What are different things which link us to the world?
- Culture: friends from different cultures, foreign parents
- Clothing: clothing from manufacturers around the world (e.g brandy Melville, urban outfitters), Nike (mainly manufactured in Italy), Cotton (from Egypt, India, Americas, Africa etc.)
- Sport: Basketball (from America)
- Music: (America, Canada)
- TV shows and Movies: set/filmed around the world e.g Friends, Romeo & Juliet, Forest Gump
- Travelling: experiencing different cultures, travelling to different countries
- Food: fruit from abroad, cuisines from around the world, pasta (Italy), sushi (Japan), noodles (China), salmon (Chile, Norway, Canada, Scotland)
What is Globalisation?
Globalisation is the process by which the world is becoming increasingly interconnected. We now communicate, trade, travel and share other’s cultures more easily around the world.
Why has globalisation happened?
- technology has made it easier to communicate. We communicate more, however the depth of communication has decreased. Online sponsors make international products more popular (on social media and the Internet). Technology also allows businesses to operate in more than one country.
- trans national incorporations
- Transport has increased rapidly between countries. This is due to containerisation. Containerisation is where goods are transported in large ships around the world. This is due to more car ownership and networks, trains etc.
- MEDCs create a demand for clothes. Companies use sweat shops to provide for this demand and so that they are able to get more profit because of cheap labour costs. Sweat Shops are allowed because of the lax labour rules in LEDCs.
What is a sweatshop?
A sweatshop is a factory or workshop especially in the clothing industry when manual workers are employed at very low wages for long hours and under poor conditions.
What are the conditions like in sweatshops?
- poor, noisy conditions
- many people working in cramped, dirty, uncomfortable factories
- don’t have good toilet facilities
Why do people work in sweatshops?
-sweatshop workers do not have a choice of where they work because they are often very desperate for a job and will accept any job offered to them, even if they earn hardly enough to live on. The workers cannot really argue about working conditions
What would happen if factory workers in sweatshops refused to work for these wages?
They would be fired and if the workers went on strike they could all be fired and replaced easily
What would happen if the government in the poor countries with sweatshops passed a law that the factories must pay higher wages?
The companies who employ the factory workers would stop buying from those factories and instead buy from factories in countries where workers are paid less so that the company can sell their products for less and get more profit. The factory workers in the country with the new laws would all become unemployed
What would happen if customers refuse to buy clothes made in sweatshops?
The companies would be put under pressure to convert to factories where workers are paid more. If the clothing company decides to pay the factory more, the factory may pay workers more, or could use the money for more profit. However, the company could also convert to a completely different factory which is not a sweatshop and the previous factory would have all of its workers unemployed.
What is an employment sector?
Sectors to categorise the types of jobs people do
What are the four employment sectors?
Primary Industry/ Sector, Secondary Industry/Sector, Tertiary Industry, Quaternary Sector
What is the Primary Industry/Sector?
These jobs involve the extraction of raw materials
What are examples of jobs in the Primary Industry/Sector?
Mining, Logging, Fishing
What is the Secondary Industry/Sector?
Manufacturing industries involve transforming or making something with raw materials
What are examples of jobs in the Secondary Industry/Sector?
Making cars, chefs
What is the Tertiary Industry?
These provide a service to people
What are examples of jobs in the Tertiary Industry?
teaching, cleaning, doctors, police, hairdressing, waiters
What is the Quaternary Sector?
Knowledge based industries in which information is generated and shared
What are examples of jobs is the Quaternary sector?
IT, media, scientists
What are the positives of globalisation?
- Globalisation has allowed shoppers to get much more choice
- The wages that TNCs pay people in the country allows the country to climb out of poverty
- Setting up a TNC in an LEDC allows countries to develop
- TNCs working overseas spreads the MEDCs influence so is encouraged by governments
- unemployment leads to negative feelings
- some TNCs are far richer than governments so can get away with exploiting people or countries
- when foreign TNCs set up in MEDCs is more jobs are created
- LEDC workers are lucky to get jobs in the TNC
- TNCs give people living in LEDCs jobs
- being able to export and import goods freely breaks down barriers between countries
- LEDC workers think themselves lucky even when they get a badly paid job like sewing
- LEDCs need TNCs like oil companies to help them to get the most out of their resources
- The profits have rapidly increased as the labour is cheaper in LEDCs than MEDs
- some LEDC workers get better pay by working in management
What are the negatives of globalisation?
- taxes are collected whether the TNC is in an MEDC or LEDC and the money often goes to the MEDCs
- The jobs are often badly paid in LE DCs like sticking soles on trainers
- TNCs take the profit back home so don’t help countries to develop
- MEDC workers have lost jobs because the company relocate to somewhere cheaper
- Local culture doesn’t seem to matter anymore
- LEDCs don’t have strong laws to protect the environment
- TNC is in LEDCs often damage the environment
- Culture in LEDCs has been eroded
- if TNCs are challenged about their practices they can afford to move elsewhere
- LEDC workers are not learning skills that will help them in other jobs
- TNCs only care about profit, not the workers
- LEDCs don’t get chances to have their own industries because TNCs take over
- TNCs has driven globalisation by going to places where workers are cheap
- TNCs release toxic chemicals into the air and water
What does TNC stand for?
Transnational Corporation
Where on the globe are the more switched-on places to globalisation?
- Switched on places are mostly in the northern hemisphere, although many are in the southern hemisphere
- these include most of Europe, some parts of Australia, East America, China and some parts of south west and north of South America
- switched off places include the centre of Africa the northern region of South America (where the Amazon rainforest is), the north and south pole and northern Russia.
What are the four reasons why some places are more switched on to globalisation than others?
Political, Economic, Environmental, Physical
