Jane Sternbach-- Last Post!

Jane Sternbach

5/7/12

Sociology of Globalization

Last Response!

            I found Roy’s essay to be a very concise and articulate view of what we have learned about globalization in this class: it is contradictory, omnipresent, and hard pin down. She uses India to exemplify the ways in which globalization can affect a place, a nation, and a society. However, I think that her conclusion was a little too rosy. Roy says, “Corpratising India is like trying to impose and iron grid on a heaving ocean, forcing it to behave. My guess is that India will not behave.” I feel like the whole point of globalization is to get everyone in the world to “behave.” One of the main criticisms of globalization is that it is a homogenizing force. This is true in a lot of ways, and untrue in some others. But if globalization continues on its current path, I do believe that globalization will “tame” the world. Of course, I cannot predict the future, and I hope that something will change globalization for the better.

Class Reflection

            There is no way for me to choose my single favorite topic that we discussed thus far, but I will name some of them. The week on labor/sweatshops and the Maquilapolis video were really interesting for me. They opened my eyes to the true extent of this particular kind of globalization. Something that really stuck with me from that week was the environmental damage caused by these companies, and the effects that the pollution and exploitation of resources can have on the population of those places. Maybe next time you do this class, you should add a week about environmental globalization? We talk a lot about people and culture, but what is globalization physically doing to the earth? How are globalization and global warming connected?

            Another of my favorite topics was media representation. I found it really interesting to learn how American media impacts other countries, and how their own media is being altered by globalization. Media is such a powerful social tool that influences the way we think that the globalization of media is bound to be interesting.

            My last favorite topic was the globalization of beauty. I feel like this topic is the one that really takes aspects of all the other topics and rolls them into one. It brought up issues of feminism, capitalism, media representation, culture, and labor. It is scary to think what people do to their bodies, and others bodies for an arbitrary social construct.

            This is probably where I am supposed to discuss my least favorite topics, but I don’t have one, so I’m not going to. Instead I will reflect on what I’ve learned. I started the class with the idea that globalization is just the modern word a continued Western imperialism. While some of these articles have only reinforced that notion in my mind, others have broken it down. Imperialism does need to be discussed when discussing globalization, but it is not the only driving force of globalization. Also, imperialism has a negative connotation of exploitation and abuse, but globalization is not all bad. There are positives to a globalized world, and now that the semester is basically over, I agree most completely with a reading from the first week. Sen argued that there is no point to debating whether globalization is more good than bad or not because globalization is here stay. We need to focus on how to make globalization more beneficial for more people, rather than dwell on its bad aspects.