Summary: Globalization In World History | 9780367279868 | Peter N Stearns

Read the summary and the most important questions on Globalization in World History | 9780367279868 | Peter N. Stearns

• 1 Globalization and the Challenge to Historical Analysis

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• What positive and negative perspectives are there about globalization?

  Some observes have seen it as an engine for economic growth and prosperity, or a framework for the protection of human rights and even a peaceful global community. 
  Others have blasted it as a source of corporate control and impoverishment, a threat to cultural integrity, a terrible and destructive force.

• What does the left say about globalization?

  Globalization promotes economic and political systems that "threaten progressive goals, and should be recognized as such and fought at every level."
  "It does not serve the interests of the vast majority of the people on the planet and is both economically and environmentally unsustainable."
  Its menace is "self-evident".

• When did the "new global" historians say that globalization began?

  The "new global" historians tends to opt for a slightly more generous time span than some non-historians prefer, pointing back to the 1950s or so for the onset of the contemporary current.

• How may we be better able to evaluate the impacts of globalization on the human condition?

  If we look for a more gradual accumulation of features rather than just debating about the origins of the whole process.

• On what claim does this book rest, regarding globalization?

  - This book rests on the claim that globalization has become one of the defining features of world history but that it emerges from a more complex and longer-standing process of change. 
  - It picks up on the idea of stages or waves of particularly important change, but adds careful attention to chronologically earlier precedents and to the idea of a sequence of key steps.

• What has modern globalization been connected to?

  To Western norms, at least until very recently, but the basics may pre-date Western leadership just as the process, today, may be escaping Western control.

• What are the four major turning points of globalization?

  - The four major turning points are around 1000, around 1500, around 1850 and of course in recent decades.

• What does globalization reflect?

  It reflects the ambitions and daring and greed of many people in the past who knew they wanted to reach out for new goods or new ideas or new conquests without having any idea that what they were doing would someday amount to a new world system.

• What encouraged the development of distinct habits and identities?

  Hunting and gathering groups, generally about 60-80 strong, usually required upwards of 200 square miles to operate - depending of course on climate and other conditions. This in itself tended to create substantial open space between one group and the next, which in turn could encourage the development of distinct habits and identities.

• What was combined with distance in hunting and gathering economy?

  Distance combined with dramatically different habits, localized religions, and linguistic patterns to make contact and communication extremely difficult, often promoting proudly separate small-group identities and no small fear of strangers.