Contemporary globalization: trends, impacts, and perspectives

¶ … globalization: interconnectivity and diversity. In terms of interconnectivity, globalization has made it more possible for people from different cultures to come together. Appiah's friend, for example, has a brother who lives in Japan because his wife is Japanese. He had no problem in moving to Japan, although he is from Ghana. At the same time, some of his brothers are in Spain or the United States. Maybe only some decades ago, this would have seemed impossible: people were born in some place and usually spent most of their lives in the same area. Even if they worked in the business segment, traveling would have usually been less common.

In terms of diversity, this is also an argument easy to support. The fact that somebody from Ghana is marrying somebody from Japan, despite all the cultural differences which are so obvious, means that globalization has managed to overpass the potential problems that might arise from this diversity and promote cultural diversity as a mean to bring people together rather than drive them apart.

While Appiah's article is important in bringing in examples and ideas related to the cultural impact of globalization, Jervis's article brings a political perspective to the issue of globalization, one which attempts to explain the perspective of a new, unipolar world. The unipolar world is dominated by the United States, which is the only superpower left after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. As the only superpower, the United States often finds itself in the position of creating the general coordinates under which the world evolves. The thesis of the article is that the United States cannot and will not remain satisfied with the current status quo, but would rather attempt to improve the system it is part of in the future.

If one looks at the example that globalization gives, this is certainly true. In many ways, the United States has led the technological and economic progress for the past couple of decades and globalization, as a phenomenon, also means that its efforts in this direction are likely to spread around the world in a much quicker manner. With improved communication and higher interconnectivity, change is brought about at a quicker pace.