First of all, to illustrate the notion Spaces and Exchanges, it is important to define the terms. On the one hand, the idea of space deals with the geographical and symbolic areas that societies occupy and the interactions carried out among them. On the other hand, an exchange is when we give in return for something received – this can be anything from economics, culture, gifts, medical or financial aid. This notion is a nowadays topical issue.The different cultural, economic, sociological and language interactions have shaped and characterised our modern-day world. That’s why I wonder if we can say that the world is becoming a smaller place. To answer this question I have chosen two documents illustrating firstly the development of a global world and then the importance of the virtual world.
Transnational companies- Priceton University -2014
The first document raises the idea of the development of a global world. It introduces one of the two most famous transnational companies that dominate different countries: Starbucks and McDonalds. It was published by the Princeton University and its objective is to show the worldwide distribution of the stores of both companies. Both of them are presented with a world map above their logo that exposes the places were they get their products as well as were their shops are established all over the world. Furthermore on one side we can see a graph that shows the number of Starbucks stores worldwide, and one the other side the Mcdonald's amount of sales compared to other fast food chains.
In the first place, Starburcks chain spands across nineteen countries. This can explain why coffee beans can come from one country while milk can come from a different country hundreds of kilometers away. As we can read in the document, Starbucks production connects some of the poorest countries in the world with some of the wealthiest. It follows from this that there are more and more Starbucks shops around the world, and as we see in the graph nowadays there are 6,200 stores worldwide with three new stores opening daily. Moreover, the circles make the distinction of the Starbucks shops by country, for example we have more than 1000 shops in the United States whereas in countries like Australia or China there are just 1 to 24 Starbucks shops.
Concerning Mcdonald’s, what stands out from the map is the amount of restaurants worldwide. Comparing with Starbucks, Mcdonald's restaurants are much more spread across the world than Starbucks ones. In fact, McDonald's has over 31,000 restaurants in 118 countries. Besides, it is clearly seen in the graph that Mcdonald's surpasses by far the other fast food restaurants.
To sum up, this document depicts the idea that the world is controlled by the exchanges of transnational companies who offered globally standardized food and who stract materials from different countries. To answer the question we can say, that in some way the world is becoming smaller because the same products (or food) are consumed all over the world.
As regards the question of a globalized world we should focus on another important aspect of today's society: new technologies. As a matter of fact the appearance of new technologies has changed the way in which human communicate and exchange information.
This second document is a video that was produced in June 2004 by the University of East Anglia, UK. The video shows how social media can change the world. Moreover it explains that 26% of the Global population from different countries is using social media. That’s why they say that social media are helping to create a global village, mobilizing activism and increasing access to information. It gives examples about how social media helped social changed, like in Jamaica distributing information about HIV or in Mexico where citizens have used social media to report information about drugs. Consequently, social media is a way to unify and connect people all over the world.
Nevertheless, social media reveals also worldwide differences, for instance three fifths of population remains unconnected and even some governments ban websites like facebook or Youtube… Social media has turned so powerful that governments qualifies it as a menace for society and control it. Also, part of world population think that the internet is not relevant to their lives. Although, the video asserts that there are more mobile devices than toothbrushes and that new technologies have the power to change the world.
In short, this video explains that social media is becoming an important mainstay of the exchanges all over the world. It is a way to connect people from side to side. But it has still to evolve because there are some parts of the world that remain unconnected.
To put in a nutshell, we have seen two important powers that control today’s exchanges: the multinationals that shared out the same products all over world and the influence of the virtual world with social media. Both examples show that world is becoming a smaller and standarized place, eventhough there are still deep inequalities with people who continue to be out of this globalized system. To relate this to another notion,we can briefly ask ourselves if this standarization is erasing people identities creating a uniformed world and if this can be considered as progress.
OK Natalia.
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