essay on global society

World Studies Extended Essay: Global Themes

• Introduction
• Getting Started
• Global Themes
• Interdisciplinary Research
• What Makes Up a "Discipline"?
• Evaluating the Insights of Academic Disciplines
• Multiple Forms of Integration
• Evaluating Your Essay
• Common Stumbling Blocks
• Examples of Globally Conscious Students

World Studies Global Themes

Conflict, peace, and security Culture, language, and identity Environmental and/or economic sustainability Equality and inequality Health and development Science, technology and society

Conflict, peace, and security

Culture, language, and identity, environmental and/or economic sustainability, equality and inequality, health and development, science, technology and society, wsee documents.

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• RPPF Example 5 - World Studies
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A Global Perspective: Bringing the World Into Classrooms

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The need for students to be able to empathize with others, value diverse perspectives and cultures, understand how events around the world are interconnected, and solve problems that transcend borders has never been greater. Just consider the recent attacks inspired by hate and terrorism in Orlando, Fla., San Bernardino, Calif., Brussels, Paris, Tunis, Istanbul, and Yemen, or the unparalleled flow of migrants—many of them children—from war- and violence-stricken regions in the Middle East and Central America. Then there’s threat of damaging and deadly viruses such as Zika and Ebola hopping across people and countries.

The quick tick of news headlines exemplifies just how interconnected the world is today. It also points to the intercultural collaboration and problem-solving skills necessary to thwart the hatred that spawns terrorist attacks, successfully integrate culturally and linguistically diverse populations into classrooms and communities, and solve health and environmental crises.

Engaging students with the world is one step toward one day accomplishing such objectives. But what should educators teach to ensure that all students are prepared to successfully engage in the globalized world in which they already live? Furthermore, what steps can educators take to effectively foster globally minded knowledge, skills, and attitudes in students?

As part of the movement to educate the whole child and ensure students are challenged academically and prepared for participation in a global environment, the organization for which I work, ASCD, has launched an effort to focus on answering these questions. The place to start, I believe, is with some definitions on what global engagement means in a practical sense.

More Than a ‘21st-Century Skill’

For students to participate effectively in the global community, they will need to develop global competence: the attitudes, knowledge, and skills needed to live and work in today’s interconnected world and to build a sustainable, peaceful, inclusive world for the future. Global competence is often, and rightly, labeled a “21st century skill” needed for employment in today’s global economy. Yet global competence is so much more than a ticket to a competitive job. Students also need global competence to participate as empathetic, engaged, and effective citizens of the world.

What exactly does global competence entail? Many organizations have devised specific frameworks that define the term (see examples from the Asia Society , the OECD , World Savvy , and the Globally-Competent Teaching Continuum ). These frameworks tend to coalesce around the following attitudes, knowledge, and skills:

• Attitudes : This includes openness, respect, and appreciation for diversity; valuing of multiple perspectives, including an awareness of the cultural and experiential influences that shape one’s own and others’ perspectives; empathy; and social responsibility, or a desire to better the human condition on a local and global scale.

• Knowledge : This refers to the ability to understand global issues and current events; global interdependence, including the impact of global events on local conditions and vice versa; the processes of globalization and its effects on economic and social inequities locally and globally; world history; culture; and geography.

• Skills : These includes the ability to communicate across cultural and linguistic boundaries, including the ability to speak, listen, read, and write in more than one language; collaborate with people who have diverse cultural, racial, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds; think critically and analytically; problem-solve; and take action on issues of global importance.

Connecting Educators Across the World

Just as teachers of algebra know how to solve equations and music teachers know how to play scales, educators should also strive to develop these global competencies in themselves so that they can foster them in their students.

Engaging with the world is one way educators can develop global competence. Traditionally in the United States, educators as a whole have experienced limited training around global diversity. For example, very few teacher-preparation programs provide opportunities for preservice teachers to study abroad or require coursework in global topics. Therefore, connecting practicing teachers, principals, and district leaders across communities and continents through summits, conferences, exchanges, and virtual meetings geared towards common professional learning needs can provide experiences that help develop a globally oriented mindset, knowledge base, and skill set. Furthermore, when provided a platform to network, educators can lead the way in changing the broader education system locally and globally to better support the whole child and elevate the teaching profession.

A number of opportunities already exist for teachers to connect with one another across the world. There are an array of exchange programs run by the U.S. State Department and NGOs (e.g., American Councils for International Education , EF Tours , Teachers2Teachers-International ) that provide educators with opportunities for meaningful cross-cultural interactions. And if travel is not always feasible due to financial or familial obligations, teachers can still engage with the wider world through virtual exchanges that connect classrooms across the globe as partners in learning activities that prepare students to be productive, engaged citizens of the world (for example, iEARN , Global SchoolNet ).

Classroom Strategies

There are plenty of steps that educators can take today to put students on the path towards creating a better world for tomorrow. This doesn’t require legislation that mandates a change in the curriculum, the introduction of a global studies course for graduation, or a line item from the state or federal budget. In a recent study of teachers committed to globally competent teaching , researchers found that the educators used the following common strategies to foster global citizenship and competency:

• Integrating global topics and perspectives across content areas. Globally competent teaching does not require a separate course or unit of study. Instead, teachers infused global content into the required curriculum, regardless of subject area. For example, math teachers used real-world global challenges as contexts for introducing new concepts (e.g., using word problems on population growth as a way to teach the rules of exponents) and language arts teachers used texts that represent diverse cultural perspectives and that take place in settings around the world to teach literature and informational texts.

• Providing opportunities for authentic engagement with global issues. Teachers provided real-world audiences for students to engage with around global issues. This took the form of pen pal and Skype exchanges with schools in other countries, service-learning projects emphasizing issues of global concern (e.g., access to clean water), or working in teams to devise and debate solutions to real-world problems, such as climate change, and sharing those solutions with government leaders. Notably, these activities were student-centered and inquiry-based.

• Connecting the global experiences of students and teachers to the classroom. Teachers adopted culturally responsive teaching practices that incorporated the cultures, languages, perspectives, and experiences of diverse students into curriculum and instruction. Teachers also incorporated their own cross-cultural experiences into the classroom through informal conversation, discussions around artifacts and photos, and lesson plans that incorporated knowledge gained and relationships built through their global experiences.

With these strategies in hand, the time is now for teachers to engage themselves, and their students, with the world. The lives of all students, no matter their zip code or their cultural, racial, linguistic, or economic background, are in some way influenced by the wider world. They too have the potential to shape that world. Their future, and the future of our world, depends on it.

What does global engagement mean to you? Why do you think it is important? Join the conversation by posting your reflections in the comments section.

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Chapter 10. Global Society

Learning Objectives

10.1 Trade, Colonialism and the Origins of Global Society

• Define the stages of the development of global society.
• Analyse the relationship between the history of colonialism and contemporary global society.

10.2. Global Wealth and Poverty

• Describe concepts and indicators of global stratification and global poverty.
• Distinguish between relative and absolute poverty.
• Examine the World Bank’s classification of economies into high-income, middle-income, and low-income.
• Compare the explanations of global inequality from the perspectives of modernization theory, dependency theory and global capitalism theory.

10.3. Contemporary Global Society

• Analyse the lived experience of global society from an interpretive sociology perspective.
• Describe four distinct features of global society: de-traditionalization, globalization, expressive individualism/new tribalism, and the risk/trust dynamic.

Global Society

In the 1960s, Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan described the world as a “global village” (McLuhan, 1962; 1964; 1968). Due to the development of electronic media and other technological advances, communication from almost any point in the world to any other point became instantaneous. The sharing of news, culture and viewpoints expanded from neighbourhoods to the world. It was as if everyone lived in everyone else’s backyard.

“Ours is a brand-new world of all-at-once-ness. ‘Time’ has ceased, ‘Space’ has vanished. We now live in a ‘global village’…a simultaneous happening. Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously. As soon as information is acquired, it is rapidly replaced by still newer information” (McLuhan, 1967).

The sense of simultaneity (“time has ceased”) and closeness (“space has vanished”) that McLuhan described is a product of globalization. As Ulrich Beck (1944-2015) put it, the effect of globalization has been to “conjure away distance” on a variety of different levels (Beck, 2000). Individual actors no longer “live and act in the self-enclosed spaces of national states and their respective national societies. Globalization means that borders become markedly less relevant to everyday behaviour in the various dimensions of economics, information, ecology, technology, cross-cultural conflict and civil society” (Beck, 2000).

Globalization therefore refers to the processes of increasing integration and interconnection, which incorporate people across the world into a single global society (Albrow and King, 1990).  It is “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa” (Giddens 1991). If, as Dorothy Smith (1999) said in Chapter 1 An Introduction to Sociology , the social is the “ongoing concerting and coordinating of individuals’ activities,” then these activities must be understood to be increasingly coordinated on a global scale.

Using a global level of analysis , sociologists study how the world operates as a whole. In a global society, local activities need to be understood in a global context. The local is global, and vice versa. Many view this process with anxiety, while others view it with hope. In the current period of globalization, which Robertson (1990) describes as its “uncertainty phase,” many examples come to mind where global level factors significantly affect people’s lives in different ways in different locations.

Global pandemic: The COVID-19 virus was first recorded in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, but by March 2020, it had become a global pandemic, spreading initially through the networks of global tourism (Tsiotas & Tselios, 2022).

Global climate change: Global climate change driven by emissions from human activities does not respect societal borders. It is producing weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe (heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones), and threatening the homes and livelihoods of people living in low elevation coastal zones through rising sea levels — around 11% of the world’s population in 2010 (IPCC, 2019).

