economic interdependence and prosperity.
Those at Bretton Woods envisioned an international monetary system that would ensure
exchange rate stability, prevent competitive devaluations, and promote economic growth.
Although all participants agreed on the goals of the new system, plans to implement them differed.
To reach a collective agreement was an enormous international undertaking. Preparation began
more than two years before the conference, and financial experts held countless bilateral and
multilateral meetings to arrive at a common approach. While the principal responsibility for
international economic policy lies with the Treasury Department in the United States, the Federal
Reserve participated by offering advice and counsel on the new system. The primary designers of
the new system were John Maynard Keynes, adviser to the British Treasury, and Harry Dexter
White, the chief international economist at the Treasury Department.
The 730 delegates at Bretton Woods agreed to establish two new institutions. The
International Monetary Fund (IMF) would monitor exchange rates and lend reserve currencies to
nations with balance-of-payments deficits. The International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development, now known as the World Bank Group, was responsible for providing financial
assistance for the reconstruction after World War II and the economic development of less
developed countries.
Shortly after Bretton Woods, various countries also committed themselves to further
global economic integration through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in
1947. GATT‘s main purpose was to reduce tariffs and other hindrances to free trade.
Neoliberalism and Its Discontents
The high point of global Keynesianism came in the mid-1940s to the early 1970s. During
this period, governments poured money into their economies, allowing people to purchase more
goods and, in the process, increase demand for these products. As the demand increased, so did the
prices of these goods.
The stock market crashed in 1973-1974 after the United States stopped linking the dollar to
gold, effectively ending the Bretton Woods System. The result was a phenomenon the Keynesian
economics could not have predicted – a phenomenon called stagflation, in which a decline in
economic growth and employment (stagnation) takes place alongside a sharp increase in prices
(inflation).
Economists like Milton Friedman used the economic turmoil to challenge the consensus
around Keynes‘s ideas. What emerged was a new form of economic thinking that critics labeled
neoliberalism. From the 1980s onward, neoliberalism became the codified strategy of the Unites
States Treasury Department, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and eventually the
World Trade Organization – a new organization founded in 1995 to continue the tariff reduction
under the GATT. The policies they forwarded came to be called the Washington Consensus. Its
advocates pushed for minimal government spending to reduce government debt.
Economic Globalization Today

The world has become too integrated. Economic globalization remains an uneven process,
with some countries, corporations, and individuals benefiting a lot more than others. The series of
trade talks under the WTO have led to unprecedented reductions in tariffs and other trade barriers,
but these processes have often been unfair.
First, developed countries are often protectionists, as they repeatedly refuse to lift policies
that safeguard their primary products that could otherwise be overwhelmed by imports from the
developing world. Trade imbalances, therefore, characterize economic relations between
developed and developing countries.
Second, the beneficiaries of global commerce have been mainly transnational policies
(TNCs) and not governments. And like any other business, these TNCs are concerned more with
profits than with assisting with social programs of the governments hosting them. The term ―race
to the bottom‖ refers to countries‘ lowering their labor standards, including the protection of
workers‘ interests, to lure in foreign investors seeking high profit margins at the lowest cost
possible.
References:

 https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/bretton_woods_created
“A History of Global Politics: Creating an International Order”
The world is composed of many countries or states, all of them having

different forms of government. Scholars study political, military, and other diplomatic
engagements between two countries known as international relations. Moreover, when they
explore the deepening of interactions between states, they refer to the phenomenon of
internationalization.
Internationalization does not equal globalization, although it is a major part of

globalization – which encompasses a multitude of connections and interactions that cannot be
reduced to the ties between governments.
The Attributes of Today‟s Global System
1. Sovereignty
2. Diplomacy
3. International Organizations
4. IOs take on lives of their own
Nation-State
Not all states are nations and not all nations are states.
State refers to a country and its government which has four attributes:
1. Sovereignty
2. Citizens
3. Territory
4. Government
Nation, according to Benedict Anderson, is an ―imagined community‖ or the people

who have imbibed a particular culture, speak a common language, and live in a specific territory.
The nation allows one to feel a connection with a community of people even if he/she will never
meet all of them in his/her lifetime.
The Interstate System
The origins of the present-day concept of sovereignty can be traced back to the Treaty of
Westphalia, which was a set of agreements signed in 1648 to end the Thirty Year‘s War
between the major continental powers of Europe. After a brutal religious war between
Catholics and Protestants, the
Holy Roman Empire, Spain, France, Sweden, and the Dutch Republic designed a system
that would avert wars in the future by recognizing that the treaty signers exercise complete control
over their domestic affairs and swear not to meddle in each other‘s affairs.
However, the treaty faced its first major challenge by Napoleon Bonaparte who believed in
spreading the principles of the French Revolution – liberty, equality, and fraternity – to the rest of
Europe and thus challenged the power of kings, nobility, and religion in Europe. The Napoleonic
Wars lasted from 1803-1815 and they implemented the Napoleonic Code that forbade birth
privileges, encouraged freedom or religion, and promoted meritocracy in government service.
Anglo and Prussian armies finally defeated Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
The Concert of Europe was an alliance of the ―great powers‖ – the United Kingdom,
Austria, and Prussia – that sought to restore the world of monarchial, hereditary, and
religious privileges of the time before the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.
More importantly, it was an alliance that sought to restore the sovereignty of states.
Under this Metternich System (named after the Austrian diplomat, Klemens von
Metternich, who was the system‘s main architect), the Concert‘s power and authority
lasted from 1815 to 1914, at the dawn of World War I
Internationalism
Internationalism is a desire for greater cooperation and unity among states and people.
Two categories of Internationalism:
1. Liberal Internationalism
2. Socialist Internationalism
Liberal Internationalism
Immanuel Kant - German philosopher who is the first major thinker of liberal
internationalism in the 18th Century and imagined a form of global government.
Jeremy Bentham - British Utilitarian philosopher who coined the term ―international‖ in
1780 and advocated the creation of ―international law‖ that would govern the inter-state relations.
Giuseppe Mazzini - Italian patriot who was the first thinker to reconcile nationalism with
liberal internationalism in the 19th century and was both an advocate of the unification of various
Italian-speaking mini-states and a major critic of the Metternich system. He also believed that free,
unified nation-states should be the basis of global cooperation.
Woodrow Wilson - was a US President from 1913-1921 who became one of the 20th
century‘s most prominent internationalists. He forwarded the principle of self-determination
(belief that the world‘s nations had a right to a free and sovereign government)
Socialist Internationalism
Karl Marx - German socialist and internationalist philosopher who believed that any true
form of internationalism should deliberately reject nationalism.
Classes in Society = Capitalist vs Proletariat
Friedrich Engels - supported Karl Marx in a socialist revolution seeking to overthrow the
state and alter the economy.
Socialist International - was a union of European socialist and labor parties established in
Paris in 1889. Their achievements included: May 1 as Labor Day, 8-hr workday, and International
Women‘s Day.
Vlademir Lenin - leader of the Bolshevik Party during the Russian Revolution in 1917 who
overthrown Czar Nicholas II and replaced Russia with a revolutionary government (beginnings of
Communist parties).
Communist International (Cominterm) - served as the central body for directing

Communist parties all over the world in 1919.
Joseph Stalin - successor of Vlademir Lenin who appeased the Allied forces by dissolving
the Cominterm in 1943 but re-established the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) after
WWII.
References:

 https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/3289/1/2006006060.pdf

“The United Nations and Contemporary Global Governance”
International Organizations
International organizations are international intergovernmental organizations or groups

that are primarily made up of member-states.
International Law - international rules that govern interactions between states.
Powers of IOs (by Michael Barnett & Martha Finnemore)
1 Classification
2 Fix Meanings
3 Diffuse Norms
Joseph Stiglitz - Nobel-Prize winning economist who famously criticized the IMF for
using a ―one-size-fits-all‖ approach when its economists made recommendations to developing
countries.
The United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945. It is currently made

up of 193 Member States. The mission and work of the United Nations are guided by the
purposes and principles contained in its founding Charter.
Due to the powers vested in its Charter and its unique international character, the United
Nations can take action on the issues confronting humanity in the 21st century, such as peace and
security, climate change, sustainable development, human rights, disarmament, terrorism,
humanitarian and health emergencies, gender equality, governance, food production, and more.
The UN also provides a forum for its members to express their views in the General
Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, and other bodies and
committees. By enabling dialogue between its members, and by hosting negotiations, the
Organization has become a mechanism for governments to find areas of agreement and solve
problems together.
The main organs of the UN are the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic
and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, the International Court of Justice, and the UN
Secretariat. All were established in 1945 when the UN was founded.
General Assembly
The General Assembly is the main deliberative, policymaking and representative organ
of the UN. All 193 Member States of the UN are represented in the General Assembly,
making it the only UN body with universal representation. Each year, in September, the
full UN membership meets in the
General Assembly Hall in New York for the annual General Assembly session, and general
debate, which many heads of state attend and address. Decisions on important questions, such as
those on peace and security, admission of new members and budgetary matters, require a
two-thirds majority of the General Assembly. Decisions on other questions are by simple majority.
The General Assembly, each year, elects a GA President to serve a one-year term of office.
Security Council
The Security Council has primary responsibility, under the UN Charter, for the
maintenance of international peace and security. It has 15 Members (5 permanent and 10
non-permanent members). Each Member has one vote. Under the Charter, all Member States are
obligated to comply with Council decisions. The Security Council takes the lead in determining
the existence of a threat to the peace or act of aggression. It calls upon the parties to a dispute to
settle it by peaceful means and recommends methods of adjustment or terms of settlement. In some
cases, the Security Council can resort to imposing sanctions or even authorize the use of force to
maintain or restore international peace and security. The Security Council has a Presidency,
which rotates, and changes, every month.
Economic and Social Council

The Economic and Social Council is the principal body for coordination, policy review,
policy dialogue and recommendations on economic, social and environmental issues, as well as
implementation of internationally agreed development goals. It serves as the central mechanism
for activities of the UN system and its specialized agencies in the economic, social and
environmental fields, supervising subsidiary and expert bodies. It has 54 Members, elected by
the General Assembly for overlapping three-year terms. It is the United Nations‘ central platform
for reflection, debate, and innovative thinking on sustainable development.
Trusteeship Council
The Trusteeship Council was established in 1945 by the UN Charter, under Chapter XIII,
to provide international supervision for 11 Trust Territories that had been placed under the
administration of seven Member States, and ensure that adequate steps were taken to prepare the
Territories for self-government and independence. By 1994, all Trust Territories had attained
self-government or independence. The Trusteeship Council suspended operation on 1 November
1994. By a resolution adopted on 25 May 1994, the Council amended its rules of procedure to drop
the obligation to meet annually and agreed to meet as occasion required -- by its decision or the
decision of its President, or at the request of a majority of its members or the General Assembly or
the Security Council.
International Court of Justice
The International Court of Justice is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. Its
seat is at the Peace Palace in the Hague (Netherlands). It is the only one of the six principal organs
of the United Nations not located in New York (United States of America). The Court‘s role is to
settle, in accordance with international law, legal disputes submitted to it by States and to give
advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by authorized United Nations organs and
specialized agencies.
Secretariat
The Secretariat comprises the Secretary-General and tens of thousands of international UN

staff members who carry out the day-to-day work of the UN as mandated by the General Assembly
and the Organization's other principal organs. The Secretary-General is chief administrative
officer of the Organization, appointed by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the
Security Council for a five-year, renewable term. UN staff members are recruited internationally
and locally, and work in duty stations and on peacekeeping missions all around the world. But
serving the cause of peace in a violent world is a dangerous occupation. Since the founding of the
United Nations, hundreds of brave men and women have given their lives in its service.
The UN is not a world government, and it functions primarily because of voluntary

cooperation from states. The following are what they do:
Maintain International Peace and Security
The United Nations came into being in 1945, following the devastation of the Second
World War, with one central mission: the maintenance of international peace and security. The UN
does this by working to prevent conflict; helping parties in conflict make peace; peacekeeping; and
creating the conditions to allow peace to hold and flourish. These activities often overlap and
should reinforce one another, to be effective. The UN Security Council has the primary
responsibility for international peace and security. The General Assembly and the
Secretary-General play major, important, and complementary roles, along with other UN offices
and bodies
Protect Human Rights
The term ―human rights‖ was mentioned seven times in the UN's founding Charter, making
the promotion and protection of human rights a key purpose and guiding principle of the
Organization. In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights brought human rights into the
realm of international law. Since then, the Organization has diligently protected human rights
through legal instruments and on-the-ground activities.
Deliver Humanitarian Aid
One of the purposes of the United Nations, as stated in its Charter, is "to achieve
international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or
humanitarian character." The UN first did this in the aftermath of the Second World War on the
devastated continent of Europe, which it helped to rebuild. The Organization is now relied upon
by the international community to coordinate humanitarian relief operations due to natural and
man-made disasters in areas beyond the relief capacity of national authorities alone.
Promote Sustainable Development
From the start in 1945, one of the main priorities of the United Nations was to ―achieve
international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or
humanitarian character and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for
fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.‖
Improving people‘s well-being continues to be one of the main focuses of the UN. The global
understanding of development has changed over the years, and countries now have agreed that
sustainable development – development that promotes prosperity and economic opportunity,
greater social well-being, and protection of the environment – offers the best path forward for
improving the lives of people everywhere.
Uphold International Law
The UN Charter, in its Preamble, set an objective: "to establish conditions under which
justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law
can be maintained". Ever since, the development of, and respect for international law has been a
key part of the work of the Organization. This work is carried out in many ways - by courts,
tribunals, multilateral treaties - and by the Security Council, which can approve peacekeeping
missions, impose sanctions, or authorize the use of force when there is a threat to international
peace and security, if it deems this necessary. These powers are given to it by the UN Charter,
which is considered an international treaty. As such, it is an instrument of international law, and
UN Member States are bound by it. The UN Charter codifies the major principles of international
relations, from sovereign equality of States to the prohibition of the use of force in international
relations.
References:

 https://www.un.org/en/sections/about-un/overview/index.html
 https://www.un.org/en/sections/about-un/main-organs/index.html
“A World of Regions”
Regionalism
Regionalism is a political process characterized by economic policy cooperation and

coordination among countries.
Regionalization is the regional concentration of economic flows.
Regions are group of countries located in the same geographically specified area organized
to regulate and oversee flows & policy choices.
Countries form regional associations for several reasons:
1. Military Defense
2. Pool their resources
3. Protect independence
4. Economic crisis
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) - formed during the Cold War when several Western
European countries and the US agreed to protect Europe against the threat of the Soviet Union.
OAPEC (Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries) – was established in 1960 by Iran,
Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela to regulate the production of sale of oil.
NAM (Non-Aligned Movement) - established in 1961 by the Presidents of Egypt, Ghana, India,
Indonesia, & Yugoslavia to pursue world peace and international cooperation, human rights,
national sovereignty, racial & national equality, non-intervention, and peaceful conflict resolution.
Establishment of the ASEAN
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, was established on 8 August

