Globalization

“If you could hear the sound of its quietness (for quiet in this library was a sound in itself), the smell of the sea (which was a stone’s throw away), the heat of the sun (no building could protect us from that), the beauty of us sitting there like communicants at an altar, taking in, again and again, the fairy tale of how we met you, your right to do the things you did, how beautiful you were, are, and always will be; if you could see all of that in just one glimpse, you would see why my heart would break at the dung heap that now passes for a library in Antigua.” (Kincaid, 42-43)

This passage in A Small Place is part of Kincaid’s effort to answer the question of whether Antigua was a better place when it was colonized by the British. The library is a perfectly good example of the problem. Kincaid describes the old library like a church, and the existing library as a ridicule of the old; damaged. To Kincaid, the old library might have played a political role in the old Antigua. To her, the library was part of the “fairytale” of the British Empire and of how the British brought culture and civilization to Antigua. Kincaid’s uncertainty is key in her description of the library which was in colonial times a beautiful place and now a modern “dung heap.”

“The second great era, Globalization 2.0 lasted roughly from 1800 to 2000, interrupted by the Great Depression and World Wars I and II. This era shrank the world from a size medium to a size small. In Globalization 2.0 the key agent of change, the dynamic force driving global integration, was multinational companies. These multinationals went global for markets and labor, spearheaded first by the expansion of the Dutch and English joint-stock companies and the Industrial Revolution. (Friedman, 9)

This passage from Friedman’s book reminds me of the economic situation in Jamaica from “Life and Debt” in relation to globalization. I think when Friedman says that the era of WWI and II shrank the world from a size medium to a size small, he meant that during that time period, every country was for itself and its own economy. After WWII when the powerful countries colonized the smaller weak ones, they expanded their economies to them. By expansion of their economy, they profited from the hard labors from the populations of those weak countries. For example, a McDonalds in Jamaica pays its employee cheap labor money, but the company makes huge amounts of money while the employee makes minimum wage. Signifiers of globalization are sweatshops in china, call centers in India, and Starbucks in South Africa. These powerful companies are selling their products in other countries, but these countries are making less in return. In my opinion, the World is Flat, but on the surface, but on the bottom, it’s not a leveled playing field, meaning if a country like Jamaica can have multiple international businesses but still be in debt, there’s something definitely wrong.