Global economy: Global flows of economic investment and disinvestment affect the availability of work in various locations. Investment reflects global markets and prices for different commodities, impacting everything from the volatility of the petro-economy in Northern Alberta to the affordability of housing in Vancouver and Toronto.

Container Ships: Globalization and Uncertainty

These are some of the big-ticket items confronting global society and will be discussed later in the textbook. But to take a smaller example of the effects of globalization, the grounding of the gigantic container ship Ever Given in the Suez Canal for several days in March 2021, indicates just how interconnected the world has become in the 21st century.

In 2021, the Ever Given was one of approximately 100 mega-container ships worldwide that are almost as long as the Empire State Building is high, as wide as a city block, and capable of transporting 20,000 six-metre-long metal shipping containers. In the 21 km stretch of the canal where the Ever Given got stuck, its keel would have been only a few metres from the bottom. The canal was not built for such huge ships. Initial reports stated the ship was blown off course by heavy winds, although subsequent reporting indicated communication problems, lack of tugboats, and poor piloting contributed to the ship running aground (Yee and Glanz, 2021). The accident caused an estimated $6–10 billion per day in costs and backed up the 12% of global trade that passes between Europe and Asia through the canal (Russon, 2021). The blockage severely disrupted global supply chains, just-in-time manufacturing processes, workers’ jobs and consumer prices around the world.

There are numerous components of the global economy at play in this incident. The first is the global shipping industry itself. Container shipping was only invented in 1956, but because the cost of shipping boxes is so inexpensive, secure, and efficient, approximately 90% of all non-bulk cargo is now moved in containers (Dicken, 2015). Containerization is a key technological driver of contemporary globalization, the means by which the clothes, coffee mugs, wall paint, laptops — practically all the raw materials, parts and household products — in any Canadian home are transported. The accessories of contemporary life are thoroughly global in origin, largely because of the transformation in the transportation and trade of goods brought about by container ships.

The second component is the multinational corporations that propel global trade. Characteristics of multinational corporations include the following: a large share of their capital is collected from various nations, their business is conducted without regard to national borders, they concentrate wealth in the hands of core nations and already wealthy individuals, and they play a key role in the global economy. The global nature of ownership and management of container ships is an indicator of the interlinked complexity of multinationals and corporate business models in the global economy. A Japanese company owned the Ever Given , and it was registered in Panama, operated by a Taiwanese conglomerate, and staffed by an all-Indian crew employed by a German ship management company (Wise, 2021).

The third component at play is the emergence of global assembly lines , where the process of designing and assembling products is distributed in different geographical locations, and global commodity chains , where resources, workers and corporations are internationally coordinated for the purpose of manufacture and marketing of goods and services (Plahe 2005). For instance, Apple engineers and designs its iPhone in the United States, rare earth minerals for its components are sourced in Mongolia, semi-conductors are made in Taiwan, touch screens are made in Japan and Korea, gyroscopes are made in Switzerland, and they are shipped to China for assembly, while tech support is outsourced to Cork, Ireland (Anthony, 2022).

As the Ever Given incident illustrates, container shipping exemplifies the precarious nature of the tightly coordinated network of interactions in global assembly lines and global commodity chains. Key to these processes are just-in-time production and distribution systems, which depend on goods arriving precisely when needed. Just-in-time production saves manufacturers and stores the cost of storage and inventory, but it only takes a single problem in the supply chain for the entire system to break down. There are numerous “choke points,” like the Suez Canal, where things can go wrong, affecting container ports, jobs, costs of production, prices of components and goods, and inflation around the world (Browne, 2021).

Furthermore, global assembly lines and global commodity chains bring a global division of labour, in which comparatively wealthy workers from core nations compete with the low-wage labour pool of peripheral and semi-peripheral nations. This can lead to a sense of xenophobia , which is an intense fear and even hatred of foreigners and foreign goods. Corporations trying to maximize their profits in the United States are aware of this risk and attempt to “Americanize” their products, selling shirts printed with U.S. flags that were nevertheless made in China, Mexico or elsewhere.

Finally, the Ever Given incident demonstrates the global complexity of international regulation and national jurisdictions. The development of the sovereign state system was itself a product of early modern globalization (see discussion later in the chapter), but it means that individual states have jurisdiction over regulations within their borders, whereas many processes they seek to regulate are global in scale. Maritime traffic through the Suez Canal is a case in point: numerous overlapping authorities were engaged in the grounding of the Ever Given (Yee and Glanz, 2021). Who was responsible for the accident?

Shipping industry analysts note that the development of mega-container ships is the product of companies attempting to maximize efficiency and minimize costs in a competitive marketplace, but that canals and ports were not designed to handle them safely. The International Maritime Organization is responsible for mandating safety standards, but the Egyptian government maintains the canal, and collects fees for passage through it. The Suez Canal Authority provides the pilots to navigate the canal, while the ship’s captain has ultimate authority over the ship. Investigating an accident is the responsibility of the country where it happened (in this case Egypt), and of the country where the ship is registered (in this case Panama), rather than a neutral party such as the International Maritime Organization. Sorting out what went wrong and what to do to prevent it happening again involves a complex interplay of competing interests and jurisdictions, while the consequences of incidents like these are shared globally.

The example of the Ever Given shows us how one small event can have significant worldwide ramifications due to the interconnectedness of global society. Larger events like pandemics, climate change, and decisions about capital investment and disinvestment can be enduring and potentially catastrophic on a global scale. How did the world become so globalized?

Media Attributions

• Figure 10.1 Container Ship ‘ Ever Given ‘ stuck in the Suez Canal, Egypt – March 24th, 2021 , modified by Pierre Markuse from Copernicus Sentinel data, is used under a CC BY 2.0 licence.
• Figure 10.2   Marshall McLuhan, half-length portrait, standing, leaning on television set on which his image appears by Bernard Gotfryd has no known copyright restrictions.
• Figure 10.3   Anthony Giddens at the Progressive Governance Conference, Budapest, Hungary, 13 October, 2004 by Szusi is used under a CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.
• Figure 10.4 Ever Given by Kees Torn is used under a CC BY-SA 2.0 licence.

Introduction to Sociology – 3rd Canadian Edition Copyright © 2023 by William Little is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Global education: How to transform school systems?

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Emiliana vegas and emiliana vegas former co-director - center for universal education , former senior fellow - global economy and development @emivegasv rebecca winthrop rebecca winthrop director - center for universal education , senior fellow - global economy and development @rebeccawinthrop.

November 17, 2020

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This essay is part of “ Reimagining the global economy: Building back better in a post-COVID-19 world ,” a collection of 12 essays presenting new ideas to guide policies and shape debates in a post-COVID-19 world.

Even before COVID-19 left as many as 1.5 billion students out of school in early 2020, there was a global consensus that education systems in too many countries were not delivering the quality education needed to ensure that all have the skills necessary to thrive. 1 It is the poorest children across the globe who carry the heaviest burden, with pre-pandemic analysis estimating that 90 percent of children in low-income countries, 50 percent of children in middle-income countries, and 30 percent of children in high-income countries fail to master the basic secondary-level skills needed to thrive in work and life. 2  

Analysis in mid-April 2020—in the early throes of the pandemic—found that less than 25 percent of low-income countries were providing any type of remote learning, while close to 90 percent of high-income countries were. 3 On top of cross-country differences in access to remote learning, within-country differences are also staggering. For example, during the COVID-19 school closures, 1 in 10 of the poorest children in the U.S. had little or no access to technology for learning. 4

Yet, for a few young people in wealthy communities around the globe, schooling has never been better than during the pandemic. They are taught in their homes with a handful of their favorite friends by a teacher hired by their parents. 5  Some parents have connected via social media platforms to form learning pods that instruct only a few students at a time with agreed-upon teaching schedules and activities.

While the learning experiences for these particular children may be good in and of themselves, they represent a worrisome trend for the world: the massive acceleration of education inequality. 6

Emerging from this global pandemic with a stronger public education system is an ambitious vision, and one that will require both financial and human resources.

The silver lining is that COVID-19 has resulted in public recognition of schools’ essential caretaking role in society and parents’ gratitude for teachers, their skills, and their invaluable role in student well-being.

It is hard to imagine there will be another moment in history when the central role of schooling in the economic, social, and political prosperity and stability of nations is so obvious and well understood by the general population. The very fact that schools enable parents to work outside the home is hitting home to millions of families amid global school closures. Now is the time to chart a vision for how education can emerge stronger from this global crisis and help reduce education inequality.

Indeed, we believe that strong and inclusive public education systems are essential to the short- and long-term recovery of society and that there is an opportunity to leapfrog toward powered-up schools.

A powered-up school, one that well serves the educational needs of children and youth, is one that puts a strong public school at the center of the community and leverages the most effective partnerships to help learners grow and develop a broad range of competencies and skills. It would recognize and adapt to the learning that takes place beyond its walls, regularly assessing students’ skills and tailoring learning opportunities to meet students at their skill level. New allies in children’s learning would complement and assist teachers, and could support children’s healthy mental and physical development. It quite literally would be the school at the center of the community that powers student learning and development using every path possible (Figure 12.1).

While this vision is aspirational, it is by no means impractical. Schools at the center of a community ecosystem of learning and support are an idea whose time has come, and some of the emerging practices amid COVID-19, such as empowering parents to support their children’s education, should be sustained after the pandemic subsides.

It is hard to imagine there will be another moment in history when the central role of schooling in the economic, social, and political prosperity and stability of nations is so obvious and well understood by the general population.

The way forward

To achieve this vision, we propose five actions to seize the moment and transform education systems (focusing on pre-primary through secondary school) to better serve all children and youth, especially the most disadvantaged.

