To what extent are you a product of globalisation?
I believe that I am a product of
globalisation, I say this whilst typing on my HP laptop made in Taiwan, whilst
watching the globalisation video on my Lenovo tablet made in China. Culture has
become so fluid that I am unsure of any British made items I actually own, it's
so easy to acquire things by the click of the button especially with modern
apps like Ebay (mostly ships from China).
Being connected with the rest of the world
in a western, industrialised society has never been so easy, having friends all
over the globe is becoming easier due to apps like Monkey which lets you video
chat with random people all over the world with the chance to add them to
Snapchat afterwards. Being someone with family everywhere I see every day how
globalisation has changed my life, the fact that I can message my cousins in
America or my brothers in Canada, all by the click of a button is amazing.
The world we live in has become so
interconnected that you have to start to question if anyone really has any
culture or how solid was 'our' culture to begin with if it's been so easy to
change. Throughout the world, we have all dissected everyone's culture, adapted
and added the thing we like into our own individual culture.
It's hard to argue that I am not a product
of globalisation when the broccoli I cooked with earlier was imported from
Spain, almost all the food I cook with and eat have been imported from other
countries due to the climate in Britain not being able to grow certain fruits
and vegetables all year round. So, I have almost been forced into being a
product of globalisation due to the country my dad chose to inhabit.
The truth is that us millennials don’t know
and we definitely wouldn’t be able to recognise a world without globalisation,
when we are on holiday and absolutely drunk we are most likely to stumble into
a fast food global giant such as Mcdonalds because we know it and recognise it
in a place where everything else seems to be so 'foreign' to us.
So many of the known global giants that I
love, and couldn't live without such as my Apple phone, designed by Apple in
California but assembled in China are a product of globalisation. If it wasn’t
for globalisation this already expensive phone would cost almost double due to
the fact that workers in America – a fully developed country, compared to the
workers in China - which is still a developing country would demand to be paid
more, therefore, increasing the price that we would have to pay as the
consumer.
To
conclude, I am a product of globalisation like most of my peers and the
generation after me who will have no idea what life without imported goods
looked like. Globalisation is wonderful to some extent but what price do we
really pay to live the life of imported luxury?
by 'Princess Aishat'