1967 in Bangkok, Thailand, with the signing of the ASEAN Declaration (Bangkok Declaration) by
the Founding Fathers of ASEAN, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and
Thailand.
Brunei Darussalam then joined on 7 January 1984, Viet Nam on 28 July 1995, Lao PDR
and Myanmar on 23 July 1997, and Cambodia on 30 April 1999, making up what is today the ten
Member States of ASEAN.
Aims and Purposes
As set out in the ASEAN Declaration, the aims and purposes of ASEAN are:
 To accelerate the economic growth, social progress and cultural development in the
region through joint endeavors in the spirit of equality and partnership in order to
strengthen the foundation for a prosperous and peaceful community of Southeast Asian
Nations;
 To promote regional peace and stability through abiding respect for justice and the rule
of law in the relationship among countries of the region and adherence to the principles
of the United Nations Charter;
 To promote active collaboration and mutual assistance on matters of common interest
in the economic, social, cultural, technical, scientific and administrative fields;
 To provide assistance to each other in the form of training and research facilities in the
educational, professional, technical and administrative spheres;
 To collaborate more effectively for the greater utilization of their agriculture and
industries, the expansion of their trade, including the study of the problems of
international commodity trade, the improvement of their transportation and
communications facilities and the raising of the living standards of their peoples;
 To promote Southeast Asian studies; and
 To maintain close and beneficial cooperation with existing international and regional
organizations with similar aims and purposes, and explore all avenues for even closer
cooperation among themselves.
Fundamental Principles
In their relations with one another, the ASEAN Member States have adopted the following
fundamental principles, as contained in the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia
(TAC) of 1976:
 Mutual respect for the independence, sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity, and
national identity of all nations;
 The right of every State to lead its national existence free from external interference,
subversion or coercion;
 Non-interference in the internal affairs of one another;
 Settlement of differences or disputes by peaceful manner;
 Renunciation of the threat or use of force; and
 Effective cooperation among themselves.
The ASEAN Community
The ASEAN Vision 2020, adopted by the ASEAN Leaders on the 30th Anniversary of
ASEAN, agreed on a shared vision of ASEAN as a concert of Southeast Asian nations, outward
looking, living in peace, stability and prosperity, bonded together in partnership in dynamic
development and in a community of caring societies.
At the 9th ASEAN Summit in 2003, the ASEAN Leaders resolved that an ASEAN
Community shall be established.
At the 12th ASEAN Summit in January 2007, the Leaders affirmed their strong
commitment to accelerate the establishment of an ASEAN Community by 2015 and signed the
Cebu Declaration on the Acceleration of the Establishment of an ASEAN Community by 2015.
The ASEAN Community is comprised of three pillars, namely the ASEAN

Political-Security Community, ASEAN Economic Community and ASEAN Socio-Cultural
Community. Each pillar has its own Blueprint, and, together with the Initiative for ASEAN
Integration (IAI) Strategic Framework and IAI Work Plan Phase
The ASEAN Charter
The ASEAN Charter serves as a firm foundation in achieving the ASEAN Community by
providing legal status and institutional framework for ASEAN. It also codifies ASEAN norms,
rules and values; sets clear targets for ASEAN; and presents accountability and compliance.
The ASEAN Charter entered into force on 15 December 2008. A gathering of the ASEAN
Foreign Ministers was held at the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta to mark this very historic occasion
for ASEAN.
With the entry into force of the ASEAN Charter, ASEAN will henceforth operate under a
new legal framework and establish a number of new organs to boost its community-building
process.
In effect, the ASEAN Charter has become a legally binding agreement among the 10
ASEAN Member States
The European Union
The European Union is a unique economic and political union between 27 EU countries
that together cover much of the continent.
The predecessor of the EU was created in the aftermath of the Second World War. The first
steps were to foster economic cooperation: the idea being that countries that trade with one another
become economically interdependent and so more likely to avoid conflict.
The result was the European Economic Community (EEC), created in 1958, and initially
increasing economic cooperation between six countries: Belgium, Germany, France, Italy,
Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
Since then, 22 other members joined and a huge single market (also known as the 'internal'
market) has been created and continues to develop towards its full potential.
On 31 January 2020 the United Kingdom left the European Union.

What began as a purely economic union has evolved into an organization spanning policy
areas, from climate, environment and health to external relations and security, justice and
migration. A name changes from the European Economic Community (EEC) to the European
Union (EU) in 1993 reflected this.
Stability, a single currency, mobility and growth
The EU has delivered more than half a century of peace, stability and prosperity, helped
raise living standards and launched a single European currency: the euro. More than 340 million
EU citizens in 19 countries now use it as their currency and enjoy its benefits.
Thanks to the abolition of border controls between EU countries, people can travel freely
throughout most of the continent. And it has become much easier to live, work and travel abroad in
Europe. All EU citizens have the right and freedom to choose in which EU country they want to
study, work or retire. Every EU country must treat EU citizens in exactly the same way as its own
citizens for employment, social security and tax purposes.
The EU's main economic engine is the single market. It enables most goods, services,
money and people to move freely. The EU aims to develop this huge resource to other areas like
energy, knowledge and capital markets to ensure that Europeans can draw the maximum benefit
from it.
Transparent and democratic institutions
The EU remains focused on making its governing institutions more transparent and
democratic. Decisions are taken as openly as possible and as closely as possible to the citizen.
More powers have been given to the directly elected European Parliament, while national
parliaments play a greater role, working alongside the European institutions.
The EU is governed by the principle of representative democracy, with citizens directly

represented at Union level in the European Parliament and Member States represented in the
European Council and the Council of the EU.
European citizens are encouraged to contribute to the democratic life of the Union by
giving their views on EU policies during their development or suggest improvements to
existing laws and policies. The European citizens' initiative empowers citizens to have a
greater say on EU policies that affect their lives. Citizens can also submit complaints and
enquiries concerning the application of EU law.
The EU in the World
Trade
The European Union is the largest trade block in the world. It is the world's biggest
exporter of manufactured goods and services, and the biggest import market for over 100
countries.
Free trade among its members was one of the EU's founding principles. This is possible thanks to
the single market. Beyond its borders, the EU is also committed to liberalizing world trade.
Humanitarian aid
The EU is committed to helping victims of man-made and natural disasters worldwide and
supports over 120 million people each year. Collectively, the EU and its constituent countries are
the world's leading donor of humanitarian aid.
Diplomacy and security
The EU plays an important role in diplomacy and works to foster stability, security and
prosperity, democracy, fundamental freedoms and the rule of law at international level.
References:
 Claudio and Abinales (2018) The Contemporary World

 https://asean.org/asean/about-asean/
INFORMATION SHEET MD-6.1.1

“Religion and Globalization”
Religion, human beings‘ relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred,
absolute, spiritual, divine, or worthy of especial reverence It is also commonly regarded as
consisting of the way people deal with ultimate concerns about their lives and their fate after death.
In many traditions, this relation and these concerns are expressed in terms of one‘s relationship
with or attitude toward gods or spirits; in more humanistic or naturalistic forms of religion, they
are expressed in terms of one‘s relationship with or attitudes toward the broader human
community or the natural world. In many religions, texts are deemed to have scriptural status, and
people are esteemed to be invested with spiritual or moral authority. Believers and worshippers
participate in and are often enjoined to perform devotional or contemplative practices such as
prayer, meditation, or particular rituals. Worship, moral conduct, right belief, and participation in
religious institutions are among the constituent elements of the religious life.
Secularization Theory
The role of religion in society has long been an area of focus for sociologists, with early
considerations coming from prominent 19th century theorists like Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx.
For example, in his writings on the origins of modern capitalism, Max Weber theorized that the
development of European capitalism was rooted in the Protestant value of hard work. However, as
society modernized, the connections between capitalism and religion, making capitalism a wholly
secular pursuit.
Beginning in the late 1960s and 70s, sociologists again began to focus their attention on the
declining influence of religion and the implications for the future. From their perspective, as
societies become more modern, the need for and power of religion begins to decline. Depending on
whose perspective you consult, there could be several reasons for this, but it can in many ways be
attributed to rationality. For example, in the 14th century there existed many natural phenomena
that people could not explain, and they turned to religion for answers. As the field of science
expanded and provided answers outside of a religious context, the attribution of divine
intervention in the human world began to lose credibility.
It is important to recognize that although the concept of secularization has been explored
by many theorists for over a century, there is no single theory of secularization. Likewise, scholars
tend to have different perspectives on why secularization occurs in society. Talcott Parsons, for
example, suggests that secularization occurs when societies begin to assign certain purposes and
authorities to other institutions when there is no longer a singular dominant faith. This, according
to Parsons, is to ensure that societies will continue to evolve, even after religion is no longer the
dominant social framework.
Religion and Globalization
Central to Huntington‘s thesis in The Clash of Civilizations is the assumption that the post-Cold
War world would regroup into regional alliances based on religious beliefs and historical
attachments to various ―civilizations.‖ Identifying three prominent groupings—Western
Christianity (Roman Catholicism
and Protestantism), Orthodox Christianity (Russian and Greek), and Islam, with additional
influences from Hinduism and Confucianism—he predicted that the progress of globalization
would be severely constrained by religion-political barriers. The result would be a ―multi-polar
world.‖ Huntington‘s view differed markedly from those who prophesied a standardized,
homogenized global culture.
There is, however, considerable ethnographic evidence, gathered by anthropologists and

sociologists that refutes this model of civilizational clash and suggests instead a rapid diffusion of
religious and cultural systems throughout the world. Islam is one case in point, given that it
constitutes one of the fastest-growing religions in the United States, France, and
Germany—supposed bastions of Western Christianity. Before the end of the 20th century, entire
arrondissements (districts) of Paris were dominated by Muslims, the majority of them French
citizens born and reared in France. Thirty-five percent of students in the suburban Dearborn,
Michigan, public school system were Muslim in 2001, making the provision of ḥalāl (―lawful‖
under Islam) meals at lunchtime a hot issue in local politics. By the start of the 21st century,
Muslims of Turkish origin constituted the fastest-growing sector of Berlin‘s population, and, in
northern England, the old industrial cities of Bradford and Newcastle had been revitalized by
descendants of Pakistani and Indian Muslims who immigrated during the 1950s and ‘60s.
From its inception, Christianity has been an aggressively proselytizing religion with a
globalizing agenda. Indeed, the Roman Catholic Church was arguably the first global institution,
having spread rapidly throughout the European colonial world and beyond. Today, perhaps the
fastest-growing religion is evangelical Christianity. Stressing the individual‘s personal experience
of divinity (as opposed to priestly intercession), evangelicalism has gained wide appeal in regions
such as Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, presenting serious challenges to established
Catholic churches. Following the collapse of Soviet power in 1991, the Russian Orthodox church
began the process of rebuilding after more than seven decades of repression. At the same time,
evangelical missionaries from the United States and Europe shifted much of their attention from
Latin America and Africa to Russia, alarming Russian Orthodox leaders. By 1997, under pressure
from Orthodox clergy, the Russian government promoted legislation to restrict the activities of
religious organizations that had operated in Russia for less than 15 years, effectively banning
Western evangelical missionaries. The debate over Russian religious unity continues, however,
and, if China is any guide, such legislation could have little long-term effect.
In China, unauthorized ―house churches‖ became a major concern for Communist Party
officials who attempted to control Muslim, Christian, and Buddhist religious activity through
state-sponsored organizations. Many of the unrecognized churches are syncretic in the sense that
they combine aspects of local religion with Christian ideas. As a result they have been almost
impossible to organize, let alone control.
Social scientists confirm the worldwide resurgence, since the late 20th century, of
conservative religion among faiths such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and even Shinto in Japan
and Sikhism in India. The social and political connotations of these conservative upsurges are
unique to each culture and religion. For example, some sociologists have identified Christian
evangelicalism as a leading carrier of modernization: its emphasis on the Bible is thought to
encourage literacy, while involvement in church activities can teach administrative skills that are
applicable to work environments. As a sociologist of religion, Berger argues that ―there may be
other globalizing popular movements [today], but evangelicalism is clearly the most dynamic.‖
Demographic influences
Huntington‘s ―clash of civilizations‖ thesis assumes that the major East Asian societies
constitute an alliance of ―Confucian‖ cultures that share a common heritage in the teachings of
Confucius, the ancient Chinese sage. Early 21st-century lifestyles in Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing,
Taipei, and Hong Kong, however, show far more evidence of globalization than Confucianization.
The reputed hallmarks of Confucianism—respect for parental authority and ancestral
traditions—are no more salient in these cities than in Boston, London, or Berlin. This is a
consequence of (among other things) a steady reduction in family size that has swept through East
Asian societies since the 1980s. State-imposed restrictions on family size, late childbearing, and
resistance to marriage among highly educated, working women have undermined the basic tenets
of the Confucian family in Asia.
Birth rates in Singapore and Japan, in fact, have fallen below replacement levels and are at
record low levels in Hong Kong; birth rates in Beijing, Shanghai, and other major Chinese cities
are also declining rapidly. These developments mean that East Asia—like Europe—could face a
fiscal crisis as decreasing numbers of workers are expected to support an ever-growing cohort of
retirees. By 2025, China is projected to have 274 million people over age 60—more than the entire
1998 population of the United States. The prospects for other East Asian countries are far worse:
17.2 percent of Japan‘s 127 million people were over age 65 in 2000; by 2020 that percentage
could rise to 27.
Meanwhile, Asia‘s ―Confucian‖ societies face a concurrent revolution in family values: the
conjugal family (centring on the emotional bond between wife and husband) is rapidly replacing
the patriarchal joint family (focused on support of aged parents and grandparents). This
transformation is occurring even in remote, rural regions of northwest China where married
couples now expect to reside in their own home (―neolocal‖ residence) as opposed to the house or
compound of the groom‘s parents (―patrilocal‖ residence). The children produced by these
conjugal units are very different from their older kin who were reared in joint families: today‘s
offspring are likely to be pampered only children known as ―Little Emperors‖ or ―Little
Empresses.‖ Contemporary East Asian families are characterized by an ideology of consumerism
that is diametrically opposed to the neo-authoritarian Confucian rhetoric
promoted by political leaders such as Singapore‘s Lee Kuan Yew and Hong Kong‘s Tung
Chee-hwa at the turn of the 21st century.
Italy, Mexico, and Sweden (among other countries) also experienced dramatic reductions
in family size and birth rates during the late 20th century. Furthermore, new family formations are
taking root, such as those of the transnational workers who maintain homes in more than one
country. Multi-domiciled families were certainly evident before the advent of cheap air travel and
cellular phones, but new technologies have changed the quality of life (much for the better) in
diaspora communities. Thus, the globalization of family life is no longer confined to migrant
workers from developing economies who take low-paying jobs in advanced capitalist societies.
The transnational family is increasingly a mark of high social status and affluence.
References:
 The Contemporary World (Claudio &Abinales, 2018)
 Religion and Globalization (Beyer, 1994)
 https://www.britannica.com/science/cultural-globalization/The-illusion-of-global-cultur
e
 https://www.aljamiah.or.id/index.php/AJIS/article/download/49207/85
 https://academic.oup.com/socrel/article-pdf/60/3/209/4666049/60-3-209.pdf
 https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756384/obo-9780
199756384-0073.xml
 https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/4/92/htm
 World Economic Forum

“Media and Globalization”
Part 1
At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
1. Analyze how various media drive different forms of global integration;