1. Leverage public schools and put them at the center of education systems given their essential role in equalizing opportunity across society

By having the mandate to serve all children and youth regardless of background, public schools in many countries can bring together individuals from diverse backgrounds and needs, providing the social benefit of allowing individuals to grow up with a set of common values and knowledge that can make communities more cohesive and unified. 7

Schools play a crucial role in fostering the skills individuals need to succeed in a rapidly changing labor market, 8 play a major role in equalizing opportunities for individuals of diverse backgrounds, and address a variety of social needs that serve communities, regions, and entire nations. While a few private schools can and do play these multiple roles, public education is the main conduit for doing so at scale and hence should be at the center of any effort to build back better.

2. Focus on the instructional core, the heart of the teaching and learning process

Using the instructional core—or focusing on the interactions among educators, learners, and educational materials to improve student learning 9 —can help identify what types of new strategies or innovations could become community-based supports in children’s learning journey. Indeed, even after only a few months of experimentation around the globe on keeping learning going amid a pandemic, some clear strategies have the potential, if continued, to contribute to a powered-up school, and many of them involve engaging learners, educators, and parents in new ways using some form of technology.

3. Deploy education technology to power up schools in a way that meets teaching and learning needs and prevent technology from becoming a costly distraction

After COVID-19, one thing is certain: School systems that are best prepared to use education technology effectively will be best positioned to continue offering quality education in the face of school closures.

Other recent research 10 by one of us finds that technology can help improve learning by supporting the crucial interactions in the instructional core through the following ways: (1) scaling up quality instruction (by, for example, prerecorded lessons of high-quality teaching); (2) facilitating differentiated instruction (through, for example, computer-adaptive learning or live one-on-one tutoring); (3) expanding opportunities for student practice; and (4) increasing student engagement (through, for example, videos and games).

4. Forge stronger, more trusting relationships between parents and teachers

When a respectful relationship among parents, teachers, families, and schools happens, children learn and thrive. This occurs by inviting families to be allies in children’s learning by using easy-to-understand information communicated through mechanisms that adapt to parents’ schedules and that provide parents with an active but feasible role. The nature of the invitation and the relationship is what is so essential to bringing parents on board.

COVID-19 is an opportunity for parents and families to gain insight into the skill that is involved in teaching and for teachers and schools to realize what powerful allies parents can be. Parents around the world are not interested in becoming their child’s teacher, but they are, based on several large-scale surveys, 11 asking to be engaged in a different, more active way in the future. One of the most important insights for supporting a powered-up school is challenging the mindset of those in the education sector who think that parents and families with the least opportunities are not capable or willing to help their children learn.

5. Embrace the principles of improvement science required to evaluate, course correct, document, and scale new approaches that can help power up schools over time

The speed and depth of change mean that it will be essential to take an iterative approach to learning what works, for whom, and under what enabling conditions. In other words, this is a moment to employ the principles of improvement science. 12 Traditional research methods will need to be complemented by real-time documentation, reflection, quick feedback loops, and course correction. Rapid sharing of early insights and testing of potential change ideas will need to come alongside the longer-term rigorous reviews.

Adapting the scaling strategy is especially challenging, requiring not only timely data, a thorough understanding of the context, and space for reflection, but also willingness and capacity to act on this learning and make changes accordingly.

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Emerging from this global pandemic with a stronger public education system is an ambitious vision, and one that will require both financial and human resources. But such a vision is essential, and that amid the myriad of decisions education leaders are making every day, it can guide the future. With the dire consequences of the pandemic hitting the most vulnerable young people the hardest, it is tempting to revert to a global education narrative that privileges access to school above all else. This, however, would be a mistake. A powered-up public school in every community is what the world’s children deserve, and indeed is possible if everyone can collectively work together to harness the opportunities presented by this crisis to truly leapfrog education forward.

• This essay is based on a longer paper titled “Beyond reopening schools: How education can emerge stronger than before COVID-19” by the same authors, which can be found here: https://www.brookings.edu/research/beyond-reopening-schools-how-education-can-emerge-stronger-than-before-covid-19/ .
• ”The Learning Generation: Investing in Education for a Changing World.” The International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity. https://report.educationcommission.org/report/ .
• Vegas, Emiliana. “School Closures, Government Responses, and Learning Inequality around the World during COVID-19.” Brookings Institution, April 14, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/research/school-closures-government-responses-and-learning-inequality-around-the-world-during-covid-19/.
• “U.S. Census Bureau Releases Household Pulse Survey Results.” United States Census Bureau, 2020, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/household-pulse-results.html .
• Moyer, Melinda Wenner. “Pods, Microschools and Tutors: Can Parents Solve the Education Crisis on Their Own?” The New York Times. January 22, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/parenting/school-pods-coronavirus.html.
• Samuels, Christina A., and Arianna Prothero. “Could the ‘Pandemic Pod’ Be a Lifeline for Parents or a Threat to Equity?” Education Week. August 18, 2020. https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/07/29/could-the-pandemic-pod-be-a-lifeline.html.
• Christakis, Erika. “Americans Have Given Up on Public Schools. That’s a Mistake.” The Atlantic. September 11, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-war-on-public-schools/537903/.
• Levin, Henry M. “Education as a Public and Private Good.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 6, no. 4 (1987): 628-41.
• David Cohen and Deborah Loewenberg Ball, who originated the idea of the instructional core, used the terms teachers, students, and content. The OECD’s initiative on “Innovative Learning Environments” later adapted the framework using the terms educators, learners, and resources to represent educational materials and added a new element of content to represent the choices around skills and competencies and how to assess them. Here we have pulled from elements that we like from both frameworks, using the term instructional core to describe the relationships between educators, learners, and content and added parents.
• Alejandro J. Ganimian, Emiliana Vegas, and Frederick M. Hess, “Realizing the promise: How can education technology improve learning for all?” Brookings Institution, September 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/essay/realizing-the-promise-how-can-education-technology-improve-learning-for-all/.
• “Parents 2020: COVID-19 Closures: A Redefining Moment for Students, Parents & Schools.” Heroes, Learning, 2020. https://r50gh2ss1ic2mww8s3uvjvq1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/LH_2020-Parent-Survey-Partner-1.pdf . 
• “The Six Core Principles of Improvement.” The Six Core Principles of Improvement. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. August 18, 2020. https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/our-ideas/six-core-principles-improvement/ . 

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Is There a Global Society?

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Jens Bartelson, Is There a Global Society?, International Political Sociology , Volume 3, Issue 1, March 2009, Pages 112–115, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-5687.2008.00066_3.x

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The concept of globality is today commonly used to describe a condition characterized by the existence of a single sociopolitical space on a planetary scale. Such a global realm is believed to have resulted from the gradual dissolution of boundaries brought about by intensified exchange and increased interconnectedness between territorially bounded and distinct societies. But while there is a broad agreement to the effect that it is necessary to posit a distinct global level of analysis in order to be able to explain and understand a wide range of phenomena which transcend the boundaries of individual states, the social ontology of this purportedly new domain remains largely unexplored. Arguably, unless we are able to make sociological sense of what goes on in this domain, the very notion of globality and all that goes with it will be of little analytical value to the social sciences (see for example Rosenberg 2005 ). In this context, one important question has recently been raised by Mathias Albert (2007) , who has asked “whether the tools of social theory―or, more specifically, theories of society―are applicable to the global realm.” Implicit in this question is that we need to be able to conceptualize the global in societal terms in order for other sociological concepts, like those of differentiation and rationalization, to become applicable in a theoretically fruitful way.

Yet the concept of society has proven difficult to use with reference to the global realm. As I shall suggest, the theoretical difficulties we encounter when we try to apply modern theories of society to the global realm are indicative of the extent to which our conceptions of human association have been nationalized , rather than of any limitations intrinsic to the global realm itself. As I would like to argue, as a consequence of conceptual nationalization, we ended up with a profoundly particularistic social ontology which has made it hard if not impossible to make coherent sense of human associations other than bounded ones. Hence also the constant but futile attempts to overcome the restrictions of this social ontology by means of domestic analogies. This contention will lead me to argue that if we want to be able to make sense of the concept of a global society, we will have to look beyond modern social theory for inspiration, by recovering those earlier universalistic notions of human association which largely have been forgotten by modern political and social theory. When dusted off, these conceptions might help us to conceptualize global society as a larger social whole, rather than as the sum total of individual human beings or particular societies. We would then be free to ask questions about how and why this global society has been differentiated into distinct and territorially bounded communities, as well as under what conditions this compartmentalization of mankind is likely to give way to higher degrees of functional integration. I shall start by a brief overview of some of the problems encountered by those who have tried to conceptualize global society, and then go on to suggest an alternative way to conceptualize global society that draws on earlier and boundless conceptions of human association.

The difficulties in coming to terms with the concept of global society have been especially evident within academic international relations. Most theories of international relations still habitually assume that their field of inquiry is delimited to the interaction between bounded political societies in a context defined by the absence of centralized authority. Given this basic understanding of the topic of international relations, a distinct global realm becomes hard to envisage other than perhaps as an epiphenomenon to interstate interaction and interdependence. As Beck (2006) has remarked, “the cosmopolitanization of reality appears as the enemy of international theory, for it seems to undermine the authority of the theory of the state, to abolish the political monopoly of the national state and international relations.” Hence, to the extent that the possibility of a global society has been taken seriously at all within international relations theory, it has been conceptualized as an end state of a set of processes which originate in the international system, rather than as a sui generis form of human association capable of existing prior to or independently of the international system of states ( Ruggie 2004 ; Sassen 2006 ).

