Silicon Sweatshops is a five-part investigation of the supply chains that produce many of the world’s most popular technology products, from Apple iPhones, to Nokia cell phones, Dell keyboards and more. The series examines the scope of the problem, including its effects on workers from the Philippines, Taiwan and China. It also looks at a novel factory program that may be a blueprint for solving this perennial industry problem.
posted by Joe Beese on Nov 19, 2009 - 9 comments

Post-(cheap)oil: will the end of globalisation be the beginning of re-localisation? [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Sep 27, 2009 - 17 comments

As turmoil continues in Iran, with protesters and members of the opposition party empowered by Twitter and camera-equipped cell phones, Clay Shirky gives a TED Talk on the emerging global era of bottom-up journalism, including the phenomenon of the transfer of social technology patterns from the second and third world to the first. Previously
posted by macross city flaneur on Jun 16, 2009 - 48 comments

What is the future of capitalism?
a) 3.0
b) Canada* ([1],[2])
c) 'smart growth' (viz.)
d) none of the above** [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Feb 15, 2009 - 86 comments

The Washing Machine That Ate My Sari: Mistakes in Cross-Cultural Design is a fascinating article about making cross-culturally sensitive products for the Indian market. The title refers to how the Whirlpool company's introduction of the World Washer into India proved to be a financial disaster, because a millimeter gap between the washer's agitator and its drum ended up shredding most traditional Indian clothing. You can also read about how the Indian preference for warm milk at breakfast turned Kellogg's corn flakes into a big flop in India.
posted by jonp72 on Jan 7, 2009 - 43 comments

Today's featured article at Wikipedia concerns the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly: a proposed UN body which, according to its proponents, would eventually consist of representatives elected directly by the people of the world. Might this proposal be a viable plan for a more global expression of democracy? Or is it just one more Utopian vision of "world government" doomed to wither under the vociferous criticisms that such proposals seem, inevitably, to attract?
posted by washburn on Dec 18, 2008 - 21 comments

Adam Smith in Beijing Embedded Flash film 1hr59mins "Is US power in decline? What are we to make of the rise of China? Will a possible equalization of North-South relations herald a more brutal capitalism or a better world? Giovanni Arrighi, Joel Andreas, and David Harvey give their perspectives in this forum, for a discussion of Arrighi's 2007 book Adam Smith in Beijing. The event, filmed in Baltimore, MD, in March of 2008, was organized by the Red Emma's collective."
posted by Abiezer on Nov 9, 2008 - 10 comments

A recent study shows that farmer suicides in India have not increased due to introduction of GM crops The Washington based research organization IFPRI claims that "Bt cotton is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the occurrence of farmer suicides. In contrast, many other factors have likely played a prominent role." Their study has been wielded in the empirical arms race by big pharmaceutical corporations such as Monsanto against NGOs that oppose GM modified crops in India such as Gene Campaign and activists such as Vandana Shiva.
posted by bodywithoutorgans on Nov 8, 2008 - 13 comments

Financial Regime Change? Robert Wade, professor of political economy and development at the London School of Economics, "argues that we are exiting the neoliberal paradigm that has held sway since the 1980s" and considers the "causes and repercussions of the crisis, and errors of the model that brought it to fruition." Prof. Wade was making similar predictions last year.
posted by Abiezer on Oct 25, 2008 - 24 comments

A view from Iran: Golboo Fiuzi, a young resident of Tehran, talks to fellow Iranian citizens about why they think the US hasn't attacked yet, their political views, opinions about globalization and their lives under UN imposed sanctions.
posted by Surfin' Bird on Oct 20, 2008 - 24 comments

The Fallacy of Examples, and the problems of extrapolating from media. [Via RConversation]
posted by homunculus on Jul 7, 2008 - 5 comments

While Gerorge Soros and Jim Rodgers predict one of the worst recessions for the US, Americans seem to look for exit options in form of a second citizenship. [more inside]
posted by yoyo_nyc on Jun 10, 2008 - 128 comments

