Acceleration

• Globalisation

  • the variety of ways that people and places are now more connected than they used to be
  • some view globalisation as positive ( hyper-globalisers ) that applaud the fact that millions of people have escaped poverty since the 1970s, they also celebrate that cultures are mixing and, on a local scale, often become more diverse
• Past global connections

  • trade - the modern world economy started to take shape after 1492 when Columbus reached the Americas
  • colonialism - by the end of the 19th century, the British empire controlled 1/4 of the world and its peoples
  • co operation - since WW1 ended in 1918, international organisations like the United Nations have existed
• Global flows and connections - capital

  • the movement of money
  • major capital flows are routed daily through the world's stock markets
  • a range of businesses like investment banks and pension funds buy and sell money in different countries to make profits
  • in 2019, the volume of the flows reached US $6.6 trillion per day
• Global flows and connections - commodities

  • the movement of goods
  • valuable raw materials like fossil fuels, food and minerals have always been traded
  • flows of manufactured goods have multiplied in recent years, fuelled by low production costs in China and low wage economies like Bangladesh and Vietnam
  • in 2019, GDP was around US $87 trillion in value - of which 1/3 was generated by trade flows in agricultural and industrial commodities
• Gross domestic product (GDP)

  • a measure of the financial value of goods and services produced within a territory (including foreign firms located there)
  • it is often divided by population size to produce a per capita figure to make comparisons
• Global flows and connections - information

  • movement of information
  • the internet has brought real-time communication between distant places, allowing goods and services to be bought at the click of a button
  • social networks have ballooned in size and influence and on demand TV has increased data usage further
  • information is stored in enormous 'server farms' like Facebook's data in Sweden where the cold temperatures reduce the cost of cooling
  • in 2019, Facebook had 2.5 billion users
  • in 2019, Netflix had 190 million subscribers
• Global flows and conections - tourists

  • the movement of people
  • many air passengers are people going on holiday
  • budget airlines have made it easier for people from high-income nations to travel
  • more people from emerging economies are travelling abroad too using budget airlines like AirAsia and Fastjet
  • China is the biggest spender on international travel with 180 million outbound trips in 2018
• Global flows and connections - migrants

  • permanent movement of people
  • there are lots of obstacles like border control and immigration laws and governments often 'pick and mix' global flows eg they embrace trade but attempt to resist migrant flows unless there is a need eg Qatar needing Indian construction workers
  • despite restrictions, record flows of people are recorded every year - combined number of economic migrants and migrants worldwide in 2019 reached 270 million
• The combined effect of global flows makes places interconnected and increases the interdependency of places
• Remittances

  • money that migrants send home to their families
  • in 2019, $625 billion of remittances were sent
• Interdependency

  • if two places become over reliant on one another
  • eg if an economic recession adversely affects a host country of migrant workers, the economy of the source country shrinks too as less remittances are sent
• Steam power

  Britain was a leading world power in the 1800s with steam technology as boats could move goods/ armies along trade routes to Asia and Africa
• Railways

  they expanded globally from 1904 with the trans-siberian linking Moscow to China and Japan to China now building 35,000 km of high speed railway since 2000
• Jet aircraft

  The intercontinental Boeing 747 in the 1960s made international travel more commonplace with expansion of budget airlines
• Container shipping

  Around 200 million individual container movements take place every year, some describe shipping as the backbone of the global economy
• Spatial division of labour

  • a common practice of TNCs where low skilled work is move abroad to places where labour cossts are low
  • skilled management jobs are retained at the TNC's headquarters in its country of origin
• Shrinking world

  • distant places start to feel closer and take less time to reach
• Growth of ICT - telephone/telegraph

  • The first telegraph cables across the Atlantic in the 1860s replaced a three week boat journey with instantaneous communication
  • In parts of Africa, where telephone lines have never been laid in many places, people are technologically ‘leap-frogging’ straight to mobile phone use
• Growth of ICT - broadband/fibre optic

  • The invention broadband internet in the 1980s and 1990s, large amounts of data could be moved quickly
  • Today, enormous flows of data are conveyed across the ocean floor, by fibre optic cables owned by national governments or TNCs such as Google
  • More than 1.2 million kilometres of flexible undersea cables, carry all the world’s emails, searches and tweets
• Growth of ICT - GIS/GPS

  • The first global positioning system (GPS) satellite was launched in the 1970s
  • There are now 40 above the Earth which continuously broadcast position and time data to users throughout the world
  • Deliveries can be tracked by companies using vehicle-tracking systems, helping the growth of global production networks to be managed
• Growth of ICT - internet/social networks

  • The internet began life as part of a scheme funded by the US Defence Department during the Cold War
  • Since then, connectivity between people and places has grown exponentially. By 2020, 500 million tweets were being sent each day and 58% of the world’s population were using the internet
• ICT and mobile phone use - economic globalisation

  • ICT allows managers to keep in touch with employees in distant places more easily eg video conferencing, allowing TNCs to expand with either making or selling products
  • Each time the barcode of a Marks & Spencer food purchase is scanned in a UK store, an automatic adjustment is made to the size of the next order placed with suppliers in distant countries like Kenya.
• ICT and mobile phone use - social globalisation

  • Maintaining long distance relationships through ICT is a factor that supports migration
  • Since 2003, Skype has provided a cheap and powerful way for migrants to maintain a strong link with family they have left behind
• ICT and mobile phone use - cultural globalisation

  • Cultural traits, such as language or music, are adopted, imitated and hybridised faster than ever before
  • Since 2017 the Chinese video-sharing social media app TikTok has spread to over 150 countries and over 70 languages
• ICT and mobile phone use - political globalisation

  • Social networks are used to raise awareness about political issues and to fight for change on a global scale
  • Environmental charities like Greenpeace spread their message online, while the militant group Daesh (or ‘Isis’) has used social media to spread its message of terror globally, and to gain new recruits.
• Electronic banking in developing countries

  • In countries where the lack of communications infrastructure has traditionally been a big obstacle to economic growth, mobile phones are now changing lives for the better by connecting people and places
  • In 2005, six per cent of Africans owned a mobile phone. By 2019 this had risen to about 60 per cent, a ten-fold increase, due to falling prices and the growth of provider companies
  • Rising uptake in Asia (in India, over 1 billion people are mobile subscribers) means there are now more mobile phones than people on the planet
• M-Pesa

  • launched by Safaricom and Vodafone
  • a mobile phone service that allows credit to be directly transferred between phone users
  • The equivalent of one-third of the country’s GDP is now sent through the M-Pesa system annually
  • People in towns and cities use mobiles to make payments for utility bills and school fees
  • In rural areas, fishermen and farmers use mobiles to check market prices before selling produce
  • Women in rural areas are able to secure microloans from development banks by using their M-Pesa bills as proof that they have a good credit record