At first glance, sociologists would seem to be better equipped to conceptualize the global in societal terms. Sociological concepts seem to have been less burdened with nationalist baggage than those of international relations, and hence easier to stretch to fit a condition in which social and political life is believed to be increasingly unbounded ( Wagner 2000 ; Inglis and Robertson 2008 ). This semantic plasticity is evident from some contemporary efforts to apply categories of sociological analysis to the global realm, while making traditional conceptions of society look increasingly incoherent and redundant in the process ( Urry 2000 ). Yet simultaneously, however, sociologists have found it difficult to argue that the global realm constitutes a society in its own right, since the global realm seems to lack precisely the traditional defining properties of societies and communities, such as a common culture or a common historical memory that could bestow such a society with a common identity. To the extent that historical sociologists are willing to speak of anything resembling a society on a world scale, it is widely believed to be an outcome of intercourse between territorially bounded societies ( Rosenberg 2006 ). Being an outcome of interaction within the international system, a global society would ultimately depend on a fragile global consciousness of its existence. As Martin Shaw (2000) has put it, global society is constituted by “a common consciousness of human society on a world scale.” Thus, many of those who have tried to argue that the global realm indeed constitutes a society have had to face conceptual difficulties stemming from their particularistic social ontology, according to which forms of human association have to be both bounded and homogeneous in order to qualify as societies in the first place. Consequently, the concept of society becomes hard to apply to the global realm without thereby stretching its meaning beyond the limits of intelligibility posed by modern social theory.

In my view, the main reason why we have ended up with such a particularistic social ontology is to be found in the nationalization that sociopolitical concepts have undergone during the last centuries. In this context, nationalization implies that the range of reference of sociopolitical concepts gradually was brought to coincide with the spatial boundaries of the modern state, and that their meaningful employment was equally restricted by the imagined necessity of such boundaries. In most instances, such nationalization of sociopolitical concepts took place well before a politicization and ideologization of the same concepts could take place in different national contexts. But before processes of conceptual nationalization started to gain momentum during the seventeenth century, the predominant way of understanding human association in Western political thought was by regarding the human species as one immanent and universal society, by virtue of its members sharing the essential capacities for forming social bonds. Societies of lesser scope were frequently regarded as instantiations of such an immanent society of all mankind, the enigmatic but apparent cultural differences between particular communities being explained with reference to an accidental geographical dispersion of different peoples to different places with different natural characteristics (see for example Headley 2002 ). All the way from the Stoics via Dante to Kant and Herder, the assumption of a universal and boundless society of all mankind constituted the default setting of much Western speculation on the origins and conditions of human associations, and also served as an important starting point for critiques of despotism, imperial expansion, and colonial exploitation (see for example, Muthu 2003 ). Thus, a universal society of all mankind was not thought to result from the transcendence of a plurality of particular communities, but rather thought to be always already present in the shape of a primordial social bond between human beings by virtue of their shared capacity for social intercourse. To many writers, this shared capacity for social intercourse and the concomitant propensity to form societies were thought to derive from the use of language and reason by members of the human species, not from the use of a specific language or from a specific principle of reason.

To many scholars, such universalistic theories of human community are of little but historical interest, since they lack any obvious relevance in a world of nation-states. And indeed, most of these theories are based upon assumptions that are hard to defend in secular or scientific terms. But they also make one very useful assumption about the nature of human association, by positing the existence of a larger social whole: a society of all mankind constitutes such a larger social whole simply by being something more than the sum total of its individual parts, whether these are individuals or particular communities. So within this view, the existence of human community is not dependent on things like shared cultural values or a common historical memory. This being so, since members share characteristics in common that supposedly are exclusive to the human species, and which exist independently of its individual members. While this conception of human community is unlikely to satisfy modern nationalists, it might contain the seed values of what we need in order to make sense of the global in societal terms. A global society thus could be said to exist, not as a consequence of anything resembling a common global culture or a common global memory―although those things might well be there if we bother to look beyond modern sociology and historiography for clues―but rather as a consequence of two things: the relatively even dispersion of human beings on a planetary scale and the capacities for intercourse entailed by human sociability. So instead of asking whether processes of globalization will take us from an international system of states into a boundless global society, we might rather ask why this global society was territorially differentiated into a system of states in the first place, how this particular differentiation has been legitimized by modern international relations theory and modern sociology to the point of being taken for granted by both, as well as under what conditions human intercourse on a planetary scale is likely to replace the compartmentalization of mankind with new forms of political community. Indeed, questions of differentiation become hard to pose at the global level in the absence of prior assumptions about the essential unity of mankind, and about the basic homogeneity of a global space. Otherwise, theories of differentiation will always beg the questions: what is being differentiated, and where does this differentiation take place? So to conclude in answer to Mathias Albert's question, I would like to suggest that we indeed can speak coherently of a global society, but only to the extent that we are willing to venture beyond modern theories of society, the latter which I take to be part of the problem rather than of the solution.

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ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Globalization.

Globalization is a term used to describe the increasing connectedness and interdependence of world cultures and economies.

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Globalization is a term used to describe how trade and technology have made the world into a more connected and interdependent place. Globalization also captures in its scope the economic and social changes that have come about as a result. It may be pictured as the threads of an immense spider web formed over millennia, with the number and reach of these threads increasing over time. People, money, material goods, ideas, and even disease and devastation have traveled these silken strands, and have done so in greater numbers and with greater speed than ever in the present age. When did globalization begin? The Silk Road, an ancient network of trade routes across China, Central Asia, and the Mediterranean used between 50 B.C.E. and 250 C.E., is perhaps the most well-known early example of exchanging ideas, products, and customs. As with future globalizing booms, new technologies played a key role in the Silk Road trade. Advances in metallurgy led to the creation of coins; advances in transportation led to the building of roads connecting the major empires of the day; and increased agricultural production meant more food could be trafficked between locales. Along with Chinese silk, Roman glass, and Arabian spices, ideas such as Buddhist beliefs and the secrets of paper-making also spread via these tendrils of trade. Unquestionably, these types of exchanges were accelerated in the Age of Exploration, when European explorers seeking new sea routes to the spices and silks of Asia bumped into the Americas instead. Again, technology played an important role in the maritime trade routes that flourished between old and newly discovered continents. New ship designs and the creation of the magnetic compass were key to the explorers’ successes. Trade and idea exchange now extended to a previously unconnected part of the world, where ships carrying plants, animals, and Spanish silver between the Old World and the New also carried Christian missionaries. The web of globalization continued to spin out through the Age of Revolution, when ideas about liberty , equality , and fraternity spread like fire from America to France to Latin America and beyond. It rode the waves of industrialization , colonization , and war through the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, powered by the invention of factories, railways, steamboats, cars, and planes. With the Information Age, globalization went into overdrive. Advances in computer and communications technology launched a new global era and redefined what it meant to be “connected.” Modern communications satellites meant the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo could be watched in the United States for the first time. The World Wide Web and the Internet allowed someone in Germany to read about a breaking news story in Bolivia in real time. Someone wishing to travel from Boston, Massachusetts, to London, England, could do so in hours rather than the week or more it would have taken a hundred years ago. This digital revolution massively impacted economies across the world as well: they became more information-based and more interdependent. In the modern era, economic success or failure at one focal point of the global web can be felt in every major world economy. The benefits and disadvantages of globalization are the subject of ongoing debate. The downside to globalization can be seen in the increased risk for the transmission of diseases like ebola or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), or in the kind of environmental harm that scientist Paul R. Furumo has studied in microcosm in palm oil plantations in the tropics. Globalization has of course led to great good, too. Richer nations now can—and do—come to the aid of poorer nations in crisis. Increasing diversity in many countries has meant more opportunity to learn about and celebrate other cultures. The sense that there is a global village, a worldwide “us,” has emerged.

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Promises and Pitfalls of Technology

Politics and privacy, private-sector influence and big tech, state competition and conflict, author biography, how is technology changing the world, and how should the world change technology.

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Josephine Wolff; How Is Technology Changing the World, and How Should the World Change Technology?. Global Perspectives 1 February 2021; 2 (1): 27353. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gp.2021.27353

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Technologies are becoming increasingly complicated and increasingly interconnected. Cars, airplanes, medical devices, financial transactions, and electricity systems all rely on more computer software than they ever have before, making them seem both harder to understand and, in some cases, harder to control. Government and corporate surveillance of individuals and information processing relies largely on digital technologies and artificial intelligence, and therefore involves less human-to-human contact than ever before and more opportunities for biases to be embedded and codified in our technological systems in ways we may not even be able to identify or recognize. Bioengineering advances are opening up new terrain for challenging philosophical, political, and economic questions regarding human-natural relations. Additionally, the management of these large and small devices and systems is increasingly done through the cloud, so that control over them is both very remote and removed from direct human or social control. The study of how to make technologies like artificial intelligence or the Internet of Things “explainable” has become its own area of research because it is so difficult to understand how they work or what is at fault when something goes wrong (Gunning and Aha 2019) .

This growing complexity makes it more difficult than ever—and more imperative than ever—for scholars to probe how technological advancements are altering life around the world in both positive and negative ways and what social, political, and legal tools are needed to help shape the development and design of technology in beneficial directions. This can seem like an impossible task in light of the rapid pace of technological change and the sense that its continued advancement is inevitable, but many countries around the world are only just beginning to take significant steps toward regulating computer technologies and are still in the process of radically rethinking the rules governing global data flows and exchange of technology across borders.

