Extra Credit: Techno Jeep

Extra Credit: Christmas Laser Beam Cats

WTF Blanket

I hate Snuggies, so I thought this was funny.

Minnesota Girls

HAHAHA Apple Users....

I suppose it's ironic that I own an iPhone...

Extra Credit - Revamp of a Popular Song

I thought this was interesting because it was a parody made by 20 some year olds, they took 2 popular medias, the Harry Potter movie and "Like a G6" and combined them!

Extra Credit: Word Disassociation

Extra Credit Assignment: Hook on Fonik

EXTRA CREDIT

Only 1 point of it, but this will take you less than two minutes. It is simply to create a post that embeds your favorite user-created youtube video (in other words, something made through "amateur" means...not Lady Gaga, or commercials). Thursday, along with Andrejevic, we will look through a few of these and discuss.

For example,

Assignment #6

You will have one of two options for this blog assignment (due Sunday Dec. 7):

1. Find a passage in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things of no more than 2 paragraphs, and write a close reading of it. This is practically the same assignment as the book report for Mao II--you want to elucidate the themes and questions that emerge from the passage and relate it to one of the following topics that we've discussed in class with regard the novel: (1) Global/Colonial English, (2) The Love Laws, (3) History, and (4) The God of Small Things

But make sure to be as detailed as possible, drawing our attention to the use of figurative language, capitalization, "foreign" sounding words, images, dialogue, repetition, etc. Please paste the passage that you intend to analyze.

As a refresher, the following links explain the idea of close reading:
http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/reading_lit.html
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/documents/CloseReading.html


2. Pick an object from everyday life, something that you use regularly, and write a "close reading" of it, identifying its role in rituals of everyday life, and relating it back to at least one concept that we have covered in this course. This is a relatively open assignment, but make sure to apply the rules of close reading on this object.

Globalization

The World Is Flat

“No one ever gave me directions like this on a golf course before: “Aim at either Microsoft or IBM.” I was standing on the first tee at the KGA Golf Club in downtown Bangalore, in southern India, when my playing partner pointed at two shiny glass-and-steel buildings off in the distance, just behind the first green. The Goldman Sachs building wasn’t done yet; otherwise he could have pointed that out as well and made it a threesome. HP and Texas Instruments had their offices on the back nine, along the tenth hold. That wasn’t all. The tee markers were from Epson, the printer company, and one of our caddies was wearing a hat from 3M. Outside, some of the traffic signs were also sponsored by Texas Instruments, and the Pizza Hut billboard on the way over showed a steaming pizza, under the headline “Gigabites of Taste!” No, this definitely wasn’t Kansas. It didn’t even seem like India. Was this the New World, the Old World, or the New World?”

A Small Place

“You are looking out the window (because you want to get your money’s worth); you notice that all the cars you see are brand-new, or almost brand-new, and that they are all Japanese –made. ..You continue to look at the cars and you say to yourself, Why, they look brand-new but they have an awful sound, like an old car—a very old, dilapidated car. How to account for that? Well possibly it’s because they use leaded gasoline in these brand-new cars whose engines were built to use non-leaded gasoline…”

In The World Is Flat, Friedman employs very obvious markers of globalization through the astonishing ten different brands/company names placed in one single paragraph of the starting passage in his novel. Right away, Friedman explicitly emphasizes the overbearing presence of the brands in Bangalore, India, which is interesting to note because the headquarters of these companies are located in the United States. Friedman takes on a very American perspective of globalization throughout the rest of the passage, leaving out other voices and perspectives. The continuous string of brand names and companies originated in America but present in India suggests that ‘the world is flat’ and the playing field has been leveled in terms of the economy. No longer does only the United States have a booming economy, product placement, and a continuous bombardment of advertising—now the same can be found across the globe. This world experienced by Kincaid has no limits or boundaries to the possibilities of expansion as seen through the almost dozen well-known brands in the passage which act as signifiers of globalization.

