medium for cultural and economic exchange. Additional factors fueling globaliza-
tion are greater levels ofmigrationand international tourism, increasing contact
between peoples of different cultures. In 2008, there were more than
900,000,000 international tourist arrivals recorded around the world. The great
majority of these travelers originate from regions that are driving globalization,
i.e., North America, Europe, and Japan.
Examples of globalization may be found everywhere. One of the most fre-
quently cited instances of globalization is the American restaurant franchise
McDonald’s, which opened a single facility in California in 1940, but by the year
2000 had more than 25,000 locations in 118 countries and territories. The com-
pany claims to serve an average of 58 million people per day worldwide, a figure
roughly equivalent to the entire population of France. Indeed, many commentators
view multinational companies as the primary instigators of globalization since the
end of World War II. They argue that corporations like McDonald’s fueled globali-
zation by pursuing overseas markets and overwhelming local competitors through
advantages in economies of scale and competitive advantage. The convenience
and availability of “fast food,” certainly an American innovation, thereby became
a global phenomenon and Americanfoodwaysbecame the norm for millions of
people living outside the United States. But it is not only Western, and especially
American, corporations and their products that have acquired a global reach—it
is also Western popular culture. Western popular music, movies, and modes of
dress now are found in every corner of the planet. But perhaps even more interest-
ing is the adoption by local performers of foreign styles of music and dress, and
even the methods of promoting their music. An example of the latter is the near
universal adoption of the music video as a mechanism for publicity by performers
worldwide, albeit with some modification to suit local standards. But globalization
does not occur in only one direction—the popularity of sushi and karaoke outside
of Japan, along with the global emergence of “Bollywood” cinema and stars shows
that popular culture flows in all directions across the globallandscape.
The effects of globalization permeate into all aspects of modern life, but two
broad categories of the phenomenon may be identified—economic globalization
and cultural globalization. Broadly put, economic globalization signifies the emer-
gence of a unified, interdependent economic system that transcends international
boundaries. The global economic system is characterized by a greater level of
mobility of capital, labor, and information than ever before in history. The decline
of international socialism in the 1980s and 1990s, represented by broad capitalistic
market reforms in the People’s Republic of China and the collapse of Soviet
communism, fueled the development of increased levels of international trade,
larger levels of capital investment in foreign markets, and transfers of information,
technology, and marketing strategies. Pools of highly skilled labor in emerging152 Globalization