2. Compare the social impacts of different media on the processes of globalization;
3. Explain the dynamic between local and global cultural production; and
4. Define responsible media consumption.
Media and Its Functions
Jack Lule is an Iacocca Professor and Chair of Journalism and Communication, and
Professor and Founding Director of Global Studies and the Globalization and Social Change
Initiative at Lehigh University. His research and teaching interests include globalization and
media, international communication, media and sports, and cultural and critical studies of news.
He is the author of Globalization and Media: Global Village of Babel (Rowman &
Littlefield). The book argues that globalization could not have occurred without media. From
earliest times, humans have used media to explore, settle, and globalize their world. Decades ago
Marshall McLuhan prophesied that media technology would transform the world into a "global
village." Slowly, fitfully, his vision is being fulfilled. The global village, however, is not the
blissful utopia that McLuhan predicted. Instead, Dr. Lule argues, globalization and media are
combining to create a divided world of gated communities and ghettos, borders and boundaries,
suffering and surfeit, beauty and decay. Dr. Lule is also the author of the award-winning Daily
News, Eternal Stories: The Mythological Role of Journalism (Guilford Press). Called "a landmark
book in the sociology of news," the book argues that ancient myths can be found daily in the
language of the news.
Lule describes media as ―a means of conveying something, such as a channel of
communication.‖ It also means the technologies of mass communication.
a. Print media – books, magazines, and newspapers

b. Broadcast media – radio, film, and television
c. Digital media – internet (e-mail, social media, internet-based video and audio) and
mobile mass communication
In the 1960s, way before anybody had ever tweeted, Facebook Live-d or sent classified
information to WikiLeaks, one man made a series of pronouncements about the changing media
landscape. His name was Marshall McLuhan and you‘ve probably heard his most quoted line:
―The medium is the message‖.
Marshall McLuhan was concerned with the observation that we tend to focus on the obvious. In
doing so, we largely miss the structural changes in our affairs that are introduced subtly, or over
long periods of time. Whenever we create a new innovation - be it an invention or a new idea -
many of its properties are fairly obvious to us. We generally know what it will nominally do, or at
least what it is
intended to do, and what it might replace. We often know what its advantages and disadvantages
might be. But it is also often the case that, after a long period of time and experience with the new
innovation, we look backward and realize that there were some effects of which we were entirely
unaware at the outset. We sometimes call these effects "unintended consequences," although
"unanticipated consequences" might be a more accurate description.
Many of the unanticipated consequences stem from the fact that there are conditions in our
society and culture that we just don't take into consideration in our planning. These range from
cultural or religious issues and historical precedents, through interplay with existing conditions, to
the secondary or tertiary effects in a cascade of interactions. All of these dynamic processes that
are entirely non-obvious comprise our ground or context. They all work silently to influence the
way in which we interact with one another, and with our society at large. In a word (or four),
ground comprises everything we don't notice.
If one thinks about it, there are far more dynamic processes occurring in the ground than
comprise the actions of the figures, or things that we do notice. But when something changes, it
often becomes noticeable. And noticing change is the key.
McLuhan tells us that a "message" is, "the change of scale or pace or pattern" that a new
invention or innovation "introduces into human affairs." (McLuhan 8) Note that it is not the
content or use of the innovation, but the change in inter-personal dynamics that the innovation
brings with it. Thus, the message of theatrical production is not the musical or the play being
produced, but perhaps the change in tourism that the production may encourage. In the case of a
specific theatrical production, its message may be a change in attitude or action on the part of the
audience that results from the medium of the play itself, which is quite distinct from the medium of
theatrical production in general. Similarly, the message of a newscast are not the news stories
themselves, but a change in the public attitude towards crime, or the creation of a climate of fear. A
McLuhan message always tells us to look beyond the obvious and seek the non-obvious changes or
effects that are enabled, enhanced, accelerated or extended by the new thing.
McLuhan defines medium for us as well. Right at the beginning of Understanding Media,
he tells us that a medium is "any extension of ourselves." Classically, he suggests that a hammer
extends our arm and that the wheel extends our legs and feet. Each enables us to do more than our
bodies could do on their own. Similarly, the medium of language extends our thoughts from within
our mind out to others. Indeed, since our thoughts are the result of our individual sensory
experience, speech is an "outering" of our senses - we could consider it as a form of reversing
senses - whereas usually our senses bring the world into our minds, speech takes our
sensorially-shaped minds out to the world.
But McLuhan always thought of a medium in the sense of a growing medium, like the
fertile potting soil into which a seed is planted, or the agar in a Petri dish. In other words, a medium
- this extension of our body or senses or mind - is anything from which a change emerges. And
since some sort of change emerges from everything we conceive or create, all of our inventions,
innovations, ideas and ideals are McLuhan media.
Thus we have the meaning of "the medium is the message:" We can know the nature and
characteristics of anything we conceive or create (medium) by virtue of the changes - often
unnoticed and non-obvious changes - that they effect (message.) McLuhan warns us that we are
often distracted by the content of a medium (which, in almost all cases, is another distinct medium
in itself.) He writes, "it is only too typical that the "content" of any medium blinds us to the
character of the medium." (McLuhan 9) And it is the character of the medium that is its potency or
effect - its message. In other words, "This is merely to say that the personal and social
consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale
that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology."
Why is this understanding of "the medium is the message" particularly useful? We tend to
notice changes - even slight changes (that unfortunately we often tend to discount in significance.)
"The medium is the message" tell us that noticing change in our societal or cultural ground
conditions indicates the presence of a new message, that is, the effects of a new medium. With this
early warning, we can set out to characterize and identify the new medium before it becomes
obvious to everyone - a process that often takes years or even decades. And if we discover that the
new medium brings along effects that might be detrimental to our society or culture, we have the
opportunity to influence the development and evolution of the new innovation before the effects
becomes pervasive. As McLuhan reminds us, "Control over change would seem to consist in
moving not with it but ahead of it. Anticipation gives the power to deflect and control force."
(McLuhan 199)
Cultural imperialism, in anthropology, sociology, and ethics, is the imposition by one
usually politically or economically dominant community of various aspects of its own culture onto
another, non-dominant community. It is cultural in that the customs, traditions, religion, language,
social and moral norms, and other aspects of the imposing community are distinct from, though
often closely related to, the economic and political systems that shape the other community. It is a
form of imperialism in that the imposing community forcefully extends the authority of its way of
life over the other population by either transforming or replacing aspects of the non-dominant
community‘s culture.
Charges of cultural imperialism have been aimed at the United States by critics who allege
that imperial control was being sought economically by creating a demand for American goods
and services in other parts of the world through aggressive marketing. This ―Americanization‖ of
other cultures is said to occur when the mass exportation of American films, music, clothing, and
food into other countries threatens to replace local products and to alter or extinguish features of
the traditional way of life. Some countries have attempted to thwart this cultural threat through
various kinds of legal action—for example, by banning the sale of certain products.
References:
 https://medium.com/@obtaineudaimonia/the-medium-is-the-message-by-marshall-mcl
uhan-8b5d0a9d426b
 https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/mcluhan.mediummessage.pdf
 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marshall-McLuhan
 https://journalism.cas.lehigh.edu/content/jack-lule
“Media and Globalization”
Part 2

„Media imperialism‘ has been one of the most influential models in international
communication. It has given rise to a significant body of empirical research, considerable
theoretical debate, as well as support for international policy interventions about global
communications imbalance. However, it is increasingly subject to critique, particularly as a
reflection of a particular moment of international media history that is now passing.
The Broader Paradigm of Cultural Imperialism
Media imperialism needs to be seen as a subset of the earlier and broader paradigm of
‗cultural imperialism‘ that is most closely associated with Herbert Schiller (1969, 1976). This
critical Marxisant paradigm itself developed out of broader critiques of the triumphalist paradigm
of ‗modernization‘ propounded in the late1950s and the 1960s predominantly by US theorists.
This ‗dominant‘ model proposed a single global process of modernization through a unilinear
diffusion of Western technologies, social institutions, modes of living, and value systems to the
eponymous ‗Third World‘ (Sreberny Mohammadi, 1996). Critical views, especially those
advanced by dependency theorists such as Gunder-Frank, saw the process instead as the spread of
inegalitarian capitalism from a few core advanced industrial countries to the periphery, the South.
In this process, the West was supplied with raw materials and cheap labor as well as with markets
for their manufactured goods. The spread of Western influence was seen as establishing an
ideological bulwark against the much-feared spread of communism.
Cultural imperialism, Schiller argued, ‗best describes the sum of the processes by which a
society is brought into the modern world system and how its dominating stratum is attracted,
pressured, forced, and sometimes bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or even
promote, the values and structures of the dominating center of the system‘ (1976: p. 9). For
Schiller, the carriers of Western cultural influence included communication technologies
themselves, which were not value-neutral instruments but imbued with capitalist values; language
(evident as English takes over as the global linguistic currency from the varieties of colonial
linguistic heritage); business practices; the genres as well as content of soap opera, blockbuster
film, popular music, etc. Schiller‘s view was US-centric, and he saw media as central elements in
the global expansion of capitalism centered on the US, fueled by advertising and consumerism. In
the context of the Cold War, US policy makers‘ promotion of the ‗free flow of information‘ – with
no trade or legal barriers to the production or movement of mediated cultural products –
undoubtedly helped the spread of US hegemony in ways that were consonant with, if not totally
driven by, US foreign policy.
Media Imperialism
Media imperialism, a more focused subset of this model, was defined as ‗the process
whereby the ownership, structure, distribution or content of the media in any one country are
singly or together subject to substantial external pressures from the media interests of any other
country or countries without proportionate reciprocation of influence by the country so affected‘
(Boyd-Barrett, 1977: p. 117). It differentiated between the shape of the communications vehicle, a
set of industrial arrangements, a body of values about best practice, and media content, although it
is the latter claim that received most research attention.
It highlighted both the issues around ‗cultural invasion‘ as well as a more general
imbalance of power resources. In essence, the model argued that the world patterns of
communication flow, both in density and direction, mirrored the system of domination in the
international economic and political order, the control by the West over the rest.
Empirical Research
Part of the strength of the paradigm of media/cultural imperialism was its compelling
clarity, which gripped many a critical academic imagination, and which suggested many fertile
avenues of empirical research. It precipitated numerous studies that sought to examine the
unidirectional flow of mediated product from the West to the South. The ‗one-way street‘ of
television traffic was mapped by Nordenstreng and Varis (1974); film production and distribution
were studied by Guback and Varis (1982); international news flow by the IAMCR/UNESCO study
(Sreberny-Mohammadi et al., 1985). Scholars investigated the reach and dominant role of Western
news agencies (Boyd-Barrett, 1980), supplemented latterly by study of the televisual news
agencies (Paterson, 1998). Others showed that Third World media organizations were modeled on
those of the earlier mother empires (Katz and Wedell, 1977). More recent studies detail the
on-going transnational processes of conglomeratization and the increasing vertical and horizontal
linkages of media corporations (Herman and McChesney, 1997).
Cultural imperialism and media imperialism were among the first models to take the global
dynamics of media production and diffusion seriously. These paradigms posed important
questions about cultural homogenization, about the diffusion of values such as consumerism and
individualism, and about the possible impacts of Western media product on indigenous cultures in
the South (Hamelink, 1983).
Political/Policy Struggles
These models also provided the conceptual and empirical framework for the NWICO
(New World Information and Communication Order) debates which preoccupied UNESCO and
the nonaligned movement through the 1970s until the USA, the UK, and Singapore walked out of
UNESCO in 1984–5 (see Vincent and Galtung, 1992). The MacBride Commission gathered input
from over 100 international experts, and in its final report, Many Voices, One World (UNESCO,
1980) challenged as inadequate the prevailing idea of ‗free flow of information‘ since it functioned
to privilege Western hegemony and cultural diffusion and to turn the South into mere consumers of
Western news values, entertainment, and advertising images. Instead the report suggested the
important qualification of a ‗free and balanced‘ flow, which was adopted as UNESCO policy,
although it defaulted from precise suggestions as to how, for example, international news coverage
could be appropriately ‗balanced.‘
It is significant that UNESCO funded many of the early landmarks in critical international
communication research yet from the mid-1980s, its focus and rhetoric has shifted toward a more
neo-liberal position and a greater concern with issues around freedom and democratization than
around balance/flow.
The debates about global media inequality and concern about the logics of
conglomeratization and the threats to local cultures continue even in 2001 at the forums of the
MacBride Round Tables; the demand for a Peoples Communication Charter and in the activities of
the Cultural Environment Movement (see Voices 21, 1999). However, while the debates in the
1970s involved Third World policy makers, the critical voices are now mainly Western academics,
while Southern politicians have become more involved in nitty-gritty decisions around
deregulation, digitalization, and media convergence.
Critiques of Media Imperialism

Arguments from and About Historical Process and Effects
‗Media imperialism‘ was a problematic argument both theoretically and empirically from
the beginning, and by year 2001 it appears increasingly ossified. An argument that might have had
some validity for some countries at a certain period of time became the dominant critical
paradigm, operating as a form of political correctness by which critics were seen as apologists for
the USA and its demand for a ‗free flow international regime for trade in cultural products‘
(Sinclair et al., 1995: p. 6). By the 1980s when the global television and other media industries
really changed shape, the ‗critical‘ paradigm had become the ‗orthodoxy‘ (Sinclair et al., 1995: p.
5).
Historically it is doubtless the case in most, especially technologically based, endeavors

that the prime mover sets the model: in cars, in high-rise architecture, in media. Broadcasting did
not develop with world domination in mind, even if some of its spread has been consonant with
Western foreign policy interests. However, the model of state-controlled broadcasting which was
adopted in much of the South hardly supported the ‗free flow of information‘ of Western interests.
It is also the case that subsequent media players ‗catch up,‘ begin to produce their own content, and
rework genres to fit their cultural habits. Already in the 1970s, Tunstall (1977) was arguing that
Latin America‘s high level of television imports in the 1960s was a transitional phase while
nationally based television systems were being established.
Empirically, it is mainly from the 1990s with the expansion of global satellite systems and
development of infrastructure that much of the population of the rural South has actually been
introduced to television. Thus, oddly enough, media could not have had the strong effects imputed
by the model (nor by the modernization theorists like Lerner, 1958) because the televisual media
actually didn‘t reach most people in the South until the satellite expansion of the late 1980s.
The crude adoption of ‗media imperialism‘ arguments promoted a truncated historical

analysis and tended to disregard earlier historical processes. It is probably the case that the cultural
legacies of imperialism – the spread of Christianity, training in and use of European languages,
establishment of systems of schooling and higher education, spread of administrative cultures –
have had more enduring and far-reaching effect as carriers of Eurocentric modernization to the
South than have the subsequent arrival of electronic media (SrebernyMohammadi, 1997; Bitterlli,
1989).
Additionally, many other industries, connected to but not reducible to the media industries,
produce and market symbolic goods (fashion, foodstuffs, architecture and interior design,
consumer durables) while the global tourism and travel industries literally transport millions of
people a year. A focus on only one element of the contemporary production of culture cannot be
read for the whole. Capitalism is also not organized and instituted through media, albeit that media
content diffuses images of the goods, lifestyles, attitudes that are increasingly commodified and
available for consumption in the capitalist market. In that sense, the media can support processes
of economic transformation and the profound shift from culture as ‗practice‘ to culture as
‗commodity,‘ and here reconnect to the bigger issues around modernization and development that
tend to become submerged in the focus on media structures alone.
Arguments about Production and Flow
‗Media imperialism‘ was a model developed at a time of comparative media scarcity and
newly established broadcasting structures in the South. By the year 2001 there are many
significant cultural industries in the South: Globo in Brazil, and Televisa in Mexico produce
telenovelas; a huge multimedia complex near Cairo supports the production of Islamic soap
operas, which Turkey also produces. And if the focus shifts away from television alone to include
other cultural products, the diversity increases: Bollywood, the familiar label for the Indian film
industry, is the Eastern challenge to Hollywood in the sheer number of film titles produced yearly,
with the Asian diaspora constituting a sizeable audience. The Iranian and Chinese film industries
are gaining global recognition and audiences. The marketing of ‗world music‘ has helped the
diffusion of Algerian, Senegalese, Cuban, and Brazilian contemporary music. The Indian Zee-TV
is a powerful independent newscaster while Qatar‘s Al-Jazeera is revolutionizing factual
programming in the Arab World.
Thus, the model‘s metaphors of the ‗one-way flow‘ down the ‗one-way street‘ from the
West to the rest (Nordenstreng and Varis, 1974) are challenged by more diverse production, and
more complex images of the ‗patchwork quilt‘ (Tracey, 1988). Southern media exports into the
West have been dubbed ‗reverse imperialism‘ while many of the new media mogul empires are not
based in the West and Asian corporations and entrepreneurs (SONY, Masushita) have bought up
segments of Western media.
Arguments about Audiences and Effects
‗Media imperialism‘ also implied direct unmediated effects of television programming on