In A Small Place, the markers of globalization employed by Kincaid are slightly less obvious than Friedman, but nonetheless still prevalent. While Friedman incorporated brand and company names into the story, Kincaid chooses to add a little extra explanation about the Japanese made cars that are too expensive for the people who are driving them. When I read this passage, what stuck out to me was the seemingly unneeded description about which cars used which gasoline, etc. Then, upon further analysis, I realized this addition functioned as a marker of globalization. The cars themselves obviously convey the idea that globalization has spread to this small area where it sticks out like a sore thumb. Kincaid points out through this signifier that although beneficial (the cars are nice and expensive and luxurious), globalization has underlying faults and problems that are not necessarily addressed. The shiny, appealing outside of the car represents the ‘progress’ and ‘improved quality of life’ brought to areas in need by the spreading out of business and economy; however, these cars were not built for ‘leaded gasoline’, or globalization, and they will not function properly once installed. Kincaid points out through the signifier of the fancy Japanese car that invading other countries with progress and ‘good intentions’ may not necessarily be in that areas best interest.

Assignment 5

In the opening scene of Life and Debt it shows the civilians sitting around watching the news about the trouble and unrest going on in their country. This shows globalization in that they are using media as their source of information, and as they are being informed about the current standing of their nation, we are watching them get informed as we too are being informed. This also shows that everything in Jamaica is not perfect and wonderful as they project to the tourists. After the scene of the war and unrest, it shows the happy tourists arriving and being welcomed with song and looking at the scenery in awe, while in reality there is crime and social unrest all over the country.

As Seth mentioned, English is major sign of globalization. The film was made in English, however there is a pretty good chance that the main language tour guides in Jamaica speak would be English, even though people from many different countries may go to visit, all the tour guides and workers in the hotel spoke English. I also realize that English is the language they inherited from the British, however it has stuck with them over time and become a main language there. They communicate the past, such as the queen being their ruler, in English, and they listened to her speak in English. And in A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid, she points out the that she despises the fact that she can only speak about her country's history and all the bad things they did to the country in their tongue, and not her own. "For isn't it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime [colonialism] is the language of the criminal who committed the crime? And what can that really mean? For the language of the criminal can contain only the goodness of the criminal's deed. The language of the criminal can explain and express the deed only from the criminal's point of view. It cannot explain the horror of the deed, the injustice of the deed, the agony, the humiliation inflicted on me." (31-32)

The Hospital is another comparison between the tourists and the native. The tourist is wprry free as they are in this exotic country and are not worried about the realities and necessities of everyday life, such as a hospital. They are not concerned about its condition or qualified doctors or not because they do not actually care about the stability of the country and its people, they only care about their relaxation and enjoyment. Many have referenced the quote, "An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to gaze at this and taste that, and it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you, that behind their closed doors they laugh at your strangeness..." (p. 17). The tourists are not concerned or troubled at all by the state of the nation as long as it does not effect them. They see that the nation has all of these other American products that make it seem just like home, but prettier, so therefore they would not think to consider the actual differences and where this country is lacking in funding, such as the hospital. Tourists become greedy self centered people that are only concerned about their enjoyment and happiness that they do not consider the real effects that their travel and tourism has on the country. Although tourism can be god, because it does bring in money, there is also a much greater cost the country has to pay for this revenue. They have to give up their uniqueness as a country in order to become a "flat" place where all people from around the world feel a sense of familiarity and want to continue to spend their time and money there.

Although the British were the ones to conquer Jamaica, the fast food chains in the movie were American. This shows that the island has adapted their catering to America's tastes, since generally speaking other countries do not prefer American fast food. These restaurants line the Queen's road which was built specifically for the Queen and made to represent a clean, happy Jamaica, and ignore all the hardships and displeasure they were really facing. They have now restructured this road, which was built to pleasure the Queen, in order to pleasure the tourists that visit. They cater to the tourists needs and wants, and although the tourists are there to experience a different country, they feel like they are the top of the hierarchy when they see familiar American brand names and see American products and luxuries that have reached this island though globalization. This familiarity to their home makes them feel like they are the reason that this country is so beautiful and developed, and without western influence and the American tourism then maybe the country would be impoverished and lacking in technology and other necessities. The tourists are put in a position of power by the host country.

Terribly sorry this is a day late...completely forgot all about the blog.

Assignment #5

Piece from Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place: The thing you have always suspected about yourself the minute you become a tourist is true: A tourist is an ugly human being.” (p. 14)

Scene from Life and Debt: The scene showing the Jamaican and British flags waving simultaneously in the air, then depicting it as one while Bob Marley’s One Love is playing in the background.

