Post on 19-Jul-2016
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By Harm De BlijGeography, Destiny, and Globalization’s Rough Landscape
Thomas Friedman Harm De Blij
Preface
The World is Flat (Globalization)
The Power of Place (Localization)
Mobility / time /space compression or convergence with shrinking functional distances
The Earth, physically as well as culturally is very rough terrain with staggering situational differences
Interconnected transportation/communication
Regional compartments trap billions with uneven distribution of natural resources
Free trade Durable cultures/local traditionsMigration is ubiquitous Global core walling off affluent
realmsFlow of ideas, money and jobs The inequity of the Core /
Periphery“place” is history Males and females in the same
place have widely varying experiences
States try to join in unions (supranational organizations)
Devolution / balkanization regions nurture nationalism
Near-global diffusion of the English language / Western pop culture /corporations forms a cloak of conformity
Place of birth is a powerful influence over the destinies of billions
Join and you will enjoy the benefits
Most will die close to where they were born
Don’t join and fall off the edge Globals vs. Locals
Globals, Locals, and Mobals (Chapter 1)
Where The Garb
Speak The Language
Profess The Faith
Share The Health Conditions
Absorb The Education
Acquire The Attitudes
Inherit The Legacy or
“Baggage” of Place
What deck or cabin do you first occupy on Cruiseship Earth?
Locals Globals MobalsPoorest
(Traditional)Wealthiest(High Mass
Consumption)
Risk-takers in a rapidly urbanizing
worldLeast mobile Very mobile Migrants willing to
leave the familiar Most susceptible to the impress of place
“Place” is history Legal migrants to undocumented border crossing
Population increasing 1.46% annually
Population growing at 0.25% annually
transnational
Top 48 most poverty-stricken countries are growing at 2.4% rate (700 million people)
Populations of Germany and Japan
are declining!
Agents of change that challenge the power of place (they carry
with them the assets and liabilities of
locality)Stage 2 or 3 in Demographic
Transition Model
Stage 4 in the Demographic
Transition Model
They are not refugees
Locals – Globals - Mobals
A Nation AsunderThe relationship between Globals and Locals will determine the future of the planet!
Globals build security and migration barriers
Globals mobilize armies to intervene in other states
Globals outsource for profit motives
Do Globals control the fates of Locals and Mobals?
ApartheidThe formalization
of a set of practices
that had long
prevailed in South
Africa but had
never been codified
as national policy
In the still-colonial
era of the 1940s,
South Africa was a
microcosm of the
world
Apartheid
A white minority had
established the
political, economic,
and social
frameworks that
constituted the state
Apartheid
Black workers toiled in gold
and diamond mines, on
farms, and on public
projects; whites had
appropriated the means of
production as well as most
of the good farmland
Apartheid
The architects of apartheid were
Afrikaners and English speaking
South Africans. They were the
Globals, driving along good
highways linking all-white city
centers and upscale suburbs,
and controlling internal African
migration in accordance with
labor requirements
Apartheid
South Africa’s Locals were the
African peoples who found
themselves circumscribed by
political boundaries the Europeans
laid out. Several of them were
nations more numerous than their
white rulers: Zulus, Xhosa, Sotho,
and Tswana. All of them had
historic homelands; all had
distinctive cultures and traditions.
They were the most Local of Locals
Apartheid
President of South
Africa 1994-1999
Leader of the ANC
Convicted in 1962,
he will serve 27
years in prison
Nelson Mandela
The key figure in South Africa’s
essentially peaceful transition to
majority government. A new
multiracial government has taken
the reins. New challenges from
an army of millions of Mobals is
transforming cities and towns.
South Africa has still not yet
crossed the Rubicon.
Nelson Mandela
Formal Apartheid from
South Africa is dead,
however, the incentives that
gave rise to the system
lives on in our cultural
landscapes.
Gated Communities and the
gap between rich and poor
countries of the world
A World Apart
The Global Core The PeripheryMDC, First World, The Haves LDC, Third World, The Have- Not'sHigh quality-of-life Low quality of lifeSlow growing population Faster-growing populationEconomic powers Export oriented15% of world’s population 85% of world’s population75% of world’s annual income 25% of world’s annual incomeThe world is “Flattest” in the core The world is “roughest” in the
peripheryAttracts Mobals (a destination) A source of migrantsMust control/regulate immigration
Affected by colonialism and imperialism
The Global Core vs. Periphery
700 kilometers of
fences, concrete
and walls . Here the
objective is security
against terrorism
rather than
migration
Israel
Built in 1953
250-kilometer fenced fortification, four
kilometers wide and very heavily guarded.
DMZ (Demilitarized Zone)
Today it symbolizes the world’s core-periphery partition
There is nothing unique
about Afrikaners seeking
to protect their
advantages, their way of
life, and culture. From
Han-ruled China to Sunni-
dominated Iraq it has
been done for centuries
Place and Destiny
Toward the end of the 20th century,
when the Soviet Union
disintegrated and Yugoslavia
collapsed, many foresaw the
demise of the state as the key
player in international affairs. It
would be replaced by supranational
blocs such as the European Union
and subnational units like Catalonia
The State
Catalonia
The planet’s sole superpowerFive factors that lead to a countries
collapse
1.Environmental damage
2.Natural forces of climate change
3.Behavior of hostile neighbors
4.Weakening of trading
partners/allies
5.Their response to these problems
Jared Diamond
An Enduring Human Geography
The diffusion of modern humanity
begins in Africa. It will lead to
plant and animal domestication in
the fertile, watered river basins
that attracted growing numbers of
people. A settlement pattern will
begin to emerge, roughly 10,000
years ago.
An Enduring Human Geography
A map of world population
represents a durable demographic
layout, much of it forged early and
then sustained by local expansion
far more than by regional location.
China had the world’s largest
population a thousand years ago it
still does today.
An Enduring Human Geography
“World Island” Halford Mackinder 1904
The Greatest distributional changes
over the past millennium occurred
not on the “World Island” consisting
of Eurasia and Africa, but in the
human outposts of the Americas and
Australia, where Europeans
overpowered and decimated earlier
arrivals (even today, the World
Island’s human population exceeds
the rest of the world by 5.4 to 1.3
billion)
1. Ancient emigration from Africa
and occupation of productive Old-
World environments
2. Recent penetration of the New
World by European emigrants
“Guns, Germs, and Steel”
3. Recent explosion of global
population (nearly 6 billion people
in the last 100 years)
3 phases of human geographic dispersal
Models, Mobals, and Migration
Migrants and Motives
Migrants and Motives
A Barricaded World Samuel Huntington
Chapter 2