Globalization: Exploitation, Inequality and Power Imbalances: Literature Review

             In recent years, as awareness of globalization has entered the mainstream, a variety of tomes examining the detrimental effects of this process have emerged. While some of the literature is strictly intended for a scholarly audience, many books have been published with the general reader in mind. In what follows, I will examine both the sociological and – for lack of a better term – "popular" literature of globalization organized around three basic, but essential themes:
             1) Globalization as the Precursor of Inequality;
             2) Globalization as a means of Exploitation of people and resources; and
             3) Globalization as the harbinger of Dominance and Power.
             Globalization as the Precursor of Inequality
             In When Corporations Rule the World, David Korten argues that the rise of corporations in the United States today has effectively worked to destroy the foundational concepts of private enterprise that the United States of America was founded upon. What is more, the ideology that is promoted by corporate libertarians manipulates the theories promoted by Adam Smith, the esteemed free market economist. Korten feels that the type of economic development that is supported by Bretton Woods institutions and multinational corporations is inherently exploitative – of both human beings and natural resources such as the environment. He argues that we should be going in a completely different direction – that of "people-centered development," as he terms it, as well as a concern for the well-being of the environment. One way of achieving this would be to charge a tax on advertising of fifty percent or more. Advertising is one of the primary evils of globalization, Korten argues. "An active propaganda machinery controlled by the world's largest corporations constantly reassures us that consumerism is the path to happiness, governmental restraint of market excess is the cause our distress, and e...

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Globalization: Exploitation, Inequality and Power Imbalances: Literature Review. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 04:47, March 29, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/203064.html