In the piece from A Small Place, it examines how tourist are viewed by the host of the place they’re in. We never stop to think that maybe those people hate that we come in the country to be served. Not noticing that probably in their own country, that they could never get the treatment that you are getting on your vacation. The fact that you take a vacation is a delicacy that could never tremble upon because of how poor they must be. The globalization though is the fact that you expect a little piece of home to be their. The familiar things you expect to find everywhere and not seeing the only reason they have it there is for you.

In the scene from Life and Debt I examined, it shows the newly independent Jamaica and England will be working together to aid the new country from the post-colonial reign England once had over them. The previous scene showed how the Queen arrived in Jamaica and how she was announcing the grant of independence given to Jamaica in 1962. The globalization that is prevalent in this case is how many countries in the sixties were granted independence but England still had a bind over through being apart of the Commonwealth and all the debt owed to England, the West, and the IMF. The relation with One Love playing the background was the fact it was a politically-motivated song about this situation in Jamaica.

“How do they afford such a car? And do they live in a luxurious house to match such a car? Well, no. You will be surprised, then, to see that most likely the person driving this brand-new car filled with the wrong gas lives in a house that in comparison, is far beneath the status of the car; and if you were to ask why you would be told that the banks are encouraged by the government to make loans available for cars, but loans for houses not so easily available; and if you ask again why, you will be told that the two main car dealerships in Antigua are owned in part or outright by ministers in government.” P.7

In Life and Debt there is a scene where a group of people surround a television and they are watching the news. Horrible things are happening death and fighting. Then the news takes a break and a commercial comes on for Baskin Robins telling them to enjoy ice cream today.

In A Small Place there are many brand new Japanese vehicles and this is a signal of globalization. People everywhere around the world have cars and Antigua is trying to be a part of this. These cars are just face globalization, however, because the government is selling these cars to make a profit. The cars might say that one is rich but the people don’t really have a say and the government forces this globalization.

In Life and Debt there is a good a scene juxtaposed with death and ice cream. A group of people watch their country in ruins on the news and it goes to break and advertising tells them to buy ice cream. Death, fighting, and hardship are all normal to this country even more normal than buying an ice cream. This sort of advertising is a good signifier of globalization. The companies are trying to push their product and create a country similar to the fast food nation of America.

Globalization assignment

"...in places there are Ministers of Culture it means there is no culture...In countries that have no culture or are afraid they may have no culture, there is a Minister of Culture. And what is culture, anyway? In some places it is the way you play the drum; in other places, it's just the way you behave out in public; and in still other places; it's just the way a person cooks food. And so what is there to preserve about these things? For it is not so that people make them up as they go along, make them up as they need them." p. 49-50

-A Small Place Jamaica Kincaid

In this passage Kincaid states that Antigua has no culture of its own. In a country such as Antigua being ruled by the British for so long, globalization has had major affects on it. Once globalization happens in a country it starts to lose it's tradition or "culture" because it is busy trying to "globalize" and meeting standards of other countries. It starts to leave behind some of it's old ways to keep up with modern times and being somewhat the same in every aspect as other countries. It's a competition and for the people of the country globalization takes away their identity and may come up with their own culture because they don't know what is truly their culture. Globalization is like a double-edged sword, there are positives and negatives about globalization.

"But Globalization 3.o not only differs from the previous eras in how it is shrinking and flattening the world and in how it is empowering individuals. It is different in that Global 1.0 and 2.0 were driven primarily by European and American individuals and business. Even though China actually has the biggest economy in the world in the 18th century it was Western countries, companies and explorers who were doing the most globalizing and shaping of the system."

-The World is Flat Thomas Friedman

Friedman says that as globalization is taking over the world it is shrinking and flattening the world by not really giving it any demensions. Again economies are becoming uniform therefore "flattening" it and therefore creating competition. It is different from the other eras because now it has opened up doors to others other then the Europeans and Americans. Before as Friedman mentioned it was mostly Europeans and Americans globalizing and know it is for everyone. This marks that countries are more connected to eachother than before and that it may be harder for other economies, others are stepping up to the plate.

