All Insights Articles

American pop music blaring from speakers in North Africa. Indian novels being read on the subway in New York City. Has cultural production become as widely dispersed as the supply chain?

Global commerce would be impossible without the movement of information — contracts, arrangements, plans, blueprints. Before the digital revolution transformed many of these things into bits and pixels, there was a postal revolution that improved the speed of information flow around the world.

Nigeria’s film industry, often called Nollywood, produced 1,687 feature films in 2007. That’s more movies than were made in India and the United States combined. In a country that has suffered from decades of corruption and a failure to translate significant oil wealth into a higher standard of living for the majority of people, this homegrown enterprise has brought Nigeria a new sort of attention in recent years.

With consumers becoming increasingly concerned about how their goods are produced, international companies are faced with managing conditions — as well as productivity — all along their supply chains. In many cases, that means finding ways to oversee factories in China.

One problem that has come up throughout this issue is how to enforce fair rules throughout a global system when most enforcement mechanisms are nation-based. Given how powerful the forces of globalization are, do we need a new global regulator?

Can globalization thrive without a strong foundation of moral and social values? Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair argues that all human systems rely on certain fundamental values to function well over the long term, and that applying this understanding to globalization could produce tangible benefits.

You can find Cosmopolitan on news­stands in Korea, India, Russia, Greece, Brazil, China, and 50 other countries. How did the idea of the “fun, fearless female” go global — and pull in profits for Hearst?

The lives of people in distant countries are increasingly being linked, through commerce, communications technology, or culture. Researchers are trying to parse out how the gains from globalization are touching the lives of the poorest citizens in developing countries.

Depending on where you stand, globalization can mean factory jobs in Thailand or cheap goods at the mall; a world of choices or the homogenization of pop culture. Scholars from the fields of economics, sociology, and political science discuss the growing web of connections transforming commerce and culture around the world.

Elizabeth Serlemitsos ’93 is chief advisor to the Zambian National AIDS Council, which is the government entity responsible for coordinating the country’s response to HIV and AIDS. The council works with international donors to develop and implement both private and public sector programs to combat devastating impacts of the disease.