BYE!

Well guys it’s time to say goodbye, I suffer a lot for this blog because i had to post all days and sometimes i need to make time to create a post.. L but for this partial It’s all. Have a good end of partial bye! XOXO.

Pros and cons

 

People around the globe are more connected to each other then ever before. Information and money flow more quickly than ever. Goods and services produced in one part of the world are increasingly available in all parts of the world. International travel is more frequent and international communication is commonplace. Globalization is an economic tidal wave that is sweeping over the world. It can’t be stopped, and there will be winners and losers.

 

Support and criticism

Reactions to processes contributing to globalization have varied widely with a history as long as extraterritorial contact and trade. Philosophical differences regarding the costs and benefits of such processes give rise to a broad-range of ideologies and social movements. Proponents of economic growth, expansion and development, in general, view globalizing processes as desirable or necessary to the well-being of human society. Antagonists view one or more globalizing processes as detrimental to social well-being on a global or local scale; this includes those who question either the social or natural sustainability of long-term and continuous economic expansion, the social structural inequality caused by these processes, and the colonial, Imperialistic, orhegemonic ethnocentrism, cultural assimilation and cultural appropriation that underlie such processes.

Proponents

In general, corporate businesses, particularly in the area of finance, see globalization as a positive force in the world. Many economists cite statistics that seem to support such positive impact. For example, per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth among post-1980 globalizing countries accelerated from 1.4 percent a year in the 1960s and 2.9 percent a year in the 1970s to 3.5 percent in the 1980s and 5.0 percent in the 1990s. This acceleration in growth seems even more remarkable given that the rich countries saw steady declines in growth from a high of 4.7 percent in the 1960s to 2.2 percent in the 1990s. Also, the non-globalizing developing countries seem to fare worse than the globalizers, with the former's annual growth rates falling from highs of 3.3 percent during the 1970s to only 1.4 percent during the 1990s. This rapid growth among the globalizers is not simply due to the strong performances of China and India in the 1980s and 1990s – 18 out of the 24 globalizers experienced increases in growth, many of them quite substantial.

Critiques

Critiques of globalization generally stem from discussions surrounding the impact of such processes on the planet as well as the human costs. They challenge directly traditional metrics, such as GDP, and look to other measures, such as the Gini coefficient or the Happy Planet Index, and point to a "multitude of interconnected fatal consequences–social disintegration, a breakdown of democracy, more rapid and extensive deterioration of the environment, the spread of new diseases, increasing poverty and alienation"which they claim are the unintended consequences of globalization.

Fast Food

Chances are that you have had a McDonald’s meal in the past or if not, you certainly know a lot of people who have. It’s the biggest fast food chain in the world, with 32,000 outlets in 117 countries. The clown-fronted burger outfit employs a staggering 1.7 million people, and in the first three months of 2011 alone it made $1.2bn in profits on the back of revenues of $6.1bn. The company has come in for huge amounts of criticism over the past 20 years, for the impact it has on the diets of people worldwide, its labour practices and the impact its business has had on the environment. From Fast Food Nation to Supersize Me by the way of the McLibel trials of the 1990s, plenty has been written and broadcast to tarnish the golden arches’ shine.

Declining sales in the early 2000s, which saw franchises being shut for the first time in the company’s history, caused a major rethink of the way McDonald’s operates, and its recent rhetoric has been that of a firm with a newly discovered zeal for ethical end eco-friendly practices, garnering praise from champions as unlikely as Greenpeace and the Carbon Trust. But is this just marketing hype or has McDonald’s had a genuine change of heart?

The answer is yes and no. First of all, because of the way the company is run, it’s hard to generalise. Around 80 per cent of McDonald’s outlets are run by franchisees who have to meet standards set by the company, but who can – and do – go above and beyond them. Further, McDonald’s branches are run by country and regional offices, each of which are subject to domestic standards. The production of much of the raw products which go into McDonald’s meals, from burger patties to sauces, is subcontracted to different suppliers, making it impossible to assess the company in terms of a single golden standard. Its sole global supplier (for soft drinks) is Coca-Cola

Chinese Food

 

Have you ever stopped to think about the evolution of fried rice in America? Well, I think I might have thought of something similar last night when I was using two wooden sticks to eat the last bits of rice I had on my plate. Call me crazy, but I can actually distinguish between Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and other Asian foods because I am such an Asian food lover. Although you might not be able to distinguish the differences, or may not even enjoy the taste of oriental food, perhaps learning about the critically acclaimed food will do you some good. 