Buildings as markers

From Kincaid, page 62:

“The Syrians and Lebanese own large amounts of commercial property in Antigua. They build large concrete buildings, and then the government of Antigua rents all the space in these buildings. Why can’t the government of Antigua build its own government buildings? What is the real interest paid on these loans made to the government? And are the loans made to the government or are they really made to persons in the government but charged to the government? What is the real rent paid to the Syrian and Lebanese landlords, for no one believes the sum quoted…”

From Friedman, page 3:

“No one ever gave me directions like this on a golf course before: “Aim at either Microsoft or IBM.” I was standing on the first tea at the KGA Golf Club in downtown Bangalore, in southern India, when my playing partner pointed at two shiny glass-and-steel buildings off in the distance, just behind the first green. The Goldman Sachs building wasn’t done yet; otherwise he could have made it a threesome. HP and Texas Instruments had their offices on the back nine, along the tenth hole. That wasn’t all. The tee markers were from Epson, the printer company, and one of our caddies was wearing a hat from 3M. Outside, some of the traffic signs were also sponsored by Texas Instruments, and the Pizza Hut billboard on the way over showed a steaming pizza, under the headline “Gigabites of Taste!””

Buildings are a quasi-permanent part of the landscape that surrounds us. Our own interpretations of their existences play an integral role in how we interpret our environments and our place in the world every day. The two passages above, along with the scene from Life and Debt which we focused on in class that showed McDonalds and Baskin Robbins, can reveal much about how the native and the tourist interpret their surroundings.

For the narrator in A Small Place, the buildings that surround her are a constant reminder of the corruption that permeates the government of Antigua. Many of the buildings that she sees are ugly to her not only in their appearance, but ugly in their histories. The passage is just one selection of many in A Small Place that shows the impact of globalization on the narrator’s psyche. While the narrator is a fictitious character, it is not difficult to imagine that these are the same thoughts that course through the minds of the elders in cultures such as Antigua, Jamaica and probably even Thomas Friedman’s wonderful India.

Wikipedia counts Friedman as a multi-millionaire. As this is likely true, we should expect him to view the buildings that he sees through very different eyes than the natives of India. Indeed, I would imagine that the buildings that he was describing serve as a (probably pleasant) reminder of home, whereas the buildings in A Small Place and Life and Debt serve as a painful reminder to the natives of what is wrong with their countries.

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.

Globalization

"You will forget your part in the whole setup, that bureaucracy is one of your inventions, and all the laws that you know mysteriously favour you. Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists? Well, it's because we, for as long as we have known you, we were capital, like bales of cotton and sacks of sugar, and you were the commanding, cruel capitalists" (A Small Place, pg 36-37)

I actually found India and thought many of the people in met there were Americans. Some had actually taken American names, and others were doing great imitations of American accents at call centers and American business techniques at software labs” (The World Is Flat, 5).

I drew up these two passages to contrast each other. India is a emerging economy, and the only reason it is a emerging economy is because it follows the rules we have (as a people) created. The world is flat quote perfectly displays this. The reason why we have "thrown them a bone" is because they are allowing themselves to become Americanized. They give up their traditions, language and customs for the modern and superior culture of the West. India prospers because it has allowed its cheap labor to be a commodity, enslaving itself to a culture that Gandhi had fought hard to rid themselves of. The author in "A Small Place" is calling to light that the current rules do in fact benefit us and force other countries to adapt to us while we don't have to adapt to others. This is done in a number of ways. With trade we demand that countries set up their trade to our standard and provide goods for us below a fair price. When countries don't follow those guide lines we either refuse to trade or invade. We don't need to look at the government to see a example of this however. Culturally, we expect everyone to work around us. When someone comes to this country, we demand that they learn our language. We find it disgusting and insulting if we have to talk to someone who can't speak proper English. When we travel however, we expect countries to accommodate us.  We expect to find English speakers ready to accommodate us. After all we are guests, it would be rude if they didn't. When we bring our business over seas they must learn how to communicate with us. The responsibility for successful relations is never put on us. This makes the system unequal before hands are even shaken.

Assignment 5- Globalization Signifiers

"And as your plane descends to land, you might say, What a beautiful island Antigua is- more beautiful than any of the other islands you have seen, and tehy were beautiful... you are thinking of the hard and cold and dark and long days you spent working in North America (or worse, Europe), earning some money so you could stay in this place (Antigua) where the sun always shines and where the climate is deliciously hot and dry for the four to ten days you are going to be staying there..." This is an excerpt from Jamaica Kincaid's book, "A Small Place," in which she devotes the first portion of the book to criticizing tourists in a direct and pressing sort of way (referring to the reader, the 'tourist', as "you").

