Human Geog Case Studies

• 90% of non-bulk trade transported through containerisation
• 'Shrinking world' - the feeling that the world is becoming more interconnected and smaller due to transport developments and internet connections
• 2% Kenyan households lifted out of poverty through M-Pesa (mobile phone money transfer)
• 'Time-space compression'


  Alteration of the relationship between time and space as a result of globalisation and capital
• International political and economic organisations contributing to globalisation

  • World Trade Organisation (WTO)
  • International Monetary Fund (IMF)
  • World Bank
• 100,000 people out of city of 3.5 million had running water after privatisation of water in Tanzania
• European Union


  448.4 million inhabitants, large market
• Association of Southeast Asian Nations

  10 nations 1967, free trade bloc
• China is the world's largest recipient of FDI, and became the world's biggest trader in 2019
• China's 'Open Door Policy' in 1978 led to the spread of globalisation into new global regions
• Trade between China and Africa was worth 600 billion in 2016, with over 1 million Chinese migrant workers in Africa
• The AT Kearney Index measures the extent of globalisation across 5 measures including business and human capital
• The KOF Index measures the extent of globalisation across 3 categories with a 39% weight on social globalisation
• Globalised companies


  • Disney
  • McDonalds
• McDonalds operates in 118 different countries, showing glocalisation
• North Korea and the Sahel region are 'switched off' from globalisation
• Zambia and Tanzania may become more 'switched on' to globalisation in the future, linked to 'The Chinese in Africa'
• Manufacturing has shifted to emerging countries like China's Guangdong Province
• Outsourcing of services has shifted to emerging countries like India's Bangalore
• India's GDP has increased from $1.2 trillion in 1991 to $7.3 trillion in 2018
• The Agbogbloshie toxic waste dump in Accra, Ghana is an example of the environmental problems caused by the global shift of manufacturing
• Detroit has declined from being the 4th largest city in the USA during the 1920s to only the 24th largest, due to deindustrialisation in developed countries
• The growth of megacities like Mumbai has led to social and environmental challenges
• There is elite international migration of Russian oligarchs to London
• There is mass low-wage economic international migration from India to the UAE
• Cultural diffusion has led to changing diets in China
• The Paralympics has increased opportunities for disadvantaged groups
• The drying up of the Aral Sea is an impact of an increasingly 'westernised' global culture on the environment, due to water needed for cotton production
• Cultural erosion has occurred in places like Cuba and Papua New Guinea with 1000 languages
• There is opposition to globalisation through measures like Iran's restrictions on Barbie dolls and French films, China's Great Firewall, and the Arab Spring protests
• Measurements of widening income inequality include the Gini Coefficient and Lorenz Curve
• China has both economic and environmental inequality
• Culturally mixed societies have been created in places like London, with thriving diasporas
• Culturally mixed societies have also created tensions, as seen with Brexit/EU migration and Trump's policies in the USA
• Tensions arising from globalisation include the rise of extremism in Europe and the Mekong River conflict
• Countries like China and North Korea try to control globalisation through censorship
• Japan tries to control globalisation by limiting migration
• First Nations in Canada try to control globalisation by protecting their culture
• In Totnes and Bristol, the 'Transition Towns' movement promotes localism, where £10 spent in local shops leads to £23 in the local economy compared to £1 from a supermarket
• Ethical consumption initiatives like Fairtrade and H&M's sustainability efforts aim to address the negative impacts of globalisation