Source Interpretation Essay- Final

Social 10-1                                                                           Jeri Blackmore

Related Issue 1

Source Interpretation Written Assignment

               

            All over the world media is spreading globalization through any community to every individual.  Ideas are being spread faster than ever through technology to countries everywhere.  I think that in time as cultures become more and more alike globalization will kill the individuality of the world.  Transnational corporations are currently in power over trading and media convergence resulting in the conglomeration of smaller companies.  Western culture is vastly spreading far across the world reaching the Eastern coast.  Should our society revert back to its former individualism or continue to shift into a collective identity?

            As media convergence controls what society sees it strictly limits the information the public is receiving.  Alliances made through trade agreements allow the goods we receive to travel to various regions around the word.  I agree with source one in its claims that constant growing globalization and the rise of transnational corporations will universalize our culture into a collective society.  Individual beliefs will travel and unite the world, where everyone is collectively the same and individualism is rare.  

            Sesame Street (as seen in source two) is a popular children’s television program originating in North America that can now be seen all over the world.  Made into various languages children across the globe are now familiarized with the characters, convergence of media is shaping their thought pattern.  Conglomeration is a factor as the smaller programming will never be as popular as the larger corporations and businesses.  If all our interests are the same, interactions between people of different countries will have minimal differences. 

            When going to the grocery store, the last thought on a persons’ mind is the origin of the product being bought.  Many foods such as bananas are not local to Canada and must be shipped in from other countries.  Local farmers cannot compete with the large fruit corporation as they offer extensive variety and low cost due to the cheap labour and little to no employer regulations.  Top brands like Del Monte, Dole, and Chiquita are in association with the World Trade Organization which has previously been confronted with undermining national laws that have protected workers, environments, community economies, safety and health of the public.  The best way to keep individualism and ensure humane practices have been used is to buy fresh local fruit as often as possible and to be informed as to where food is originating and the circumstances around it. 

            Through technology and the modernization of society globalization is spreading faster than ever.  Traditions, beliefs, and idealism are being lost as entire cultures are falling victim to the mainstream transnational brands and corporations.  As the cultures once did stand unique to one another it would be a shame for cultural hybridization to remold what once stood as individualized ways of living.  I think that globalization is fortunate to a certain extent until it takes away from culture.

Source essay by jace salmon final

Did you know that India is the fastest growing internet audience in the world in 2006 they grew by 33%. How has Globalization affected our modern world? For negative or positive, people have been disagreeing with one another for a long time about this subject. Globalization has made us have more of a collective identity. Though many people think of globalization as a good thing they may not realized some of the negative effects that it causes. Globalization takes away from tradition culture and penalizes banana farmers and is converting the whole world to the North American ideology. For the better or the worse that is for you to decide.


 How has globalization affected our world past, present and future?
 Globalization started a long time ago; there is no exact date but large travel started on the silk road when goods were transferred between India and England. This kind of travel and trade has affected the way we live today and might I add for the worse. Today you can sit on a couch that was made in China but assembled in Thailand while you are on a computer that was designed in Germany while you eat a banana from Guatemala. This is present day Globalization and it is making people all over the world more and more the same. How am I supposed to keep my culture and history when more and more globalization takes over? Soon we will all be the same people, with the same culture, religion, and one human identity. 


TV programs have spread all over the world such as Sesame Street, Simpsons, and Family Guy. These TV shows are all created in the United States and these shows and ideas are being shown all over the world. North American ideology is being transported all over the world. Young children are slowly being brainwashed to think a certain way. Media convergence can affect large amounts of people. Companies can send out mass advertisements in the form of magazines, TV commercials, poster, movies, and the internet. Websites such as Facebook and Twitter are also based out of the United States. Large companies such as these can persuade people to think what they want. People in India have been affected drastically by media convergence. For example, Indian women are no longer wearing their traditional clothing, because they are influenced by American television shows such as MTV.


When you go to a grocery store, there are typically three main brands of bananas. Most people wouldn't support large banana companies if they knew the truth about them. Chiquita Bananas hire young children that are usually paid a very small wage or no wage whatsoever. They also spray chemicals to protect the plants from insects even when there are workers in the fields. If you go to a grocery store anywhere in the world you will find one of the major three banana companies, Chiquita, Dole, or Del Monte . These three companies control the majority of the banana industry. This is bringing our world closer together, under a false umbrella and unfair buying power between countries on unequal footing. It is harmful to the free market economy that our society was built. It is the banana farmers that are really losing out on this deal. The workers toll long laborous hours for minimal wage, then the large corporations buy the bananas in bulk for dirt cheap, and then they sell them all over the world for super inflated prices. It is our crave and want that is hurting local farmers and increasing the profit of American made millionaire companies. So think about that the next time you bite into a banana.