In the movie, "Life and Debt," Jamaica Kincaid is also heavily involved, using narration from her book, but altering it slightly (basically just by changing the name from Antigua) to fit the story of the island of Jamaica. She recites the lines above, with their slight alterations, while overlapped with the images of tourists landing in the Montego Bay Airport in Jamaica. There is then a clip shown of Jamaican people, in 'authentic', bright clothing and with huge (fake) grins on their faces, welcoming in white tourists with cheerful song and dance.

I feel that not only does this passage of words show a great deal about globalization in today's world, but the fact that these two countries can be interchanged in this manner to describe simmilar histories and current situations, is very telling about the way that a gap has been created between Westerners and 'third world' island nations, so as to clump either group into a generalizable set of peoples.

-First of all, just the idea of tourism (which both the movie and the book spend a good deal of focus on) is a telling aspect of life becoming globalized. Globalization has, in a way, 'shrunk' the world so that it is no longer uncommon for people around the world to travel to far off, foreign lands, to spend just a matter of a few days to check out the country. These people who are to travel, however, must be relatively wealthy in order to afford such a luxery as to escape from their mundane daily life to speculate on the average lives of others (poorer, less privilaged, others.) Also, the mention of 'other islands that you have seen' in this excerpt, alludes to the idea that these people who are touring Antigua (or Jamaica) have been around to many other nations like these, and therefore have a basis of comparison. This illustrates the frequency of people touring about the world to see various cultures and to partake in tourist-like activities (especially in the Caribbean region). However, at the same time, this mention gives way to the idea that these tourists often dont consider the vast historical, cultural, and ecological differences between these different nations, as they compare them to one another based on the 'prettyness' each holds.

- Another factor that depicts a globalizing world, is that not only are the two islands and thier peoples used interchangeably between the film and the book, but that the tourists are constantly referred to as being from North America (or worse, Europe), which denotes a sense of interchangeability between all tourists, and even all white people. This contrast of the locals and the foreigners, as both groups view the other as a generalized whole without individualism, shows that our world has become increasingly unable to escape the gap between wealthy countries and poor ones, between industrialized societies and those less industrialized, and even between dark ethnicities and light-skinned ones. In a sense, everything has become black- and - white, and we see other people by the differences they have from us, not the similiarities we share. So, according to Jamaica Kincaid, to tourists, a person could be Antiguan, or Jamaican, or any other Caribbean race, and it would all be the same; she also inadvertantly shows a similar case for the locals considering Europeans, Americans, and any other wealthy white race to be one in the same as well.

- Finally, along with many other facets of this movie, the film clips of Jamaican people dancing in the airport to welcome the oncoming tourists depict many stereotypes of both the dancers (wearing brightly colored costumes and hairstyles one would 'expect' from the Caribbean), and of the tourists (all white, in Hawaiian style shirts, wearing fanny-packs and funny attire). This is an illustration of what many people (especially from the US and European countries) would expect that landing in Jamaica would be like. The stereotypes of carelessness and cheerfulness in Jamaica are depicted and perpetuated by the music, dance, dress, and attitudes that are sold to tourists so they will come to this island where "the sun always shines", so they will help out the country financially. However, in doing this, many tourists wouldn't stop to think (or wouldn't allow themselves to while on vacation) about the less happy aspects of these peoples' lives, nor about the struggles they face every day before, during, and after work- in which they are required to maintain the careless attitudes. The opposite is also important to consider though; that many of these tourists who are seeking carelessness in the Jamaican spirit of things, may also have very serious things going on in their own lives, and though they are almost certainly more wealthy and privillaged than those who they speculating upon, the tourists may also have reasons to escape their lives back home which the Jamaicans (or other locals in tourist areas) are hostile and unconsiderate of. The locals don't often express their feelings or inquiries towards the tourists (as is true the other way around much more frequently), but they often have extremely unflattering images engraved in their minds about the true home-lives of these tourists. I think it is very important to realize that our beliefs of uniformity in other peoples' cultures comes directly from the 'shrinking' of our world, for we come in contact with so many different people and cultures on a day-to-day basis now that it would be nearly impossible for everyone to understand the intricacies within each major grouping. With all of this said, globalization, especially speaking about the tourist aspect of it, has been very helpful in alotting widely differing experiences for those with money as well as those who are visited by people with money. But, at the same time, this narrowing in of the global view has created many issues involving our perception of foreign cultures, and our lack of ability to understand specific people who we interact with, without assigning them to generalizations and stereotypes which are familiar to us.

