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