1.5: Connections

Everyone wants Connections

Technology can make connection possible but it does not explain why humans keep building connections in the first place.  Across history, societies have traded, migrated, conquered, exchanged ideas, formed alliances, traveled, colonized, communicated, and created networks for thousands of different reasons. Although the specifics change from one place and period to another, these motivations can be organized broadly around economic, political, and cultural drivers of connectivity (Steger, 2023).

We Want Things

Resources are distributed unevenly across the planet. Different places possess different climates, minerals, agricultural products, technologies, labor forces, transportation routes, skills, and forms of knowledge, which means that few societies can produce everything they want or need on their own. Trade creates access. Food. Energy. Metals. Timber. Technology. Manufactured goods. Labor. Capital. Luxury products. Knowledge. Economic exchange can create genuine mutual benefits, particularly when different societies specialize, share technologies, gain access to scarce resources, or expand markets. But exchange can also create dependence. Imagine two countries trading with one another. One exports a valuable mineral. The other transforms that mineral into advanced technology and sells the finished product for far more money. Both participate in trade.Both are connected. But that does not mean they capture equal value from the relationship (Frank, 1966; Wallerstein, 2004).

This is why Global Studies does not stop at the observation that trade occurs. We follow the exchange further, examining how ownership, technology, bargaining power, infrastructure, labor, regulation, and historical relationships shape who gains what. Who controls the resource? Who sets the price? Who owns the technology? Who performs the labor? Who controls transportation? Who receives the highest profits? Connection tells us that a relationship exists. Power tells us what kind of relationship it is.

We Want Power

Political connections can emerge voluntarily. Governments form alliances. They sign treaties, join international organizations and coordinate trade. They cooperate on transportation, health, security, environmental protection, or communication. Political integration can reduce barriers and make interaction easier, especially when states agree to shared rules that allow people, goods, money, or information to move more predictably. But political connection can also be imposed. Think conquest, colonization, occupation, forced assimilation or unequal treaties and imperial rule. Throughout history, large political systems have introduced shared legal codes, currencies, administrative practices, languages, roads, taxation systems, or measurements that made communication and exchange easier across large territories. Those systems increased connectivity. At the same time, they also concentrated authority. The key question is therefore not simply: Does political integration connect people? It is: Who defines the terms of the connection?

We Want Ideas (and Sometimes We Want Other People to Want Ours)

Culture moves whenever people do even if not explicit. Religions travel. Languages travel. Music travels. Food travels. Fashion travels. Political ideologies travel. Technologies travel. Stories travel. Human beings continually borrow from, adapt, remix, imitate, resist, and reinterpret one another, which is one reason cultural traditions are rarely as isolated or “pure” as people sometimes imagine (Pieterse, 2009). Cultural exchange can produce extraordinary creativity. Musical traditions combine. Languages absorb words. Recipes evolve through migration. Religions encounter new local practices. Artistic forms cross borders and return transformed. Yet cultural movement also occurs inside unequal systems of power. A language may spread because merchants find it useful, because migrants carry it with them, or because a colonial government imposes it through education and administration. A religious tradition may expand through voluntary conversion, political authority, or both. A multinational entertainment company may distribute a particular cultural product around the world because it controls access to the platforms through which audiences encounter it. Later in this book, we will return to a deceptively difficult question: When is cultural movement exchange, when is it adaptation, and when does power turn it into something else?

Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces

Globalization is not inevitable. Some forces draw societies together and these are commonly described as centripetal forces. Examples are shared institutions, economic interests, transportation infrastructure, political alliances, languages, religions. These are collective identities and communication networks that encourage integration. Other forces however push societies apart. These are centrifugal forces such as conflict, economic inequality political fragmentation, nationalism, discrimination, competing identities and economic crises. Even resistance to outside influences pushes people apart. The balance between these forces changes over time, which is why globalization should never be imagined as a straight arrow pointing inevitably toward “more.”

Borders open. Borders close. Governments join international agreements. Governments withdraw from them. Supply chains become more international and later get reorganized. Cultural practices spread rapidly while others become symbols of local resistance. The history of globalization looks less like a single upward line and more like a series of waves.  Keep that image in mind. We will need it later.