audiences, turning them into Americanized consumers. It tended to ignore the particularities of
local culture and their meaning systems as well as other processes of modernization (shifts in
material production, migration and tourism, political institutionalization and democratization) that
often operate alongside media development.
New approaches to the ‗active audience‘ within media studies have forced a rethinking of
international effects also. As with domestic viewing practices, analyses of the negotiation of
meanings around US-produced programs such as Dallas by ‗foreign‘ audiences show different
audience viewing strategies including the imposition of local interpretive frames on ‗foreign‘
media product (Liebes and Katz, 1990). There is also strong evidence that audiences prefer locally
made mediated culture where and when that becomes available (Sepstrup and Goonasekura,
1994). The original logic of argument also depended on a rather ossified notion of ‗national‘
culture, whereas even US product changes, so that the Cosby Show has become a popular, if rather
inaccurate, symbol of changing race relations in the USA.
All this means that a single global product doesn‘t always work across cultural divides.
While a film such as Titanic may have global reach, falling into that magical, much-desired and
heavily marketed category of the ‗global popular,‘ most media production is now tailored for local,
that is, linguistically bounded, sometimes still nationally-bounded, cultural markets. The mantra is
to ‗think global, produce local.‘
Regional linguistic-cultural markets are growing in economic significance as the ‗cultural

discount‘ (Hoskins and McFadyen, 1991) of local cultural preference kicks in. While this can
produce regional exchanges of news and television programming, it can also produce localized
versions of the old paradigm, as in the concern about India‘s cultural dominance over the
subcontinent.
Arguments about Genres
Discussion about the nature and definition of media genres in relation to the South has
perhaps not been fully engaged. The advent of an externally originated cultural form into a society
has often caused controversy in, for example, fear about the impact of free verse on traditions of
formal poetry or about the impact of the novel on non-Western writing cultures. Yet now Latin
American magic realism and postcolonial family sagas crossing generations and national
boundaries have transformed the very form of the novel. A debate once raged about whether Latin
American telenovelas were a new form of television series, inflected with socially developmental
themes, or whether they were simply soap operas with commercial promotional messages.
Anthropologists have analyzed the rise of the Islamic soap opera (Abu-Lughod, 1993) and it seems
clear that Southern media texts are not ‗simply‘ copies of Western texts, but neither are they utterly
novel genres either. Textual give and take, multiple sources of inspiration and derivation in media
content, needs to be taken seriously, and attention paid to how forms evolve over time, both within
developed television industries like the USA and the UK as well as within ‗younger‘ media
systems. For example, Zee-TV is not the same as MTV, although it may also show music videos.
Arguments about Media Policy and Regulation
As the global media environment changes with growing convergence between

broadcasting and telecommunications, growing digitalization and the spread of the Internet, so
there has also been a move from notions of imperialism to ideas of cultural hegemony. Such
constructs are less overtly spatial and usefully deconstruct a singular and unproblematic ‗West.‘
There have been fierce intra-Western disputes, most obviously the French disagreements about the
deregulated flow of US film within GATT talks, or the differences and competition between US
and UK modes of news construction. Parts of South East Asia may now be more concerned about
the dominance of Indian cultural product than US; and national law in one Western country
encounters a different set of rules in another, as in the US-French dispute about the sale of Nazi
ephemera through the Yahoo gateway on the Net.
Arguments about the State and Democratization
The concern of much of the debate with transnational media domination by the West and
the dominance of the market often precluded serious analysis of national processes, particularly
the complex class formations in the South and the role of states. Thus, for example in Latin
America, repressive military juntas have used media as key institutions of authoritarian
government (Waisbord, 2000) while in rapidly modernizing South East Asian economies the
ruling elites have aligned with global corporate interests, often against the needs of their own
population. As popular movements for democratization and equality have grown inside such
states, this has prompted greater analytic focus on the relations between transnational processes
and national politics and media control, and how states and markets interact within different
political and economic formations.
It is amongst the autocratic, sometimes religious, regimes of the Middle East and South
East Asia that the argument about ‗media imperialism‘ is still heard. The ‗protection of indigenous
culture‘ can be used as a weapon to prevent internal change and demands for democratization, and
the ‗outside‘ can be constructed solely as a predator involved in acts of rape against the feminized,
vulnerable nation. Yet, in numerous Southern countries – Indonesia, Nigeria, Iran, Brazil – secular
intellectuals, ethnic groups, and women are struggling for greater political openness and basic
human rights as well as a media environment which facilitates the construction of an inclusive
national public sphere. Sometimes the transnational space can act as one of solidarity and support
for such struggles.
A recent attempt to rework the ‗media imperialism‘ model suggested the need to
‗encompass neo-colonialisms of interethnic, inter-cultural, inter-gender, inter-generational and
inter-class relations‘ (Boyd-Barrett, 1998: p. 167) but instead helps us to recognize that in the end
the model is simply about power imbalances, which do not require the ‗imperial‘ stamp to be of
importance to examine. Indeed the ‗imperialism‘ obscures the differentiated processes of
economic inequality and complex power dynamics. Access to cultural expression often involves
complex internal struggles for power as well as pushes from the outside. As Tomlinson (1991) has
argued, cultural imperialism always consisted of many different discourses; the on-going attempt
to rewrap them into one through the trope of ‗media imperialism‘ is an increasingly forlorn task.
The world has changed and so must our language and our theoretical frames.
Conclusion
Perhaps the enduring cultural legacy of the USA lies in the development of a commercial
model of television as a medium: using entertainment content to attract audiences who could be
sold to advertisers (Sinclair et al., 1995). While this is still not a universal model and many states
still try to control broadcasting, commercial pressures and availability of multiple forms of media
distribution/reception such as satellite and cable mean the globalization of capitalism and the
manufacture of mediated culture are in the ascendant. In that sense, the focus on US-centric media
diffusion obscures a far wider concern around the generic mass production of culture that is now
flourishing globally.
References:
 https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-3-319-91206-6_83-1
 Fejes, F. (1981). Media imperialism: an assessment. Media, Culture & Society, 3(3), 281–289.
 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/016344378100300306?journalCode=mcsa
 https://sci-hub.st/10.1177/016344378100300306
“Social Media and Globalization”

Around the world, billions of us use social media every day, and that number just keeps
growing. In fact, it‘s estimated that by 2018, 2.44 billion people will be using social networks, up
from 970,000 in 2010.
We use it for every part of our lives – in our personal relationships, for entertainment, at
work and in our studies. To put it into some context, every minute we collectively send more than
30 million messages on Facebook and almost 350,000 tweets.
Our growing love of social media is not just changing the way we communicate – it‘s
changing the way we do business, the way we are governed, and the way we live in society. And
it‘s doing so at breakneck speed. Here are six observations and predictions for the way social
media is changing the world from experts from the Global Agenda Council.
1. Across industries, social media is going from a “nice to have” to an essential component
of any business strategy
It started in the newsroom, as Claire Wardle of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism explains:
―In just seven years, newsrooms have been completely disrupted by social media. Social media
skills are no longer considered niche, and solely the responsibility of a small team in the
newsroom. Instead social media affects the way the whole organization runs.‖
It‘s a trend that is already spreading to businesses beyond the newsroom, whether it be
because of digital marketing or new customer service communication channels. Other industries
should look to the lessons learned – or not – by the newsroom and ensure that they‘re one step
ahead of this social media-enabled disruption.
2. Social media platforms may be the banks of the future
Imagine being able to pay your rent or make an investment through your favourite social
network. That might not be too far off, says Richard Eldridge of Lenddo. ―Social media is
transforming banking relationships in very significant ways, from improving customer service
to allowing users to send money to others via online platforms. New financial technology
companies are using social media to help people simply open a bank account. Social media can
even impact your ability to get a loan.‖
But it won‘t be without its problems: ―The biggest challenge is maintaining security standards
and ensuring customers knowingly provide personal information. Banks will also have to
implement sophisticated social media policies.‖
3. Social media is shaking up healthcare and public health
The health industry is already using social media to change how it works, whether through
public health campaigns or virtual doctor‘s visits on Skype. It‘s also helped groups of people,
such as patients suffering from the same condition, stay in touch, say Shannon Dosemagen of
Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science and Lee Aase of Mayo Clinic Center for
Social Media and its Social Media Health Network: ―Social media has been responsible for
relevant changes in both personal and community health, especially by making it easier for
large numbers of people to rapidly share information.‖
That‘s not always a good thing: while social media does help official agencies and experts
share important information fast – such as during a disease outbreak – it has a downside.
―Social media is a two-way street, and allows non-experts to share information just as rapidly
as health agencies, if not more so.‖ It‘s this future that the health industry will need to plan for:
―Health agencies need to have plans in place ahead of time to be able to respond to and counter
misinformation or support accurate information shared via social media.‖
4. Social media is changing how we govern and are governed
Civic participation and engagement have been transformed with social media: ―Social media
allows citizens to be the source of ideas, plans and initiatives in an easier way than ever before‖
says Eileen Guo of Impassion Media. In the future, we can expect more and more leaders to
embrace this type of transparent governance, as it becomes easier for them to interact with their
constituents: ―Whereas politicians and government officials once had to travel to interact with
citizens, now online town halls strengthen the connections between them, while providing a
platform for direct input on government initiatives.‖
Before the dawn of social media, governments, along with the traditional media, were the
gatekeepers of information. This relationship has been turned on its head, says Taylor Owen of
the University of British Columbia: ―This largely symbiotic relationship has been radically
disrupted by the concurrent rise of digital technology and the social media ecosystem that it
enabled. Nowhere is this challenge more acute than in the world of international affairs and
conflict, where the rise of digitally native international actors has challenged the state‘s
dominance.‖
Wikileaks and the rise of the social-media savvy terrorist organization ISIS are just two
examples of this shift in power, which will call for a complete rethink of the concept of
governance.
5. Social media is helping us better respond to disasters
From Facebook‘s Safety Check – which allows users in disaster zones to mark themselves as
safe – to the rise of the Crisis Mappers Network, we‘ve seen many examples of how social
media and digital communications more broadly are helping respond to disasters.
That looks set to continue, says Heather Leson of the Qatar Computing Research Institute. In
fact, more and more of us will be using social media to contribute to disaster relief from
wherever we are: ―Digital responders can immediately log on when news breaks about a
natural disaster or human-created catastrophe. Individuals and teams are activated based on
skill sets of volunteer and technical communities. These digital responders use their time and
technical skills, as well as their personal networks in an attempt to help mitigate information
overload for formal humanitarian aid in the field.‖ These digital humanitarians will help close
the gap in worldwide disaster response.
6. Social media is helping us tackle some of the world‟s biggest challenges, from human
rights violations to climate change
The Arab Spring is perhaps one of the best-known examples of how social media can change
the world. But it‘s about more than just bringing together activists: it‘s also about holding
human rights violators to account. ―Content shared on social media has increasing potential to
be used as evidence of wartime atrocities and human rights violations, explain Esra‘a Al Shafei
of Mideast Youth and Melissa Tyas of Crowdvoice. ―Following verification and forensic
reconstruction by prosecutors and human rights advocates, these videos are potential evidence
that may one day be brought before an international court.‖
This capacity for social media to bring together disparate but like-minded people is also
helping fight another enormous challenge: climate change. ―Social media has become an
important tool for providing a space and means for the public to participate in influencing or
disallowing environmental decisions historically made by governments and corporations that
affect us all. It has created a way for people to connect local environmental challenges and
solutions to larger-scale narratives that will affect us as a global community,‖ says Shannon
Dosemagen.
References:
 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/6-ways-social-media-is-changing-the-world/
 https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/5729/1846
 Claudio and Abinales (2018) The Contemporary World, pp. 72-82

“The Global City and Globalization”
The term “global village” first appeared in 1962 with the publication of Marshall
McLuhan‘s The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. In popular usage, the
expression has assumed a utopian connotation, suggesting a perpetual peace enabled by electronic
communications. In the global village, diverse cultural tradition will supposedly survive—indeed,
thrive—amid the transformations wrought by electronic connectivity. But McLuhan was hardly a
utopian thinker, and the magic conjured by the ―global village‖ should be treated with some
skepticism. This magic, which continues to pervade techno-humanitarian discourses, was born of
colonial thought, having been coined by McLuhan in reference to various devices of British
colonial and neocolonial power.
What the ―global village‖ suggests is a state of political dispossession resulting from a
differential in semiotic power. The global village is constituted first and foremost by a rural
subaltern that—owing to its geographic dispersion—is governed largely through
nanotechnologies. These latter can elide geographic distances and thereby facilitate governance
over a vastly dispersed population. To some extent, we are all global villagers, but given the
imbalances of semiotic power (accruing to urbanites versus ruralites, to global North versus global
South, and to the literate versus nonliterate), some belong more thoroughly to the global village
than others.
It has gone strangely unnoted in the abundant scholarship on McLuhan that the global
village seems to have been inspired by techniques of colonial rule in Africa, specifically from
Britain‘s brutal villagization scheme in Kenya in the 1950s, in which thousands of Kikuyu, Embu,
and Meru civilians from Kenya‘s Rift Valley were detained in camps.
Yet McLuhan, while copiously citing colonial research on Kenya‘s villagization, was
clearly not depicting a future of wartime detainment camps so much as depoliticization and
pacification through other means: through other media. It was not barbed-wire enclosures that
would circumscribe the global community McLuhan imagined but rather feedback loops of
information that were to work in
tandem with spatial tactics of quasi-urbanization. The global village was modeled on
colonial strategies intended to transform the semiotic, economic, and spatial fabric of the
decolonizing world in such a way as to safeguard British economic and political interests in the
aftermath of independence.
Following the example of British strategy in Kenya, the global village can be understood as
a mechanism for pacifying postcolonial agrarian society by absorbing people made landless by the
relentless expansion of agrarian capital. The global village—like villagization—was intended to
enfold dispossessed denizens into the incipient nation-form and into the global market, while
simultaneously withholding the modes of semiotic power required to participate effectively in a
public sphere.
Insofar as McLuhan‘s ―global village‖ seems to have been inspired by theories surrounding
Kenya‘s detainment camps, we might invoke Giorgio Agamben‘s formulation of ―the camp‖ as
―the nomos of the modern.‖ But the camp qua global village suggests a somewhat different nomos
than the concentration camp, which Agamben cites as exemplary of biopolitical processes of
reducing subjects to ―bare life.‖ The concentration camp is not quite the right paradigm for
describing the power latent in the concept of the global village, even despite certain similarities
(both being, after all, ―camps‖). In the
case of villagization, biopolitical sovereignty over life was not simply a matter of the right
to extinguish life; it was governance over the psychic-social constitution of the individual subject.
By the mid-1950s, many colonial administrators began to view Kenya‘s independence as

