Сборник материалов международной научной конференции студентов, магистрантов, аспирантов

А.О. Шихова, В.О. Богачук

Республика Беларусь, Брест, БрГУ имени А.С. Пушкина

Научный руководитель – Л.М. Калилец

IMPACT OF GLOBALIZATION ON OUR LIVES

Today’s world is changing rapidly because people want it to be better for them. At the same time the opinion of a single person does not play a big role nowadays. Very often we have to accept different processes which take place on the Earth even if we don’t like them because the majority of people want them to be. There are no changes which are good for everyone. One of the most arguable processes is globalization. At a glance, the globalization can solve all our economic and social problems at a blow. As a matter of fact, globalization hurts some people. “Globalization” is the sort of word where everyone is expected to know what it means, but where few people could offer a clear definition.

Globalization is a controversial issue for business and governments throughout the world. We recognize globalization mainly through its effects. It's a bit like electricity – we cannot see it, but we certainly observe what it does. So how can we explain what globalization is? There are lots of its definitions. For some people globalization is associated with erasing of boarders between countries, simplifying and speedup of making bargains. For others it’s creating, development and spreading of unified culture and values. Generalizing different opinions we can note that globalization is a condition when the entire world functions as a single system and each country makes own and special contribution into its work.

We think that globalization is an extremely complex web of many things and like any other process it has its positive and negative sides.

Globalization can be described as a process by which people of the world are unified into a single society and function together. This process is a combination of economic, technological, sociocultural and political forces. It’s a movement of people, goods, capital and ideas due to increased economic integration.

Globalization is a controversial issue mainly because different groups interpret it in different ways. For its opponents globalization is a threatening word. It prompts visions of large multinationals dominating the world in pursuit of ever-higher profits. Many pressure groups fear that globalization threatens the environment as well as national cultures – they predict that it will make rich nations richer and developing countries even poorer than they are. But its supporters have another point of view. They believe that increasing and freer trade between nations will offer prosperity and economic growth for all countries and businesses. Of course it’s impossible to define uniquely whether globalization is good or bad. It has lots of supporters and opponents. Let’s have a look at the influence of this process on different aspects of modern life and try to note its positive and negative sides. So globalization is likely to be a hot potato for the twenty-first century. As far as the benefits are concerned it is possible to name the next statements:

- an opportunity to get acquainted with cultures of different nations;

- a variety of choice for consumers: when they can buy in their local stores and supermarkets not only home-produced goods but also foreign ones;

- transnational corporations create additional work places for local people, at the same time it is convenient for these large corporations as well: they may locate the labour-intensive part of their production process in countries with a relative abundance of labour in order to minimize their costs;

- another point is risk-sharing. It’s more reasonable to invest money not in one company but to create an international company with great number of subsidiaries in various countries, so it won’t have so serious consequences if one of them does not stand cut-throat competition;

- this cut-throat competition in the local markets between domestic and foreign producers leads to production of high-quality goods.

The disadvantages of globalization are:

- pollution of the environment (and there one peculiarity should be admitted - developed countries try to locate their harmful for the environment factories and works not in their own countries but in developing countries);

- globalization destroys cultural identity, for example the Europeans usually try to impose their customs and traditions on Asian people;

- multinational corporations prefer to use cheap labour-force of developing countries for instance in Asia. And at the same time they provide their workers with bad and sometimes even awful working conditions;

- it’s difficult for domestic producers to compete with multinational corporations especially if it’s an infant industry.

The last but not least is that we don't actually know to what globalization can lead, we don’t realize its consequences.

But globalization means competition as well. There are a lot of people who want to achieve the same aims as we want. Unfortunately, the number of places under the sun is limited. This fact means that it may be difficult even for a good specialist to find the work he or she likes. As a result anti-globalists try to struggle against globalization in forms of demonstrations and rallies.

For example in November 1999 a collection of 50,000 environmentalists, students, anarchists and ordinary people gathered in Seattle, USA, to protest against a meeting there of the WTO. The demonstration began peacefully, but by the end of the day protestors had smashed shop windows and destroyed property; as a result the police fired plastic bullets and gas into the crowd.

It should be said that American companies, such as McDonald’s, GAP and Starbucks, are often become targets for violence and vandalism. In 1999 Jose Bove, a French farmer, became a national hero when he demolished a new McDonald’s as a protest against the standardization of food, the impact of McDonald’s on local business and the high level of US taxes on imported European food.

The consequence of globalization is the appearance of a flock of different international organizations which try to collaterally solve economical, political, and ethical and many other problems.

So, globalization is very ambivalent process. It makes our life much more interesting and comfortable. Thanks to the Internet we are so close to our relatives as never before. We can get any information we need. We can stay in any place we want. On the other hand, if we rely on the advantages on globalization too much, there are several negative aspects of this process.

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В статье раскрываются проблемы, связанные с глобализацией и её влиянием на отношение между странами. Для некоторых людей глобализация – это стирание границ между странами, упрощение и ускорение осуществления деловых контактов, для других – это унифицированная культура и потеря личностных ценностей.