Final Reflection

        Even though coming together and understanding the whole project might have been complicated in the beginning, the final product came together nicely. When we first got our topics, we were overwhelmed by the information we were being asked to find, and no one really knew how to start.  Finding information that connected globalization, our specific topic, and our specific company was challenging, but once we realized it would be easier to break it down, we were able to start working. Without realizing it, we had also already done a lot of the work. Over the course of the year, our articles and summaries that were posted on the edublogs were about some of our topics, and we were able to use these to get an idea of what we wanted to write about. Everyone had a couple articles on the edublogs site, and it was a good tool for starting our research. For me, finding an NGO for labor in De Beers was the part that took me a while.  I was getting really frustrated, because none of the NGOs I found would connect directly to my topic. This is when the group work started to come into play. Katie, who was the corporation side to my topic, was able to give me a good amount of ideas, because when she was researching the good sides to labor in De Beers, she obviously came across some bad sides of it too.  She started telling me about the Blood Diamond trade, but at first, I couldn’t understand how that would connect to labor. Ana and Frances helped me out with that, because we ended up getting together to watch the movie “Blood Diamond”, and it actually turned out to be extremely helpful when doing the presentation and writing my paper.  During the whole process, we also had a group chat where we were able to ask each other questions,  and we could send each other something to edit or something we needed help on. It was an easy way to communicate with each other, everyone participated actively in the chat, and it was as if we had all come together in person to work on our presentation.

In “A Wife’s Story”, the main character, Panna, is living in America but originally comes from India. Her husband, still in India, comes to visit her, but the feelings she has towards him have changed and she can’t really seem to understand why. When she moves to America, she meets a friend who she becomes very close with, but their relationship doesn’t stray from a close friendship. She still feels kind of strange about it though, especially when her husband comes. Half of her knows that the culture in India doesn’t allow that type of close friendship with the opposite gender, but the other half of her knows that its time to move on and let the culture changes take over. In addition, when men start to talk to her on the street, she decides to keep it from her husband because he wouldn’t be pleased with it. At certain times she’s even embarrassed by her husband because he is so ignorant of the new American culture. Towards the end of the book she starts realizing why she doesn’t have the same feelings for him. While she embraced the globalization America gave her, her husband was still stuck with the old Indian culture that she was straying from. This culture gap made it uncomfortable for them, and it seemed like he had to fight for her affection, which he never had to do before. Dealing with globalization from these authors’ points of view show that its better to let globalization happen, but its hard to let old customs go completely. Most characters still lived in the shadow of their old cultures even when they were physically in a different country, and had already adapted to it’s new ways.

From watching the other groups’ presentations, specifically people with the same topic as me, it seems as though child labor is a common issue that comes along with the globalization of companies around the world (such as Asia). When companies start to globalize, they want to expand farther, and make more money. Their obvious first thought is that they need cheap labor, because they wont have to spend as much of their money when paying for their workers.  The first people that come to mind when a company thinks “cheap labor” is children, so they find families that really need the money, and take their children. This is a violation of human rights because the children aren’t getting paid enough, they’re working under unsafe conditions, and they’re way too young to be working so many hours. Another topic I came across when listening to presentations was just the ability for workers to have simple rights. Some I came across in the America’s presentation were just the rights to have respectful treatment regardless of age, race, or gender. Most people don’t think about these issues, because they just assume that everyone is given these rights. In some companies though, workers could be targeted for being a different gender or race. They could be getting paid less and taken advantage of, and these problems could easily go unnoticed as the company grows even larger on a global scale.  While watching other presentations, I was impressed by how the groups really took on the role of the company or their NGO. Most people seemed really well informed about their topics, and they were very convincing and passionate about their arguments.  In the Europe presentation, like Dr. Russell pointed out, it was also impressive to see that people representing the company could point out their bad points also. Most companies aren’t able to do this because they’re afraid of looking bad, but it actually did the opposite. They addressed the problem, and no one could say anything to them about neglecting it. Overall, the groups did a really nice job of presenting their companies, and everyone came out of it with a different insight on the globalization of these major companies.

This project was very appropriate as an activity for our first year in the Global Program. The companies that we researched are huge icons of globalization, but most people aren’t aware of how much influence they have globally. De Beers started out small during the 19^th century diamond rush, but as diamonds grew in higher demand and more were found in South Africa, they were able to expand globally and grow to be one of the largest diamond companies in the world. People across the globe are familiar with the De Beers diamonds, and they are aware of its success, but most people aren’t aware of its flaws. This year, we focused a lot on the upsides and downsides of globalization, and I think this project really highlighted them. Learning about these highlights opened our eyes to the process of globalization, because most of the issues found in a specific company are usually repeated in the next. It also opened our eyes to the fact that there isn’t a concrete answer to the question, “Is globalization good or bad?”, But we learned that there doesn’t have to be a concrete answer. There are both upsides and downsides to globalization, but there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Instead, we can only learn to promote the good and fight the bad. Global English and History has prepared us for this by showing us these good and bad points, and starting to build our awareness to the fact that there is this process going on in the world around us, and instead of just watching it happen, we can all learn to be a part of it.