inevitable. The war became less about retaining colonial sovereignty than about safeguarding
white settlers‘ property in the wake of decolonization and ensuring that Kenya remained amenable
to Britain‘s economic and global military interests in the Cold War. Although Kenya‘s
villagization has often been likened to the Holocaust camps, by the mid-1950s, British power of
administering death in Kenya was increasingly superseded by apparatuses of soft power that
sought to convert detainees not into homo sacer‘s but into global villagers.
Unlike homo sacer, global villagers were to exercise the rights guaranteed by law but in a
manner constrained—shrunken—by semiotic poverty. This form of semiotic disempowerment
wouldn‘t necessarily be recognizable as poverty, given the semiotic amplitude that often engulfs
the subject of nootechnologies. ―Bare,‖ then, isn‘t really the term to describe the electronically
enchanted life of the global villagers, even if the global villagers is to be depoliticized, similar to
the biopolitical subject of ―bare life.‖ The life of the global villagers is to be captured by media, to
be deeply, cognitively involved with that media, submerged in a rhythmic sensorium resembling
the magical, arboreal semiosis Carothers described as innate to ―the African mind.‖ Through
magical captivation by audiovisual media, a ―state of exception‖ promulgated by violence is
transformed into a nonexceptional state of popular participation.
Agamben has cited the phrase, ―poverty in the world,‖ used by Martin Heidegger to
describe how animals receive and respond to sensory signals without, however, having access to
―being.‖ Heidegger says that being can be disclosed only through human language, relative to
which all other semiotic modes are impoverished. Agamben does not explicitly draw any
connection between ―poverty in the world‖ and ―bare life,‖ but the former phrase might be used to
connect Agamben‘s conception of biopolitics with noopolitics. I use ―semiotic poverty in the
world‖ to describe a condition of relative impoverishment, a power imbalance. The global villager
is grazed by word and image without possessing equal capabilities to leverage semiotic power
toward political transformation. In other words, semiotic poverty is produced by a corollary
semiotic affluence in the world—or effluence—which washes over us, precluding reply.
One virulent strain of semiotic poverty in the postcolonial world arose from the persistence
of colonial languages as international lingua francas, a tendency that sheds light on another
dimension of McLuhan‘s thinking. In the mid-1940s Ivor Armstrong Richards, a professor who
deeply influenced McLuhan during the latter‘s doctoral studies at Cambridge University, devised
Basic English and ―English through Pictures‖ as a way to expand the international use of English,
believing that a pared-down lexicon was requisite to transparent international communications
and, consequently, world peace.
Richards‘s insistence that a simplified English of merely 850 words would hone and clarify
communication (rather than exacerbate the semiotic asymmetries of international power)
anticipated McLuhan‘s concept of the global village, insofar as both models posited semiotic
impoverishment as means of attaining perpetual peace. Conceived in the context of myriad anti
colonial wars, the ideal of perpetual peace harbors violence within it, as suggested by the fact that
colonial administrators in Malaya during the war against Malaya‘s Communist Party took a keen
interest in Basic English
While Richards sought to eschew translation through a simplified lingua franca, McLuhan
dreamt of computer technologies capable of circumventing language entirely so as to eradicate the
differences between thought and language and the misunderstandings arising there from:
Language as the technology of human extension, whose division and separation we know
so well, may have been the ―Tower of Babel‖ by which men sought to scale the highest heavens.
Today computers hold out the promise of a means of instant translation of any code or language
into any other code or language. The computer, in short, promises by technology a Pentecostal
condition of universal understanding and unity. The next logical step would seem to be, not to
translate, but to by-pass languages in favor of a general cosmic consciousness which might be very
like the collective unconscious dreamt of by Bergson. The condition of ―weightlessness,‖ that
biologists say promises a physical immortality, may be paralleled by the condition of
speechlessness that could confer a perpetuity of collective harmony and peace [emphasis added].
It is hard to imagine a greater semiotic poverty than what McLuhan envisions

here—essentially a world dispossessed of language, save for computer code. Going a step beyond
what Rosalind Morris has called ―multilingualism against translation‖ (describing British
language policies in Malaya), McLuhan dreams of a circum-lingualism against translation, which
divests language of its semiotic powers and invests those powers within the work of audiovisual
coding
However, the most peculiar dimension to McLuhan‘s Pentecostal fantasy is its proximity
to his conception of the ―tribal‖ world‘s aural semiosis, gleaned largely from Carothers.
Carothers‘s thesis concerning the ―African mind‘s‖ enthrallment to the authority of voice rested on
the idea that written language revealed the arbitrary relation between signified and signifier,
whereas spoken language produced an illusion of magical unity between words and the things they
named. ―Western man‘s‖ putative independence of thought was born of his supposed awareness of
the fundamental difference and distance between signifier and signified, but it is precisely this
distance between words and referents that McLuhan dreamed of eradicating through Pentecostal
technologies.
Carothers‘s ideas concerning the illusory magic of spoken language likely drew from a
much earlier book Richards had coauthored in 1927 with C. K. Ogden, The Meaning of Meaning:
A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism, which had
become stock reading for Anglophone scholars of semiotics and psychology. The Meaning of
Meaning argued that language had long been linked to magic, insofar as words were believed to
exercise a direct influence over their referents.
That McLuhan should have so rampantly cited Carothers‘s obscure article—published in a

professional psychiatric journal—while never mentioning his own teacher‘s renowned work on a
similar topic might be explained by a key difference in their respective arguments. Whereas
Richards and Ogden discussed how Western typographic propaganda had greatly expanded the
deceptive magic of the written word, Carothers had, as we know, distinguished sharply between
the rational habits of thought encouraged by literacy and the tendencies of magical thought
promulgated through orality.
Additionally, Carothers‘s fixation on Africans‘ alleged orality appears to have drawn from
the British wartime obsession with the loyalty oaths the KLFA administered to all fighters and to
countless civilians. In this case it appears to have been the British who were dazzled by the magical
power of the spoken word, as they went so far as to claim that the Kikuyu oaths had the power to
utterly transform those who uttered them, so much as to alter the very color of their eyes and
skin.[8] Following villagization, the oaths became the primary focus of British military strategists
who were convinced that the war could be won only by countering the oaths‘ magical power. Even
apart from the issue of propaganda then, the war was a semiotic war, insofar as what was at stake
was how words operated socially and politically.
In its broadest sense, the ―global village‖ designates a fairly ubiquitous condition of
semiotic disempowerment in the face of mass media. Yet more specifically and owing to the
unique ability of electronic mass-media to operate across distances and in the absence of systems
of public education, the global village names a paradigm for instating semiotic poverty as means of
facilitating the conversion of agrarian land into agrarian capital (as is now transpiring apace in
Africa and Latin America). A battle against the perpetual conversion of land into capital and
vice-versa (a battle often waged in the name of environmental justice or indigenous rights) must
therefore be conceived also as a ―battle for intelligence,‖ to use Stiegler‘s expression.
Semiotic poverty—whether belonging to the non literate or to those whose limited

rhetorical training fails to guard against what Talal Assad has called ―seductive speech‖—such
poverty is tantamount to what being ―landless‖ has meant in other times and places: to be without
means of economic and political independence. Wherever terra-power and noopolitics collaborate,
shuttling between agrarian society and the global market, is where the villagers of the global
village can be found.
Such a battle for intelligence is always already being fought. Every class conflict, every
anti colonial war, and every civil rights movement is to some extent a battle for intelligence, a
battle for rights to education, to semiotic empowerment, to the means of rendering one‘s stories
public, and to the political capabilities deriving there from. Keeping this in mind, a battle for
intelligence must not be approached as if noopolitics (or, for that matter, capital) operated
homogenously across the globe. Semiotic technologies are differently leveraged and accessed in
global North versus South, in differently educated classes, and in cities versus villages.
We are all semiotically impoverished to varying degrees, according to accidents of birth

and the educational privileges subsequently withheld or conferred. A battle for intelligence would
have to acknowledge these differences (these accidents of birth and all the power differentials
deriving there from). Colonialisms and the techno-humanitarian movements that are often heir to
colonial logics have long employed techno-aesthetic magic as means of elision—as means of
obfuscating the societal differences they help produce. In a direct inversion of this method, a battle
for intelligence would have to constantly acknowledge those differences as the preliminary basis
for overcoming them.
References:
 Barrientos, A., Neff, D. Attitudes to Chronic Poverty in the ‗Global Village‘. Soc Indic
Res 100, 101–114 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-010-9606-7
 Claudio and Abinales (2018) The Contemporary World, pp. 72-82
 http://www.globalization101.org/the-global-village/
 Scott, B. (2001). The Great Divide in the Global Village. Foreign Affairs, 80(1), 160-177.
doi:10.2307/20050050
 https://manifold.umn.edu/read/the-neocolonialism-of-the-global-village/section/f3939a8b
-5620-49b3-bb1d-a5e3c2f2565a
 http://www.saskiasassen.com/pdfs/publications/the-global-city-brown.pdf
INFORMATION SHEET FN-11.1.1

“Global Demography”
Thomas Robert Malthus was

interested in everything about populations.
He accumulated figures on births, deaths,
age of marriage and child-bearing and
economic factors contributing to longevity.
His main contribution was to highlight the
relationship between food supply and
population. Humans do not overpopulate to
the point of starvation, he contended, only
because people change their behavior in the
face of economic incentives.
Noting that while food production

tends to increase arithmetically, population
tends to increase naturally at a (faster)
geometric rate, Malthus argued that it is no
surprise that people thus choose to reduce (or ―check‖) population growth. People can increase
food production, Malthus thought, only by slow, difficult methods such as reclaiming unused land
or intensive farming; but they can check population growth more effectively by marrying late,
using contraceptives, emigrating, or, in more extreme circumstances, resorting to reduced health
care, tolerating vicious social diseases or impoverished living conditions, warfare, or even
infanticide. Malthus was fascinated not with the inevitability of human demise, but with why
humans do not die off in the face of such overwhelming odds. As an economist, he studied
responses to incentives.
Malthus is arguably the most misunderstood and misrepresented economist of all time. The
adjective ―Malthusian‖ is used today to describe a pessimistic prediction of the lock-step demise of
a humanity doomed to starvation via overpopulation. When his hypothesis was first stated in his
best-selling An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), the uproar it caused among
non-economists overshadowed the instant respect it inspired among his fellow economists. So
irrefutable and simple was his illustrative side-by-side comparison of arithmetic and a geometric
series—food increases more slowly than population—that it was often taken out of context and
highlighted as his main observation. The observation is, indeed, so stark that it is still easy to lose
sight of Malthus‘s actual conclusion: that because humans have not all starved, economic choices
must be at work, and it is the job of an economist to study those choices.
.
Malthus addressed many other issues. His Principles of Political Economy (1820) was the
first text to describe a demand schedule as separate from the quantity demanded at a given price.
His exposition of demand curves clarified the debate on Say‘s law and gluts (to which he objected
in the long run on the grounds that markets self-adjust). His work centered on contrasting the long
run, as exemplified by population growth, with the
short run, reflected by cyclical events such as those
affecting agriculture. Writing before the industrial
revolution, Malthus did not fully appreciate the
impact of technology (i.e., pesticides, refrigeration,
mechanized farm equipment, and increased crop
yields) on food production.
Malthus died in 1834, before seeing

economics characterized as the ―dismal science.‖
That phrase, coined by Thomas Carlyle in 1849 to
demean John Stuart Mill, is often erroneously
thought to refer to Malthus‘s contributions to the
economics of population growth.
Thomas Malthus argued that because of the

natural human urge to reproduce human population
increases geometrically (1, 2, 4, 16, 32, 64, 128,
256, etc.). However, food supply, at most, can only
increase arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, etc.).
Therefore, since food is an essential component to
human life, population growth in any area or on the
planet, if unchecked, would lead to starvation.
However, Malthus also argued that there are
preventative checks and positive checks on the population that slow its growth and keep the
population from rising exponentially for too long, but still, poverty is inescapable and will
continue.
Thomas Malthus' example of population growth doubling was based on the preceding 25
years of the brand-new United States of America. Malthus felt that a young country with fertile
soil like the U.S. would have one of the highest birth rates around. He liberally estimated an
arithmetic increase in agricultural production of one acre at a time, acknowledging that he was
overestimating but he gave agricultural development the benefit of the doubt.
According to Thomas Malthus, preventative checks are those that affect the birth rate and
include marrying at a later age (moral restraint), abstaining from procreation, birth control, and
homosexuality. Malthus, a religious chap (he worked as a clergyman in the Church of England),
considered birth control and homosexuality to be vices and inappropriate (but nonetheless
practiced)
Positive checks are those, according to Thomas Malthus, that increase the death rate. These
include disease, war, disaster, and finally when other checks don't reduce the population, famine.
Malthus felt that the fear of famine or the development of famine was also a major impetus to
reduce the birth rate. He indicates that potential parents are less likely to have children when they
know that their children are likely to starve.
Thomas Malthus also advocated welfare reform. Recent Poor Laws had provided a system
of welfare that provided an increased amount of money depending on the number of children in a
family. Malthus argued that this only encouraged the poor to give birth to more children as they
would have no fear that increased numbers of offspring would make eating any more difficult.
Increased numbers of poor workers would reduce labor costs and ultimately make the poor even
poorer. He also stated that if the government or an agency were to provide a certain amount of
money to every poor person, prices would simply rise and the value of money would change. As
well, since population increases faster than production, the supply would essentially be stagnant or
dropping so the demand would increase and so would price. Nonetheless, he suggested that
capitalism was the only economic system that could function.
The ideas that Thomas Malthus developed came before the industrial revolution and
focuses on plants, animals, and grains as the key components of the diet. Therefore, for Malthus,
available productive farmland was a limiting factor in population growth. With the industrial
revolution and the increase in agricultural production, land has become a less important factor than
it was during the 18th century.
Thomas Malthus printed the second edition of his Principles of Population in 1803 and
produced several additional editions until the sixth edition in 1826. Malthus was awarded the first
professorship in Political Economy at the East India Company's College at Haileybury and was
elected to the Royal Society in 1819. He's often known today as the "patron saint of demography"
and while some argue that his contributions to population studies were unremarkable, he did
indeed cause population and demographics to become a topic of serious academic study. Thomas
Malthus died in Somerset, England in 1834.
Malthusian Population Theory
Malthus viewed poverty, hunger and lack of sufficient food production to feed all of the
world's people as an inevitable part of the human experience. In accordance with the less secular
standards of the science-minded during his lifetime, he believed this arrangement was put in place
by God to keep people from being lazy.
His ideas went against the prevailing wisdom at the time, which was that with enough laws
and the proper social structures, human ingenuity could overcome any level of sickness, hunger,
poverty and so on.
Malthus, in fact, failed to foresee the technological advances that have allowed humanity to
keep pace with exponential population growth (at least so far). As a result, at least as of the second
decade of the 21st century, Malthus' predictions have not been borne out in reality.
Was Malthus Truly Wrong?
With no small degree of smugness, modern scholars have suggested that Malthus'
doomsday predictions were predicated on flimsy ideas and a flawed and cynical understanding of
the ingenuity of future generations of human beings, as occurred in the Industrial Revolution in
Europe (especially Britain) and the United States after his death in the 1800s.
Still, if the world's population continues to grow at its present rate, factors other than
increased food production may be necessary to sustain population growth beyond 9 or 10 billion
people, about 2 to 3 billion in excess of the world total as of 2019.
Many scientists believe that even if the food supply can be maintained at adequate levels
per se, the environmental consequences will be such that sustainability measures will fail for
secondary reasons (e.g., climate change, pollution, etc.). In some ways, these arguments appear to
parallel Malthus' own in that they may fail to account for technological leaps capable of
surmounting such challenges.
References:
 David E Bloom & David Canning, 2006. "Global Demography: Fact, Force and
Future," RBA Annual Conference Volume (Discontinued), in: Christopher Kent & Anna
Park & Daniel Rees (ed.), Demography and Financial Markets, Reserve Bank of Australia.
 https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Malthus.html
 https://sciencing.com/thomas-malthus-biography-population-theory-facts-13719060.html
 Rosenberg, Matt. (2020, February 11). Thomas Malthus on Population. Retrieved from
https://www.thoughtco.com/thomas-malthus-on-population-1435465