These are exciting times not just for technological development but also for technology policy—our technologies may be more advanced and complicated than ever but so, too, are our understandings of how they can best be leveraged, protected, and even constrained. The structures of technological systems as determined largely by government and institutional policies and those structures have tremendous implications for social organization and agency, ranging from open source, open systems that are highly distributed and decentralized, to those that are tightly controlled and closed, structured according to stricter and more hierarchical models. And just as our understanding of the governance of technology is developing in new and interesting ways, so, too, is our understanding of the social, cultural, environmental, and political dimensions of emerging technologies. We are realizing both the challenges and the importance of mapping out the full range of ways that technology is changing our society, what we want those changes to look like, and what tools we have to try to influence and guide those shifts.

Technology can be a source of tremendous optimism. It can help overcome some of the greatest challenges our society faces, including climate change, famine, and disease. For those who believe in the power of innovation and the promise of creative destruction to advance economic development and lead to better quality of life, technology is a vital economic driver (Schumpeter 1942) . But it can also be a tool of tremendous fear and oppression, embedding biases in automated decision-making processes and information-processing algorithms, exacerbating economic and social inequalities within and between countries to a staggering degree, or creating new weapons and avenues for attack unlike any we have had to face in the past. Scholars have even contended that the emergence of the term technology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries marked a shift from viewing individual pieces of machinery as a means to achieving political and social progress to the more dangerous, or hazardous, view that larger-scale, more complex technological systems were a semiautonomous form of progress in and of themselves (Marx 2010) . More recently, technologists have sharply criticized what they view as a wave of new Luddites, people intent on slowing the development of technology and turning back the clock on innovation as a means of mitigating the societal impacts of technological change (Marlowe 1970) .

At the heart of fights over new technologies and their resulting global changes are often two conflicting visions of technology: a fundamentally optimistic one that believes humans use it as a tool to achieve greater goals, and a fundamentally pessimistic one that holds that technological systems have reached a point beyond our control. Technology philosophers have argued that neither of these views is wholly accurate and that a purely optimistic or pessimistic view of technology is insufficient to capture the nuances and complexity of our relationship to technology (Oberdiek and Tiles 1995) . Understanding technology and how we can make better decisions about designing, deploying, and refining it requires capturing that nuance and complexity through in-depth analysis of the impacts of different technological advancements and the ways they have played out in all their complicated and controversial messiness across the world.

These impacts are often unpredictable as technologies are adopted in new contexts and come to be used in ways that sometimes diverge significantly from the use cases envisioned by their designers. The internet, designed to help transmit information between computer networks, became a crucial vehicle for commerce, introducing unexpected avenues for crime and financial fraud. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, designed to connect friends and families through sharing photographs and life updates, became focal points of election controversies and political influence. Cryptocurrencies, originally intended as a means of decentralized digital cash, have become a significant environmental hazard as more and more computing resources are devoted to mining these forms of virtual money. One of the crucial challenges in this area is therefore recognizing, documenting, and even anticipating some of these unexpected consequences and providing mechanisms to technologists for how to think through the impacts of their work, as well as possible other paths to different outcomes (Verbeek 2006) . And just as technological innovations can cause unexpected harm, they can also bring about extraordinary benefits—new vaccines and medicines to address global pandemics and save thousands of lives, new sources of energy that can drastically reduce emissions and help combat climate change, new modes of education that can reach people who would otherwise have no access to schooling. Regulating technology therefore requires a careful balance of mitigating risks without overly restricting potentially beneficial innovations.

Nations around the world have taken very different approaches to governing emerging technologies and have adopted a range of different technologies themselves in pursuit of more modern governance structures and processes (Braman 2009) . In Europe, the precautionary principle has guided much more anticipatory regulation aimed at addressing the risks presented by technologies even before they are fully realized. For instance, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation focuses on the responsibilities of data controllers and processors to provide individuals with access to their data and information about how that data is being used not just as a means of addressing existing security and privacy threats, such as data breaches, but also to protect against future developments and uses of that data for artificial intelligence and automated decision-making purposes. In Germany, Technische Überwachungsvereine, or TÜVs, perform regular tests and inspections of technological systems to assess and minimize risks over time, as the tech landscape evolves. In the United States, by contrast, there is much greater reliance on litigation and liability regimes to address safety and security failings after-the-fact. These different approaches reflect not just the different legal and regulatory mechanisms and philosophies of different nations but also the different ways those nations prioritize rapid development of the technology industry versus safety, security, and individual control. Typically, governance innovations move much more slowly than technological innovations, and regulations can lag years, or even decades, behind the technologies they aim to govern.

In addition to this varied set of national regulatory approaches, a variety of international and nongovernmental organizations also contribute to the process of developing standards, rules, and norms for new technologies, including the International Organization for Standardization­ and the International Telecommunication Union. These multilateral and NGO actors play an especially important role in trying to define appropriate boundaries for the use of new technologies by governments as instruments of control for the state.

At the same time that policymakers are under scrutiny both for their decisions about how to regulate technology as well as their decisions about how and when to adopt technologies like facial recognition themselves, technology firms and designers have also come under increasing criticism. Growing recognition that the design of technologies can have far-reaching social and political implications means that there is more pressure on technologists to take into consideration the consequences of their decisions early on in the design process (Vincenti 1993; Winner 1980) . The question of how technologists should incorporate these social dimensions into their design and development processes is an old one, and debate on these issues dates back to the 1970s, but it remains an urgent and often overlooked part of the puzzle because so many of the supposedly systematic mechanisms for assessing the impacts of new technologies in both the private and public sectors are primarily bureaucratic, symbolic processes rather than carrying any real weight or influence.

Technologists are often ill-equipped or unwilling to respond to the sorts of social problems that their creations have—often unwittingly—exacerbated, and instead point to governments and lawmakers to address those problems (Zuckerberg 2019) . But governments often have few incentives to engage in this area. This is because setting clear standards and rules for an ever-evolving technological landscape can be extremely challenging, because enforcement of those rules can be a significant undertaking requiring considerable expertise, and because the tech sector is a major source of jobs and revenue for many countries that may fear losing those benefits if they constrain companies too much. This indicates not just a need for clearer incentives and better policies for both private- and public-sector entities but also a need for new mechanisms whereby the technology development and design process can be influenced and assessed by people with a wider range of experiences and expertise. If we want technologies to be designed with an eye to their impacts, who is responsible for predicting, measuring, and mitigating those impacts throughout the design process? Involving policymakers in that process in a more meaningful way will also require training them to have the analytic and technical capacity to more fully engage with technologists and understand more fully the implications of their decisions.

At the same time that tech companies seem unwilling or unable to rein in their creations, many also fear they wield too much power, in some cases all but replacing governments and international organizations in their ability to make decisions that affect millions of people worldwide and control access to information, platforms, and audiences (Kilovaty 2020) . Regulators around the world have begun considering whether some of these companies have become so powerful that they violate the tenets of antitrust laws, but it can be difficult for governments to identify exactly what those violations are, especially in the context of an industry where the largest players often provide their customers with free services. And the platforms and services developed by tech companies are often wielded most powerfully and dangerously not directly by their private-sector creators and operators but instead by states themselves for widespread misinformation campaigns that serve political purposes (Nye 2018) .

Since the largest private entities in the tech sector operate in many countries, they are often better poised to implement global changes to the technological ecosystem than individual states or regulatory bodies, creating new challenges to existing governance structures and hierarchies. Just as it can be challenging to provide oversight for government use of technologies, so, too, oversight of the biggest tech companies, which have more resources, reach, and power than many nations, can prove to be a daunting task. The rise of network forms of organization and the growing gig economy have added to these challenges, making it even harder for regulators to fully address the breadth of these companies’ operations (Powell 1990) . The private-public partnerships that have emerged around energy, transportation, medical, and cyber technologies further complicate this picture, blurring the line between the public and private sectors and raising critical questions about the role of each in providing critical infrastructure, health care, and security. How can and should private tech companies operating in these different sectors be governed, and what types of influence do they exert over regulators? How feasible are different policy proposals aimed at technological innovation, and what potential unintended consequences might they have?

Conflict between countries has also spilled over significantly into the private sector in recent years, most notably in the case of tensions between the United States and China over which technologies developed in each country will be permitted by the other and which will be purchased by other customers, outside those two countries. Countries competing to develop the best technology is not a new phenomenon, but the current conflicts have major international ramifications and will influence the infrastructure that is installed and used around the world for years to come. Untangling the different factors that feed into these tussles as well as whom they benefit and whom they leave at a disadvantage is crucial for understanding how governments can most effectively foster technological innovation and invention domestically as well as the global consequences of those efforts. As much of the world is forced to choose between buying technology from the United States or from China, how should we understand the long-term impacts of those choices and the options available to people in countries without robust domestic tech industries? Does the global spread of technologies help fuel further innovation in countries with smaller tech markets, or does it reinforce the dominance of the states that are already most prominent in this sector? How can research universities maintain global collaborations and research communities in light of these national competitions, and what role does government research and development spending play in fostering innovation within its own borders and worldwide? How should intellectual property protections evolve to meet the demands of the technology industry, and how can those protections be enforced globally?

These conflicts between countries sometimes appear to challenge the feasibility of truly global technologies and networks that operate across all countries through standardized protocols and design features. Organizations like the International Organization for Standardization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and many others have tried to harmonize these policies and protocols across different countries for years, but have met with limited success when it comes to resolving the issues of greatest tension and disagreement among nations. For technology to operate in a global environment, there is a need for a much greater degree of coordination among countries and the development of common standards and norms, but governments continue to struggle to agree not just on those norms themselves but even the appropriate venue and processes for developing them. Without greater global cooperation, is it possible to maintain a global network like the internet or to promote the spread of new technologies around the world to address challenges of sustainability? What might help incentivize that cooperation moving forward, and what could new structures and process for governance of global technologies look like? Why has the tech industry’s self-regulation culture persisted? Do the same traditional drivers for public policy, such as politics of harmonization and path dependency in policy-making, still sufficiently explain policy outcomes in this space? As new technologies and their applications spread across the globe in uneven ways, how and when do they create forces of change from unexpected places?

