speech on globalization

Today I am going to write about globalization and the way it affects people all over the world.

I am glad that I feel like writing on this topic because I believe that we have the potential to work for a change and to contribute considerably for people’s well-being.

My main goal with this piece of writing is to put across a message which has been often ignored by those who are now capable of making a difference, merely because the statement that this message supports is anything else but advantageous for those individuals.

One of the most thorough definitions of globalization says that it is a historical process involving a fundamental shift or transformation in the spatial scale of human social organization that links distant communities and expands the reach of power relations across regions and continents.

Or just to simplify this definition - Globalization represents the widening, deepening and speeding up of worldwide interconnectedness.

Proponents of globalization say that it helps developing nations "catch up" with industrialized nations much faster through access to free markets, increased employment and technological advances.

But such attributions to globalization reveal many cracks and fissures beneath their high-gloss surface.

The idea of interconnectedness and involvement to any single state in the world system may sound quite liberal but what this idea actually brings about seems to be anything else but liberal.

There are too many facts and too much evidence that prevent the idea of globalization from keeping its shiny outlook.

The statement I am about to argue today is that globalization is a self-serving myth or ideology which reinforces world inequality.

First, I would like to focus on the fact that the noble goals of globalization such as combating poverty and hunger by giving access to global markets to the developing countries is working exactly in the opposite direction.

Second, I will argue about the harmful effects of globalization by giving you an example with the case of Tanzania.

And third, I will talk about the fact that globalization is just reinforcing Western hegemony on a world scale.

So, now I start with one of the biggest problems of our age, namely hunger.

Never before in our human history we have been so rich and at the same time so poor;

so overwhelmed with products and so much lacking basic food that contributes for our survival.

The causes of hunger are many.

But globalization certainly has a big share in this problem.

Globalization and the integration of developing countries into the global market allow products from those countries to enter our never-having-enough societies and at the same time leave people from those countries die from hunger.

Hunger in the Third World countries is not caused by underproduction or less fertile soil in those regions.

Hunger in the developing countries is caused by our Western fuss of when we go shopping to be able to choose between 7 types of African peaches, 15 types of fish coming straight from Lake Victoria and 20 types of rice produced in India, Bangladesh and China.

Hunger in the Third World countries is caused by the artificial needs we have obtained due to globalization and the accessibility of everything we would like to have access to.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that although there is enough grain alone to provide everyone in the world with 3600 calories a day (just to clarify the UN’s recommended minimum intake per day is 1200 calories) there are still over 800 million hungry people.

Furthermore, critics note that the Third World, where the majority of starving people are found, produces much of the world’s food, while those who consume most of it are located in the Western World.

Amartya Sen’s pioneering book called Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation shows results from an empirical research work on the causes of famine which conclude that hunger is due to people not having enough to eat, rather than there not being enough to eat.

One of the main reasons for those people to be hungry is globalization.

The responsibility for people not having enough to eat is of those who want to make a greater profit from supplying us with a huge variety of extremely cheap imported products. The responsibility of growing inequality among people can be reasonably attributed to globalization.

One of the best documentaries ever called “Darwin’s Nightmare” clearly shows the effects of globalization on the poor countries by focusing on Tanzania.

I have to admit that the documentary is striking.

No other movie shows so clearly the devastating effects of globalization.

The fact that there are basically no borders at a global level makes the rich –richer and the poorest become even poorer.

Tanzania has one of the biggest natural fish resources, the Lake Victoria.

Every day Tanzania exports fish which feeds 2 million people in Western Europe, while at the same there are 8 million people in that same Tanzania who are dying from hunger.

This is just unacceptable my dear friends.

This is just another proof of the dehumanization of humanity.

This is just the real face of globalization and the real problems it brings about.


Some of you may ask yourselves about the actions that the rich Western countries take to prevent the ongoing inequality phenomenon.

My dear friends, the countries we are living in, the rich countries, do not care about world inequality as long as they are leading world figures.

What is more distressing, however, is the fact that the easiest way to keep on top is to be a proponent of the ideas of globalization and to make use of them.

Globalization is the greatest tool for preserving world inequality.

A clear example is the fact that one of the biggest resources for increasing Western power and wealth are the big Western companies situated in Third World countries.

These companies use the filthy excuse of increasing employment by expanding their businesses, but all they do is making huge profits from the Third World workers whom they pay the equivalent of 2 US dollars per day.

One contemporary anti-globalists (call her even neo-Marxist as you like), the Canadian scholar Naomi Klein, writes in one of her books that

the global village we live in is a village where some multinationals, far from leveling the global paying field with jobs and technology for all, are in a process of mining the planet’s poorest back country for unimaginable profits.

The travels of Nike sneakers have been traced back to the abusive sweatshops of Vietnam, Barbie's little outfits back to the child labourers of Sumatra,

Starbucks' lattes to the sun-scorched coffee fields of Guatemala,

and Shell's oil back to the polluted and impoverished villages of the Niger Delta.


This is global village, my dear friends, is also the village where bill Gates lives,

amassing a fortune of 55 billion while a third of his workforce is classified as temporary workers, many of whom are seventeen-year old girls living in Third World countries who assemble CD-ROM drives in the great number IBM sweatshops in those regions.

This is my dear friends, the result of globalization.

This is, my dear friends, the representation of the words of the Indonesian writer Mangunwijaya who wrote that

“We might not see things yet on the surface, but underground, it’s already on fire”

Dear friends, let us hope that this fire will soon be extinguished from its core;

References (APA style):

• Baylis, J., & Smith, S. (2005). The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press Inc. [textbook]

• Klein, N. (2000). No Logo. Great Britain: Flamingo. [book]

• Sauper, H. (Writer) (2004). Darwin's Nightmare. In E. Mauriat (Producer). France. [documentary]

• Sen, A. (1981). Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation Oxford: Clarendon Press. [book]