“Feminism and Population Growth”
For most of human history population growth and economic growth have moved in
tandem. As humans invented agriculture; (several times over a period of centuries, according to
some archeologists) they managed to produce more food than they could consume. Population
growth ensued. Food surpluses gave homo sapiens time to develop the ―stuff‖ of civilization:
technology, infrastructure, science, and medical care. These advances brought lower death rates
and accelerated population growth still further. This cycle, called ―demographic transition‖ by
professionals, has repeated itself over and over again through the millennia.
In recent years, however, the link between population and economic growth has gone
missing. The Great Recession – the worst economic decline since the 1930s – ended in 2009.
Despite a long and increasingly strong economic recovery, marked by record low unemployment
and strong wage gains, births and fertility rates have continued to fall.
The fertility rate fell to 60.3 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age in 2017, down 4%
from 2016, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. It was the largest annual decline
since 2010, when families were still reeling from the effects of the Great Recession. The number of
births also declined for the third straight year, hitting the lowest level since 1987.
―Every year I look at data and expect it will be the year that birthrates start to tick up, and
every year we hit another all-time low,‖ Kenneth M. Johnson, a demographer at the University of
New Hampshire, is quoted as saying. ―It‘s one of the big demographic mysteries of recent times.‖
What does seem in sync with the economy is the new assertiveness of women –
exemplified by the ―Me Too‖ movement, a record number of women elected to political office or
running large corporations, and millennials postponing marriage. Feminist activists call it the
―Third Wave‖ of their movement, comparing it to the 1920s and the 1970s, when fertility and
economic growth also decoupled. This leads to an obvious, but largely unrecognized, conclusion
that birth rates may depend on micro events like women‘s attitudes toward marriage and
procreation, as much as macro events like the economy. Social factors may exert an even larger;
and more lasting influence on the size and timing of family creation.
Feminists have long been skeptical of the institution of marriage, arguing that it prevents
women from achieving social equality and reinforce the notion that women exist to serve men. For
most of us, this seems a bit extreme. It conjures up visions of child brides in India or the Congo,
forced into arranged marriages for economic survival. But hardcore feminists see the same
problem in advanced societies. Feminist scholar Sheila Jeffries writes ―… the traditional elements
of marriage have not completely disappeared in western societies, even in the case of employed,
highly educated and… well paid professional women.‖ These women ―… feel they have no choice
but to stay and endure and may ‗love to survive.‘‖
The good news: the institution of marriage is alive and well in the U.S. The marriage rate
(marriages as a percent of total population) was virtually unchanged during the recession, even
rising slightly in the past two years.
The better news - at least for those of us desiring negative population growth: the recent
marriage rate uptick is primarily due to older couples making their second or third trip down the
aisle. Women in their peak child-bearing years are increasingly postponing marriage. In 2018 the
median age of first marriage was 27.8 for women and 29.8 for men – roughly two years more than
in 2007, and seven years more than in 1960.
Delayed marriage does not explain all of the fertility drop-off. The share of Americans who
have never married has been rising steadily in recent decades. At the same time, more adults are
living with a partner instead of marrying and raising children outside of marriage.
Giving birth at any age, with or without the benefit of marriage, can disrupt family
finances. Immediately after the first birth, the pay gap between husband-and-wife doubles, driven
entirely by the drop in the mother‘s pay, according to a Census Bureau study. Men‘s wages keep
rising. But the study also finds that women, who postpone their first baby to their late thirties or
forties, when their careers are established, eventually close the pay gap with their husbands.
Women who have children between 25 and 35 – the prime career building years, as well as the
years when most women have children – never regain the pre-child pay level they achieved
relative to their husbands.
A desire to minimize the spousal pay gap may explain the fertility rate trends of U.S.
women over the past decade:
The bottom two lines reflect births to women older than age 35. We might call them ―safe
zone‖ mothers, women who gave birth at an age when their careers are already well established.
While their fertility rates increased over the past decade, they are still way too low, and their
biological clock too far along, to reverse the downward trajectory of total U.S. population growth.
Meanwhile, the top two lines reflect fertility of women ages 25 to 35, the ages when a new
child sets a mother‘s income back irrevocably. Fertility of women in those age groups has declined
over the decade 2007 to 2017.
Two inescapable conclusions:
1. U.S. women increasingly minimize the financial distress caused by children by postponing
births to their late thirties and early forties. This strategy has worked well for them. Since
the end of the Great Recession women‘s employment has increased more than that of men,
even in jobs dominated by males. Nationally, 28% of wives earn more than their husbands
today, up from 12% in 1980.
2. If continued, these fertility trends portend ever lower rates of natural increase (births minus
deaths) and, eventually, a smaller U.S. population.
The takeaway: When women take control of their fertility, they opt for smaller families and
longer, more lucrative careers. These personal choices may explain why strong economic growth
co-exists with declining fertility today.
The 1920s: Women get the Vote … and save their babies
The roaring twenties – The economy was booming. World War I had given women access,
at least temporarily, to factory jobs once deemed inappropriate for their gender. As the decade
unfolded full time office jobs – typists, filing clerks, and stenographers – became possibilities for
ambitious young women. Simultaneously, the mechanization of agriculture reduced the demand
for farm labor, which had traditionally been performed by children. The largest internal migration
in U.S. history saw millions of farm families‘ move to cities where children were more likely to be
educated than put to work.
These trends explain much of the fertility rate decline in the 1920s. But infant mortality
was also declining, and for this we can thank early 20th Century feminists.
In 1921 Congress passed – quite unwillingly, it appears – the Sheppard-Towner Act,

providing federal funding for prenatal care and children‘s health clinics. Historian Richard Meckel
notes that ―…fear of being punished at the polls by American women, not conviction of the bill‘s
necessity, seems to have motivated Congress to vote for it. As one senator admitted to a reporter
from the Ladies Home Journal, ‗if the members of Congress could have voted on the measure in
their cloak rooms, it would have been killed as emphatically as it was finally passed out in the
open.‘‖ The bill passed by a margin of 279 to 39.
Funding was modest, but its apparent impact on infant survival was enormous. From 1920
to1921 infant mortality dropped from 86 to 76 deaths per 1,000 live births; by 1929 it was down to
68. There were other factors at work – advances in hygiene and medical practice, for example – but
careful analysis of the timing, geographical distribution, and nature of infant deaths during this
period point to the role of the new legislation. ―Taken together, this evidence suggests that the
extension of suffrage rights to women may have itself been responsible for substantial
improvements in child survival.‖
Nationwide, the enactment of Federal and state suffrage laws is credited with averting
roughly 20,000 child deaths each year, or about 10% of the child mortality reduction.
Other things equal, mortality declines of this magnitude should increase population
growth. This assumption is overly simplistic, however, because it ignores the interaction between
fertility and infant mortality. As married couples perceive their newborns are more likely to
survive, they reduce the number of children they want because fewer are needed to achieve their
desired family size. Child quality supplants child quantity as the criteria for couples planning a
family.
This seems to have been the case in the 1920s, birth rates fell throughout the 1920s, with
the largest drop occurring in 1922 – the year after Sheppard-Towner was passed. From 1921 to
1929 births to American women declined from 119.8 per 1,000 women of childbearing ages to
94.8, a reduction of 20.9%. Over this period GDP rose at a prodigious 4.8% average annual rate.
The notion that fertility moves in tandem with economic growth is even more decisively
debunked by Depression-era results. Births per 1,000 women of childbearing ages declined by
12.9 babies from 1925 to 1928 and that was the height of the boom. Most were conceived during
the years 1924 to 1927, when GDP rose by an average 3.3% per year. Birth rates declined further
in the first three Depression years, 1929 to 1932, but the reduction was nearly identical to the
reduction that occurred in the last three boom years. Instead of 12.9 fewer babies, women had 13.1
fewer in 1932 than in 1929.
Using slightly different metrics, Martha J. Baily and Brad J. Hershbein confirm our finding
of a weak relationship between fertility and economic growth during the Great Depression:
―The Great Depression and the baby boom pose challenges to the simple demand-side
narrative. As the economy entered the Depression, the downward trend in fertility rates changed
little in pace. Even as per-capita disposable income plummeted by 23 percent between 1929 and
1932 (Bureau of Economic Analysis 2015: Table 7.1), the general fertility rate fell by a mere seven
births per 1,000 women (55.9 to 48.6) between 1930 and 1933 (lagged one year because births
occur nine months after pregnancies). But the fertility rate had declined by about 6 births per 1,000
women between 1927 and 1930 (61.4 to 55.9) (Linder and Grove 1947).
Thus, the speed of fertility declines barely budged from its earlier trend. Additionally,
fertility rates stabilized—but did not appreciably grow—as the economy slowly rebounded
between 1933 and 1938….‖
Fertility rates increased slightly during World War II, and boomed from 1946 to 1960.
Peak fertility – 122.1 births per 1,000 women of child bearing ages – occurred in 1957.
The long-term trend of declining U.S. fertility resumed in 1960.
1960-1980: Baby Boom Bubble Popped by the Pill and Labor Force Participation
The birth control pill. In 1968 a writer called it the most important breakthrough since the
discovery of fire. Twenty-five years later the Economist listed it among the seven wonders of the
modern world. Today it is known simply as ―the Pill.‖
Many blames it for the sexual revolution that (allegedly) swept the country in the 1960s,
and it‘s not hard to see why. When first produced in 1957, pharmaceutical company G. D. Searle
touted the drug, called Enovid, as a treatment for ―gynecological disorders.‖ Contraception was a
little noticed side effect.
Searle was shocked – at least publicly – when more than 500,000 women were using it
within two years. In 1960 the company obtained FDA approval to market Enovid as a
contraceptive, and it was off to the races: by 1965 the pill was the most widely prescribed drug in
the country, with 6.5 million American women taking it daily.
The national sex party had begun!
Reality check: the sexual revolution was alive and well long before the first pill rolled out.
It just wasn‘t talked about. The pill heralded what some demographers call a ―contraceptive
revolution,‖ a period when women switched from less effective forms of contraception controlled
entirely by men – mainly condoms and coitus interruptus.
With the pill women were able to engage in the same behavior with dramatically reduced
risk of unwanted pregnancies. From 1961 to 1965, 20% of births to married U.S. women were
unwanted, and 45% were mis-timed. By 2006-2010, those percentages declined to 8.9% and
16.4%, respectively. In light of this data, one wonders how much of the Baby Boom fertility spike
was preventable, the result of unwanted births?
There were other factors at work. When the pill was first introduced 24 states banned the
sale of contraceptives under anti-obscenity statutes known as ―Comstock laws.‖ In 1965 the
Griswold Supreme Court decision invalidated these sales bans for married women. Fertility rates
dropped sharply in states with bans relative to those without the bans. Based on this data,
economist Martha Bailey concludes that as much as 40% of the decline in marital fertility in the
mid-1960s was attributable to the pill.
The year 1965 also saw the first publicly subsidized birth control programs, courtesy of
President Johnson‘s War on Poverty. It is estimated that unintended pregnancies and abortions
would be nearly two-thirds higher than they are without these family planning services.
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Babyboom fertility levels of the late 1950s gave way
to a sustained period of decline:
By 1975 fertility dropped to 66 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, down a whopping
45% from the Baby-boom peak of 122 reached in 1957.
Before the pill, most women did not look for long-term jobs. The typical female worker left
the job market when she became pregnant, and re-entered it when her child entered school. With
nearly 100% control over their fertility, women pursued education and career opportunities that
had been unattainable prior to the pill.
The gender gap in labor force participation narrowed considerably after 1960, as male and
female participation moved in different directions:
From 1960 to 1980 the labor force participation rate of adult women rose from 37.6% to
51.6%, a 37.6% jump, while those of adult men fell from 86.1% to 79.4%, an 8% drop.
In 1960, 12.2 million married women were employed; by 1980, the number had risen to
23.5 million, a gain of 11.7 million, or 92.5%. By contrast, employment of married men over this
period rose by 4.4 million, a gain of just 12.6%. The bottom line: in the sixties and seventies the
number of working wives rose more than 7-times faster than the number of working husbands.
For women it was sweet revenge. Many entered the labor force as young women during the
war, only to lose their jobs to returning GIs who were paid more. Young children prevented their
re-entering the job market in the first post-war decade. The women could not have done it without
the pill.
References:
 Marsden, L. R. (1973). Human Rights and Population Growth—A Feminist Perspective.

