Tag Archives: globalization

Globalization takes place in many different ways

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by Julia Helbing

Nowadays globalization does not only mean to produce in one part of the world and do deliver these good to the other part of the world. I think it also means that you have to move to the places, where work is offered and employees needed.

In many developed countries, the costs of living have risen constantly. People have to pay more rent, the food is more expensive and of course, electronic devices also got more expensive because they are developed all the time and should make our live more easily. Therefore, a lot of women also have to work now to pay all the expenses she and her husband face. And if they have children, they even have to pay higher expenses. But what would happen if there is no one at home who can take care of the housework? Or who would take care of the children? Because of this, many families decide to hire a nanny from developing countries. Compared to nannies from their own country, they have to pay fewer wages. In addition, those nannies from abroad also work very hard to earn maybe more money. But still the nanny leaves her own family in her country of origin to go abroad and work for other people, just to send the money she earned home to her children to pay the expenses for the children’s education. This way, the mother wants to offer a better future to her children.

In my opinion, globalization now does not just shift production from one country to another; it also shifts people to other countries. But today we also have a lot of countries that depend on those workers coming from third world countries to rich countries.

There are many jobs that people in developed countries don’t want to do. They don’t want to take care of older or ill people, for example, or they don’t want to work in the fields and harvest potatoes or salad. Therefore, they are really happy to have workers emigrating from other countries to do this kind of work.

Japan has for example a contract with the Philippines about nurses coming from the Philippines to work in Japan. Since 2009, the countries entered into a Memorandum of Understanding, which means that Philippine nurses are trained and employed in Japan to face the decreasing number of Japanese nurses and caregivers. But after their training, the potential nurses have to pass an exam, which is in Japanese. So in addition to learning how to take care of other people, they also have to learn Japanese language. This is why unfortunately, not many nurses pass this exam. Since the start of this contract, only 13 Philippine nurses were able to pass the exam and therefore work in Japan. (1)

But of course I can understand that the nurses have to speak Japanese, because the patient in Japan normally can’t speak any other languages then Japanese.  And of course it is not easy to take care of sick people, so the exam has to be difficult. If the nurse would make a mistake, she could maybe kill the ill person, so I think it is correct that the exam is not easy to pass.

Nonetheless, this example shows clearly that in developed countries, workers from other counties are needed.  People from rich countries go to other rich countries to perform work there, so the gap they leave has to be filled with people from undeveloped countries.

References

  1. http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/253140/pinoyabroad/13-pinoy-nurses-pass-tough-japan-nursing-exams

Is globalization making our world homogenized?

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by Chika Yamamoto

We often hear the word “globalization” these days in everywhere and we actually see and feel all the outcomes of globalization. As we talked in the first class, it is often said that globalization makes our world similar. For example, if you go to the big cities such as New York, London, Vancouver, and Tokyo, there are not so much differences in the buildings, companies, shops there. Big cities always have high buildings and skyscrapers, and we see lots of common international corporations such as Macdonald, Starbucks, Gap, Zara, Louis Viton, Nike and so on. Now we can find sushi restaurants everywhere in the world. All the signs in those big cities are in English even though it’s in non-English-speaking countries. So, people say that the world is getting similar. But, is it really true? Are all the international companies are selling exactly same things? Do people feel that they are in Japan when they are in Macdonald in New York? I think globalization is not making our world homogeneity but is actually making our world more various and diverse.

Here is one of the examples of the variety and diversity resulted from globalization. Sushi is getting really famous and popular food in the world. When I went to Canada, I was surprised at a huge number of sushi restaurants there. I guess there was the same number of sushi restaurants in Toronto and Montreal as the number of convenience stores in Japan. If we explain that you can find sushi restaurants anywhere in the world, it may mean that world is getting same. However, are those sushi sold in Canada same as Japanese sushi? Some restaurants sell the real Japanese sushi like “nigiri sushi”,but it seems common to have “their” sushi. The most common one is California roll that contains avocado and crab mixed with mayonnaise. Not only that, but also they have whole bunch of “their” sushi we’ve never seen in Japan. So, sushi is arranged to fit in that culture.

According to Matsumoto (2002), there are sushi restaurants in New York that serve specific sushi topping for Jewish keeping “Kosher”, the rule of what they can eat and cannot eat. In South America, some people dip sushi in salsa source instead of dipping in soy sauce, which is targeted for Latin people. Thus, sushi has spread all over the world changing the content of sushi and the style in order to fit in that culture and society. I think those sushi are not “Japanese” sushi anymore. People around world get an idea from sushi and they create new types of sushi for people living there. As a result, sushi culture is enriched and now there are various kinds of sushi in the world.

In conclusion, I think globalization enriches cultures in the world. In other words, new types of cultures or way to provide international products are appeared when culture is influenced by other culture or when people try to adopt foreign products or culture. I show only one example, however we can say the same thing about menu of Macdonald or clothes of H&M and Gap. I guess that’s because globalization is always strongly tied to economy, and market place differs in different places. So, naturally it results in varying their culture and their products. And, I think it is really important to have their color or flavor in internationalized cities. Therefore, I believe that developing countries that are going to be like world cities had better take account of this idea and apply this so that they won’t lose their culture and they will develop themselves. I think that is the good way to be globalized.

Reference

Matsumoto Hirotaka (2002). ”お寿司、地球を廻る” Kobun-sha.

