Yergin and Norberg-Hodge on globalization's economic versus cultural effects

¶ … Globalization: Daniel Yergin's "Giving Aid to World Trade" and Helena Norberg-Hodge's "The March of the Monoculture"

In their respective articles about the effects of western influence on developing nations and areas of the world, Daniel Yergin, in "Giving Aid to World Trade" and Helena Norberg-Hodge, in "The March of the Monoculture," express very different viewpoints on the benefits (or lack thereof) of western foreign presence in these places. Yergin is more sanguine about such presence overall. Norberg-Hodge is less so. While Yergin writes from a purely economic perspective, Norberg-Hodge writes from a cultural one, which perhaps explains the differences in their viewpoints on this issue.

As Yergin suggests in "Giving Aid to World Trade," for example, foreign aid may "improve health, education and national infrastructure . . . build legal and lending institutions . . . Such improvements can attract long-term foreign investment that creates jobs and encourages transfers of technologies to poorer nations." While this may be economically true, from a cultural viewpoint, like that of Norberg-Hodge, such widespread foreign involvement in the business of developing nations, including foreign aid, is culturally destructive. As Norberg-Hodge states, in "March of the Monoculture, for example: ". . . villages, rural communities and their cultural traditions around the world are being destroyed on an unprecedented scale under the impact of globalising market forces. Communities that have sustained themselves for hundreds of years are simply disintegrating."