WEEK 12: Chapter 21: Globization, 1970-2000 :

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We began this course by looking at the ways in which the world was brought closer together. Over the last five hundred years religious, scientific, industrial, political and soical revolutions have shaped our contemporary world. Our "Third Rock from the Sun" seems to be in the grip of another revolution. In 1966 C. P. Snow wrote:

we are amidst the biggest technological revolution men have known, far more intimate in the tone of our daily lives and or course far quicker than the agricultural transformation in Neolithic times, or the early industrial revolution ....

More and more the entire globe is becoming a part of an ever-growing technological web. As we approach the next millenium we seem to be faced with global concerns ranging from El Nino to chemical warfare to cloning to ozone layer depletion. Space satellites can pin-point a car's license plate, email zips across electronic wires, rock stars have their songs played on radios and DVDs from Japan to Argentina to Serbia. Every day we are drawn closer together through quicker, faster, cheaper transportation. Ideas are exchanged, weighed and accepted or jettisoned with increasing speed.

This week we will see that by the 1970s the three-world system was brought under increased and intense strain. By 2000, the Second World had collapsed and the Third World had splintered. Globalization, a new design of power, increasingly shaped all societies. While not entirely new, the increased movements of peoples, capital, goods, and ideas across national borers in the last decade of the 20th century has clearly opened a new era in history. These forces have replaced large political empires as main driving force of global integration. To many this globalization is an Americanization. Although the United States has championed a number of these changes and has emerged as the most influential society, America itself is being transformed by the same forces of globalization. The nation-states are struggling to retain some sense of nationhood in face of emerging or resurging local, regional or even transnational identities. Globalization has not eliminated the disparities of wealth resources or education. If anything the process has heightened this gap.

Yet the challenges we face are not new old but older concerns re-formatted, re-packaged. Humanity still has the power and ability to creat eor destory. Only the scope of these actions has dramatically changed in the last quarter of the second millenium. As we seek answers to questions to help deal withour present and future concerns let us hope that we have learned from the past

Click on your assignments below:

1. Reading assignments.

2. Interpretation of Images.

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