Globalization, Development and Health

This week was a little nerve racking. Liyan and I went first to facilitate the case study on globalization. Even though the experience did not go as well as we planned it, I am definitely glad it is over with.

I really like the quote "There are only 2 families in the world, as my grandmother used to say: the haves and the have-nots," by Sancho Panza. We are definitely fortunate to be born into the families of haves. I never really thought of the globe as having a North-South divide in terms of socio-economic and political division between the wealthy developed countries and the poorer developing countries. After class this divide stuck with me. I feel with globalization, "the North" or wealthy developed countries exploit "the South" or poorer developing countries. It is hard for us to tell the poorer developing countries not to follow in our footsteps when all they want is to experience just a slight portion of our lifestyles in which we take for granted.

With globalization comes the "increased interdependence and integration of economic, demographic, social, cultural, political, and environmental systems across geographical boundaries; the trend away from discrete local or national economic units toward one huge interdependent global market." Because we are all becoming one big global village, information exchange will increase, knowledge and expertise will increase, and money, jobs, and people will cross national boundaries.

Globalization can have both positive and negative implications for different countries and for different populations within countries. Most developing nations have been marginalized and experience negative implications of globalization. I feel only the most developed nations have benefited and experience positive implications of globalization. However, in lecture we learned that the general rule is that "those who have learnt how to play the new global game have benefited, while those who have not have tended to be marginalized." I believe it takes resources developing nations do not have access to in order to learn how to play the new global game.

I agree that "we have an ethical and moral responsibility to work to ensure that every human being has the opportunity to maximize her/his potential and has the same options and choices that we take for granted for ourselves and for our loved ones."

I realized through the many discussions of my classes that we feel we know best and that is just not true. Yes, we do have lots of knowledge and tools but we are not deeply rooted to the culture of that nation for us to say that we know best. We should assist and empower the individual nations to learn how to play the new global game for them to benefit and experience the positive implications of globalization.

I feel leaders of countries need to have broader perspectives on the positive and negative implications globalization had on other countries before adoption of new globalization plans. As public health professions, we should consult others and be open to suggestions in order to improve our own individual country while contributing to our world.