These are some of the questions that we hope to address in the Technology and Global Change section through articles that tackle new dimensions of the global landscape of designing, developing, deploying, and assessing new technologies to address major challenges the world faces. Understanding these processes requires synthesizing knowledge from a range of different fields, including sociology, political science, economics, and history, as well as technical fields such as engineering, climate science, and computer science. A crucial part of understanding how technology has created global change and, in turn, how global changes have influenced the development of new technologies is understanding the technologies themselves in all their richness and complexity—how they work, the limits of what they can do, what they were designed to do, how they are actually used. Just as technologies themselves are becoming more complicated, so are their embeddings and relationships to the larger social, political, and legal contexts in which they exist. Scholars across all disciplines are encouraged to join us in untangling those complexities.

Josephine Wolff is an associate professor of cybersecurity policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Her book You’ll See This Message When It Is Too Late: The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches was published by MIT Press in 2018.

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Global Organizations, Essay Example

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The modern world experiences multiple challenges and changes in the context of globalization and overall integration that await every contemporary country. Despite the huge realm of cultural peculiarities and differences most countries have historically formed, they are now forced to tolerate each other and to learn to cooperate on a routine basis to achieve common goals, to promote progress and to enhance their position in the world map. The notion of global organizations is comparatively new, and they need to be considered from several points of view, which can be done with the application of the social science basics. For this reasons main questions related to the identification of global organizations and their functions in the modern world has become the focus of the present research.

It goes without saying that both types of sciences utilize a set of scientific methods to ensure accuracy and objectivity, but depending on the subject of research they almost always choose different paths for considering the data and testing their hypothesis. It is necessary not to forget that the social phenomena always contain an element of irrationality, the so-called human factor that allows making only approximate inferences, never being able to state something with ultimate accuracy to which natural sciences tend.

Global organizations are a significant element of the modern global community; as they cater for the needs of various groups of people that are not united by a common religion or national identity, it becomes interesting to understand the mechanisms that govern their activities and ensure their success. Thus, the present paper aims at answering three fundamental questions: What is a global organization? How does it work? What does it do? Identification of these basic questions represents the first stage of the present research – selecting and defining the problem or the issue. The conditions that cause the necessity of global organizations-related research have been identified, the modern conditions claiming the necessity thereof are described, thus it is now possible to proceed to the next stage – reviewing literature (Perry & Perry, 2009).

Identification of social research methods that will be utilized in the process of examining global organizations now need to be identified. Surveying will help with getting an understanding as to how many people are actually involved in helping their country with global organizations. Observation will help the researcher learn how to become a part in a global organization with further finding the key to understanding how global organizations work. Having and researching through existing data will allow a better knowledge of global organizations and their functions. Usage of the original scientific method would be the best way to learn what a global organization is. The steps of the scientific method are: defining a question; gathering information and resources; forming a hypothesis; performing an experiment and collecting data; analyzing the data; drawing a conclusion; publishing the results and retesting the experiment (Lafferty, 2002). However, the original scientific method will be slightly modified taking into consideration the specificity of the subject of research, as it will be seen further.

As it has already been said, the classical scientific method will be applied for the investigation of the present question – it is necessary to assume that the researcher does not know what a global organization is, thus starting to collect data from resources on the formulated question: What is a global organization? Some of the social science theories that can be helpful in researching Global Organizations are critical theory and phronetic social science. Researchers can use critical theory to examine and critique society and cultures that the Global Organizations represent. This will help give a better idea of what exactly is represented within the peoples and cultures of the global organizations countries.

A global organization is simply defined as a world organization where other countries participate in helping one another (The Free Dictionary, 2010). It can be described as a global alliance made up of many different countries. The one thing that all global organizations have in common is that they are working together to better the world. The significance of the question to this paper is to help give a better understanding of a global organization, its uses, what it works to present to the world and why we have global organizations all over the world. The question shows significance because it relates to different cultures and people around the world. It can help people understand what effects this question has on its society and the people of the society, therefore clear research findings are essential at this point to continue with the consideration of global organizations at deeper levels.

Going further to deal with the second question, namely the research of how global organizations work, it is possible to say that the approach of phronetic science is also highly appropriate for the research. However, as it has been already noted, observation and volunteering are the most suitable choices for the present issue as they will give the researcher first-hand information on the inner processes that occur in global organizations, which, in the long run, will enable him or her make a set of conclusions and create a generalized descriptive inference from research. However, observation is a non-experimental study, so it is not explanatory, which should be understood before the beginning of the study depending on the aims of the researcher. The researcher can also apply such scientific methods as case study (analyzing a structure of some global organization to define its components) that is an in-depth descriptive study that allows the researcher to get a proper understanding of a subject o phenomenon; however, it will not explain why global organizations work the way they do, i.e. case studies do not provide explanation as well.

The third question is: What do global organizations do? Global organizations help achieve global effectiveness by having different types of fund raisers or charity events to help raise money so that they can help make the environment better.  A way to get an understanding on what global organizations do is by research or volunteering, as a way to gain a first-hand experience. In case such research design is chosen, it will be possible to proceed to collecting and analyzing data to produce a set of highly credible results. An experiment could be conducted to see how much money a global research company makes within one fundraiser: initiating the program for fundraising and applying different sets of promotion tools the result will be arrived at. Case studies and naturalistic observation may also be highly relevant in terms of finding out the practical side of global organizations’ activities – by observing a couple of organizations closely for a certain period of time or searching through literature available on a particular organization the researcher may obtain all necessary information about what they do under different conditions.

Natural and physical sciences surely also have a word in the present study – the number of methods they traditionally use is as well applicable to examining global organizations, e.g. experimentation, correlation or naturalistic observation are usually utilized by natural sciences more than social ones. However, a significant aspect complicating such analysis is that global organizations are usually intangible objects, in contrast to the majority of physical phenomena studied empirically or by empirical tools that reflect their nature. For this reason mostly observational methods are chosen by social sciences, which is the main difference in the two discussed fields of scientific study on the whole. As one will see from the following analysis of three problems approached from the social science perspective, it is at times possible to apply natural sciences’ methods and sometimes the alternative is inappropriate.

One can consider the first question for proving the statement. Here the paths of social and natural sciences divide, and review of literature actually constitutes the present research. Since global organizations are too large to grasp by an experiment, or to make general conclusions on the basis of interviews, then the research design that will help answer the posed questions will be the qualitative theoretical research. It is rarely used in natural sciences alone because it usually supports the hypothesis that is also proven or denied in an experimental or observational way.

Forming a hypothesis is also irrelevant for the present research, in contrast to natural science research that surely includes an initial hypothesis that will be further denied or supported (Perry & Perry, 2009). The reason for this is that there is no aim to prove something in the present research. Instead, it aims at summarizing and reviewing the information about global organizations existing up to date and identifying their essence as well activities they perform. It is not stated whether they are beneficial or destructive for the modern reality or whether their functions are significant or not. Consequently, proving a hypothesis is not involved in the present research model. Literature review, i.e. deriving the information from existing sources, will be utilized in order to answer the main questions related to the discussed issue.

Dealing with the second question is also subject to some limitations from the point of view of natural sciences. To understand why this stage cannot be a subject of natural science research, one should consider a set of examples of establishing the mechanisms through which global organizations work. For instance, the Arab League is “an international organization of independent Arab states formed in 1945 to promote cultural and economic and military and political and social cooperation” (The Free Dictionary, 2010). Judging from its description, one can see that the Arab League is a locally formed organization that aims at responding to the challenges emerging in the Middle East and worldwide. The revelation of mechanisms through which it does it is impossible through only experimenting because the organization is too large, so even a series of experiments will not give a clear and precise answer to the question. Nonetheless, naturalistic observation is something both social and natural sciences rely on, so here an overlapping is possible.

Discussing the research on the third question, experimentation seems to be the alternative for both natural and social sciences. However, experimentation is perceived in different ways here – one can conduct a physical experiment to test natural laws, and can manipulate the variables that will be plain objects chosen. However, a researcher cannot manipulate a global organization or some events to which they respond (lack of education, famine or disasters). Here experimentation will be much more limited in its approach, though still possible. Volunteering is highly improbable in natural sciences because of the emphasis on non-intrusion and actually inability to intrude in natural processes. Here come the main differences in research as viewed from the social and physical perspective.

Summing up everything that has been said, it is possible to make a realm of decisions on the research design that can be chosen by the researcher. The fact that there are many global organizations catering for the needs of humanity and providing substantial services for particular groups of population is already obvious; however, the aim of the researcher is not to prove whether it really happens, but to find the inner mechanisms, policies and objectives they pursue. The described methods are also often met in natural and physical sciences despite the fact that social sciences are highly different from them and investigate social phenomena and objects according to different patterns. The unifying condition for physical, natural and social sciences is the scientific method that should lie within all of them, though with a certain number of deviations and variations. Thus, for example, the experimental method that is widely used by natural sciences by means of manipulating certain variables under certain conditions to investigate their effect on other variable is neither practical nor ethical in social sciences. The very essence of manipulating is not recognized and common in social sciences, so the most popular methods in social sciences still remain observation, case study and survey. Correlation can also be used for quantitative studies in social sciences to identify socio-demographic characteristics of a certain area or to explain the distribution of crime rates throughout a state etc. However, qualitative studies in social sciences can be approached from a limited number of viewpoints, which is clearly seen in the present study.

