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As the meaning and effects of globalization become more and more widespread, people across the world have formed grassroots organizations. These organizations protest the negative effects encouraged by globalization and try to form worldwide acknowledgement of a particular problem. This paper discusses some disadvantages of globalization and which have prompted people to protest. It will then examine at a closer level two protested issues, labor injustice and wealth inequality. Finally, conclusions on the prospect of globalization in the future will be reached. Globalization includes the global exchange of capital, labor, information, politics, technology, and culture, all which have formed an integrated “global” world. But growing disparity, corporate power, and environmental destruction has overshadowed the hope for a global civil society, a global community. Ordinary people have become increasingly aware of these problems (due in part to globalization itself and the spread of instantaneous information) and protest movements have sprouted. Although many are unorganized and address a single issue, grassroots organizations’ protests have had a surprisingly influence on the institutions they protest, including the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. The World Trade Organization’s meeting in Seattle of November 1999, for example, “saw the birth, and to date, the high point of this new mode of activism,” where protesters aimed to “shut down, or at least badly disrupt, the meetings of the global elite” (Angry and Effective, 2). Protestors have greater aims than simply disrupting the work of international organizations; they wish to bring attention to a variety of issues. The major issues of globalization that have prompted people to protest are environmental destruction, human rights standards, labor injustices, and the growth of multinational corporations. Specific problems within these issues include industrialized countries exploit the resources of developing countries, corporations exploit underprivileged people in labor, the outsourcing of jobs, and corporations transforming culture and consumerism. Other issues that prompt protests are animal rights, the distribution of wealth (inequality), and the loss of culture and tradition. While each of these issues, no matter how few or many protest them, hold importance, some are more convincing reasons for protest than others. The vast disparity in wealth between the upper class and the impoverished, and developed countries and developing is staggering. As globalization has continued, multinational corporations, foreign investors, and citizens of more powerful nations have entered a time of great prosperity and a high standard of living, much at the expense of the third world.
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