Chapter 23 1137-1171, visual sources 1182-87

During the 20th century, there was a growing dense web of: political relationships, economic transactions, and cultural influences. These cut across the world's many peoples, countries, and regions, mining them together more tightly, but also more contentiously. This process of accelerating engagement among distant peoples was recognized as globalization.

When people talk about globalization, they usually think that it has to do with immense acceleration in international economic transactions that took place in the second half of the twentieth century and continued into the twenty first. There is a common though that this process is inevitable an natural. Even with the world wars, great depressions/ recession, favoring high tariffs and economic autonomy in the face of a global economic collapse.

After the second world war, the capitalist victors were determined to avoid any return to such depression/ recession era conditions. Conferences were made where there were laid foundations for postwar globalization. There was also technology that contributed to the growth of economic globalization. 

The kind of economic globalization that was growing in the 1970s and after was known as neoliberalism. There were huge capitalist countries that abandoned many earlier political controls on economic activity as their leaders and businesspeople increasingly viewed the entire world as a single market. 

A reglobalization of the world economy followed the contractions of the 1930's. This was a huge process that accelerated the flow of goods, capital, and people. There was a huge increase of world trade. It went from a value of "57 billion in 1947 to about 16 trillion in 2009"(1140). Many departments around the world had plenty to sell, plenty to buy.  Money and goods achieved and amazing global mobility in a few ways. There was a foreign direct investment. There was short movement of capital in which investors annually spent trillions of dollars purchasing foreign currencies or stocks likely to increase in value and often sold them quickly thereafter, with unsettling consequences. There was also, and finally, money movement involved in the personal funds of individuals.

There was huge debate and controversy as an impact from tightening economic links. 

"On a global level, total world output grew from a value $7 trillion in 1950 to $73 trillion in 2009 and on a per capita basis from $2,652 to $10,728"

Globalization and an American empire:

The "American Empire" faced globalization but many have disagreed about how best to describe the US' role on the post war.

The US' global presence can be seen as this kind of "informal empire". This would be similar to the Europeans exercised in places like China or the Middle East during the 19th century. 

The "collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war by the early 1990s, US, military dominance was unchecked by any equivalent power"(1147). 

Feminism:

Visual sources:

One visual source showed that globalization offered employment opportunities. This would be for people in developing countries and non developed. 

Note that "companies in wealthier countries have often found it advantageous to build such facilities in places where labor is less expensiceor environmental regulations are less restrictive". This is good for them because it generates much more profit. This was on page 1183. 

There  was also a great visual source on page 1186: "FREE to exploit people and nature TRADE". It was taken in 2000 an reflecting the aspects of the globalization process. I think this one links to the visual source I talked from above. Very powerful.