Consequently, it becomes possible to assume that social sciences must rely on physical sciences in order to help answer the question about global organizations. A combination of social and physical sciences’ methods will allow achieving much better and much more precise results, as it is seen from the analysis. For example, experimentation will be a good way for social and physical sciences to help research and get the answer to the question about global organization. Learning what a global organization does will be easily determined from the usage of the physical sciences, as they relate to researching and experimentation more than social sciences do (even though social sciences must be used at times in the experimentation).

Global Organization (2010). The Free Dictionary by Farlex . Retrieved April 20, 2010, from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/global+organization

Lafferty, K. (2002). Steps of the Scientific Method . Retrieved April 20, 2010, from http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_scientific _method.shtml

Perry, J.A., & Perry, E.K. (2009). Contemporary Society: An Introduction to Social Science (12th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc.

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Essay on Global Warming

• Updated on  
• Apr 27, 2024

Being able to write an essay is an integral part of mastering any language. Essays form an integral part of many academic and scholastic exams like the SAT , and UPSC amongst many others. It is a crucial evaluative part of English proficiency tests as well like IELTS , TOEFL , etc. Major essays are meant to emphasize public issues of concern that can have significant consequences on the world. To understand the concept of Global Warming and its causes and effects, we must first examine the many factors that influence the planet’s temperature and what this implies for the world’s future. Here’s an unbiased look at the essay on Global Warming and other essential related topics.

Short Essay on Global Warming and Climate Change?

Since the industrial and scientific revolutions, Earth’s resources have been gradually depleted. Furthermore, the start of the world’s population’s exponential expansion is particularly hard on the environment. Simply put, as the population’s need for consumption grows, so does the use of natural resources , as well as the waste generated by that consumption.

Climate change has been one of the most significant long-term consequences of this. Climate change is more than just the rise or fall of global temperatures; it also affects rain cycles, wind patterns, cyclone frequencies, sea levels, and other factors. It has an impact on all major life groupings on the planet.

Also Read: World Population Day

What is Global Warming?

Global warming is the unusually rapid increase in Earth’s average surface temperature over the past century, primarily due to the greenhouse gases released by people burning fossil fuels . The greenhouse gases consist of methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, carbon dioxide, water vapour, and chlorofluorocarbons. The weather prediction has been becoming more complex with every passing year, with seasons more indistinguishable, and the general temperatures hotter.

The number of hurricanes, cyclones, droughts, floods, etc., has risen steadily since the onset of the 21st century. The supervillain behind all these changes is Global Warming. The name is quite self-explanatory; it means the rise in the temperature of the Earth.

Also Read: What is a Natural Disaster?

What are the Causes of Global Warming?

According to recent studies, many scientists believe the following are the primary four causes of global warming:

• Deforestation 
• Greenhouse emissions
• Carbon emissions per capita

Extreme global warming is causing natural disasters , which can be seen all around us. One of the causes of global warming is the extreme release of greenhouse gases that become trapped on the earth’s surface, causing the temperature to rise. Similarly, volcanoes contribute to global warming by spewing excessive CO2 into the atmosphere.

The increase in population is one of the major causes of Global Warming. This increase in population also leads to increased air pollution . Automobiles emit a lot of CO2, which remains in the atmosphere. This increase in population is also causing deforestation, which contributes to global warming.

The earth’s surface emits energy into the atmosphere in the form of heat, keeping the balance with the incoming energy. Global warming depletes the ozone layer, bringing about the end of the world. There is a clear indication that increased global warming will result in the extinction of all life on Earth’s surface.

Also Read: Land, Soil, Water, Natural Vegetation, and Wildlife Resources

Solutions for Global Warming

Of course, industries and multinational conglomerates emit more carbon than the average citizen. Nonetheless, activism and community effort are the only viable ways to slow the worsening effects of global warming. Furthermore, at the state or government level, world leaders must develop concrete plans and step-by-step programmes to ensure that no further harm is done to the environment in general.

Although we are almost too late to slow the rate of global warming, finding the right solution is critical. Everyone, from individuals to governments, must work together to find a solution to Global Warming. Some of the factors to consider are pollution control, population growth, and the use of natural resources.

One very important contribution you can make is to reduce your use of plastic. Plastic is the primary cause of global warming, and recycling it takes years. Another factor to consider is deforestation, which will aid in the control of global warming. More tree planting should be encouraged to green the environment. Certain rules should also govern industrialization. Building industries in green zones that affect plants and species should be prohibited.

Also Read: Essay on Pollution

Effects of Global Warming

Global warming is a real problem that many people want to disprove to gain political advantage. However, as global citizens, we must ensure that only the truth is presented in the media.

This decade has seen a significant impact from global warming. The two most common phenomena observed are glacier retreat and arctic shrinkage. Glaciers are rapidly melting. These are clear manifestations of climate change.

Another significant effect of global warming is the rise in sea level. Flooding is occurring in low-lying areas as a result of sea-level rise. Many countries have experienced extreme weather conditions. Every year, we have unusually heavy rain, extreme heat and cold, wildfires, and other natural disasters.

Similarly, as global warming continues, marine life is being severely impacted. This is causing the extinction of marine species as well as other problems. Furthermore, changes are expected in coral reefs, which will face extinction in the coming years. These effects will intensify in the coming years, effectively halting species expansion. Furthermore, humans will eventually feel the negative effects of Global Warming.

Also Read: Concept of Sustainable Development

Sample Essays on Global Warming

Here are some sample essays on Global Warming:

Essay on Global Warming Paragraph in 100 – 150 words

Global Warming is caused by the increase of carbon dioxide levels in the earth’s atmosphere and is a result of human activities that have been causing harm to our environment for the past few centuries now. Global Warming is something that can’t be ignored and steps have to be taken to tackle the situation globally. The average temperature is constantly rising by 1.5 degrees Celsius over the last few years.

The best method to prevent future damage to the earth, cutting down more forests should be banned and Afforestation should be encouraged. Start by planting trees near your homes and offices, participate in events, and teach the importance of planting trees. It is impossible to undo the damage but it is possible to stop further harm.

Also Read: Social Forestry

Essay on Global Warming in 250 Words

Over a long period, it is observed that the temperature of the earth is increasing. This affected wildlife, animals, humans, and every living organism on earth. Glaciers have been melting, and many countries have started water shortages, flooding, and erosion and all this is because of global warming. 

No one can be blamed for global warming except for humans. Human activities such as gases released from power plants, transportation, and deforestation have increased gases such as carbon dioxide, CFCs, and other pollutants in the earth’s atmosphere.                                              The main question is how can we control the current situation and build a better world for future generations. It starts with little steps by every individual. 

Start using cloth bags made from sustainable materials for all shopping purposes, instead of using high-watt lights use energy-efficient bulbs, switch off the electricity, don’t waste water, abolish deforestation and encourage planting more trees. Shift the use of energy from petroleum or other fossil fuels to wind and solar energy. Instead of throwing out the old clothes donate them to someone so that it is recycled. 

Donate old books, don’t waste paper.  Above all, spread awareness about global warming. Every little thing a person does towards saving the earth will contribute in big or small amounts. We must learn that 1% effort is better than no effort. Pledge to take care of Mother Nature and speak up about global warming.

Also Read: Types of Water Pollution

Essay on Global Warming in 500 Words

Global warming isn’t a prediction, it is happening! A person denying it or unaware of it is in the most simple terms complicit. Do we have another planet to live on? Unfortunately, we have been bestowed with this one planet only that can sustain life yet over the years we have turned a blind eye to the plight it is in. Global warming is not an abstract concept but a global phenomenon occurring ever so slowly even at this moment. Global Warming is a phenomenon that is occurring every minute resulting in a gradual increase in the Earth’s overall climate. Brought about by greenhouse gases that trap the solar radiation in the atmosphere, global warming can change the entire map of the earth, displacing areas, flooding many countries, and destroying multiple lifeforms. Extreme weather is a direct consequence of global warming but it is not an exhaustive consequence. There are virtually limitless effects of global warming which are all harmful to life on earth. The sea level is increasing by 0.12 inches per year worldwide. This is happening because of the melting of polar ice caps because of global warming. This has increased the frequency of floods in many lowland areas and has caused damage to coral reefs. The Arctic is one of the worst-hit areas affected by global warming. Air quality has been adversely affected and the acidity of the seawater has also increased causing severe damage to marine life forms. Severe natural disasters are brought about by global warming which has had dire effects on life and property. As long as mankind produces greenhouse gases, global warming will continue to accelerate. The consequences are felt at a much smaller scale which will increase to become drastic shortly. The power to save the day lies in the hands of humans, the need is to seize the day. Energy consumption should be reduced on an individual basis. Fuel-efficient cars and other electronics should be encouraged to reduce the wastage of energy sources. This will also improve air quality and reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Global warming is an evil that can only be defeated when fought together. It is better late than never. If we all take steps today, we will have a much brighter future tomorrow. Global warming is the bane of our existence and various policies have come up worldwide to fight it but that is not enough. The actual difference is made when we work at an individual level to fight it. Understanding its import now is crucial before it becomes an irrevocable mistake. Exterminating global warming is of utmost importance and each one of us is as responsible for it as the next.  

