Globalization : for a Better World ?

Groupe : Maxime, Antoine et Denez.

Globalization : for a better world ?

Document 1 : Activists decry sweatshops

http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/how-do-activists-create-change

Introduce. The document is a cartoon from a newspaper called "The Philadelphia Inquirer" and was published on April 1997. It deals with the globalization which is a growth of the exchanges to a worldwide of various economic and cultural system. So, with this document, we are going to answer to the following problem : does the globalization contributes to a better world?

Description In the foreground, we can see five young Asian people working in a production line work, making sport’s shoes. They look tired and sad. Moreover, they are threaten by a fat white man behind them, wearing a NIKE T-shirt, holding a kind of whip, with a comma shape and shouting "JUST DO IT !" to these children. Two of them are protecting themselves while putting their hands above their heads. "JUST DO IT !" has a double sense : it the slogan of the NIKE corporation for advertisement. The message means "what you want to reach, you can reach it with Nike shoes, of course. But for the sweatworkers, it’s different, they are notre allowed to think about anything else than makin the shoes, so “Just do it.

Explanation The cartoonist wants to show us the contrast between the advertisement destinated to consumers and the living and working conditions of the shoes makers. It makes an ironical situation with a slogan destinated to the "consumers" and which is now destined to the "workers" from the Southern countries. Therefore it denounces the inequalities in the economic system inside the globalization. The fat man behind the workers represents the Northern Countries This cartoon is showing the NIDL and reporting the inequalities made by globalization. The southern countries make mass consumption products, for bad living conditions and bad wedges. They are manufacturing countries. The Northern countries are hosting the consumers who never think about the other parts of the world. In conclusion, globalization is an uneven development in space and time. Those progress exclude the least developed countries. The TNC'S do business in more than one country and makes some strategies to make the best benefits. They used foreign workers and they paid them as little as possible to limit the production’s costs. The globalization makes inequalities in the world and strengthens the divide between developed countries (North) and the least developed countries (South).

Criticize This sources are taking the side of the sweatworkers. So they are engaged sources, which denounce scandalous inequalities.