Globalization - Assignment #5

1. "You must not wonder what exactly happened to the contents of your lavatory when you flushed it. You must not wonder where your bathwater went when you pulled out the stopper. You must not wonder what happened when you brushed your teeth. Oh, it might all end up in the water you are thinking of taking a swim in; the contents of your lavatory might, just might, graze gently against your ankle as you wade carefree into the water, for you see, in Antigua, there is no proper sewage-disposal system" (13-14, Kincaid).

In this quotation taken from A Small Place, the narrator clearly shows one side of globalization that the tourist is usually not aware of which is Antigua's struggle with creating a proper sewage-disposal system. The mentioning of this issue by Kincaid is a signifier of globalization because it is a serious problem for the people of Antigua. As a society they probably struggle with this issue, and so far they have not found a good system for sewage disposal. The perspective of writing Kincaid has is also a signifier. For example, the straight-forward addressing of this issue of water in Antigua points the finger at you, the reader, and forces him or her to think about this issue. Because of how Kincaid presents this problem that is usually unseen to the tourist, you, the reader, suddenly becomes the one who is acting out in ignorance. As the reader personally I feel like Kincaid puts me in an uncomfortable place because I am faced with issues that have never occurred to me before, even though I have travelled to Mexico eight times in the past for vacations. Although it is not safe to assume the same for other readers, I would guess their reactions would be similar. The reader/tourist is vulnerable and guilty for the situation described, because Kincaid gives refreshing insight into the workings of a tourist from the society's point of view, such as Antigua's perspective that Kincaid offers. The ignorance of tourists not knowing where their dirty water goes is an example of globalization because the local problems citizens in Antigua face of water disposal does not bother the tourist on his or her holiday.

2. "Once you enter the gates of Infosys, though, you are in a different world. A massive resort-size swimming pool nestles amid boulders and manicured lawns, adjacent to a huge putting green. There are multiple restaurants and a fabulous health club. Glass-and-steel buildings seems to sprout up like weeds each week. In some of those buildings, Infosys employees are writing specific software programs for American or European companies; in others, they are running the back rooms of major American- and European-based multinationals--everything from computer maintenance to specific research projects to answering customer calls routed there from all over the world ... Young Indian engineers, men and women, walk briskly from building to building, dangling ID badges. One looked like he could do my taxes. Another looked like she could take my computer apart. And a third looked like she designed it!" (5-6, Friedman)

This passage from "The World Is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman shows the globalization he sees once he enters the area of Infosys. Its outskirts, as he mentions before this passage, are anything but globalized, and it is filled with cows, carts and "motorized rickshaws." But all of this changes when he enters the area of the Infosys campus. All of his description words of things that he sees are signifiers of globalization; for example, glass-and-steel buildings, fabulous health club, dangling ID badges, manicured lawns, etc. All of these descriptions show the advanced technology of Infosys that has so largely taken over the area surrounding the corporation and globalizing the buildings and employees there. Also, his mention of Indian engineers as the ones who can do his taxes, take his computer apart, and design computers, is an obvious signifier of globalization. Outsourcing and the United States' receiving of technological exports, such as computers, cars, televisions, etc. is one thing that has happened in the process of globalization and the United States' extended communication. Receiving these products from countries such as India, as Friedman observes, has had a tremendous impact on people from all over the world, but United States citizens especially, as he connects Indian engineers with computer designing and construction. Friedman also connects to the reader in this way, because he paired Indians with making technology that many United States citizens own, he is talking about a subject that most everyone can relate to. This connection between the Indian race and technology is undeniable for most United States citizens, so Friedman successfully relates to the personal experience of most readers and he can connect with his readers in this way.