In EU and NATO member Bulgaria, the state is a part of the Mafia. The world's "shadow economy" accounts for 10 trillion dollars each year. Chechen mobsters bent on revenge kill a young woman in London in a case of mistaken identity. Welcome to the global pillage following the fall of Communism and the 'liberalization' of trade. Misha Glenny travels through the underworld.
posted by lukemeister on May 22, 2008 - 28 comments

Chinese manufacturers are setting up shop in the U.S. due to a weak dollar, energy shortages, tax credits, and a desire to compete globally.
posted by gman on May 7, 2008 - 38 comments

The Rise of the Rest. Fareed Zakaria's Newsweek article about a "post-American" world.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on May 5, 2008 - 42 comments

The Tata Nano (pic) is a car that costs less new than the amount I've spent on gas during single car trips, recently announced to the auto market in India. The Chery QQ ^, successful , widely exported, and recognized as the Hostage Taker's Vehicle of Choice by China Car Times, is the runner-up for the world's cheapest car but is still approximately twice as expensive. Yes indeed, the price of gas is not going to come back down. So much for my coast-to-coast road trips. [more inside]
posted by XMLicious on Feb 3, 2008 - 42 comments

Waving Goodbye to Hegemony. "Just a few years ago, America’s hold on global power seemed unshakable. But a lot has changed while we’ve been in Iraq — and the next president is going to be dealing with not only a triumphant China and a retooled Europe but also the quiet rise of a 'second world.'" [Via The Washington Note.]
posted by homunculus on Jan 27, 2008 - 63 comments

What does "globalization" look like? Princeton's searchable collection of historical maps and present-day analysis, including Artists' Travels in the Renaissance, an 1891 ethnographic chart, Telegraph Lines in 1869, Global Terrorism c. 1983, Oil reserves vs. consumption, a visualization of world development since 1960. (via)
posted by desjardins on Jan 6, 2008 - 13 comments

The Rise of China and the Future of the West: Can the Liberal System Survive? "China's rise will inevitably bring the United States' unipolar moment to an end. But that does not necessarily mean a violent power struggle or the overthrow of the Western system. The U.S.-led international order can remain dominant even while integrating a more powerful China -- but only if Washington sets about strengthening that liberal order now." [more inside]
posted by homunculus on Dec 29, 2007 - 29 comments

5 types of Chinese fish subject to temporary import ban. Melamine in farmed fish. The safety of fish farming in question. Are we risking a trade war with China over food? Some see an upside to food globalization. China's loss may be the Gulf Coast's gain. Previously on Mefi
posted by SaintCynr on Jun 28, 2007 - 30 comments

Environmentalism, globalization and national economies, 1980-2000 [Schofer and Granados in Social Forces, Dec 06] Triple-punch! (1) "We find no impact of environmentalism on foreign investment and trade. Firms and investment do not appear to be fleeing countries with strong environmental standards." (2) "While it is common to assume that environmentalism targets industry, the agricultural sector may be [negatively] affected more significantly." (2) "[S]ociologists influenced by world-system theory [posit that] the relationship between environmentalism and growth could be spurious: environmentalism does not cause growth, but rather coincides with the economic success of core nations. However, broader results do not support this."
posted by Firas on May 19, 2007 - 6 comments

"The church of global free trade, which rules American politics with infallible pretensions, may have finally met its Martin Luther." A thorough summary in The Nation of the brilliant but ignored Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests by Ralph Gomory, former IBM Senior Vice President for Science and winner of the National Medal of Science. His heresy? Arguing, with supporting technical and economic data, that multinational corporations and their home countries have divergent interests in shipping skilled labor and advanced technologies overseas, and that this "divergence" is a net negative for the American economy and the American public. Globalization, he argues, has its losers, the United States paramount among them.
posted by Pastabagel on Apr 20, 2007 - 76 comments

"All over Orlando you see forces at work that are changing America from Fairbanks to Little Rock. This, truly, is a 21st-century paradigm: It is growth built on consumption, not production; a society founded not on natural resources, but upon the dissipation of capital accumulated elsewhere; a place of infinite possibilities, somehow held together, to the extent it is held together at all, by a shared recognition of highway signs, brand names, TV shows, and personalities, rather than any shared history. Nowhere else is the juxtaposition of what America actually is and the conventional idea of what America should be more vivid and revealing."