International Journal of Health Services, 3(4), 567–575.
 https://npg.org/library/press-releases/pr03212019.html
 https://www.npg.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/ControllingPopulationInAStrongEcono
my-IsFeminismTheAnswer-FP2019.pdf
“Global Migration”
Since the earliest times, humanity has been on the move. Some people move in search of
work or economic opportunities, to join family, or to study. Others move to escape conflict,
persecution, terrorism, or human rights violations. Still others move in response to the adverse
effects of climate change, natural disasters, or other environmental factors.
Today, more people than ever live in a country other than the one in which they were born.
In 2019, the number of migrants globally reached an estimated 272 million, 51 million more than
in 2010. International migrants comprise 3.5 per cent of the global population. Compared to 2.8
per cent in 2000 and 2.3 per cent in 1980, the proportion of international migrants in the world
population has also risen.
While many individuals migrate out of choice, many others migrate out of necessity. The
number of globally forcibly displaced people topped 70 million for the first time in UNHCR's
almost 70-year history at the end of 2018. This number includes almost 26 million refugees, 3.5
million asylum seekers, and over 41 million internally displaced persons.
Who is a Migrant?
The UN Migration Agency (IOM) defines a migrant as any person who is moving or has
moved across an international border or within a State away from his/her habitual place of
residence, regardless of (1) the person‘s legal status; (2) whether the movement is voluntary or
involuntary; (3) what the causes for the movement are; or (4) what the length of the stay is.
Migrants and the SDGs
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development recognizes for the first time the
contribution of migration to sustainable development. 11 out of the 17 Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs) contain targets and indicators relevant to migration or mobility. The Agenda's core
principle is to "leave no one behind," not even migrants.
The SDGs‘ central reference to migration is made in target 10.7: to facilitate orderly, safe,
regular and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of
planned and well-managed migration policies. Other targets directly related to migration mention
trafficking, remittances, international student mobility and more. Moreover, migration is indirectly
relevant to many more cross-cutting targets.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM)
Established in 1951, IOM is the leading inter-governmental organization in the field of

migration. IOM works to ensure the orderly and humane management of migration, to promote
international cooperation on migration issues, to assist in the search for practical solutions to
migration problems and to provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in need, including refugees
and internally displaced people. In 2016, IOM entered into an agreement with the United Nations
(A/70/976), becoming one of its specialized agencies.
To promote diversity and inclusion of migrants in society, IOM has developed the platform
‗i am a migrant,‘ which features first-hand accounts from individuals, providing insights into the
experiences of migrants of all backgrounds and throughout their migratory journeys.
Data on migration
In 2019, the number of international migrants worldwide – people residing in a country

other than their country of birth – reached 272 million (from 258 million in 2017). Female
migrants constituted 48 per cent of this international migrant stock. There are an estimated 38
million migrant children, three out of four international migrants are of working age, meaning
between 20 and 64 years old. 164 million are migrant workers. Approximately 31% of the
international migrants worldwide reside in Asia, 30% in Europe, 26% in the Americas, 10% in
Africa and 3% in Oceania [Source: Global Migration Data Portal].
It can be a challenge to make sense of available migration data, as this is often scattered
across different organizations and agencies, and not easily comparable. IOM‘s Global Migration
Data Analysis Centre runs the Global Migration Data Portal, which serves as a unique access point
to timely, comprehensive migration statistics and reliable information about migration data
globally. The site presents migration data from diverse sources and aims to help policy makers,
national statistical officers, journalists and the general public interested in migration to navigate
the increasingly complex landscape of migration data.
Global Action
Large-scale movements of refugees and migrants affect all UN Member States and they
require closer cooperation and responsibility-sharing. In 2016, the UN General Assembly
convened a high-level plenary meeting on addressing large movements of refugees and migrants.
The UN Secretary-General prepared the report 'In Safety and Dignity: Addressing Large
Movements of Refugees and Migrants' (A/70/59) with recommendations on the issue.
UN member states adopted a set of commitments, known as the New York Declaration for
Refugees and Migrants (A/RES/71/1), in which to recognize the need for a comprehensive
approach to migration. The New York Declaration acknowledges the positive contribution of
migrants to sustainable and inclusive development, and commits to protecting the safety, dignity
and human rights and fundamental freedoms of all migrants, regardless of their migratory status.
In March 2017, the UN Secretary-General appointed Louise Arbour of Canada as his
Special Representative for International Migration to lead the follow-up to the migration-related
aspects of the High-Level Summit.
As a result of the New York Declaration, UN Member States agreed to work together to
develop the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, adopted at an
intergovernmental conference on international migration in December 2018 in Morocco. The
GCM covers diverse issues such as strengthening labor rights for migrant workers, improving
migration data as a basis for evidence-based policies, saving lives and establishing international
efforts on missing migrants, and many others. The implementation of the GCM will represent
progress in governing migration in a way that increases its benefits for individuals, communities
and countries, and reduces its risks for all.
References:
 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/iom-global-migration-report-international-mig
rants-2020/
 https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/employment-and-growth/global-migrations-
impact-and-opportunity#
 https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/migration/index.html
“Environmental Crisis and Sustainable Development”
The earth has warmed by 1°C since the pre-industrial era and two-thirds of this rise has
occurred since 1986. The twenty warmest years on record have occurred over the past 22 years.
Because air temperatures are significantly determined by ocean temperatures, they have warmed
considerably over the past few years. In 2017 they were shockingly warm. They exceeded 2015,
the second warmest ocean temperature year, by 1.51 x 10^22 Joules, or the amount of electrical
energy China produces annually. Among other calamitous results of ocean warming is
acidification - particularly problematic for phytoplankton that produces half the oxygen we breath.
As for global warming's cause, or the nearly linear relationship between greenhouse gas
emissions ad atmospheric warming, over 42 billion tons of greenhouse pollution are dumped
worldwide into the atmosphere every year and the amount is again increasing. Per the Global
Carbon Project carbon emissions are expected to increase by 2.7 percent for 2018 due in part to
five consecutive years of rising oil consumption. The US is historically the largest emitter of
greenhouse gas pollution and currently ranks second behind China in annual emissions. Carbon
dioxide, now measured at over 400 parts per million (ppm), a 65 percent increase over
pre-industrial levels, last occurred three million years ago. Concerning the discharge rate, last
year's CCSR report concluded, ―there is no climate analog for this century any time in at least the
last 50 million years.‖
Absent significant changes in political will worldwide, the EPA admitted in a recent
environmental impact statement that atmospheric carbon concentrations will rise to nearly 800
ppm by the end of this century. This would be due in part to President Trump's decision to
withdraw from the Paris accord and decisions by the administration to relax restrictions on auto
tailpipe emissions that account for approximately 20 percent of US greenhouse pollution, rules
limiting coal fired power plants CO2 emissions that account for nearly 30 percent, and regulations
requiring drilling companies to restrict venting or flaring methane, a far more potent greenhouse
gas than CO2, and monitoring and repairing methane leaks. Atmospheric concentrations of
methane are currently the highest on record.
The World‟s Leading Environmental Problems
The Conserve Energy Future website lists the following environmental challenges that the world
faces today.
1. The depredation caused by industrial and transportation toxins and plastic in the ground;
the defiling of the sea, rivers, and water beds by oil spills and acid rain; the dumping of
urban waste.
2. Changes in global weather patterns (flash floods, extreme snowstorms, and the spread of
deserts) and the surge in ocean and land temperatures leading to a rise in sea levels (as the
polar ice caps melt because of the weather), plus the flooding of many lowland areas across
the world.
3. Overpopulation
4. The exhaustion of the world‘s natural non-renewable resources from oil reserves to
minerals to potable water.
5. A waste disposal catastrophe due to the excessive amount of waste (from plastic to
food packages to electronic waste) unloaded by communities in landfills as well as on the
ocean; and the dumping of nuclear waste.
6. The destruction of million-year-old ecosystems and the loss of biodiversity (destruction of
the coral reefs and massive species and the decline in the number of others.
7. The reduction of oxygen and the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because of
deforestation, resulting in the rise in ocean acidity by as much as 150 percent in the last 250
years.
8. The depletion of the ozone layer protecting the planet from the sun‘s deadly ultraviolet rays
due to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere.
9. Deadly acid rain as a result of fossil fuel combustion, toxic chemicals from erupting
volcanoes, and the massive rotting vegetables filling up garbage dumps or left on the
streets.
10. Water pollution arising from industrial and community waste residues seeping into
underground water tables, rivers, and seas.
11. Urban sprawls that continue to expand as a city turns into a megalopolis, destroying
farmlands, increasing traffic gridlock, and making smog cloud a permanent urban fixture.
12. Pandemics and other threats to public health arising from wastes mixing with drinking
water, polluted environments that become breeding grounds for mosquitoes and
disease-carrying rodents, and pollution.
13. A radical alteration of food systems because of genetic modifications in food production.
Air Pollution
Air pollution is a mix of particles and gases that can reach harmful concentrations both
outside and indoors. Its effects can range from higher disease risks to rising temperatures. Soot,
smoke, mold, pollen, methane, and carbon dioxide are a just few examples of common pollutants.
Poor air quality kills people. Worldwide, bad outdoor air caused an estimated 4.2 million
premature deaths in 2016, about 90 percent of them in low- and middle-income countries,
according to the World Health Organization. Indoor smoke is an ongoing health threat to the 3
billion people who cook and heat their homes by burning biomass, kerosene, and coal. Air
pollution has been linked to higher rates of cancer, heart disease, stroke, and respiratory diseases
such as asthma.
Health Effects
While health has always been affected by climate and weather, it is the change in climate
and climate variability, particularly changes in weather extremes, that is a significant threat to
human health. Again, absent dramatic and near-term changes in political will, temperatures are
expected to increase by 4°C by the end of this century. What do increase temperatures mean for
human health? (Readers should note that unless otherwise indicated statistics cited below come
from the Obama Administration‘s 2016 report.)
Severe Storms
Warmer air holds more water and greater or rising temperatures cause higher surface
evaporation that in turn increases the number and severity of rain events, now termed rain bombs,
resulting storm surge and the intensity, frequency and duration of hurricanes. For example, the
devastation caused by last year's Hurricane Harvey was in part the result of Gulf surface
temperatures for the first time on record never falling below 23°C. Hurricane Maria, the deadliest
storm of the hyperactive 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, accounted for nearly 3,000 deaths across
decimated Puerto Rico. Harvey, Irma and Maria combined caused over $300 billion in damages.
This year's Hurricane Michael, with sustained 155 mph winds, was one of the four most intense
hurricanes to hit the mainland since records began in 1851. Michael made landfall along the
Florida panhandle, where it reached nearly 20 feet in storm surge and remarkably remained a
category three storm as far inland as Macon, Georgia. Recent research published in the journal
Nature concluded global warming will cause hurricanes to become even more deadly by
intensifying rainfall by as much as 10 percent and wind speeds by 25 mph.
Rising Seas
Beyond the increasing severity of hurricane events, global warming means the current rate
of rise in Global Mean Sea Level is greater than any time in at least 2,800 years. As for rising sea
levels from ice melt, should Greenland ice sheets thaw in their entirety they would add 20 feet to
the height of global seas. The thaw of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, that is presently vanishing
faster than any previously recorded time, would add another 10 feet. At 20 feet, most of Florida
and a third of New York City would be under water. Keep in mind 145 million people worldwide
live three feet or less above sea level and 10 percent of the world's population or nearly 800 million
live less than 30 feet from present sea levels. Eleven of the 16 megacities, those with more than 15
million people, are built on coasts, for example, Jakarta, Los Angeles, Manila, Mumbai, Osaka,
Shanghai and Tokyo.
Rising seas or flooding compromises drinking water, human waste water treatment and
storm water disposal that, in turn, results in increased risk of waterborne diseases caused by
pathogens such as bacteria, viruses and protozoa. Between 1948 and 1994, 68 percent of
waterborne disease outbreaks in the US were preceded by extreme precipitation events.
Waterborne diseases may actually be underestimated by as much as 43-fold and by up to

143 times for Vibrio species, for example, Vibrio cholerae Severe storm events also mean
increased food contamination via increases in the transport of pathoge such as salmonella and
noroviruses. Global warming is therefore influencing the fate, transport, transmission, viability
and multiplication rate of pathogens in the food chain. Cases of Legionnaires' disease, spread by
contaminated aerosolized water have not surprisingly increased by nearly 200 perce between 2000
and 2009.
Drought and Fires

Heat, stagnant heat, and drought increase the prevalence, intensity and duration of wild
fires particularly in the US West. The Southwest has experienced the most persistent droughts
since record keeping began in 1895. These are expected to intensify. The recent California
wildfires, the deadliest by far in the state's history, are in part a result of the state experiencing five
consecutive years of unprecedented heat, 2018 rainfall at 20 percent of the historical norm and the
worst drought in a millennium. The amount of carbon these fires can emit can be massive, further
exacerbating overall trends in climate change. The forest and peat fires in Indonesia during 1997
were estimate to release upwards of 40 percent of total annual carbon emissions globally.
Such fires also have a lasting impact on air quality with serious health consequences. By
2050 it is anticipated western US wildfires will result in a 40 percent increase in organic carbon
and a 20 percent increase in elemental carbon aerosol concentrations. When soil dust becomes
airborne conditions such as asthma, acute bronchitis and pneumonia frequently result. Heat,
drought and wild fires also contribute to worsening ground-level ozone pollution, particle
pollution and increasing levels of aeroallergens such as pollen. Combined, these are responsible
for tens of thousands of acute care episodes. Research shows that future ozone-related human
health impacts are projected to lead to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths, hospital
admissions and causes of acute respiratory illnesses including increases in asthma episodes in
children due in part to a longer ragweed pollen season. In 2013, the year of China's ―airpocalypse,‖
researchers found that, in the 74 leading Chinese cities, air pollution was associated with an
estimated one-third of deaths.
Higher Temperatures
Higher temperatures cause heat exhaustion, heatstroke, hyperthermia and dehydration that
in extreme cases can lead to death. What is more, they can worsen pre-existing conditions such as
hypertension, cardiovascular, respiratory, cerebrovascular, kidney and diabetes-related conditions.
For example, the 2003 European heat wave was responsible for upwards of 70,000 premature
deaths. Calculating morbidity and mortality due to, or due in part to, extreme heat is difficult since
medical records seldom capture related data. Nevertheless, researchers project future warming,
absent any adaptation, will result in an increase of 2,000 to 10,000 deaths annually in each of 209
US cities. Among other effects, warmer winter and spring temperatures means the earlier annual
onset of Lyme disease cases that now number 35,000 annually in over 14 eastern states. Higher
temperatures also affect what are termed vector-borne diseases carried by, for example,
mosquitoes, fleas, ticks and rodents. Warmer temperatures, for example, speed up the reproductive
cycle of cold-blooded mosquitoes. Cases of mosquito-borne Dengue fever, once unknown in the
US, have doubled every decade since 1990. Currently there are 14 vector-borne diseases,
including West Nile Virus, that are a national public health concern.
Cascade of Consequences
The climate penalty is also the cause of a long list of mental and behavioral health
conditions ranging from anxiety, depression and alcohol and substance abuse to post-traumatic
stress and suicide. For example, following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, veterans with preexisting
mental illness had nearly a seven times greater risk for developing an additional mental illness.
Suicide attempts after Katrina among women living in temporary housing increased 15 times
compared to regional averages, and incidences of violent crime including homicide and violence
against women increased substantially.
As long as the worldwide economy is defined largely as fossilized capitalism, mass

