Behind Closed Doors: Economic Globalization and Its Making

Essay from the year 2007 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Globalization, Political Economics, grade: 1.0, University of Southampton (School of Humanities), course: Problematising the National, language: English, abstract: What is globalization? Or who is globalization? Is it prudent to make a bargain at ones local H&M branch when buying a shirt as cheap as box of chocolates or does this ostensibly casual snip make oneself guilty of supporting a modern form of slavery taking place somewhere in the developing world? The term globalization creates many questions and provides little answers. For a great majority of the world population globalization in all its complexity and impenetrability is nothing more than a modern myth, a phenomenon that is at the same time inevitable and unchangeable in its nature because it does not necessarily require democratic vote. Its design promotes the assumption that there is nothing anyone can do to change the current globalization process or to intervene in the implementation of economic policies created by the leading international financial institutions. To accept this inevitability like many governments, academics and mass media do means that no resistance is possible. And indeed a growing passivity towards this new form of global governance has emerged, its result being a ¿demonized¿ globalization that occurs to only some extent politically restricted, and, surprisingly, without major civil interference. Nevertheless, taking a closer look at the forming and structure of the globalization process allows a clearer understanding of its agents, its forms of delivery and its financial and social consequences for the developed as well as the undeveloped nations.