Also Read: Essay on Library: 100, 200 and 250 Words

Essay on Global Warming UPSC

Always hear about global warming everywhere, but do we know what it is? The evil of the worst form, global warming is a phenomenon that can affect life more fatally. Global warming refers to the increase in the earth’s temperature as a result of various human activities. The planet is gradually getting hotter and threatening the existence of lifeforms on it. Despite being relentlessly studied and researched, global warming for the majority of the population remains an abstract concept of science. It is this concept that over the years has culminated in making global warming a stark reality and not a concept covered in books. Global warming is not caused by one sole reason that can be curbed. Multifarious factors cause global warming most of which are a part of an individual’s daily existence. Burning of fuels for cooking, in vehicles, and for other conventional uses, a large amount of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, and methane amongst many others is produced which accelerates global warming. Rampant deforestation also results in global warming as lesser green cover results in an increased presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which is a greenhouse gas.  Finding a solution to global warming is of immediate importance. Global warming is a phenomenon that has to be fought unitedly. Planting more trees can be the first step that can be taken toward warding off the severe consequences of global warming. Increasing the green cover will result in regulating the carbon cycle. There should be a shift from using nonrenewable energy to renewable energy such as wind or solar energy which causes less pollution and thereby hinder the acceleration of global warming. Reducing energy needs at an individual level and not wasting energy in any form is the most important step to be taken against global warming. The warning bells are tolling to awaken us from the deep slumber of complacency we have slipped into. Humans can fight against nature and it is high time we acknowledged that. With all our scientific progress and technological inventions, fighting off the negative effects of global warming is implausible. We have to remember that we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors but borrow it from our future generations and the responsibility lies on our shoulders to bequeath them a healthy planet for life to exist. 

Also Read: Essay on Disaster Management

Climate Change and Global Warming Essay

Global Warming and Climate Change are two sides of the same coin. Both are interrelated with each other and are two issues of major concern worldwide. Greenhouse gases released such as carbon dioxide, CFCs, and other pollutants in the earth’s atmosphere cause Global Warming which leads to climate change. Black holes have started to form in the ozone layer that protects the earth from harmful ultraviolet rays. 

Human activities have created climate change and global warming. Industrial waste and fumes are the major contributors to global warming. 

Another factor affecting is the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and also one of the reasons for climate change.  Global warming has resulted in shrinking mountain glaciers in Antarctica, Greenland, and the Arctic and causing climate change. Switching from the use of fossil fuels to energy sources like wind and solar. 

When buying any electronic appliance buy the best quality with energy savings stars. Don’t waste water and encourage rainwater harvesting in your community. 

Also Read: Essay on Air Pollution

Tips to Write an Essay

Writing an effective essay needs skills that few people possess and even fewer know how to implement. While writing an essay can be an assiduous task that can be unnerving at times, some key pointers can be inculcated to draft a successful essay. These involve focusing on the structure of the essay, planning it out well, and emphasizing crucial details.

Mentioned below are some pointers that can help you write better structure and more thoughtful essays that will get across to your readers:

• Prepare an outline for the essay to ensure continuity and relevance and no break in the structure of the essay
• Decide on a thesis statement that will form the basis of your essay. It will be the point of your essay and help readers understand your contention
• Follow the structure of an introduction, a detailed body followed by a conclusion so that the readers can comprehend the essay in a particular manner without any dissonance.
• Make your beginning catchy and include solutions in your conclusion to make the essay insightful and lucrative to read
• Reread before putting it out and add your flair to the essay to make it more personal and thereby unique and intriguing for readers  

Also Read: I Love My India Essay: 100 and 500+ Words in English for School Students

Ans. Both natural and man-made factors contribute to global warming. The natural one also contains methane gas, volcanic eruptions, and greenhouse gases. Deforestation, mining, livestock raising, burning fossil fuels, and other man-made causes are next.

Ans. The government and the general public can work together to stop global warming. Trees must be planted more often, and deforestation must be prohibited. Auto usage needs to be curbed, and recycling needs to be promoted.

Ans. Switching to renewable energy sources , adopting sustainable farming, transportation, and energy methods, and conserving water and other natural resources.

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Digvijay Singh

Having 2+ years of experience in educational content writing, withholding a Bachelor's in Physical Education and Sports Science and a strong interest in writing educational content for students enrolled in domestic and foreign study abroad programmes. I believe in offering a distinct viewpoint to the table, to help students deal with the complexities of both domestic and foreign educational systems. Through engaging storytelling and insightful analysis, I aim to inspire my readers to embark on their educational journeys, whether abroad or at home, and to make the most of every learning opportunity that comes their way.

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This was really a good essay on global warming… There has been used many unic words..and I really liked it!!!Seriously I had been looking for a essay about Global warming just like this…

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It is not good , to have global warming in our earth .So we all have to afforestation program on all the world.

thank you so much

Very educative , helpful and it is really going to strength my English knowledge to structure my essay in future

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Global warming is the increase in 𝓽𝓱𝓮 ᴀᴠᴇʀᴀɢᴇ ᴛᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴀᴛᴜʀᴇs ᴏғ ᴇᴀʀᴛʜ🌎 ᴀᴛᴍᴏsᴘʜᴇʀᴇ

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• Essay Database >
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• Essay on Globalization

Good Example Of Essay On Theories Of Global Society

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Globalization , Marketing , Africa , Economics , Countries , Development , Market , World

Words: 1100

Published: 03/05/2020

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The concept of globalization is one of the most influential factors in the study of various factors influencing our lives today. Globalization is marked by integration of markets and finance, and the triumph of free market over protectionism as well as creation of a global culture by the forces of technology (Imade, 120) The general ramification of globalization has been positive in the industrial capitals of the world in terms of creating jobs and opening up export oriented markets in Asia and Latin America. However, in developing worlds like Africa, globalization has not generated economic development. Even with the liberalization of African markets at the beginning of 1990s, African countries did not experience economic growth. Instead, the number of people living in poverty in the continent increased (Cheru, 44) Questions have been asked whether globalization is good for Africa because of its failure to stimulate development. Is the disappointment of globalization in Africa a result of the implementation of the idea, or it is a function of reckless policies on the part of African governments? Either way, there is a general consensus that African development would be good for the whole world, and that globalization is necessary to tackle the challenges of the 21st century. This paper makes a case that Africa cannot escape integration into the international political economy. However, Africa can avoid the side effects of unchecked globalization through regional integration within the continent. This paper will make a case of the effects of globalization in the trading sector with trade involving the African continent being on the spotlight. A plethora of definitions of globalization has resulted in ambiguity in the way the term is conceptualized. While there is a general consensus that globalization is the undisputed economic and political phenomena that is shaping modern international political economy, scholars debate on how globalization is defined with regards to different variables that affect international economics. Even though some scholars and policy makers such as Aryeetey Earnest and Allasane Outara argue that globalization is capable of creating a universal win-win situation for everyone, others such as George Ritzer argue that globalization generates an imbalance in the allocation of global resources and development across the globe. Also disputed are the roles of the states in the new world order and the relevance of states’ sovereignty. For the purpose of this paper, globalization is “a reduction of political barriers between national economies resulting in a change of the state and the practice of sovereignty such that no particular entity can operate on its own. This technology enabled acceleration produces a new complexity in vulnerability that has cultural and social implications and requires adaptation across all jurisdictions (United Nations, 132) According to Allassane Outara (now President of Ivory Coast) in his keynote speech to the IMF in 1997 titled “The Challenges of Globalization in Africa,” “globalization of the world economy is the integration of economics throughout the world through trade, financial flows, the exchange of technology and information, and the movement of people.” Outara’s premise is that economic success in the modern day is a function of market perception and economic policy; not resource endowment or geographical location, as it used to be in the past. In his view, globalization is “not a zero sum game- it is not necessary for some countries to lose in order that others may gain.” However, Outara warns that for countries to realize the benefits of globalization there would be a need to make use of the available opportunities (Cheru 44). Another proponent of globalization is Aryeetey Earnest who reasons that “globalization is a two way street, and there should be mutual gains for countries in this process.” She makes a claim that globalization creates diversity in economies that is healthy for economic development in small countries. Also, globalization improves risk-reward returns stimulate development on the part of investing countries (Imade 22) The thoughts provided on the definition lies in the same view as I had thought about the same idea of globalization. In relevance to Africa and globalization, the scholars agree that Africa has yet to realize full benefits of globalization due to its limited integration into the global market. The idea of “detteritorialization” as argued by Scholte does not befit the continent of Africa. Also, Africa’s limited participation on the global market has raised questions on the applicability of the theory of free movement of capital across the globe. George Ritzer supports this claim when he writes “globalization is an epoch of increased openness and “simultaneously an era of growing restrictions on movement. Borders of course are major points at which movement is blocked (Ritzer, 99) Moreover, Ritzer makes the argument that “the idea that globalization hops, rather than flows, at least in some parts of the world (such as Africa, implies that some areas are strongly often positively, affected, others are not. I believe the influence of globalization is felt in every individual’s life. As a consumer of goods from different parts of the world, I have been able to integrate my other global enabled innovations to create a well established trading environment for flourishing global trading among different members of the various societies. This claim and realization makes me a member of the global society in which all the playing partners are involved. Through the exchange of the resources involved in the world market, believe I have been an active participating partner in the global society. Overall, it should be understood that regional integration and globalization resulting to global integration are complimentary to one another. While developing countries aspire to integrate into the world market, these countries will need regional integration to benefit from globalization. However, regional integration should not be based on protectionist strategies that exclude external markets. Instead, developing worlds should use regional integration to position itself to benefit in the global economy. I am sure that global society is a reality and useful in the current development of our societies.

Lucky O. Imade, The Two Faces of Globalization: Impoverishment or Prosperity? Globalization, 2003 (Theoretical perspectives on Globalization) Caren Norberg and Fantu Cheru, Can Globalization Work for Africa?, The Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, PhD, Research Directors 2012. George Ritzer, Globalization: A Basic Text (West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & sons LTD, 2010)

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