"Welcome to the theme-park nation." [more inside]
posted by wander on Mar 2, 2007 - 61 comments

GDP per square kilometer (jpg), via.
posted by jonson on Jan 13, 2007 - 31 comments

Coffee, anyone? PDF found here Everyone needs that nice pick-me-up in the morning, after all. Don't worry - have a nice espesso!
posted by lalochezia on Sep 14, 2006 - 55 comments

The International Networks Archive is an effort by a group of sociologists to understand 2,000 years of globalization through mapping the network of transactions that link the world, rather than geography. The project is still ongoing, but you can see some of the results: an interactive map that uses travel time to visualize the world; a graphic of the growth of Starbucks and McDonalds; the distribution of government jobs (apparently the 3,412 postal inspectors can carry firearms); the cashflows of movies and tobacco; and, of course, the world at night. There is also access to a lot of detailed data, as well as more maps and information at the Mapping Globalization wiki.
posted by blahblahblah on Aug 22, 2006 - 5 comments

The INA is a project out of Princeton's Sociology dept, focused in part on gathering data sets regarding globalization & making the information more publically digestable. Towards that end, these seven amazing infographics are provided covering the following topics: the Global Arms Trade, the US goverment as Employer, Transportation, The Coming Water Wars, The International Tobacco Industry, The Movie Business, and the prevalance & impact of McDonalds & Starbucks.
posted by lilbrudder on Aug 15, 2006 - 19 comments

As Bollywood goes global its becoming more cosmopolitan - and embracing one of the most controversial aspects of globalization - "Westerners will do a lot of things on camera that Indian's just won't do," says Kaneez F. Khan, a Chennai-based producer. "It's easier just to outsource the role to someone who doesn't have anything at stake." (via.)
posted by Jos Bleau on Jun 22, 2006 - 22 comments

"If only" is the frustrated utopian refrain of Oliver Ressler and David Thorne's absurdly dysfunctional URL addresses collectively titled "Boom!".
posted by anotherpanacea on May 18, 2006 - 11 comments

UCLA Economist Ed Leamer reviews Thomas Friedman's "The world is flat." (.pdf) When the Journal of Economic Literature asked me to write a review of The World is Flat... I shipped it overnight by UPS to India to have the work done. (via)
posted by Kwantsar on Apr 10, 2006 - 39 comments

A blog for everyone in Davos. "Every participant of the Annual Meeting – ranging from business leaders to political leaders, heads of NGOs, religious leaders academics and journalists – will be asked to join the Forum blog...All of the more than 2,000 participants, including presidents and prime ministers, will be asked to provide at least one posting for the blog."
posted by nyterrant on Jan 6, 2006 - 13 comments

What is a "fair wage" for contractors working in Iraq? Halliburton subsidiary KBR pays subcontracted employees far more than they could earn at home, in exchange for living far from friends and family in a dangerous work environment. KBR insists their contractors adhere to all local labor laws in the country where they operate. But when that country doesn't yet have an effective or legitimate government of its own, and the workers are brought from a country with a 68% poverty rate, is that enough?
posted by justkevin on Dec 2, 2005 - 41 comments

European Wine Fighting For Survival
posted by Gyan on Nov 7, 2005 - 35 comments

The world currently has over fifty million Mobile Indigenous Peoples (MIPs), known more popularly as "Nomads" (not including modern or industrialized Nomads). In 2003 representatives from twenty-six MIPs from four continents convened for the first time to form the World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous Peoples in which was chartered the Dana Declaration which calls for a new approach to conservation, including land and animals, and Nomads. More reading here.
posted by stbalbach on Feb 22, 2005 - 8 comments