 

The evolution of Chinese food along the years in America has been perplexing to say the least. Cheng’s (2011) article discusses the history of the globalization Chinese food in America from a cross-cultural/intercultural perspective. The reason for this particular perspective is because Cheng is actually an immigrant to the United States. He grew up in Taiwan in the early 1970s and moved here in 1996 to study. He describes himself as an “outsider within” the United States because he has been observing our culture while at the same time studying and learning how to communicate with the English language. Simultaneously, he describes himself as an “insider without” because he looks “Chinese,” however he is actually from Taiwan.

Globalization plays a huge role in the assimilation of Chinese food within the American culture. Cheng’s literature review pans over some of the current theories of globalization. To many globalization theorists, “globalization is often viewed as an ominous homogenization of the world–where sameness is ubiquitously imposed, and the difference is steadily suppressed or eliminated.” (2011 198). If you are wondering what globalization means, or simply haven’t read Cheng’s article, Inglis & Gimlin (2010 9) provide a good definition of it. In terms of food communication, globalization is, “the multiple modes of interaction of the economic, political, social and cultural dimensions of globalization as the affect food-related matters, and as the latter in turn come to affect the former, in a series of ongoing dialectical relations characterized by the constant generation forms of complexity.”

 

 

 

In 1848, the discovery of gold in California prompted the first wave of Chinese immigration to the United States. This event was followed by Chinese restaurants being built to feed the growing numbers of people on the West Coast. Twenty years later there would be similar “Chinatowns” to spring up along the East Coast as well. Eventually there hostility grew among Americans and the Chinese were looked down upon; food establishment service was not up to par and Chinatowns were generally unclean. The United States even passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 to decrease the numbers of Chinese immigrants. After those years, Chinese restaurants and Chinatowns were eventually cleaned up their act and faced Americans were faced with a new wave of immigration in the 1960s.

“In addition to the more than 41,000 independent Chinese restaurants that currently exist in the United States, there has also been an increase in number of Chinese chain restaurants, such asP.F. Chang’s and Panda Express” (Cheng 203). Interestingly, the total number of Chinese restaurants in the U.S. has now surpassed the combined number of McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King franchises. Obviously Chinese food has made its way to the sphere of the American eating experience.

 

As Cheng delves into What people eat at American restaurants, he finds that much of the Chinese restaurants in America are not serving authentic “Chinese” food. Due to the anti-Chinese sentiments that the oriental immigrants had to go through over the years, Cheng explains that the Chinese food industry had to assimilate in order to survive. The four dimensions of the acculturation model are key here. They are integration, assimilation, separation, and marginalization. Integration refers to the majority of Chinese immigrants creating a “familiar-yet-exotic” cuisine for the American eaters. The other three aspects are important, but Cheng does not touch on them as fully as he does with integration.

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Globalization of Food

 

Take a look at your evening meal and what do you see? Common foods that are so much a part of daily sustenance that you would hardly suspect they originated in another country. But it is true

Most of the foods that we commonly eat today are the product of globalization. And often a globalization that began centuries before the term came into use. Next time you eat one of the foods highlighted in the following articles imagine what life would be like if that food had never left its home country. Tomorrow we would see some examples of this food.

Modern

During the 19th century, globalization approached its modern form as a result of the industrial revolution. Industrialization allowed standardized production of household items using economies of scale while rapid population growth created sustained demand for commodities. Globalization in this period was decisively shaped by nineteenth-century imperialism. In the 19th century,steamships reduced the cost of international transport significantly and railroads made inland transport cheaper. The transport revolution occurred some time between 1820 and 1850. More nations embraced international trade. Globalization in this period was decisively shaped by nineteenth-century imperialism such as in Africa and Asia. The invention of shipping containers in 1956 helped advance the globalization of commerce.

After the Second World War, work by politicians led to the Bretton Woods conference, an agreement by major governments to lay down the framework for international monetary policy, commerce and finance, and the founding of several international institutions intended to facilitate economic growth multiple rounds of trade opening simplified and lowered trade barriers. Initially, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), led to a series of agreements to remove trade restrictions. GATT's successor was the World Trade Organization (WTO), which created an institution to manage the trading system. Exports nearly doubled from 8.5% of total gross world product in 1970 to 16.2% in 2001. The approach of using global agreements to advance trade stumbled with the failure of the Doha round of trade-negotiation. Many countries then shifted to bilateral or smaller multilateral agreements, such as the 2011 South Korea–United States Free Trade Agreement.

Since the 1970s, aviation has become increasingly affordable to middle classes in developed countries. Open skies policies and low-cost carriers have helped to bring competition to the market. In the 1990s, the growth of low cost communication networks cut the cost of communicating between different countries. More work can be performed using a computer without regard to location. This included accounting, software development, and engineering design

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