Jerry Mander: Technologies of Globalization - Essay Example

Journal Entry s Today, globalization as the dominant world order is being contested at various levels and in several ways by many movements which cannot be reduced to a simple ‘anti-globalization’ movement. Since the Industrial Revolution, economic globalization entails arguably the most crucial redesign of the earth’s economic and political arrangements. However, in spite of the global reordering, the elected officials, learning institutions, and the mass media have not made a convincing effort to explain its root philosophies or outline what is being formulated.

A political debate has been generated with regard to the blind rush towards a single economy, its effects for the democracy, well being of the human population, jobs, and cultural diversity, as well as the natural world that sustains us. This means that its impacts will be huge and irreversible even though globalization itself is not predictable.Business schools across the globe have long that globalization is a good thing. However, they are now discovering that the issue is more complicated than they realized.

In this regard, books such as The Case Against the Global Economy: And for a Turn Towards Localization by Mander are being included as ‘required reading’ in international affairs because they address both sides of the issue. The book assists to clarify the form of what is termed as a global economy and demonstrate the manner in which it is probable to influence our lives. The book also suggests that the process is supposed to be brought to a stop as quickly as possible and reversed. Proceeding further, 24 leading cultural, agricultural, economic, and environmental authorities, drawn from all over the world, are of the opinion that free trade as well as economic globalization are resulting in exactly the opposite outcomes to those promised.

From a comprehensive analysis of the new global economy, its structures, and socio-ecological effects, the book demonstrates the manner in which it is undermining our security, freedom, and well-being, and it is destructive to the planet. Globalization has resulted in the spreading disintegration of the social order and increase in landlessness, poverty, violence, homelessness, alienation, and deep within the hearts of the of most people, extreme anxiety about the future. Equally important, the aforementioned practices have made people to nearly breaking down the natural world.

This is evidenced by various symptoms, including massive species loss, rapid climate change, depletion of the ozone layer, and near maximum levels of soil, air, and water pollution. However, the good news is that it is not too late to change the course. The solutions to globalization lie in the opposite direction: localization. The goal of localization is not to eliminate trade, but encourages changes which would diversify and boost economies at both national and community levels. There are various ways of relocalization as there to globalization.

First, the agricultural subsidies are supposed to favor small scale farmers, reducing the rate of urbanization, banking with building societies and local banks, markets to be promoted instead of supermarkets, smaller clinics in place of regional and international hospitals, and developing nations to diversify their economies and attempt to meet their own needs other than orienting almost everything towards exports. In summary, Mander presents a persuasive and passionate case for the need to turn around the path, towards a revitalized economy, ecological health, and local self-sufficiency, and away from globalization.

The problems we are facing today will eventually be solved by utilizing local resources, under the guidance of local communities reflecting local cultures and traditions within nature’s limits, which is a more successful direction rather than the currently promoted, universally centralized, clearly utopian, expansionist model.ReferencesMander, J. (2014). The Case Against the Global Economy: And for a Turn Towards Localization. New York: Taylor & Francis.