When my students write essays and talk about globalization they all frequently use the metaphor that "globalization has made the world like a small village." To this, I write two comments. First, don't use metaphors in academic writing. And secondly, this metaphor isn't even accurate. I've been to small villages, like the one in northeast Hungary where my great-grandmother was born with a population of under 500. There are no McDonalds or other global brands there. No international companies are headquartered there. This village (like most small villages) is also culturally and linguistically homogenous. If you want globalization go to a major city like Hong Kong, London, or New York. A small village is probably the last place you should think of when writing about globalization.
The other claim that students often make is that globalization is something brand new that has only happened in the last 30 years or so. Beyond the fact that it's probably human nature to assume that if it's the first time you've heard of something then it must be brand new (e.g., my friend Jason the other day told me that many of his teenage students who have just discovered Weird Al Yankovic are surprised to find out that he's been producing music since the late 1970s), I feel like students in the Persian Gulf frequently confuse globalization with westernization. This term is probably more accurate, since in countries like Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain, it really has only been in the last 30 years or so that these newly oil-wealthy countries began looking to western models in order to modernize their countries. But many of the basic elements of globalization, like economic and cultural exchange, have been around for centuries before the first McDonalds was built in Dubai.
I then show my students, the majority of which are Arabic speakers, the days of the week in Malaysian. For this particular blog, I've also included the numbers one through five in Arabic so you can see what I'm getting at.
If you bear in mind that Malaysian doesn't have an equivalent sound for "th" and changed them to the simpler "s" sound, then it becomes very clear that sometime in the past, when Arabs were first traveling to the Malay peninsula for trade and the Malaysian people began to convert to Islam, there was a cultural and linguistic exchange, all of which are components of globalization.
It's also worth mentioning the words for Friday and Saturday, since they're nearly identical in both languages. In Malaysian, Friday is Jumaat, which comes directly from the Arabic word for Friday الجمعة, which comes from the root جمع, which means "to gather", since Friday is the day Muslims gather in the mosque to pray. Saturday in Malay is Sabtu, which is similar to English word "Sabbath", which ultimately refers to the seventh day of the week being a day of rest.
So globalization clearly is nothing new, I tell my students, but it certainly has increased rapidly in the past century.
The other claim that students often make is that globalization is something brand new that has only happened in the last 30 years or so. Beyond the fact that it's probably human nature to assume that if it's the first time you've heard of something then it must be brand new (e.g., my friend Jason the other day told me that many of his teenage students who have just discovered Weird Al Yankovic are surprised to find out that he's been producing music since the late 1970s), I feel like students in the Persian Gulf frequently confuse globalization with westernization. This term is probably more accurate, since in countries like Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain, it really has only been in the last 30 years or so that these newly oil-wealthy countries began looking to western models in order to modernize their countries. But many of the basic elements of globalization, like economic and cultural exchange, have been around for centuries before the first McDonalds was built in Dubai.
I then show my students, the majority of which are Arabic speakers, the days of the week in Malaysian. For this particular blog, I've also included the numbers one through five in Arabic so you can see what I'm getting at.
If you bear in mind that Malaysian doesn't have an equivalent sound for "th" and changed them to the simpler "s" sound, then it becomes very clear that sometime in the past, when Arabs were first traveling to the Malay peninsula for trade and the Malaysian people began to convert to Islam, there was a cultural and linguistic exchange, all of which are components of globalization.
It's also worth mentioning the words for Friday and Saturday, since they're nearly identical in both languages. In Malaysian, Friday is Jumaat, which comes directly from the Arabic word for Friday الجمعة, which comes from the root جمع, which means "to gather", since Friday is the day Muslims gather in the mosque to pray. Saturday in Malay is Sabtu, which is similar to English word "Sabbath", which ultimately refers to the seventh day of the week being a day of rest.
So globalization clearly is nothing new, I tell my students, but it certainly has increased rapidly in the past century.
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