The overall impact of globalization is the shrinking of our worlds and melding of cultures into one universal component. With mass media affecting our thoughts and actions on so many levels, it is impossible to believe anyone will be left untouched by it. As well, the unfair advantage of globalization gives power and profit to the educated business owners while taking all of that away from the labourers and farmers in poor countries. It will be some time before our thoughts and reactions are capable of processing the information being forced on us by social media. 

Source Interpretation Written Assignment - Final Essay!!

News broadcasts across our country and across our globe all have one thing in common; globalization. You cannot watch an hour of news without coming across an important globalization story, possible affecting your way of life. Like the recent hurricane Sandy; though not directly affecting us through weather; could eventually affect us through trade. Globalization is the interaction of people, politics, goods and services around the world, and there is no question that globalization is uniting us and converging us into one culture. But I believe globalization has weakened us as individuals, and is shaping the way people think and act and how they live their lives. Globalization can be very negative, and you can see through our every day globalization, media convergence and transnational corporations, all these aspects of globalization contribute and are right now taking away from our individual identity and adding to our collective identity, ruining the perfect balance.

The uniting of our world is directly linked to globalization, eventually we become alike, having less of an individual identity and more of a collective identity so we will become one culture. I agree that this statement is true, that globalization is combining our world into one society, but I don’t believe that is the direction we should be going. An example of our world becoming a whole could be the Silk Road. The Silk Road was a road of knowledge, the interaction of people from all around the world, sharing exclusive spices and silks, and new science and technology. From the developing of the universal number system, to the learning of different people’s cultures, it all brought us together as a whole. Another example could be the new release that has influenced popular culture, the hit song and music video “Gangnam Style”. “Gangnam Style” is sung by South Korean music artist PSY, and as of November 26, 2012 (2012 -11-26)^[update], the music video has been viewed over 830 million times on YouTube, becoming more popular then Justin Beiber. By the end of October 2012, the song reached the number one position in more than 30 countries including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom, and according to the United Nations, this song has become an “international sensation”. Even so, listening to the same music and wearing the same big brand name clothes are just more examples of how we are losing our unique personal identities, and our identities as a whole. Different cultures need to become more aware of the convergence of our world and begin to rediscover their individual and collective identities that set them apart from every other culture, because without it, we are moving towards one world.

C is for cookie. COOKIE!?! Omm-nom-nom!! The Cookie Monster from the hit American children’s show Sesame Street, is a character we all have come to know and love. Media corporations affect and influence all of us socially, economically, politically and environmentally, and Sesame Street is one of the very most influential shows because it teaches young children basic morals and learning skills, and also gives the children relatable role models. Sesame Street has made its way all around the world, and appears in over 100 countries today. It’s a show we as children have all watched, children are watching today, and our future generations of children will watch. Most of the shows broadcasted, although there are a few culturally specific to their own countries, are mostly in the general North Americans’ outlook. If viewing this show by children with the same general North American outlook is not clearly displaying the convergences of our world then I don’t know what is. This is clearly another example of how the world is mutually coming together, strengthening our collective identity as a world, but losing our identities as a person. Media convergence is one of the major contributors to the deteriorating of our identity, the fading of us as a diverse world, with many exceptional, different, and beautiful people.

Banana splits, banana muffins, banana chocolate chip muffins! Bananas are one of the most popular fruits in Canada, and the reason for this is because we cannot grow bananas in our climate, but we can use it for so many things! When bananas were first introduced in North America, they were a hot commodity and a treat among the wealthy, and being such a popular fruit, created some competitive companies. But now with bananas being so common, we can just walk into the grocery store on a daily basis and grab bananas for a very reasonable price, and we likely fail to remember where they came from and how they got here. Chiquita, being one of the leading companies, have banana farms in Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Panama, and ship the bananas all around the world. With transportation as easy as it is today to fly or boat over seas to another country, it is just as easy to transfer bananas all around the globe. But if we receive the bananas and are forgetting where they came from, then we as a society don’t know the whole story. We as a society might not know that the bananas are being sprayed with pesticides to kill the bugs out on the farms, and that wouldn’t be such a big deal, if the workers weren’t in the fields with the dangerous chemicals too. We are turning a blind eye to the clear breaking of their human rights, and as a society we need to realize how lucky we are to even have these bananas. This is one of the examples that I actually agree with.  I don’t believe we should be uniting as one world, but I believe that the trading or shipping of bananas is actually a fine way of keeping in touch with the people down in those exotic places. The bananas are not directly telling us to buy them and everyone should eat them and we will all become the same, but I can see how people could interpret that, but what I can’t see is Chiquita taking over and conquering the world.

Globalization is happening. Globalization should create diversity within our world and create uniqueness within ourselves. Our everyday globalization, media convergence and transnational corporations do play a huge role of what makes us who we are. But I believe globalization has weakened us as individuals, and is shaping the way people think and act and how they live their lives and this is all contributing to our personal identities and collective identities. Because everyone is unique and different, what would the world be without a diverse and different people? I think it would be a very boring, dull, and unfulfilling place to live and call home.