Bright Side of Global Cities

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by Misato Okumura

Today, more and more global cities are created in developing countries. The big firms in developed countries come to there to open their new business with cheaper costs and the governments there improve infrastructure and build nice facilities to welcome them. The reconstruction of developing countries kicks out local people who used to live there before the firms coming and also it makes the difference between rich people and poor bigger. The government in developing countries ignores their citizens to get business opportunity to develop their countries. But does it have only bad effects to their citizens? Their inviting the big firms to their countries has some advantages for their citizens too. I’ll show the 3 biggest points to support my opinion.

First, staying in developing countries will bring the workers in developed countries new discoveries. We, developed countries know a lot of things about other developed countries because we have had trading connection for a long time. But maybe it will be first time for the workers to stay in the countries for that long and they will find what attractive culture is there and introduce it to the world. This is good for the developing countries because the world may start looking at their country and if so, the government needs to start working on the structure of the society such as rich-poor balance. Moreover having the big firms brings a lot of profitability to their country and they can use it for their social security system. The difference between rich and poor is one of the biggest issues in developing countries. It will be better if they invite the big firms.

Second, global cities produce employment. This is not only because construction of global cities and improving infrastructure will produce a lot of employment but also the workers in developing countries need a connection with local people to run their business there. They need to work with an interpreter and sometimes a cultural instructor so they will get global connections from each others. This will be good opportunity for both of them to learn other culture in this globalizing world. And if they got an opportunity of cultural exchange at local level, it will work great for understanding their each culture and ethnicity.

Third, if the government makes a rule in which the firms need to share their technology and skills with the workers in the host countries, it will help their country develop. This is what China actually does in their special economy district. I think this can avoid “drain brain” and helps produce skilled local workers.

In conclusion, I think these 3 points are good side of global cities.

Globalization and Homogeneity

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by Yumie Kitamura

In recent decades, globalization has become so common around the world at an unprecedented speed.

Owing to high-tech, we can keep in touch with people all over the world. While I lived in San Francisco last year, I talked over skype with my family and friends every night, and now living here in Japan, I enjoy skyping with my friends in US. No matter how far we live, we can chat and talk anytime as long it is good time for us. We talk about everything happened to our current lives and laugh about it, as if we are really talking face to face. I really feel technology keeping us close.

I also enjoy shopping online. Most of stores in US currently started shipping products to Japan with low shipping fee. So I can easily order Marc Jacobs bag online at home and receive it from US a few days later.

This is when I feel globalization in my real life, and as far as that is all, this globalization seems so great and I love it. But in fact, this enormous phenomenon seems to be very difficult and complicated issue. While I appreciate the fruit of globalization, I also have some questions: Is globalization really all good for us?

Because no need to say, globalization is not something happening only online. It actually is happening right in our local towns too. Let’s take a Bangalore’s model for an example. Bangalore, the high-tech city in India, is planned to become an unbelievably gorgeous, modernistic high-tech city in near future. In the model picture of how the city is going to be, you could never tell the city in actually built in India. Because, the city just looks like some gorgeous ideal city in Europe or someplace. If this is how Bangalore is globalizing, it seems to me it’s the same as homogenizing into some modernistic, conventional European-looking city, eventually losing its beautiful originality and local charm.

The City and Globalization

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by Miki Imamura

Personally speaking, my dream is designing a city which provide environment where people can find happiness and become happy. I found the possibility to achieve global peace in designing a city as I continue studying how to solve global issues which we are facing in the world. What I believe is the crucial reason for conflict is miscommunication coming from not understanding each other. To improve communication skill to understand people who don’t share the same norm or common sense, changing their way to think is the most important, I believe. It could be done by media, education, or designing a city. Changing the way to think is very hard to do, but changing the action is so easy to do. That’s designing a city. Designing space is changing people’s movement. It can change what people see, whom people meet, and that may contribute to change people’s life. Therefore, if we design a city to provide environment where people find more chance to meet those who have different point of view, if we provide more opportunity to create communication between them through designing a city, I think people will get to know what others thinking which makes realized what themselves are. Thus, my ambition is designing a city to provide more opportunity to communicate each other.

When we think about a city, it supposed to develop for residents to improve their daily life. I was thinking so. And I was also thinking a city supposed to develop taking time and adjusting changes slowly, until I read the article written by Michael Goldman and Wesley Longhofer. In their article, “making world cities”, tells me that globalization which is rapidly spreading and deeply infiltrating in the world is changing the nature of a city. Bangalore in India is one of the “hotspot of globalization”. Bangalore is the “Silicon Valley of Asia”, and the city has totally changed not for its residents but for software elite creators. It is normal for city to get large for its economy, however the rapid growth such as Bangalore is corrupting its resident’s daily economy and making them social vulnerability. It seems like not be able to help for government to attract foreign investment to change their situation, however what they are doing is producing a huge inequality gap between poor and rich. Beside we are trying to reduce poverty, globalization and global companies are forcing a city to produce more poverty.

This fact was quite shocking for me, because the wave of globalization will not stop and might be more active in the future. Additionally our global population is still growing up. That means global companies will seek another “hotspot” and create another “Bangalore”. Stopping this movement is almost impossible because the demand of global companies and the supply of those government which they need foreign investment meet each other. What we can do is approaching companies and government to promote an urban design which gives less damage for nature of cities. The point is what this urban design would be, which I still do not know yet. Through my study, I will find it out.

Bibliography

Michael Goldman and Wesley Longhofer. (2009). making world cities. Contexts , 8 (1), 32-35.