Page 32 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol III

globalization 851

production of goods and services. By the twenty-first cen- sending and receiving countries. Three major networks
tury international flows accounted for roughly half of seem to exist: from Africa and eastern Europe to western
these. Cross-border trade is so prevalent that the world Europe, from Latin America and China to the United
actually trades more than it makes each year (accounted States, and from south and east Asia to the Persian Gulf.
for by goods moving back and forth across borders dur- There are also smaller cycles in western Africa and South
ing production and because of transshipments). Even America, and within countries. It is difficult to measure
more spectacular has been the growth of global finance. much of the migration as it is illegal, but estimates for the
Foreign exchange dealings totaled US$15 billion in 1990s include 25 million for politically induced migra-
1973, but in 2001 the total was nearly one hundred tion and 100 million for economically or socially
times as much. Foreign direct investments tripled during induced migration.Tourism is an even more recent phe-
the 1990s to equal nearly US$750 billion dollars and nomenon and one that has shifted the way many people
now represent the lifeline for many economies. The view other countries and cultures. Estimates of tourists
United States itself finances its government and commer- for 2001 are around 700 million travelers.While citizens
cial deficits by relying on a global community willing of rich countries are obviously overrepresented in such
and able to purchase its debts. flows, tourism has become infinitely more democratic in
But contemporary globalization is different from pre- the past thirty years.
vious epochs, precisely because it involves many other Culture has also become globalized, ranging from the
forms of contact other than exchange of goods and serv- sacred to the most banal. Starting at the bottom, popu-
ices. Migration, for example, obviously played a huge lar music, movies, and television shows have now be-
role in the nineteenth century, but in the twenty-first, it come global commodities.This began with the export of
has become even more critical to the survival of both easily dubbed American action movies in the 1970s and
1980s, but now features mar-
keting strategies of multiple
premieres separated by oceans.
References that once would
have made no sense to those
outside of a particular culture
can now be understood by
millions who don’t even speak
the original’s language. To a
great extent, this process has
involved the “Americanization”
of global culture, but in the

So-called Asian martial
arts have become a
global phenomenon.
This photo shows a Tae
Kwon Do center in a
Mexican town in central
Mexico in 2003.