GLOBALIZATION
COURSE
DATE

Globalization is a concept which is argued by scholars to be very complex and hence cannot be simply restricted to a number of international occurrences (András, Gábor and Orsolya, 2007). It is important to avoid looking at globalization as simply an economy process as it is so common in the current days. Other than the commonly known economic and commercial dimension, globalization expands over the broader cultural and social dealings, having both minor and major impact on them. András, Gábor and Orsolya (2007) define globalization as the amalgamation of different levels of the international political, social and economic processes. In this sense, globalization is never a single process but rather a combination of several processes that are partly connected. The aspect of globalization is characterized by the progressive loss of the traditional role attached to territories. It involves geographical reconfiguration so that all the aspects of life that are social are never mapped wholly in terms of places of territory, territorial borders and distances. Goggin (2012) on the other hand has defined globalization as the actions that involve intensifying the global social relations which link distances that are far much apart such that, the happenings taking place a number of miles away can shape the occurrence in another place and vice versa. Economically, globalization always involves integrating the market into the global economy. Markets which are regularly integrated include commodity market, financial market, and product markets (András, Gábor and Orsolya, 2007).
In a broad sense, globalization in our everyday life is the process or processes that intensify the movement of people’s ideologies, technology, culture and information across the global (Kiersey, 2011). From the music we hear over the radio to a number of popular narratives and flicks out there, technology, fashion, and movement from one country to another are all aspects of globalization experienced in everyday life (Kiersey, 2011). One of the greatest forces of the beginning of the 21st century was purely attributed to globalization after the occurrence of the Second World War II. After the events which took place after the war, countries did realize that there was need for them to be always talking, involving all the important nations (Kiersey, 2011). As a result, the birth of the United Nation was experienced to keep the countries found in the world from killing one another. Other than UN, a number of organizations have also been born in the current lives: World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Health Organization and World Trade Organization. All these were formed to act as check and balances for the whole international communities.
It is right to argue that globalization influences majority of the aspect of daily lives. For instance, the computer and phones people uses together with tablets are most likely to have been built some other than the United States of America and then shipped to other countries (Goggin, 2012). China is well known for outsourcing and transferring employment opportunities to other regions for cheaper cost of manufacturing, cheaper labor and some other related cost-cutting benefits. As the turning of the world continues to be experienced, either subsiding out from the integrated state or becoming strongly integrated, ideologies, technology, objects, culture , people and information all over the world all happen to mash up or unit together (Goggin, 2012).
With respect to the positive and negative aspects, there is mixed reaction about globalization. Within the wide opinion of the general public, the reputation of globalization is relatively worse, mostly negative. For instance, based on the Harris Poll of Financial times in 2007, within the six known economic powers in the west (Spain, France, Germany, Italy, UK and USA), very few of them find globalization as a kind of process with positive impacts. A good proportion of the countries in this case see danger in economy, uniformity of culture, alienation of the social aspects of life and fading social solidarity that is experienced as a result of globalization. The extreme left and rights alike take to obstructions over globalization (Goggin, 2012). The current and the older generations find it too much threatening. Even in terms of politics, it is very common to view globalization as a concern rather than being optimistic over it. Scholarly experts consent that globalization undermines the chances of workers who have less skills in developed nations due to the fact that the kind of low-paid similar jobs they perform are paid less in the nations that are developing (Byram and Parmenter, 2012). On the other side of the argument, as a result of globalization, millions of people have moved from high level of poverty and grew towards middle class and better standards of living in the countries still developing (Byram and Parmenter, 2012). The other positive aspect associated to globalization is improved knowledge through information sharing via the internet. Three quarters of people who uses internet plays games while more than half of the users apply the web for communicating online. People even transact their businesses online. The figure below illustrates distribution of a number of activities done online among the internet users; thanks to globalization.
Figure 1: Distribution of a number of activities done online among the internet users
Source: (András, Gábor and Orsolya, 2007)
The other benefit associated to globalization is with regards to the number of students who find themselves undertaking their higher education abroad. In most cases, such students are usually motivated by the fact that they would gain from knowledge exchange, learning about another nation or region, the people there and their culture and lastly the possibility of gaining the kind of experience that one would not have gained in their home country. Within the last two decades, the number of foreign students undertaking their studies abroad has grown by more than twice (András, Gábor and Orsolya, 2007). The figure below illustrates the number of foreign students who undertake their study in a given country for the last two decades.
Figure 2: Number of foreign students who undertake their study in a given country for the last two decades.

Source: (András, Gábor and Orsolya, 2007)
One of the most beneficial effects of globalization on the economies of western countries is reduction of inflation. Globalization has seen monopolies in these countries face global market competition (András, Gábor and Orsolya, 2007) Local firms compete for market with other international firms which do not only offer high quality products but also products at affordable cost. This has helped reduce the cost and prices of both local and international firms. With reduction of price of both local and imported goods, the rate of inflation in the countries have been generally kept down for a longer period of time affecter indicating lower nominal interest rates (András, Gábor and Orsolya, 2007) Indeed globalization has helped in mending the trade-off between inflation and unemployment. Opponents of globalization focus their arguments on the impact of the process on jobs and inequality. They claim that globalization is a force that has been driving up scale of poverty in the country. Individual countries now face a competitive challenge in the world economy. For instance, Globalization has intensified UK’s problems in the manufacturing businesses (Byram and Parmenter, 2012). Rising import penetration in many traditional industrial heartlands and switch to lower-cost production centers in Eastern Europe and South-East Asia away from manufacturing has resulted to loss of many thousands of jobs in UK and fall of output. Such rising levels of unemployment have created occupational immobility of labor in the country hence risk worsening the regional economic divide. Further argument illustrate that globalization has heightened a great gap between the lower class and the upper class earners. The real pay of people at the bottom of the economic ladder has increased barely for the last ten years while the income and accumulated wealth of the rich has seen significance within the same period of time (Byram and Parmenter, 2012). Globalization has even eroded the power of trade unions to protect jobs and pay. It has caused big structural changes in employments in the world regions and industries.
In conclusion, globalization is a very complex economic, social and political dimension. As has been described above, it involves amalgamation of different levels of the international political, social and economic processes. Economically, globalization involves investing businesses and funds beyond the domestic and national markets to other markets across the world. It therefore increases the interconnection of different markets and people across the world. Globalization has numerous positive and negative aspects in terms of inflation, specialization of goods in which the country has comparative advantage hence more income to the country, growth of economy. It also has a number of positive and positive impacts on health, education, culture and ideologies.

References
András, B., Gábor, G., Orsolya, I 2007, Everyday Globalisation. DEMOS Hungary 2007.
Byram, M. and Parmenter, L. eds 2012, The Common European Framework of Reference: The globalisation of language education policy (Vol. 23). Multilingual matters.
Goggin, G 2012, Cell phone culture: Mobile technology in everyday life. Routledge.
Kiersey, N.J 2011. Everyday neoliberalism and the subjectivity of crisis: post-political control in an era of financial turmoil. Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, 4, pp.23-44.