CHAPTER 3: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS AND INEQUALITIES

Patterns of Global Development

Consistent with the notion that a free and open global market will lead to global economic
growth, contemporary thinkers believe that globalization enriches all nations. The general
view is that globalization opens global free markets with increasingly free flows of products
and money, which Thomas Friedman believes to lead to a flat world or a world where all
barriers to participation in the global economy have been eliminated. According to Friedman
(2005), “With such barriers minimized or eliminated, more and more people can participate in,
and profit from, the global economy thereby greatly reducing, if not ultimately eliminating,
inequality. A flat world is, to a large extent, an equal world, or at least one where everyone,
everywhere has an equal chance to succeed”. In other words, in this world, development will
no longer be limited to the 1st world and small pockets in the less developed countries.

Accordingly, here are some of the most evident indications of global development

today: Increase in Employment Opportunities

As a result of globalization, more international companies are investing or setting up

businesses in less developed countries. This increases employment opportunities for people
living in countries with scarce opportunities. Today, MNCs such as Microsoft and Google have
extended their service industries to countries like India. This means that globalization helps
provide better jobs in other countries without having to migrate.

Increase in Quality of Goods and Services

With freer trade, people from around the world now have access to goods and services from
different regions. Consumers now have a variety of choices when it comes to the products he
or she thinks is best suited for his or needs. For instance, this allows a person in America to
buy products made in Asia. This in turn leads to increased competition in the market —
companies strive to upgrade the quality of their products to compete with other
manufacturers.
Faster Flow of Information

With the advent of information technology, information can now be spread without having to
transfer humans to do it. It removed the boundaries that hinder free flow of information; vital
information can now be shared between or among individuals and corporations from different
parts of the world easily and quickly. It has benefitted formerly backward and underdeveloped
countries as they now have access to new and scientific knowledge that they may use to
industrialize. Nevertheless, free flow of information has resulted to a world being tied together.
Increase in Quality of Education

In this global age, it has become easier for people to cross borders to acquire better
education. Today, academics from less developed countries move to the West to pursue
higher education. Countries like the UK and the USA have been offering scholarships and
exchange programs for prodigies in countries like India and the Philippines.

Cultural Integration

As barriers to trade, labor, and information, among others decrease, people now move from
one country to another. This has resulted to the interaction of different cultures, consequently,
openness and tolerance towards each other. This has also facilitated communication among
different nations.

Patterns of Global Inequalities

The idea of a world where everyone has an equal chance to succeed is indeed promising.
Friedman claimed that this is possible through economic globalization, more specifically,
through minimizing and eliminating barriers to trade and other economic relations. However,
economic inequality within and among societies still remain to be one of the most pressing
problems in the world today despite the increasing globalization. This begs the question —
what has been the role of globalization in achieving global equality? Moreover — is
globalization, especially economic globalization, contributing to global inequality?

This brings us back to the Marxist claim that globalization is capitalist in nature. Immanuel
Wallerstein (1974) extended this argument by introducing the concepts of “core” and
“periphery” areas in the capitalist system. The core countries are the wealthy and powerful
like the US and other European states, while the peripheral countries are the impoverished
like most countries in Asia and Africa. According to Wallerstein, economic globalization (i.e.
liberalization and privatization) is an avenue through which the core countries grow even
wealthier by exploiting the peripheral countries. These globalization schemes go hand in hand
with political mechanisms like colonialism and imperialism, as discussed previously in Chapter
2, in causing uneven development.
First and Third World Gap

After the World War II, the world split into two large geopolitical blocs — the democratic-
industrial countries associated with the US were distinguished as the First World and the
communist socialist states were the Second World. While the remaining portion of the world,
the non-aligned states, were regarded as the Third World. Historically, these terms were only
used to describe the divide in the post-war world; but these classifications have evolved to
keep pace with the development of Social Science studies. Today, these are used to
categorize countries based on wealth and state of development. The term First World refers
to the capitalist and industrialized countries such as US and most European States. Basically,
these are rich countries with progressive economy, advanced technology, and the highest
standard of living. On the other hand, Third World countries are the underdeveloped and non-
industrialized ones like most parts of Asia and Africa. These countries usually have rich
natural resources but weak governments and economic systems which lead to high levels of
poverty.

Empirical evidence shows that globalization has significantly boosted economic growth in First
World countries like the US, United Kingdom, and Japan. However, this development has not
been seen in the Third World. As per United Nations Development Programme (1997), there
has been a very rapid increase in global inequality for over 30 years now. By the end of the
20th century, “the richest fifth of the world's people obtained 86 percent of world income; the
poorest fifth received just 1.3 percent. Accordingly, “some 1.3 billion people subsisted on less
than $1 per day — a life threatening decline in living standards since the 1960s.” One of the
most remarkable evidence of inequality is the case of sub-Saharan Africa which, even with
the estimated double of the world GDP by 2030, will still experience “a further sharp decline in
its share of the world total — from 1.2 percent by the end of 20th century to 0.4 percent.” This
means some 500 million people will experience further marginalization in an increasingly
productive world system.