extinctions or the loss of phylogenetic diversity will continue. Among other things, we will also
continue to see substantial worldwide fishery losses and the collapse of insect populations. The
loss of insect populations will contribute to a profound negative effect on food production. For
example, 30 countries are currently experiencing negative crop yields and there is a one in twenty
likelihood heat, climate change will cause the failure of corn production in China and the US.
Production aside, it is worth noting higher concentrations of CO2 in the air stimulate carbohydrate
production, starch and sugars, and growth in a number of widely consumed crops including barley,
potatoes, rice and wheat. It also lowers the level of plant protein by as much as 15 percent.
Increased atmospheric CO2 also depletes calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, zinc and other
minerals in most plants by upwards of 10 percent because higher CO2 concentrations reduces
plant demand for water resulting in fewer nutrients being drawn into plant roots. This is turn, could
also contribute to greater rates of obesity.
Finally, there are any number of additional or cascading climate change-related health
consequences that disproportionally affect pregnant women, children, the elderly and disabled,
minorities and the poor. Vulnerability is a function of sensitivity to change and adaptive capacity
to adjust or cope. The elderly is particularly vulnerable since they are frequently
immuno-compromised, are prescribed certain medications that limit thermo-regulation or block
nerve impulses and a significant percent are cognitively impaired and/or socially isolated. It is
not surprising to learn half of Katrina deaths were among people over 75 and African American
mortality was two to four times higher than for whites. Keep in mind that from 2015 to 2050 the
US population age 65 and older will nearly double from 48 to 88 million.
Studies show the current reality is for CO2 emissions to continue climb through 2040. This
is due largely to China, Russia and Canada's current energy policies that, if unchanged, will drive
global warming above 5°C before the end of this century. At 4°C, for example, 44 percent of
vertebrates lose half their geographic range, plants and insects over two-thirds, global grain yields
fall dramatically, the world's economy contracts by 30 percent and excess hyperthemia deaths in
the US increase by over 700 percent.
As dire as anthropocene warming projections are, they have yet to fully account for
feedback loops, or the fact warming temperatures become the cause of new sources of greenhouse
gas emissions. After a certain point, one that may be less than two decades away, we will have
irreversibly tipped toward self-perpetuating or runaway global warming or what a recent and
widely discussed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences essay termed "Hothouse
Earth.‖ For example, a decline in the Albedo effect, where less and less sunlight is reflected by the
diminishing ice cover causes still more absorption of solar radiation or higher surface temperatures
and a wide range of subsequent threats: warming sea beds and melting permafrost allows trapped
methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas, to escape into the atmosphere; increased rainfalls
reduce soil absorption of greenhouse gasses; and reductions in Greenland ice can alter Gulf Stream
ocean currents that in turn accelerates ice melt in the southern hemisphere.
References:
 Claudio and Abinales (2018). The Contemporary World.
 https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20181218.278288/full/
 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/pollution/
“The Global Filipino”
A global citizen is someone who identifies with being part of an emerging world
community and whose actions contribute to building this community‘s values and practices. Such
a definition of global citizenship is based on two assumptions which this article explores: (a) that
there is such a thing as an emerging world community to which people can identify; and (b) that
such a community has a nascent set of values and practices.
Historically human beings always have organized themselves into groups and communities
based on shared identity. Such identity gets forged in response to a variety of human needs -
economic, political, religious, and social. As group identities grow stronger, those who hold them
organize into communities, articulate shared values, and build governance structures that reflect
their beliefs.
Today the forces of global engagement are helping some people identify themselves as
global citizens, meaning that they have a sense of belonging to a world community. This growing
global identity in large part is made possible by the forces of modern information, communication,
and transportation technologies. In increasing ways these technologies are strengthening our
ability to connect to the rest of the world: through the internet; through participation in the global
economy; through the ways in which world-wide environmental factors play havoc with our lives;
through the empathy we feel when we see pictures of humanitarian disasters, civil conflicts and
wars in other countries; or through the ease with which we can travel and visit other parts of the
world.
Those who see ourselves as global citizens are not abandoning other identities; such as
allegiances to our countries, ethnicities, and political beliefs. These traditional identities give
meaning to our lives and will continue to help shape who we are. However, as a result of living in
a globalized world, we find we have an added layer of responsibility. We have concern and a share
of responsibility for what is happening to the planet as a whole, and we are members of a
world-wide community of people who share this concern.
The values being proposed for the world community are not esoteric and obscure. They are
the values that world leaders have been advocating for the past 100 years. They include human
rights, religious pluralism, gender equity, the rule of law, environmental protection, sustainable
worldwide economic growth, poverty alleviation, prevention and cessation of conflicts between
countries, elimination of weapons of mass destruction, humanitarian assistance, and preservation
of cultural diversity.
Since World War II efforts have been undertaken to develop global policies and
institutional structures that can support these enduring values. Such efforts have been made by
international organizations, sovereign states, transnational corporations, NGOs, international
professional associations and others. They have resulted in a growing body of international
agreements, treaties, legal statutes, and technical standards.
Yet, despite such efforts, we have a long way to go before there is a global policy and
institutional infrastructure that can support our emerging world community and the values it stands
for. There are significant gaps of policy in many domains, large questions about how to get
countries and organizations to comply with existing policy frameworks, and issues of
accountability and transparency. Most importantly, from a global citizenship perspective, there is
an absence of mechanisms that enable greater citizen participation in the growing number of
institutions practicing global governance.
Governance at the global level, for the most part, is in the hands of the representatives of
sovereign states and technocrats. Global governance organizational leaders are usually distant and
removed from those that their institutions serve. Therefore, most people feel disconnected and
alienated from the global governance arena, making it difficult to build a sense of grass-roots
community at the global level.
There is an urgent need for a cadre of citizen leaders who can play activist roles in forming
world community. Such global citizenship activism can take many forms, including: advocating,
at the local and global level, for policy and programmatic solutions that address global problems;
participating in the decision-making processes of global governance organizations; adopting and
promoting changes in behavior that help protect the earth‘s environment; contributing to
world-wide humanitarian relief efforts; and organizing events that celebrate the diversity in world
music and art, culture and spiritual traditions.
Instinctively, most of us feel a connection to others around the world facing similar
challenges to ourselves, yet we lack adequate tools, resources, and support to act on this emotion.
Our ways of thinking and being are still colored by the trapping of old allegiances and ways of
seeing things that no longer are as valid as they used to be. Nonetheless, there is a longing to pull
back the veil that keeps us from more clearly seeing the world as a whole, and finding more
sustainable ways of connecting with those who share our common humanity.
The globalized world that is characterized by inequality, injustice and all forms of violence
and intimidation is a need of some standards, which may reduce the social and political problems
and bring back social equilibrium to communities worldwide. Ethics of global citizenship are the
principles, which help citizens overcome these problems, building rapport with one another,
maintaining peace and stability and realizing justice and equality among people from different
cultures. Global citizenship is not only about keeping the positive aspects, such as justice and
peace, but it is also about respecting all kinds of membership. This means valuing and esteeming
people‘s backgrounds, differences and cultural belongings. A global citizen is someone who is
committed to certain values, attitudes and behaviors. This person is acquainted with the basic
ethics required for a socially appropriate behaving and sustainable social relationships among the
members of his/her community. In fact, a global citizen is defined as ―someone who identifies with
being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this
community‘s values and practices‖.
Teaching the ethics of global citizenship has a preeminent role in educational contexts. It
contributes to the development of the students‘ cognitive skills. For instance, through learning the
ethics of global citizenship, a student would be able to critically think about the social situations
and analyze issues related to real-life, in addition to identifying possible solutions creatively and
innovatively.
What Is Meant by Global Citizenship?

As a concept, global citizenship has become popular in Europe and the Americas in
government, civil society and educational discourses. Citizenship is the membership, the fact of
being related to a certain group that is determined by particular characteristics, such as age, gender,
political affiliation and other features. However, global citizenship implies thinking for the whole
world, having an intention of improving it and creating a sustainable environment. Basically, ―the
United Nations Secretary-General‘s Global Education First Initiative (GEFI) has established
education as a means to foster global citizenship. To support this, UNESCO organized two
landmarks meetings on GCE in 2013‖. Hashman et al. (2015) states that ―global citizenship has
been defined as requiring social responsibility, recognition of global interconnectedness, and an
understanding of how global issues affect individual and community lives, how and why decisions
are made which affect the planet and life on it, and most importantly, means by which the future
can be influenced‖ (cited in Andrzejewski & Alessio et al. 1999, p. 3). Thus, global citizenship
means that one takes the responsibility of global matters related to his/her society. It concerns
human rights and social justice. Oxfam (2012) argues that global citizenship is about
understanding the need to tackle injustice and inequality, and having the desire and ability to work
actively to do so. It is about ―valuing the Earth as precious and unique, and safeguarding the future
for those coming after us‖ (p. 37). Whereas, Schattle (2008) claims that ―global citizenship has its
origins in civic management, cultural immersion, or educational programs‖ (p. 21)
UNESCO defines global citizenship as ―the sense of belonging to a broader community
and common humanity. It emphasizes political, economic, social and cultural interdependency and
interconnectedness between the local, the national and the global‖ (p.3) Global citizenship helps
one to listen to others and share opinions respectively. Creating safe and fair environment can be
realized through exposing learners to an educational content, which reinforces the ethics of global
citizenship. This means that global citizenship can be included within educational programs as a
means to promote peace and stability in the society through teaching students what global citizen is
and how to be so since the citizens who constitute the community are the ones who should be
committed to the ethics of global citizenship in order to form an ethical globalized community.
The most valuable principle of global citizenship is preserving human rights. This is due to the fact
that global citizenship is against all types of violence, humiliation and unfairness. ―Global
citizenship education (GCE) is a framing paradigm which encapsulates how education can
develop the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes learners need for securing world which is more
just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable‖ (p. 9).
What Is a Global Citizen?
The words citizenship and citizen usually refer to a national or regional identity. One who
is recognized as a citizen of a particular nation has the special rights and duties prescribed by the
government of that nation. A global citizen is someone who:
a. Respects multiculturalism.
b. Realizes that unity and cooperation are the basic features of global citizens.
c. Is aware that his/her actions affect the world around him/her.
d. Behaves respectively, and acts in an empathetic way.
e. Has team-work spirit.
f. Helps other people and appreciates cooperation.
g. Takes the responsibility of global issues concerned with his/her society.
h. Knows his/her duties and rights very well.
i. Acts as an active member of the society for the sake of improving it.
j. Understands that all parts of the world are interconnected.
k. Behaves ethically in all situations.
Global Citizenship Responsibilities:
A global citizen, living in an emerging world community, has moral, ethical, political, and
economic responsibilities. These responsibilities include:
1. Responsibility to understand one‘s own perspective and the perspectives of others on

global issues. Almost every global issue has multiple ethnic, social, political, and
economic perspectives attached to it. It is the responsibility of global citizens to understand
these different perspectives and promote problem-solving consensus among the different
perspectives and the building of common ground solutions. A global citizen should avoid
taking sides with one particular point of view, and instead search for ways to bring all sides
together.
2. Responsibility to respect the principle of cultural diversity: The multiple perspectives that
exist with most global issues often are a reflection of different cultural belief systems. Each
of our major cultural belief systems brings value-added to our search for solutions to the
global issues we face. In building a sustainable values-based world community it is
important to maintain respect for the world‘s different cultural traditions; to make an effort
to bring together the leaders of these different cultural traditions who often have much in
common with one another; and to help leaders bring the best elements of their cultures to
the task of solving global issues and building world community.
3. Responsibility to make connections and build relationships with people from other
countries and cultures. Global citizens need to reach out and build relationships with
people from other countries and cultures. Otherwise, we will continue to live in isolated
communities with narrow conflict-prone points of view on global issues. It is quite easy to
build global relationships. Most countries, cities, and towns are now populated with
immigrants and people from different ethnic traditions. The Internet offers a range of
opportunities to connect with people on different issues. So even without traveling abroad
(which is a useful thing to do), it is possible to build a network of personal and group
cross-country and cultural relationships. Building such networks help those involved better
understand their similarities and differences and search for common solutions for the
global issues that everyone faces.
4. Responsibility to understand the ways in which the peoples and countries of the world are
inter-connected and inter-dependent: Global citizens have the responsibility to understand
the many ways in which their lives are inter-connected with people and countries in
different parts of the world. They need for example to understand they ways in which the
global environment affects them where they live, and how the environmental lifestyles
they choose affect the environment in other parts of the world. They need to understand the
ways in which human rights violations in foreign countries affect their own human rights,
how growing income inequalities across the world affect the quality of their lives, how the
global tide of immigration affects what goes on in their countries.
5. Responsibility to understand global issues: Global citizens have the responsibility to

understand the major global issues that affect their lives. For example, they need to
understand the impact of the scarcity of resources on societies; the challenges presented by
the current distribution of wealth and power in the world; the roots of conflict and
dimensions of peace-building; the challenges posed by a growing global population.
6. Responsibility to advocate for greater international cooperation with other nations: Global
citizens need to play activist roles in urging greater international cooperation between their
nation and others. When a global issue arises, it is important for global citizens to provide
advice on how their countries can work with other nations to address this issue; how it can
work with established international organizations like the United Nations, rather than
proceed on a unilateral course of action.
7. Responsibility for advocating for the implementation of international agreements,

conventions, treaties related to global issues: Global citizens have the responsibility to
advocate for having their countries ratify and implement the global agreements,
conventions, and treaties that they have signed.
8. Responsibility for advocating for more effective global equity and justice in each of the
value domains of the world community. There are a growing number of cross-sector issues
that require the implementation of global standards of justice and equity; for example, the
global rise in military spending, the unequal access by different countries to technology,
the lack of consistent national policies on immigration. Global citizens have the
responsibility to work with one another and advocate for global equality and justice
solutions to these issues.
References:
 Claudio and Abinales (2018). The Contemporary World.

 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/what-does-it-mean-to-be-global-ci
tizen/
 Raouia Manseur. Ethics of Global Citizenship in Education for Creating a Better World.
American Journal of Applied Psychology. Vol. 6, No. 5, 2017, pp. 118-122
 https://www.theglobalcitizensinitiative.org/index.php/the-rights-and-responsibilities-of-gl
obal-citizenship/
 https://earthville.org/resources/responsible-global-citizenship/

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INFORMATION SHEET PR-1.1.

Different people encounter globalization in a variety of ways, it is deemed useful to ask

Globalization: A Working Definition

According to WHO, globalization can be defined as “the increased interconnectedness and

Because of trade developments and financial exchanges, we often think of globalization

Economic globalization: is the development of trade systems within transnational actors

Cultural globalization: refers to the interpenetration of cultures which, as a

Sociological globalization: information moves almost in real-time, together with the

Technological globalization: the phenomenon by which millions of people are

Geographic globalization: is the new organization and hierarchy of different regions of

In geography, globalization is defined as the set of processes (economic, social, cultural,

The best scholarly definition of globalization is provided by Manfred Steger who

For anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, different kinds of globalization occur on multiple

 Claudio and Abinales (2018) The Contemporary World

The International Monetary Fund regards ―economic globalization‖ as a historical process

International Trading Systems

The Bretton Woods System

Economic Globalization Today

 Claudio and Abinales (2018) The Contemporary World

The world is composed of many countries or states, all of them having

Internationalization does not equal globalization, although it is a major part of

The Attributes of Today‟s Global System

Nation, according to Benedict Anderson, is an ―imagined community‖ or the people

The Interstate System

Two categories of Internationalism:

Communist International (Cominterm) - served as the central body for directing

 Claudio and Abinales (2018) The Contemporary World

INFORMATION SHEET PR-4.1.1

International organizations are international intergovernmental organizations or groups

International Law - international rules that govern interactions between states.

Powers of IOs (by Michael Barnett & Martha Finnemore)

The United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945. It is currently made

Economic and Social Council

The Secretariat comprises the Secretary-General and tens of thousands of international UN

The UN is not a world government, and it functions primarily because of voluntary

Maintain International Peace and Security

Protect Human Rights

Deliver Humanitarian Aid

Promote Sustainable Development

Uphold International Law

 Claudio and Abinales (2018) The Contemporary World

Regionalism is a political process characterized by economic policy cooperation and

Regionalization is the regional concentration of economic flows.

Countries form regional associations for several reasons:

Establishment of the ASEAN

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, was established on 8 August

Aims and Purposes

 To promote Southeast Asian studies; and

 Non-interference in the internal affairs of one another;

 Settlement of differences or disputes by peaceful manner;

 Renunciation of the threat or use of force; and

 Effective cooperation among themselves.

The ASEAN Community

The ASEAN Community is comprised of three pillars, namely the ASEAN

The ASEAN Charter

The European Union

On 31 January 2020 the United Kingdom left the European Union.

Stability, a single currency, mobility and growth

Transparent and democratic institutions