Source Interpretation Written Assignment Final Copy

Source Interpretation Written Assignment

Social 10-1
Ronni Burrows

    What impact does globalization have on a world? Has it enhanced us as a globe, or has it weakened us as individuals? There is a heated discussion about the true influences of globalization and if it really is such an advantageous thing. Good or bad, there isn't much argument as to whether or not it's happening. If you look at the tag on your shirt, chances are you would see that it was made in a country other than the one in which you sit right now. Before it reached your wardrobe, that shirt could have very well been made with Chinese cotton, sewn by Thai hands, shipped on a French freighter crewed by Spaniards to a Los Angeles harbor. Essentially an economic phenomenon, globalization could only be envisioned in the context of wider interaction between different cultures; I instead believe that globalization has in fact lessened us as individuals. Globalization should shape the identity not create it so that individuals and collective identities are lost or forgotten. Our daily globalization, media convergences, and our economics are all big factors as to what keeps us from maintaining our distinctiveness, and as an alternative of being an individual.

    To what extent should globalization shape our identity? In our hybridized world, many of our sources express the positive aspects of our globalized domain. They all tell about our access to foreign culture in the form of movies, music, food, clothing, and more. In short, the world has more choices.  Still, they say globalization is the process of increased interconnection among countries, most notably in the areas of economics, politics, and culture. For example; McDonalds in Japan, French films being played in Minneapolis, and the United Nations, are all representations of globalization. Society is modernizing at a rapid rate and there is nothing we can do about that. But people around the world need to come to realize the importance of cultural diversity, unique traditions, and personal identities apart from one other. Although different cultures from around the world are able to interact, they begin to meld, and the contours and individuality of each begin to fade. One of the strongest critics to globalization comes from the fear that such a process might erode national cultures and individual identities.

    Today, the original American kids show "Sesame Street" appears in more than 120 countries. Children in 65 countries have viewed the series in its English‐language form and in addition, the program has been re-made in 13 other languages.  The producer of Sesame Street owns a lot more than just a TV show. Media convergences are bringing together media companies; a newspaper, a textbook publisher, a phone company, a TV network, and a movie production company may all be owned by a single transnational corporation. Not only has the Americans’ show Sesame Street been shared across the world but in particular the Americans’ outlook in general. We adopt American ways, and their media has a big influence on the outcomes of the rest of the world. Americans are interrogating other cultures identities. Today, communication technologies are changing so quickly that the rate of revolution has become far faster than ever before. Cell phones, television, and the Internet have come to affect nearly every aspect of people’s lives. The word distribution simply means to spread out, and that is exactly what any new found knowledge does. When a new development or way of doing something emits, it does not stay secret for long. The media aspect of globalization is making us lose one of the things that count the most: our identity, the uniqueness in us, that which makes us special and allows us to stand out from the crowd.

    Although bananas may only look like a fruit, they represent a wide variety of economic problems. The banana trade symbolizes economic imperialism and injustices in the global trade market. As one of the first tropical fruits to be exported, bananas were a cheap way to bring the tropics to North America and Europe. But why so cheap? People who work for banana companies work for very little money, that’s why we can buy them for so little in our local grocery stores. Bananas have become such a common, inexpensive grocery item that we often forget where they come from and how they got here. The transnational corporations, most notably Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte, have been linked to the World Trade Organization. What I think source three was really showing is that big brand names for either an industry or an item in the store can over show smaller brands or local stores. Mass consumption of products brought up by international trade in cultural and other sectors may be seen as negative because it crowds out self-produced, traditional and locally manufactured goods and services. How does this affect your identity? The influences of big brands helps fuel the economy by motivating buyers and supporting sellers. Your brain perceives what the average person buys and believes it’s normal and that you should have it too. Everyone needs to feel connected with others and be with others who share attitudes, interests, and circumstances that resemble their own. But why can’t we be unique. I feel that big brand like Chiquita are only making us the same as everyone else. We need to embrace our own uniqueness and think for ourselves instead

    It is obvious that neither globalization nor cultural identities are neutral concepts. But no matter what your opinion, globalization is happening. Globalization should create the diversity within our world and create the uniqueness within ourselves. As today’s global economy continues to expand, we know neither if globalization is making us better as a world or worse. But just imagine a world where everyone eats the same stuff, wears the same clothes, and listens to the same music. How dull would that be? Our daily lives, media, and our economics all support a huge role of what makes us who we are. As a globe, we need to hold our individuality and continue the diversity between one other.

RE: for the oil sands

The heating of our homes that we use everyday is used by oil. The electric gas heats our homes and is transported through terminals...BUT aren't those terminals ripe targets for terrorism.?

Against Jace post on alternative energy.

yes we should use more clean energy but it takes energy to make and set up your windmills and solar panels and that energy will most likely be from oil. also the oil sands if making ways to keep the air cleaner and to replace trees and building factories to help with air quality!