The European Dream Sure. They are doing better than the U.S. in so many aspects of living but we are number one with our military! Or perhaps that is why they do so well? Note: their view of religion does not come anywhere near the crazed attention religion plays in American life, in our politics, tax relief, social legislation etc....
posted by Postroad on Oct 2, 2004 - 48 comments

Take 100 photos of 100 faces in a metropolitan area, morph them together to create a composite male and female face, and you can see the face of tomorrow.
posted by Orb on Sep 10, 2004 - 22 comments

fantasyworldorder Difficult questions asked without political bias.
posted by ollybee on Jun 15, 2004 - 24 comments

Haunted by a truly global epidemic, perhaps it is time to consider the effects of globalization on the spread of diseases like AIDS. In addition to making it easier for disease to achieve global prevalence, global economics reduce funding for public health by placing treatment emphasis on those who can pay for their drugs, and, in the case of AIDS, may also encourage pharmaceutical companies to pursue expensive life-long 'treatments' rather than cures. Furthermore, younger, economically depressed members of the global economy are wholly dependent on the whim of richer nations for their well-being in the face of devastating epidemics. In this case, it seems that the global marketplace has failed to be the holy grail it is so often presented as.
posted by kaibutsu on Dec 1, 2003 - 17 comments

10% of American tech sector jobs will move offshore by the end of the year. Cyber-Marx (1999):

"... globalisation has given some knowledge workers, largely male, largely white, associated with high tech, finance, communication and information an exceptional importance. Concentrated in the technopoles that form the hubs of "global webs," these constitute a layer of privileged labour on whose loyalty capital can largely rely. But analysis that sees "symbolic analysts" as the crucial actors in globalisation does not grasp the speed with which capital turfs yuppies from the lifeboat when cheaper replacements can be found. Even symbolic analysts feel the blast of globalisation, as North American computer programmers are undercut by Lithuanian or Indian competition, and architects, engineers and professors discover that those who can telecommute can always be teleterminated by cheaper services uploaded from anywhere on the planet.

A little coffee shop in a little North Carolina town closes. When I worked in Fuquay-Varina, N.C., the opening of the Hyphen (get it? get it? the Hyphen in Fuquay-Varina?) was a miracle. There, in the midst of antique stores, clothiers, and the Bob Barker Co., was this hip, unique eatery owned and operated by two local artists. Owner Nina Fortmeyer partially cites that the little tobacco town has simply become "Wal-Mart-ized" in its growth, leading to a loss in downtown foot traffic, leading to lost business. This, methinks, is the greatest and most obvious consequence of globalization, the mom-and-pops being run out of town. If this is happening in Fuquay-Varina, it is absolutely happening everywhere. Very sad.
posted by NedKoppel on Jul 8, 2003 - 63 comments

Ballpoint pen from Trinidad: US$8,500. Rocket launcher to Israel: US$52. How multinational companies use absurd prices to dodge taxation, worldwide.
posted by Pretty_Generic on Jun 30, 2003 - 11 comments

George Monbiot, environmentalist and anti-globalisationist has seen the light - he no longer wishes to demolish the WTO. And what's more, it was US President, George W. Bush, who made him see the error of his ways.
posted by Blue Stone on Jun 24, 2003 - 3 comments