Globalization Signifiers

“But then again, perhaps as you observe the debacle in which I now exist, the utter ruin that I say is my life, perhaps you are remembering that you had always felt people like me cannot run things, people like me will never grasp the idea of Gross National Product, people like me will never be able to take command of the thing the most simpleminded among you can master, people like me will never understand the notion of rule by law, people like me cannot really think in abstractions, people like me cannot be objective, we make everything so personal. You will forget your part in the whole setup, that bureaucracy is one of your inventions, that Gross National Product is on of your inventions, and all the laws that you know mysteriously favor you. Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists? Well, it's because we, for as long as we have known you, were capital, like bales of cotton and sacks of sugar, and you were the commanding, cruel capitalists, and the memory of this is so strong, the experience so recent, that we can't quite bring ourselves to embrace this idea that you think so much of.” (36-37) A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid

This passage characterizes globalization as an integration of ideals and values aside from mere business and economic collaboration. Examples like the Gross National Product and notion of rule by law signify components that have become standards for globalization (that is, if a country doesn't adapt to these methods of rank, then they cannot become successful players in a global setting). Yet beyond these concrete signifiers Kincaid challenges the equality of globalization itself by using arbitrary signifiers (eg the slave trade, racism, and colonialism). Contrary to Friedman, she qualifies globalization not as an equal cooperation between nations in a global community, but rather that globalization requires the adoption of developed states' ideals by developing countries. Globalization, therefore, is a rigged playing field by inherently valuing the interests of the developed nations (“all the laws that you know mysteriously favor you”). With this interpretation it becomes apparent why Kincaid finds globalization so frustrating. Not only do the globalizing superpowers ignore the harm they have caused her people (treating her as capital), but she must now adopt their ideologies and methods to even have a possibility at becoming a member of the global community. Similar to Susan Bordo's argument, Kincaid is placed into a double bind where becoming empowered in globalization standards requires the destruction of her own cultural identity.

"Here I am in Bangalore—more than five hundred years after Columbus sailed over the horizon, using the rudimentary navigational technologies of his day, and returned safely to prove definitively that the world was round—and one of India's smartest engineers, trained at his country's top technical institute and backed by the most modern technologies of his day, was essentially telling me that the world was flat—as flat as that screen on which he can host a meeting of his whole global supply chain. Even more interesting, he was citing this development as a good thing, as a new milestone in human progress and a great opportunity for India and the world—the fact that we had made our world flat!" (7) The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman

I agree with Courtney that the expansion of technology is both a positive cause and outcome of globalization. However, I notice many subtle details in this passage that reveal a deeper negative impact of globalization and its challenges to countries' differing values. Notice how Friedman compares his business trip in India to Columbus's voyage. Did Columbus really return to Spain to tell the Queen that the world was round? Or was it to tell the Spanish crown of all the resources and profit he found in the new world? It is important to note that Friedman ignores the exploitative nature of Columbus's journey because it later reflects his own exclusion of globalization as a perpetrator of exploitative domination. First, Friedman describes meeting one of the India's smartest engineers, yet he specifies that the engineer was “trained at his country's top technical institute [italics added].” Such specification is more important than it initially appears because it reveals that Friedman is characterizing the institute as merely the best in India—as though it still lacks the credibility to be considered the best outside of India in a global context. Furthermore, Friedman qualifies the engineer's argument as counter-intuitive. His shock explains his stance against the notion that an equal playing field (granting “a great opportunity for India and the world”) is a good thing for human progress. But why does he find this idea so shocking? Though it could simply be a literary style Friedman employs, such shock reveals that Friedman finds it difficult to believe that other nations could accomplish the same technological advances as his homeland.

Repeatedly, Friedman only uses global signifiers that are also prominent in the US (eg large flat screen TVs, golf courses named after American companies). Therefore, Friedman sees the US as the standard for globalization, meaning that other nations must mimic the tendencies of the US (via technology, economy, or ideology) to be considered global competitors. Yet in treating his own nation as the standard, Friedman qualifies other states as failed attempts of his own, therefore disrespecting their inherent worth. Under this view, the world can only become flat when the world becomes Americanized. Though he tries to say that globalization has made an even playing field, the truth is that globalization has only created an even playing field for nations that succumb to the policies of the US (or those European nations that have retained their global power).

I may be reading too far into these texts, but Kincaid, Friedman, and Life and Debt have revealed the negative burdens of globalization. Sure, globalization connects countries with one another through interwoven economies and technological collaborations. Yet, globalization forces clash between cultures in order to determine a dominant standard for regulating global success (eg business policies, money transactions, even common language spoken in international affairs). Insofar as this occurs, there will always be a dichotomy of us versus them where a dominate nation, as its ideologies and customs reign supreme, oppress the rights and values of other states. While Friedman argues that globalization gives voice to these oppressed countries in a global community, I would rather agree with Kincaid and Life and Debt that globalization further submits such nations to the rules and regulations of developed superpowers.