Economic inequalities have occurred simultaneously with economic liberalization and

privatization. As discussed in Chapter 2, these globalization schemes have perpetuated the
unequal exchange between the developed and less developed countries wherein the latter’s
economic policies and flows are controlled by the former. Most Third World countries are now
import-dependent and allow the surge of imports to their country and rely on them for supply,
resulting to being export-oriented — exporting raw materials and resources instead of
manufacturing them. In addition, their natural resources either remain unutilized due to lack of
industries or exported to capitalist countries to be manufactured due to political subordination.

Evidently, globalization, especially economic globalization, has benefitted advanced countries.

But it does not seem to be an effective measure to address the Third World’s fundamental
challenges such as poverty, unemployment, and environmental issues. These evidences only
justifies the Marxist claim that globalization is just an expansion of capitalist exploitation which
further keeps the rich, rich and the poor, poor.

Majority–Minority Relations

Without a doubt, capitalist globalization contributes to global inequalities, specifically,

economic inequality between people of the so-called “core” and “peripheral” areas of the
world. However, inequalities are not limited to economic classes.
Intersectionality, a research model, promotes the understanding that the social experiences
of a human being is shaped by interacting social identities e.g. economic class, race,
ethnicity, sex, gender and others. These interacting social identities occur “within a context of
connected systems and structures of power”, which in this case is capitalist globalization
(Ritzer, 2010). Therefore, if you seek to understand how globalization affects human beings,
you should not focus on economic class alone, but also race, ethnicity, sex, gender and other
social identities.

Another factor to consider is the majority-minority relations. Historically, societies have the
tendency to create hierarchies i.e. one social group is given higher status than others.
According to the classic social theorist Max Weber (1921), this stratification is based on
“class, status, and power”; a minority group is in a subordinate position in wealth, prestige,
and power, while a majority group is in a superordinate position in wealth, prestige, and
power.

Therefore, to fully understand the experiences of different social groups in the global age, you
must look into how capitalist globalization transformed majority-minority relations within race,
ethnicity, and sex and gender.

Racial Relations

One’s race is generally based on his or her physical, biological, and phenotypical
characteristics. Some racial groups tend to be minorities while others tend to be in the
majority because of the “belief in the inherent superiority of one race and the inferiority of
others” (Ritzer, 2010). This belief system is called racism and it is clearly evident in the
case of white–
black distinction; where whites are deemed dominant, while the blacks are marginalized.
This led to the long history of black slavery in the USA. Although it has ended, racism is
still evident in culture today — white privilege and black inferiority relations have resulted
to numerous cases of black discrimination and oppression in the USA. Furthermore, as
the “whites” remain to be the superior race in the world, other races such as Asians and
Latinos also fall victim to discrimination and oppression.

Globalization has aggravated race relations as new forms and cases of racism emanate
from the restructuring of economic production. As discussed in Chapter 2, economic
liberalization has resulted to the decline in resource utilization and production in less
developed countries, which has led to lack of jobs. Consequently, unemployed and
underemployed people from these countries resort to migrating to capitalistic countries
looking for cheap labor. As the hegemon of economic globalization, US corporations have
been outsourcing millions of jobs and have opened their country for labor migration. In
fact, “between the 1950s and the early 1990s, the proportion of immigrants coming from
less developed countries in Asia and Latin America rose from 30 percent to 75 percent”
(Lerman and Schmidt, 1999).

As a result of the increasing international migration, most capitalist countries have become
more and more diverse in terms of its racial composition. But instead of developing
tolerance towards each other, the rapid influx of other racial groups has intensified racism
and has developed xenophobia. Ritzer (2010) defined xenophobia as a culture that
“involves the
beliefs, attitudes, and prejudices that reject, exclude, and vilify groups that are outsiders or
foreigners to the dominant social group”. It may lead to violence and “take forms as diverse
as murder, physical attacks, hate speech, denial of entry to stores, restaurants, clubs, and
denial of access to employment”.

Arab Americans, for instance, especially those who came from the Arab regions have been
experiencing different forms of discrimination in the US. There have been increased
reports of hate crimes against them and their property. Arab Americans experience
discrimination in employment, are denied service in businesses, and face physical and
verbal abuse in schools and universities. Another example is the largest minority group in
the US, Asian Americans, which constitutes 5% of its total population. Although they are
considered the “model minority” as they are generally better than other minorities in terms
of socio-economic measures, they still face high levels of income inequality.

Ethnic Groups and Indigenous Peoples

Both ethnic groups and indigenous groups are identified based on their shared cultural
characteristics such as language, religion, customs and laws, rituals, and other cultural
practices. Indigenous peoples, however, claim to be the aboriginal people of the lands they
live in and maintain spiritual attachment to their geographically distinct territories.
Nonetheless, in most societies, both are minorities due to their distinct and primitive ways
that people deem as uncivilized in the age of modernization. This is why ethnic groups
and indigenous peoples consider globalization as a threat to their identity.