Proximity Politics. One kind of proximity politics refers to new-found adjacency resulting from globalization which forces new dilemmas before citizens. Another kind of proximity politics refers to the coat-tail riding of aspiring politicians who try to trade on the fame, glory or popularity of others. Still another kind of proximity politics are practiced in attack ads, in which politicans seek to attach their oppenents' names to negatives without explicit accusations, relying instead upon a series of words or short phrases without the grammatical glue which might permit proper parsing or analysis. And the final kind of proximity politics—probably the most positive—are those practiced by WatchBlog, which calls paid to the inward-looking, self-reinforcing echo chambers of one-view political forums. Instead, the two main American parties and their myriad third-party siblings are posting to the same arena. It's the answer to the question, "How can people's minds be changed if they only seek out what they already agree with?" If the opposite camp is in the text column next door, maybe you can't help but to take a dose of what's turning out to be strong commentary largely free of carbon-copy rhetoric, cardboard cut-outs, and cookie-cutter opinions.
posted by Mo Nickels on Jun 16, 2003 - 9 comments

I was wrong. Free market trade policies hurt the poor. “As leader of the delegation from the United Kingdom [to Seattle in 1999], I was convinced that the expansion of world trade had the potential to bring major benefits to developing countries and would be one of the key means by which world poverty would be tackled... I now believe that this approach is wrong and misguided.”
posted by raaka on May 19, 2003 - 37 comments

Globalization Is Not Americanization: An Optimist's Lament or A Pessimist's Pipe Dream? Philippe Legrain, the chief economist of the Britain in Europe organization, sounds an upbeat, cultural, cosmopolitan note in a normally dreary economic debate. After all, Americans have arguably become more international in their daily habits and tastes than the rest of the world has become Americanized. Is there consequently room for optimism? Is globalization more like a giant menu of various calamari and cuttlefish sushi rather than one giant Yankee octopus? [Via Arts and Letters Daily.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on May 6, 2003 - 21 comments

Chris Brown and Kate Fenner, formerly of the Bourbon Tabernacle Choir have a new song/website/campaign for the you-know-what in you-know-where. But for those sick of the war, you can always help them protest globalization. And if nothing else, Kate Fenner is real cutie.
posted by Robot Johnny on Mar 25, 2003 - 4 comments

In his 1947 letter to the General Assembly of the United Nations Albert Einstein wrote of 'enhancing the moral authority of the UN' and portrayed the United Nations as a "transitional system toward the final goal, which is the establishment of a supranational authority". Is the United Nations the depository of the moral authority of the international community? Some say no. Is there really such a thing as moral authority or is it one of those intangibles that, as a Supreme Court justice once said about obscenity, we cannot define, but we know it when we see it? Could a "one world government" work and would it really produce "moral authority" ? (More Inside)
posted by Mack Twain on Feb 5, 2003 - 42 comments

The New Global Job Shift. The next round of globalization is sending upscale jobs offshore. They include basic research, chip design, engineering--even financial analysis.
posted by Ty Webb on Jan 31, 2003 - 50 comments

Dancing with Systems: What to do when systems resist change. Is an excerpt from the late Systems Theorist and Enviromentalist Donella Meadow's unfinished last book. There is beautiful information here. If you are confused and wondering about some of the ideas that has infused the world-wide peace, enviromental, social justice and anti-globalization movements (That is of course Globalization as defined by the Washington Consensus policies) you would be very hard pressed to find a better place to start. Here are points in the essay. Listen to the wisdom of the system. Expose your mental models to the open air. Stay humble. Stay a learner. Honor and protect information. Locate responsibility in the system. Make feedback policies for feedback systems. Pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable. Go for the good of the whole. Expand time horizons. Expand thought horizons. Expand the boundary of caring. Celebrate complexity. Hold fast to the goal of goodness.
posted by thedailygrowl on Jan 18, 2003 - 9 comments

Ireland rated the most globalized country in the world. After calculating a globalization index that measures foreign travel, foreign investment, international political engagement, and Internet usage, Foreign Policy magazine declared Ireland the most global nation in the world, primarily due to the developing software industry in that country. The findings also show that Saudi Arabia had the greatest decrease in the 2002-2003 globalization rankings than any other country on the index. If Saudi Arabia is as closed off from the rest of the world as this index suggests, what does this suggest about the current "war on terrorism"?
posted by jonp72 on Jan 10, 2003 - 6 comments