Globalization

Introduction

Advances in communications, information processing, and transportation technologies have permitted poor countries to become participants in world global markets in ways that previously were not possible. They now can be large-scale exporters of manufactured goods. Because this is so, both foreign direct investment (FDI) and financial capital are attracted to these previously neglected countries, particularly to those that are large and effectively governed (Mandle, pp 58).

In a certain sense, the Western economy has been "global" since the sixteenth century. After all, the African slave trade, colonialism, and the intercontinental trade in sugar and coffee made capitalism possible. But since the early 1980s, transnational corporations, cyber technology, and electronic mass media have spawned a web of tightly linked networks that cover the globe. Taken together, these forces have profoundly restructured the world economy, global culture, and individual daily lives. Nowhere are these changes more dramatic than in the ways dress and fashion are produced, marketed, sold, bought, worn, and thrown away.

For consumers in dominant Western countries, globalization means an abundance of fashions sold by giant retailers who can update inventory, make transnational trade deals, and coordinate worldwide distribution of goods at the click of a computer. It means that what people are consuming is less the clothing itself than the corporate brand or logo such as Nike, Victoria's Secret, or Abercrombie & Fitch. Consumers are purchasing the fantasy images of sexual power, athleticism, cool attitude, or carefree joy these brands disseminate in lavish, ubiquitous, hyper-visible marketing on high-tech electronic media. But much less visible is the effect of globalization on the production of fashion.

A Path to Modern Economic Growth

After a long period of skepticism, the leaders of many developing countries have come to believe that global market integration is an effective means to promote economic growth. Today representatives of such nations typically do not stand in opposition to globalization, but rather complain that the developed world often fails to adopt sufficiently liberal trade policies. In particular the European Union, the United States, and Japan are taken to task for using subsidies as no-tariff barriers impeding agricultural imports.

The empirical record generally suggests that the poor nations have benefited from their embrace of globalization. Although high levels of exports and substantial capital inflows do not ensure economic growth, the fact remains that for numerous developing countries the ability to attract FDI and to export intermediate and final manufactured goods has been effective in accelerating economic development. Typically, their growth has been associated with success in reducing poverty. Even the textile and apparel industries, much maligned for the relatively poor wages and working conditions they provide, almost always offer higher levels of income than the alternative opportunities available to their workers.

Even so, there are those who deny that globalization provides a path to development for poor nations. Such critics point to numerous cases in which the policy recommendations advanced by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund concerning developing countries have been ill advised. These multinational institutions have frequently insisted upon the privatization of ...