Some of their greatest concerns are the practice of genocide and ethnic cleansing in
xenophobic societies. Genocide was defined in 1948 by the United Nations Convention on
the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as "acts committed with the
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group". While
genocide typically involves mass killings, ethnic cleansing or expulsion can take two
forms — first, it can be direct with minority ethnic groups forcibly ejected by the majority
through military and other government action; second, such a minority group can leave
"voluntarily" because it is being harassed, discriminated against, and persecuted.
(Simpson and Yinger, 1985). One of the most extreme cases of genocide and ethnic
cleansing in history was committed primarily, but not exclusively, against the Jews in the
Nazi Holocaust.

Historically, most cases of discrimination and violence against ethnic and indigenous
groups are brought about by xenophobia. Although this culture remains destructive up to
this day, globalization has become the key perpetrator of violence against minorities.
Globalization, as it is capitalist in nature, comes with development aggression — for the
sake of globalization and its development programs, corporations and governments
trample on the rights and welfare of minorities. Indigenous peoples often fall victim to
development aggression because they live in areas that are usual targets of resource
extraction and development projects by governments and multinational companies. They
do not just suffer from the environmental
damages of excessive mining, logging, and land conversion projects. They are also
evicted from their lands, leading to the loss of their livelihood, culture, and identity.
A good example of development aggression is the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), a
program sponsored by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) that started in 1992. This
program aims to integrate six countries — Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand,
and Vietnam — into a single borderless economy and resulted to the building of
infrastructures such as roads, bridges, dams, airports, ports, and hotels anywhere, even at
indigenous lands. While it provides economic benefits to the urban areas of the member
countries, it has led to increased economic inequality, displacement of rural dwellers and
indigenous peoples, and environmental damages e.g. deforestation, decline in health of
bodies of water, and loss of biodiversity. However, development aggression is not limited
to displacement and ecological destruction. To make way for development programs,
corporations, even governments resort to threats, intimidation, harassment, arbitrary
arrest and extrajudicial killing of indigenous rights defenders. In the Philippines, for
instance, indigenous rights defenders who resist development aggression e.g. illegal
logging and excessive mining became victims of violence.

Some of the cases recorded by the Asia Indigenous Peoples’ Pact (AIPP) are the
extrajudicial killing of Markus Bangit, a well-known indigenous leader of the Cordillera
Peoples’ Alliance in 2006 and the enforced disappearance of prominent indigenous leader
and human rights defender of the Cordillera region, James Balao, who was abducted by
alleged State forces in 2008 and has never been seen again up to date.

Sex and gender

Historically, women and the LGBT (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgenders) community
have been marginalized and have experienced different forms of oppression. Early
feminists and gender advocates focused on addressing common issues like sexual
harassment and hate crimes. But with the advent of globalization, they realized that these
issues should not be addressed on a case-by-case basis; instead, it must be
acknowledged that gender oppression is a systemic or structural issue and is not an
independent phenomenon.

Gender oppression is brought about by patriarchy, a culture defined as male ideology or

male interests in dominating women and other genders. It started with the “appropriation
by men of women's sexual and reproductive capacity even prior to the formation of private
property and class society”. This has resulted to societies that favor men and prejudice on
women and other genders, consequently causing different forms gender oppression
such as physical violence, discrimination, and income disparity. Capitalism perpetuates
this culture as observed in the gender segregation of wage labor, state control over
women's biological reproduction, state neglect of LGBT rights, mass media's gender
stereotyping, and sexual objectification of women for sexual consumerism.

Thus, the main concern of contemporary feminists and gender advocates regarding the
process and effects of globalization are issues related to the status of women and LGBT
and
their structural subordination to men. Consistent with the intersectional model, feminists
and gender advocates believe that the dimensions of social life cannot be delimited into
separate measurable elements. Therefore, one cannot assume that all Third World
citizens share the same experiences and needs in the capitalist globalization setting; they
may be on the same economic level, but their age, ethnicity, sex, and gender still varies.
Feminist study and gendered analysis focus on the specific experiences and problems
encountered by women and LGBT in comparison to their male counterparts. Accordingly,
they look into the gender dimension of global issues, even those that may seem gender-
neutral, such as war, economic exploitation, migration, and development aggression.

Chapter Summary

▪ The general view is that globalization opens global free markets with increasingly
free flows of products and money, which Thomas Friedman believes to lead to
a “flat world” or a world where all barriers to participation in the global
economy have been eliminated. A flat world is, to a large extent, an equal
world, or at least one where everyone, everywhere has an equal chance to
succeed. Its patterns are observed in the effects of globalization today such as
increase in employment opportunities, increase in the quality of goods and
services, faster flow of information, increase in the quality of education, and
cultural integration.

▪ On the other hand, some argue that globalization only aggravates world
inequalities. According to Wallerstein (1974), economic globalization is an
avenue through which the core countries (First World) grow even wealthier by
exploiting the peripheral countries (Third World).

▪ Moreover, intersectional analysis promotes the understanding that inequalities

are not limited to economic classes because the social experiences of each
human being is shaped by not just one identity, but interacting social identities
e.g. economic class, race, ethnicity, sex, gender and others. This framework
has proven that people have varied experiences based on the class, status,
and power of their social group and capitalist globalization has worsen
majority-minority relations through its schemes such as international labor
migration and development aggression.